Simon Leys News Today

The book relates how the real proletarian revolution in Spain in 1936 was hijacked by political forces across the whole spectrum, fascist and anti-fascist, hence the title, counter-revolution, 1936-39. It is the complete work, published in «Bilan»: Contre-revolution en Espagne, 1936-1939, and republished in a shorter form in a pamphlet, under the title, Fascism/anti-fascism.

While giving a talk on China I was asked an unusual question: ‘What is the one word you would use to describe China?’ By China we mean of course the Chinese Communist party (CCP) and, more specifically, Xi Jinping. My reply was: ‘Solipsistic.’ Xi wants China to lead the world, but to take very limited

Xi Jinping's Empire of Tedium Appendix LVIII 蠅營狗苟 In 2024 it will be a hundred years since Lu Xun published 'The Shadow's Farewell' 影的告別, a darkly mesmeric prose-poem about the dilemmas of the age. The somnolent narrator of the piece rejects the compromises demanded of everyday tedium, while

When Chinese law professor Xu Zhangrun began publishing articles last year criticizing the government’s turn toward a harsher variety of authoritarianism, it seemed inevitable that he would be swiftly silenced. But then, remarkably, dozens of prominent citizens began speaking up. Some signed a petition, others wrote essays and poems in Xu’s support, and one wrote a song. To

Xi Jinping’s focus on ideological struggle will not help overcome the long-term problems that constrain China’s potential.

“If there was anything Mao wouldn’t want to see, it was tears. Mao said on one occasion, ‘I can’t bear to see poor people cry. When I see their tears, I can’t hold back my own.’ “Another thing which upset Mao was bloodshed.” —From Mao Zedong: Man, Not God by Quan Yanchi11.These observations should not be taken on trust. The author, a loyal hack of the official Chinese Writers’

From the July/August 2022 issue of The Horn Book Magazine: Special Issue: ALA Awards.

Isabel Hilton: When I heard the news of the death of Pierre Ryckmans, better known by his pen name, Simon Leys, I began to hunt in my bookshelves for the now yellowing and grimy copies of Chinese Shadows and The Chairman’s New Clothes: Mao and the Cultural Revolution, both published in English translation in 1977.

Following is an edited transcript of a live event hosted at Asia Society New York on December 17, 2015, “ChinaFile Presents: The New Yorker On China.” (The full video appears above.) The evening, introduced by Asia Society President Josette Sheeran, convened the writers Jiayang Fan, Peter Hessler, Evan Osnos, Zha Jianying, and Orville Schell for a look back at their four

If any of the makers of modern China who agonized over their country’s enfeebled state and dreamed of better times during the past century and a half could have visited Beijing’s Pangu Plaza today, they would hardly believe their eyes. Pangu’s preening thirty-nine-story office tower, capped by a massive figurative dragon head in stone, stands high above the fourth ring road,