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Catching Up on French Reports from China
Today, prepping a piece on Ai Weiwei in the German press, I popped a few dozen links (beginning with my own “European Sources on East Asia” in my homepage sidebar) and was quickly swimming in...
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High Altitude Social Isolation Tense Political Situation = Dream Job for...
In the best cases, one of the unheralded side benefits of being a professor involves the holding of office hours, the offering of an open door. This morning, the open door resulted in two very...
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The Dalai Lama in Toulouse: On Soft Power, Le Pen, and Unfallen Shoes
Back in July, while on a late-night stroll through the 5th Arrdondisment looking for Rue Oberkampf, I chanced upon an announcement of the Dalai Lama’s mid-August trip to Toulouse, France, a city which...
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Inside North Korea: French Edition
I found this French film, apparently shot in spring 2010, to be better than most treatments of the North Korean tourist experience. Among other things, a young North Korean “rapper” is encountered in...
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Plateau Rouge: On the Cultural Revolution in Tibet (2)
A few weeks ago, I finally received my copy of the new French translation of Tibetan writer Woeser’s text of oral histories on the Cultural Revolution in Tibet. This past Saturday night in Seattle, in...
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Consecrated: New French Embassy in Beijing
The next time you encounter someone caterwauling about the rapid expansion of Chinese cultural institutions abroad, Chinese companies taking over contracts in Algeria, or complaining about the size of...
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Blockages and Breakthroughts: Cultural Diplomacy and North Korea
[A cross-post of an essay which I posted on SinoNK.com. — AC] Yesterday, Corée_Actualités launched a short missive which functioned as a kind of bouleversement of the normal: a 90-member delegation of...
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Moranbong: Following French Intellectuals to North Korea in 1958
Frame from the French-North Korean film production of “Moranbong,” c. 1958. Image courtesy National Museum of Singapore As I’ve completed a long article on the subject of Sino-French relations in the...
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Powerless Harmonies: Cultural Diplomacy in French-North Korean Relations
In March 2012, an orchestra of North Korean musicians went to Paris to perform, an event which gave us a very good case study of looking at the DPRK’s soft power efforts. It also provided an example of...
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Journalist Expulsions and Beijing’s Counterterrorism Narrative
2015 was supposedly a triumphant year for the Chinese Communist Party, but the CCP seemed determined to end the year on a landslide of insecurity with respect to the foreign journalists within its...
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