From our contributing interns

Thoughts from Yirui Li, Lai Wei, Yifan Yan, Yutao Zhu, and Yiyang Xu

Across Pekingnology, The East is Read, and CCG Update, you often see bylines beyond my own and that of my full-time colleague, Ms. Yuxuan Jia—many of them belonging to our contributing interns. They are undergraduate or graduate students who support us remotely, and much of their work involves the patient, unglamorous craft of translation.

Quite simply, without their steady contributions, we could not sustain anything close to our current pace. So please allow me to pause our usual update for a brief change of voice: below are a few reflections from Yuxuan and several interns who have worked with us in recent months—on the work itself, and on what it feels like.

If you have any thoughts on what you read, you’re warmly invited to leave a comment on the webpage or simply reply to this email. I’m sure they would value your feedback more than I can properly say. —— Zichen Wang

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I have come to think there are two different trades in writing.

Some writing tries to live on what lasts. It may not travel quickly, because it does not offer the reader a particular thrill. It prefers to persuade rather than to excite, and it is rarely shared on the spur of the moment. Yet it may be readable when the event creating it has long since ceased to be a news item.

Other writing lives at the moment. It appeals to the readers, as it provides them with a certain trigger: a new controversy, a new slogan, a name that everybody is talking about at the moment. It can be excellent, and it can be necessary. But it comes with an inbuilt danger: once the subject passes, attention evaporates as quickly as it arrived.

Newsletter work sits uneasily between these two trades. An inbox is not a library; it is impatient, crowded, and full of immediate demands on the attention of the reader. The format almost begs for urgency.

And yet our work has a stubborn feature: it keeps. A newsletter archive does not forget who wrote what. A piece can be read a year after publication in a context nobody could have predicted, and sometimes with more consequence than it had on the day it was sent.

Practically, this changes my translating and writing. The quickest path to readability is to fit Chinese debates into familiar villains, familiar morals, familiar conclusions an English reader already expects: . It reads smoothly, and it is also a kind of betrayal. The slower path is to explain the institution behind a sentence; to identify the incentives pressing on a speaker; to reveal the risks that produce euphemism or omission. That simple honesty about conditions is what gives a piece a chance of outliving the moment that first made it interesting.

That is why I go back to a small line which is my own standard: love me little but love me long. The reader does not necessarily have to be pleased at first glance; some form of coolness at the outset is in many ways an indicator that the piece is not pandering, that it has enough context, enough honest texture, that a reader coming later can still understand what was at stake, what was being indicated, and what was being avoided.

I am relating this in detail because it makes the intern question appear somewhat different. Internships are meant to be short and temporary in the neatest sense: three months is the usual measure of youthful usefulness. Yet it is a truth universally acknowledged that a newsletter appearing with any degree of regularity cannot run in want of interns; indeed, the modern world is quietly governed by their lot.

Thus, to celebrate their indispensable contributions, our interns have been asked to share their reflections on life and work behind the byline. Across Pekingnology, The East is Read, and CCG Update, you have read them and seen their names. Here are people employed on a three-month basis, doing “temporary” work whose traces may be read long after the internship ends.

—Yuxuan Jia

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Laying Bricks on the Backside of the World: Notes on Gravity and Reality

By Yirui Li (Yirui Li is a student at Zhejiang University. She has been interning at the Center for China and Globalization since early October 2025.)

Sociology defines communication as a precarious process of “encoding” and “decoding.” In this transmission chain, distortion is the norm, while perfect understanding is merely survivor bias. If we were the Trisolarans—the alien civilization in Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem whose thoughts are transparent and instantly known to one another—perhaps this friction would vanish. But since we are not, and since we cannot simply beam our thoughts like sci-fi characters, I have come to believe that preserving the rough “edges” that cannot be perfectly decoded is actually the key to grasping reality.

My time at CCG has been less about linguistic translation and more about a reshaping of my own cognition. I used to chase a kind of “immaculate correctness,” scanning media for standard answers. However, translation forced me to abandon that obsession with purity. I learned that only by accepting the shadows that coexist with brilliance can we say we have truly seen “the backside of the world.”

In translation, I perceived a unique “Chinese Gravity” hidden on this backside.

China’s policy language often appears mild, abstract, or even bureaucratic in text. Yet, when these words land on the soil of reality, they carry immense mass. When translating Zhao Yushun’s speech on the “last generation of smallholder farmers,” I saw this gravity materialized. The image of the “nail field” —an elderly man stubbornly growing vegetables for his grandson amidst industrial expansion—was not just a data point on land transfer; it was a fold in the fabric of modernization. Similarly, in processing Cao Lin’s critique of media transformation, the signal I heard was not the venting of negative emotion, but the creaking friction of a massive system attempting to self-correct.

In a season saturated with geopolitical noise, readers often scan for “Good China” or “Bad China” narratives. I believe what is truly needed is “The Real.” My goal was to act as a sober medium, honestly revealing the nuance and grays sandwiched in the cracks of grand narratives.

