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Cake day: January 29th, 2025

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  • The diaries of Li Rui, a former senior CCP official, are considered to be one of the most important artefacts of unvarnished modern Chinese history.

    Li kept detailed records of his life at the heart of elite politics, including his observations about 4 June, 1989, which he witnessed from the balcony of his home overlooking Tiananmen Square. As one report says,

    For weeks, up to a million protesters had been gathering peacefully in Beijing’s plaza [in 1989], demanding political reform. But they failed. Instead, as Li observed from his unique vantage point, troops opened fire, killing an estimated several thousands of civilians. It was the worst massacre in recent Chinese history. “Soldiers firing randomly with their machine guns, sometimes shooting the ground and sometimes shooting toward the sky,” Li wrote in his diary. A “black weekend” […]

    Li Rui, a top official known for his criticism of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in his later years as he fought for a more liberal society in China, died in 2019 at the age of 101, The diaries are now housed at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution in the U.S. They were transferred there by Li’s daughter, Li Nanyang, who says she was carrying out her father’s wishes.

    But following Li’s death, his widow and Li Nanyang’s stepmother, sued for the documents to be returned to Beijing. However, as one lawyer for Stanford has argued, “By all indications … the PRC [People’s Republic of China] is running this litigation behind the scenes." [See the quote in the linked article above.]

    In March 2026, a court ruled to uphold the expressed wishes of Li Rui, the former personal secretary to Mao Zedong, to have his personal archives made publicly available for preservation and study at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives at Stanford University.


















  • I don’t think China wants war.

    In the last 30 or so years, China has seen the biggest military built-up during peace time in human history, and the country is accelerating its pace. Today the country is the world’s second largest military spender behind the US (number three is Russia).

    Chinese official military spending has more than doubled since Xi Jinping took power in the mid-2010s. Between 2022 and 2025 alone, China’s defence budget real-terms growth was around 8% annually - considerably higher than its GDP growth - as per official numbers.

    China’s defence budget for 2026 will increase again by 6.4% in real terms, according to government data.








  • She was charged for attempted murder and robberies (convicted only for the latter), and the only reason why she was not tried for terrorist offences committed before the early 1990s was because a statute of limitations deadline had expired.

    Are these ‘activities’ fine if and when the person who commits them claims to be ‘left-wing’ and ‘anti-capitalist’? Am I a ‘fash’ if I don’t want people to be robbed at gunpoint (and killed) just because they work in a bank or have been in the wrong place at the wrong time?

    And, if so, what exactly is the difference if such crimes are committed by a right-winger for some other abnormal ‘reasons’? What difference does it make to the victims?


  • This is part of a much larger project, including five different routes connecting different parts of South America with the Pacific Ocean in what is called the “South American Integration and Development Routes Project”, as Brazil plans new Amazon routes linking the Pacific & China’s New Silk Road.

    A major reason for the planned highways (and railways) through the Amazon rainforest is the the Port of Chancay in Peru. It was developed by Cosco Shipping Ports Chancay Perú S.A. This is corporation made up by Chinese state-owned shipping and logistics company COSCO Shipping Ports in association with the Peruvian company Volcan, but is controlled by the Chinese government.

    Critics argue that this undermines Peru’s sovereignty as they warn the Chinese-Backed Port in Peru Could Push the Amazon Rainforest Over the Edge,

    For China, the port delivers a strategically direct route for the critical minerals and agricultural commodities coming off the continent, and in the other direction, a more expedient channel for its cars, machinery and electronics to stream into South American markets … But environmental scientists and forestry experts warn that the economic pull of the port will speed the destruction of the Amazon, the planet’s most critical, climate-stabilizing terrestrial ecosystem …

    The pressure could push the rainforest over the edge, transforming it from the world’s largest terrestrial carbon sink into a massive emitter of planet-warming gases. Some research suggests the forest is already at or near this potentially catastrophic tipping point.

    “China wants everything in the Amazon,” said Julia Urrunaga, director of Peru programs for the Environmental Investigation Agency, an international nonprofit that investigates environmental crimes. “And in one way or another, all these routes are connected to the port.”