Author: Yifu Dong

Yifu Dong is a Beijing native and a graduate of Yale College. He writes in both Chinese and English, and has contributed to The New York Times, Foreign Policy, ChinaFile and Caixin. He is a Research Associate at the Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center.
Reviews

Pulling Punches

Yifu Dong

Yifu Dong reviews a new biography of Bruce Lee

Today it takes most people quite a bit of imagination to see traditional Chinese martial arts – kung fu – as an effective style of fighting. Back in my Beijing secondary school, my classmates and I learned kung fu routines alongside calisthenics, as part of daily exercises. We swung our fists and kicked our legs simply for the sake of stretching. On Chinese TV, kung fu dazzles, but everyone knows what happens in real life when half a dozen enemies encircle a solitary fighter. In recent years, Chinese mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters challenged kung fu masters, and almost every fight ended within seconds with the man of tradition lying on the floor, or bleeding, or both. Even Shaolin Temple, a soi-disant holy site of kung fu in Henan province, has evolved into a commercialized tourist trap.

Essays

Reformist Propaganda

Yifu Dong

Yifu Dong visits Beijing’s new exhibit celebrating economic reform

Forty years ago, China’s leadership decided that the Chinese people deserved better than having to suffer from mass hunger, abject poverty and periodical chaos. It rolled out a program called Reform and Opening, setting China on a path of capitalist normalcy, or as most pundits put it, “an economic miracle.”

This past November, the National Museum of China, a sullen monolith hunching over the east side of Tiananmen Square, put on a grand exhibit called ‘The Great Transformation,’ which celebrates China’s progress in the past four decades. Before it opened on November 13, when President Xi Jinping visited, the National Museum closed for 50 days in preparation. Seeking earth-shattering revelations about Chinese politics from such a well-orchestrated propaganda exhibit is the same as digging for gold in a coal mine, but the basics of China’s new narrative about Reform and Opening are worthy of a recap.

Reviews

Palimpsests of Propaganda

Yifu Dong

Yifu Dong reviews Curating Revolution by Denise Y. Ho

Propaganda is a concept that refuses to translate smoothly between English and Chinese. The English word “propaganda” seems to have a direct counterpart in the Chinese word xuanchuan, but the connotations diverge: in English, propaganda means Orwellian doublespeak, whereas in Chinese, propaganda is the carrot of persuasion that often precedes the stick of coercion. The differing perceptions of the same word stem from the varying degrees of tolerance for the distortion of truth, because propaganda not only aims to persuade and agitate but also does so by using alternative versions of the truth, such as untruths and half-truths.