Profile

R.F. Kuang’s Distance of Diaspora

The bestselling author of fantasy and satirical fiction has never shied from thorny issues of identity and belonging. In her new semi-autobiographical novel, she tackles them head-on — but how deep does the satire go?

Fetishized

The racialized sexualization of Asian women in the West has a very long history. A recent memoir grapples with the cost of internalizing that narrative, and asks what has changed.

Lin Yao: How China Views Trump

The political scientist explains why some Chinese intellectuals admire Trump, how the meaning of liberalism has shifted, and mutual misunderstandings between China and America.

Nothing to Their Name

A new history of Chinese in the American West catalogues a multitude of discriminatory laws that restricted their activity and immigration. The impacts from a century ago are still felt by Asian Americans today.

From the Archive

Fighting for Home

After 14 years of war in Syria, Damascus fell to the rebels in December 2024. Fighting with them was a small but critical cohort of Uyghurs, who had fled China and joined the battle. But once the war was won, could they find a home so far from their homeland?

Inside the Camps

In 1991, a CBS investigation into China’s reform-through-labor camps shocked the world, exposing how prison-made goods were being exported to the U.S. Three decades later, camps like it still exist.

China’s Industrial Parks in Africa

Beijing is investing heavily in Ethiopia, helping to run Special Economic Zones similar to China's own. But African workers are questioning whether the states of legal exception and national indignity that they creates are worth the development it brings.