Gaining this perspective was not a stroke of unexpected luck, but more like the metaphor I once wrote in my journal: the bricks beneath my feet.

Luck may dissipate, but the bricks left by effort, once laid, become the road. Each translation here is such a “brick”—silent and solid. On this long path toward “understanding,” inevitably riddled with misreadings, I hope they have firmly supported your steps.

The road stretches on, and the bricks remember the way.

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My name is WEI Lai. I am currently a postgraduate student at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the University of Southern California. I began contributing to the CCG newsletters in October 2025.

One of the pieces I translated that resonated with me most was Professor Diao Daming’s lecture The Challenges Facing China Studies in U.S. Academia and Think Tanks. As a Chinese student trained in social science theory and methodology in both the UK and the US, I have become increasingly aware of how knowledge about China is produced and framed, often through unquestioned assumptions. This has often led me to feel that my identity, my social and cultural background, and my country of origin are constantly shaped by processes of “Orientalism”. Translating this text therefore felt like a moment of recognition.

This awareness did not come only from academic texts. During my time at LSE, I shared an ensuite with a Canadian student of international politics who aspired to work in a think tank and spoke about China with remarkable confidence. His comments ranged from casually stereotypical remarks such as “you Chinese are always good at cooking” or “you must not go out much because you’re hardworking,” to what he presented as informed geopolitical analysis, such as “this is why the U.S. is falling behind China. You don’t drink sugary coffee, but Americans do.” He would always end by adding with evident pride, “You can see I know so much about China.”

During Chinese New Year, when we put a 福 character on our door, he lounged in the kitchen with his legs crossed and asked me, “What is that? Those black and red things? In the West, people put that on their doors only if someone is sick. It is very scary. Are you okay?”

What stayed with me was not the remarks themselves but the certainty they conveyed and the implicit belief that certain cultural and social experiences are universal. It was a quiet assurance that China had already been fully understood, a form of confidence that often appears in dominant academic and media discussions of China. I feel this all the time in public lectures and news reports, even when the knowledge being asserted is shallow or flawed. I have also seen online discussions where small, coincidental details such as clothing colors worn by Chinese students or the breeds of dogs allowed in a cinema are interpreted as direct outcomes of political systems.

When China is discussed primarily through externally imposed theoretical or ideological frameworks, everyday social realities can easily be misread as political spectacles. This is why I have been grateful for the opportunity to work with CCG and contribute to its newsletters. Through this work, I became more sensitive to how such certainty about China is produced and sustained, and it made me feel that at least in some small way, I could challenge the existing global politics of knowledge production, provide thoughtful critiques, and approach the country’s complexities from an insider perspective.

Before I conclude, please allow me to quote a passage from a lecture by Professor Diao Daming that I translated: “it is hard to imagine how one could analyze Chinese politics, society, or diplomacy solely from strategic or security frameworks, relying only on a few theoretical models, without engaging with the rich historical and institutional realities of China such as party history, national history, or diplomatic history.” “If the purpose of research is primarily to block or exclude rather than to understand and engage, it becomes difficult for such studies to achieve comprehensiveness, balance, or objectivity.”

China is vast and diverse, and the events on its land are virtually endless. I was born and raised in China, and even after studying abroad at the age of 22, I would not claim to fully understand Chinese society, and I still need to consult a large body of Chinese social science research and even historical archives in order to grasp the causes behind what happens. During my undergraduate studies at Sun Yat-sen University, many professors who had spent decades researching China were still careful not to claim comprehensive understanding either. This is why I feel that, even when statements seem superficial or flawed, the fact that they can be confidently asserted in particular social or cultural contexts already reflects a form of social and cultural privilege. If I could say one thing to the readers of this newsletter, it would be this: understanding China requires attentiveness to context, positionality and the limits of knowledge. For anyone interested in China, it is important to approach its society and culture with curiosity and a desire to learn, rather than with preconceived judgments.

China is not a monster or an exception, it is just a country like any other, and in the end, we are more similar than different from one another.

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My name is Yifan Yan; I am a Master’s student at Northwestern Polytechnical University and have been interning at the Center for China and Globalization (CCG) since early October 2025.

My months at CCG have been filled with translating a wide range of articles, each helping me learn and grow. But among all these pieces, one stood out: Zhao Shukai’s critique of Ezra Vogel’s Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China.

Since high school, Vogel’s books have been my favorites. I admired his grand narratives and smooth writing, and I believed his portrait of China to be among the most objective and authoritative. In my mind, he felt like a towering figure in the field of sinology. So, when I first read Zhao Shukai’s critique, I felt confused and instinctively resistant. I wondered: how could he appear to misinterpret what I had assumed were basic historical facts? For instance, how could he treat the 1980 No. 75 Central Document, which still held reservations about household production, as a formal endorsement? And why was the 1982 No. 1 Central Document, which was the real turning point of the reform, so downplayed in his narrative?

