23/07/2024
"In the old days, it would have been unimaginable for a foreign-based academic to publish something that might expose a writer inside China to legal pressure. But that was the era of the feral sinologists, when there was a sense of community among the wide range of people engaged in trying to understand the country. Even before the pandemic, this community had largely collapsed because of the various crackdowns and restrictions under Xi Jinping. It had become harder to live in China, harder to research in China, and harder to write in China. Fortunately, technology allowed many experts to continue to do valuable work from afar, whether it involved analyzing Chinese social media, or tracking satellite images of internment camps in Xinjiang, or simply communicating regularly with long-time interlocutors inside the country.
But for certain things, like capturing the texture of daily life, there was no substitute for being in China. In that respect, we had entered the age of the sideline sinologists: the experts who hadn’t lived in China for years and in some cases couldn’t return at all. As one of the few foreign writers reporting from the country, the sense of isolation was profound. It often felt like standing alone at midcourt in a game in which virtually every other potential player has been transformed into a grumpy and hyper-critical color commentator."
Peter Hessler responds to critics of his reporting from China.
In August, when I visited Wuhan, I met with a young building-company manager who had worked on the construction sites of various emergency clinics and quarantine facilities during the city’s outbreak. “The pandemic is like a mirror,” the manager told me. “A person can see himself more clearl...
