Gao Bai on the Dollar-Standard and More

Happy New Year!!

New on the site this week:

​Duke University sociologist Gao Bai’s lively “Trade Wars, Hot Wars and the Rise of the Global South: The Future of the Dollar Standard,” on recent changes to the international order – the U.S. China containment policy, the Russia Ukraine war, the rise of BRICS, the war in Gaza – and what these changes may be doing to undermine the dollar standard; and

Chen Yaya on “Twenty Years of Online Feminism: From the Margins to the Focal Point,” an even-handed summary which nonetheless illustrates how Chinese feminism now basically exists only online, the state having outlawed all forms of organization and activism. Online discussions seem to be between radical feminists, who want nothing to do with men, marriage, and children – and who condemn women who marry – and anti-feminist men, who accuse the feminists of being Western agents and undermining China from within. The whole thing could readily devolve into the kind of nasty stasis that would probably make the Chinese Party-State happy, except that “gender incidents” continue to erupt, keeping the feminist movement alive in China.
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I’m off for the States tomorrow, driving south to Tennessee to see my mother. If there are readers in the Knoxville, TN area, give me a holler, as we say down there (a shout, in case holler is not in the dictionary). On the way back, I’ll be giving a talk at Johns Hopkins on January 26, which you are invited to join in person or by Zoom.

I’ll be posting soon on my travel blog about the cruelties of winter in Montreal, and the difficulties of finishing a China book. Stay tuned!

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