The Search for the David Brooks of China

Why the boring, centrist establishment public intellectual is so crucial to our understanding of China

In English-language discourse on China, critical and dissident intellectuals are significantly overrepresented.

Long-time listeners to the Sinica Podcast will have heard me bring up the issue more than once. Still, it’s enough of a problem in American and other “Western” discourse on China that I think it bears repeating. Let me be clear at the outset that there’s nothing wrong with covering critics and dissidents: indeed, it would be absurd to ignore them, and doing so would harm discourse and warp our understanding as much as our current imbalance in their favor does.

If anyone challenges this basic claim — that the critical and dissident intellectuals are much better known in the Anglophone world than their mainstream, more conservative counterparts are — first read on, do the little thought experiment that follows, and then make your comments, by all means.