AI or no AI, China’s manufacturing engine to stay in the lead

Posted on by Jason Li

From Dan Wang’s China notes, July ’23: on technological momentum:

Americans are now integrating these [AI] tools into their lives. And they will start showing up in productivity statistics, perhaps even soon. The longer that most Chinese are unable to work with them, the greater the risk that China will be left behind in some way…

Though…

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There Is More Than One Chinese Language: Dictionaries for Cantonese, Teochew, Toisanese, Shanghainese, and more!

Posted on by Jason Li

A bird with a long beak and glasses reading a big thick book. Hovering near it area two browser windows and one phone screen that show different screenshots from different Chinese dictionaries

As we say in The Hanmoji Handbook, “Here’s the thing about spoken Chinese: it refers to many different languages — dozens, in fact — used by people in various parts of China, today and throughout history.” So when we discovered that the United Nations created an official, singular Chinese Language Day (celebrated annually on 4/20…

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Correcting the record (and oriental gaze) on Radiolab’s China Mixtape episode

Posted on by Jason Li
A soldier with red star cap and uniform holds up a casette tape and a machine gun, drawn in the style of a Communist China propaganda poster from many decades ago.
A still from Radiolab’s trailer for its Mixtape series (from Youtube)

Many moons ago, Krish Raghav raised some serious concerns about a Radiolab episode on the emergence of the rock music scene in China. “Framing China’s musical lineage as ‘Revolutionary operas to John Denver’ is such a frustrating half-truth,” he said, “[and] positing ‘western’…

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Innovating through manufacturing, the China way

Posted on by Jason Li

Dan Wang writes in Foreign Affair about how China is gaining ground over the US in the tech space by challenging the Western model where scientific discovery reigns supreme:

Unlike the West, China has grounded its technology sector not in glamorous research and advanced science but in the less flashy task of improving manufacturing capabilities. If Washington is serious about…

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Learning Chinese through emoji, and emoji through Chinese

Posted on by The Editor

The cover design for The Hanmoji Handbook flanked by some happy party face emoji

It’s just been two months since The Hanmoji Handbook: Your Guide to the Chinese Language Through Emoji was launched! The handbook is published by MITeen Press and authored by fellow 88 Bar contributors Jason Li and An Xiao Mina, alongside ⭐️ author Jennifer 8. Lee. What’s more, the book draws on their decade of experience writing about technology,…

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The Great China R&D Squeeze of 2021 & the US Obsession with China’s Collapse

Posted on by Jason Li

Lots of gems in this year’s edition of Dan Wang’s annual letter. It is really worth the long read, but today we’re going to hone in on two sections of his analysis on where China is today. First, on the 2021 squeeze on tech companies:

Beijing’s attitude marks a difference with capitalism as it’s practiced in the US. Over…

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Chinese Comics Review

David: a comic exploration of a hybrid identity

Posted on by Jason Li
Book cover with a pencil drawing of a man with a bird's head wearing a suit sitting on a park bench

David is a graphic novel that explores what it means to be different, a misfit caught between two worlds, and it does so through its half bird half man protagonist. The story opens with David as he goes about mundane human activities. These bird-man gags are mirthful and witty. It helps that author-illustrator Yi Li uses a delicate touch, ever…

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Book Review · Starting Up in Shenzhen

Looking at China and Seeing Ourselves: Two Ethnographies of Tech in China

Posted on by Jason Li

Two book covers. The first is for Blockchain Chicken Farm which features an agragrian landscape. The second is for Protoype Nation and features a ballerina in the middle of a factory.

Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China’s Countryside
By Xiaowei Wang
FSG Originals, 256 pp.

Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation
By Silvia M. Lindtner
Princeton University Press, 288 pp.

It’s really hard to get an on-the-ground view of…

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The missing context that plagues tech reporting about China

Posted on by An Xiao Mina

An Xiao Mina writes in the Columbia Journalism Review:

One problem I see is that many journalists reporting on Chinese technology have limited experience reporting within and about China. They might not fully understand the economic and media aims of the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese language, or the underlying logic of global capitalism. China has a population of…

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Chinese Comics Review

This quintessential Chinese millennial is a seal, and she is adorable

Posted on by Jason Li

A cute, rotund, cartoon seal clutches things on these two book coveres

Upon first glance, Seal (海豹) looks like just another cute character dreamed up by the internet, lolling about on her futon, joyfully procrastinating with her friends. Seal embodies these positive qualities in her print debut, No Big Deal If You Like Me (喜欢我也没关系), and in the cult favorite Tumblr. But if you dig deeper into the larger…

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