On denying American kids their birthright to be self-absorbed

The  US Congress, in a surprising bipartisan move, approved a requirement that the social media app TikTok be sold or banned in the US. TikTok, for anyone who may not know, is a video app from ByteDance, a highly successful Chinese company. President Biden has said he would sign a bill containing a ban. Now it is up to the Senate.

Users of TikTok are outraged. How can American free speech, free press, free ability-to-do-anything-I-want be threatened by such insidious government censorship? American teenagers are panicked.

But the principal user of TikTok – CCP – is the most outraged of all.

Stupid is as stupid does - MAGA-stupidity in China

 You’ve heard some of the MAGA stories – that Trump is sent from God, that inflation is raging, that the government is coming to take your (pick your noun) guns, kids, bible, Way of Life. The Chinese are sending spies to walk across the border with the illegal immigrants.

No question but the number of such stories would explode were the orange-haired baboon to be re-elected. At the highest level, the government itself would promote some of the stories.

Comments on the new Foreign Relations Law - why its called a one party-state

There are several good American lawyer blogs on Chinese law. Most prominent in my mind is Harris Bricken, which contains information on current and past cases dealing with businesses and law in China. The China collection features posts by several academic attorneys with China experience, including Donald Clarke, Ling Li, and Carl Minzner.

Don Clarke has some comments on the new Foreign Relations Law. I’m not a lawyer – I don’t even play one on tv – but three comments on Don Clarke’s comments.

You can check out anytime you like … but you can never leave

A short note on CCP fear of CCP members in Hubei Province –

From several sources comes information that Hubei Provincial CCP is demanding to hold passports from midlevel CCP members and above, even long after retirement. Current retirement age for men is 60; 55 for women. Lots of CCP members have family or kids in the US. If they cannot get approval to seek a visa, they can never see their families. That's a long time to be barred from direct family contact.

On passing the academic intellectual torch

William Kirby is a renowned China scholar at Harvard. He has written a dozen books on Chinese history and our relations with China. He has a long list of accomplishments at the highest levels of international academia and professional societies.

When he writes about superior universities in Germany and the US and China, I can only marvel at the scope of his erudition. So I feel a bit out of my element commenting on his latest book Empires of Ideas: Creating the Modern University from Germany to America to China.

Red Imports in the Red States

Governor DeSantis is quite clearly fond of CCP policies and regulations. Many of his GOP fellow travelers are in thrall as well. Ridiculous? To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.