However, as I went deeper into the translation, I had to stop and think. Facing Zhao’s evidence from original central documents, my skepticism turned into sober reflection. I began to see that Zhao’s points were valid. While Vogel captured a high-level perspective through interviews and told many vivid stories, that approach also has its limits. Did he rely too much on specific interviews, while giving less weight to the dry, yet crucial, policy files? As I worked through those documents myself, I began to see how easy they are to misread. They say very little on the surface, yet carry much beneath.

I realized that if the “resolution” of the underlying facts is too low or flawed, then even the most beautiful prose only spreads a clearer “illusion.” This experience taught me that if I want to contribute to international communication, I must start with this kind of critical thinking—even when dealing with works widely regarded as authoritative. It is about the meticulous verification of facts and respecting the complexity of history.

My time at CCG didn’t just teach me how to work; it taught me how to think. It taught me to move past blind faith in authority and build a reverence for the facts themselves—not to believe easily, but to maintain a cautious and investigative attitude. I believe this habit of seeking the truth will stay with me, wherever I go next.

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Yiyang Xu, PhD Candidate in International Relations at the University of Sydney.

“It is a complex country, with an old civilization, very hard to fathom.”
– Bertrand Russell, Peking, 1921

At a friend’s dinner party, I found myself seated beside a former All Black. When he learned I studied international relations, he asked: “You’re Chinese, right? What does China think about what’s going on in Venezuela?” For a second I felt the urge to impress him with a neat verdict and a few geopolitical predictions. Then it struck me that misunderstanding often begins as a demand for simplicity. So instead of answering for “China,” I explained how foreign policy is made—through bureaucratic layers, competing priorities, and strategic cultures. He nodded along until I finished my mini-lecture, then stood up for a refill.

Moments like these remind me how hard it is to describe China across cultural distance, and they make me more sympathetic to the misunderstandings that arise. People in different societies inhabit the same physical world, yet what counts as meaningful, relevant, or even sensible is shaped by social practices. An action that fits naturally within one set of norms can look puzzling, evasive, or irrational when read through another. International misunderstanding often begins not with hostility, but with overly narrow ways of reading others’ reasons and actions.

A century ago, Russell returned from China warning Western readers against easy generalisations. I arrived at the same caution: living between narratives makes you sensitive to how quickly “China” becomes a single story, and how much gets lost when it does.

This sensibility is what drew me to Pekingnology. In a crowded landscape of commentary, it stood out for its grounded curiosity—following conversations and developments across topics that rarely surface in popular media, and helping a global readership approach Chinese news and debates with more context and fewer preset frames.

Working with the team behind the newsletter also made me appreciate an often undervalued craft: translation. When moving between languages and social contexts, word-for-word substitution rarely conveys the illocution a speaker intends. Good translation pays attention to use, convention, and context. It tries to reconstruct meaning in a new environment, not merely transfer vocabulary. Understanding across cultures works in much the same way. It is a practical achievement built through participation, careful description, and the patience to learn what another world treats as salient.

In an anxious era, the easiest refuge is certainty and familiarity. I’m still learning, but I hope this newsletter can keep us doing the harder thing instead: learning across languages and cultures, one careful reading and one honest conversation at a time.

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I’m Yutao Zhu, an undergraduate student at Beijing Foreign Studies University, and I've been contributing to CCG’s newsletters since October 2025.

Working on a policy newsletter can look, from the outside, like a routine exercise in converting Chinese into English. In practice, it is a daily lesson in translating time.

The article that stayed with me most is Liu Yuanju’s “Chinese People Only Just Stopped Worrying About Their Next Meal.” It does not argue by grand slogans. Instead, it uses a sequence of institutional and social “firsts”—the end of ration coupons, the emergence of basic welfare schemes, the normalization of personal mobility—to insist on a simple point: what many now treat as a settled normal is, historically speaking, extremely recent. The text is calm, but the implication is sharp. When a society changes faster than its collective memory, nostalgia becomes not just an emotion but a political force; it can mislead both the young, who mistake today’s dilemmas for permanent fate, and the old, who retrofit the past into a coherent “golden age.”

Translating such a piece is not merely about accuracy at the sentence level. It is about preserving a structure of reasoning. English readers—especially those who work with China as a strategic object—often demand a clear verdict: success or failure, openness or closure, confidence or crisis. But the point of this essay is neither celebration nor lament. It is temporal calibration. It asks readers to hold two truths at once: material security and personal freedom have expanded in ways that would have been unimaginable not long ago, yet precisely because the changes are recent, they remain contingent and unevenly distributed.

This is also where translation becomes a form of discipline. It forces the translator to resist easy dramatization. To translate “good times haven’t been around for long” is to avoid triumphalism; to translate “yesterday’s fixes” is to avoid moralizing. The English must carry the author’s sobriety, because the core argument depends on it.