The party cadre Jiao Yulu embodied a Chinese political culture with room for experiments and risk-taking. Xi’s turn to digital technocracy may threaten its survival.
Geremie Barmé joins Ash Milton to discuss his experiences in China during the Cultural Revolution and what prior upheavals can teach us about the Xi era.
America’s elite universities have an aristocratic mission. The Confucian tradition has lessons for how to achieve it.
While in Lebanon to report on a disintegrating state, I found Hezbollah building a different kind of regime.
One man’s thought has become pivotal in China’s new political and cultural crackdowns. That man is not Xi Jinping.
Kevin Kelly joins the salon to discuss his new book and photographic travelogue: Vanishing Asia. Other topics include why history matters for futurists and why Kevin doesn’t regret the vanishing of the past.
For several centuries, life has become increasingly monitored, legible, and uniform. Can we endure our centralized societies?
Sci-Hub has become foundational for scientific research. What if we didn’t need it at all?
Xi wants to guide China’s thinkers with a clear party line. But that line is just one rallying point in a complex intellectual ecology.
Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton discuss what defines elites and why we are stuck with an upper middle class today instead.
While in Tokyo for the Summer Olympics, I instead saw the spectacle of Japan’s aspiring new elites.
Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton discuss China’s role in industrial civilization and what we can learn from it.
The Japanese Empire founded Kenkoku University to create new pan-Asian elites. Despite their own defeat, they succeeded.
In the midst of Japan’s chaotic Sengoku era, a radical Buddhist sect carved out a new regime. Then came the real test.
Michael Zargham joins Wolf Tivy to discuss the dynamics of complex systems and what they can tell us about governing societies.
Fundamental change only comes from outside established paradigms. Without room for new founders, progress is impossible.
In postwar France, Charles de Gaulle unified executive power with a technocratic state and a national story. His model still endures around the world.
The threat of mass panic lurks behind our mechanisms of political control. What if we were allowed to fear?