So I decided to let you have the vote.

Whichever theme gets the most votes in 7 days, I will write it out by the end of next week.

• During the Ching Ming Festival two weeks ago, I visited the (destroyed) tomb of Dai Li, Chiang Kai-shek’s Himmler/Beria/Hoover in Nanjing, and had a really bizarre encounter that could showcase very well how grassroots governance played out in today’s China.

• I realize what the whole “lying flat” culture prevalent in China’s younger generation is all about.

• There used to be a clear advantage of Western governance models over China’s. But information technology and AI make that advantage less certain.

Now, please cast your vote. Again, my promise is that I will write about the topic you, the reader, choose by the end of next week.

I am also glad to share that at this very moment, my subscriber list has just broken the 6,000 mark. For a personal newsletter that I can’t yet commit to a fixed schedule for, I consider this not bad.

But I am also keenly aware that all of this won’t happen without your continued support! My gratitude is especially extended to the 95 of you who are paying for my work, and the 170 of you who paid for Baiguan and took the trouble to ask me for the complimentary access that I promised. (If you are a paying subscriber of Baiguan but don’t have the comp access here yet, make sure to send me a private message.)

For this anniversary, I will do the same two things that I did for the last one, and probably for every anniversary in the future.

First, in a few weeks, I will update my Master Plan to incorporate the latest highlights (the linked version is not updated yet, but you can take a look if you haven’t.)

Second, as many of you know, this is a moment to ask me anything! What do you want to know more about me? What do you need me to elaborate on? What do you think I am wrong about? Just ask me anything! I will try my very best to entertain your questions, even sensitive ones. In fact, my last year’s answer post turned out to be one of my most popular posts yet. I will consolidate my answers in a future post.

How to ask me? If you read this from your email, just reply to the email with your questions. If you read from the Substack App or china-translated.com, just leave your questions in the comment section.

I am also glad that this year has witnessed me branching out into more niche newsletters. And if you haven’t already, subscribe to

• Robert Wu’s Portfolio, to see how I put my beliefs into investment action

• , to follow the professional data, information, and research industry in Asia that I am part of

• , a newsletter straight from China’s most prominent economic think tank that we at Baiguan helped manage

At last, let me share again what I think is my proudest work in the last 12 months:

• The series on China’s low-trust society (or is it rapidly transitioning into a high-trust society now?)

• Sharing my unique experience as an early co-founder of Ginger River Review, a newsletter founded by a state media employee

• Consolidating all my discussions about the US-China power struggle into my own phrase: The Great Divorce. (And of course, my own experience of writing an opinion piece in the New York Times bashing Trump at the height of the tariff war.)

• Why the usual “I am against the CCP but not against Chinese people” refrain is not that meaningful

• My discussion of the “Century of Humiliation” narrative

• Revisiting my old argument against Noah Smith, that China is comparatively not warlike (Part 4, Part 5, Q&A)

• Reviewing what really brought down Jack Ma (before his revival, of course)

• What I think was the most dangerous moment in China’s recent history that few people talked about: the possibility of siding with Nazi Germany.

• This one was written at Baiguan, where I shared my key reasoning for a decade-long bull market in China.

  ---

That’s it for today. let me say it once again: ASK ME ANYTHING!

I want to finish the series, and I will finish it. However, I have run into a small problem for now. In Part 3 of the series, I plan to explore the relationship between this concept and the political system of China. However, at this point, I can’t say I have fully thought it through. Maybe I am 70% ready, but not all of it. I’d rather finish it when I am 100% ready.

On the other hand, there is a topic that I have thought through. I can finish it at any time. This will be a thorough discussion of the widely believed idea that “the Party does not equal the country, and does not equal the people”. I want to discuss to what extent this idea is useful and to what extent it is not. This topic is very relevant to current affairs too, as at least part of this ridiculous tariff war (as well as many US policies about China) is based on the premise that when enough pressure is applied, the Chinese people will rise up against the ruling party.

As always, the choice is yours. The poll closes in 3 days:

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It was also a bit controversial, and many of you have expressed disagreement with at least some of my points.

To be frank, trying to pinpoint a specific idea in the often subtle and grayish cultural context is always difficult and inherently over-simplistic. I can only try my best. But if there is one line that underlies my core thesis, it’s this one: regarding dealing with strangers, China has an “untrustworthy until proven otherwise” mode, rather than the “trustworthy until proven otherwise” mode prevalent in so-called “high-trust” societies.

The caveats

There are also several big caveats that I wish I had laid out in Part 1, which could have helped me minimize misunderstanding.

First, while Chinese people may not trust (unproven) strangers, we actually often exhibit an “over-trust” of the people we see to be close to us, such as parents, kids, and good old friends. I don’t have good data to back up this claim, but that’s at least how I feel. This over-trust of “old folks” come hand in hand with under-trust of new guys, like two sides of the same coin. How it comes to be, I am not so sure. But I just know it exists.

This simultaneous over-trust and under-trust is behind the reason why many of our private businesses are having succession issues, which I will touch on in the upcoming Part 2. It’s also behind the enduring longevity of scams in China. Many fraudsters are very good at building rapport with the victims and breaking the walls of “low-trust”, leading those victims to blindly trust away large sums of money. Many telecom scam schemes are built around some fake emergencies of the victims’ parents or kids, taking advantage of them losing their cool heads in such circumstances.

So, while China may be a “low-trust” society for strangers, it can be a super “high-trust” society for family and friends. This is a crucial fact I can’t fail to mention.

A second caveat, which I only briefly touched on, but I have to stress here: China has changed a lot.

In the comment section of Part 1, a subscriber named perfectly summed up this arc of change in a comparison of China he saw back in 1986 and China of today. I was not even born in 1986, so I have to defer to Bill’s opinions on this. But from what I gather, what he said here was quite true. He wrote:

In 1986 in 汉中 Hanzhong in Shaanxi, police stopped me from “disorderly photography”. I was taking a picture of a tiny ramshackle dentist’s office with curtains instead of windows and a set of false teeth in a window sill.

In Goat Home Mountain nearby, three police in a new Beijing Jeep stopped me and denied me access to a morning market alongside a stretch of road. The day before I had purchased a small melon for a few pennies without haggling and people were talking about how rich I must be.

I had to stand at the gate of Work Unit 182 and enlist friends to buy items for me.

Laws were unwritten and so vague that any policeman could arrest any person at any time for something.

But today:

Big changes have occurred!

1. Today, officials in Hanzhong are not shamed by poverty

2. Today, buying a small melon from a street vendor without haggling over pennies is not showing off your wealth

3. Today, China’s laws are written down and published.

4. Today, the police would know I could hire a lawyer and challenge them in court

5. And today, Jeep in China is bankrupt

Another subscriber mentioned a story that outraged the nation back in 2011, when a toddler was run over by a car twice on a busy street in Dongguan. The whole episode was captured by CCTV camera. Mr. Hatch wrote (emphasis my own):

No one dared to help the child for the longest time, finally an old lady pulled the child to the side of the road and was about to run off in fear of being blamed when the parents finally showed up. Lucky for the old lady the parents were understanding and ashamed of their own failings. This whole episode exposed a trust problem that everyone who lived in China at that time knew festered in China.

This episode in 2011 was a great example of the “low-trust to strangers” nature I tried to describe, and was a more extreme version of the “grandma’s egg” story in Part 1 that some of you found hilarious. We know what is good or bad, for most of the time. But sometimes the fear of lack of trust towards others, and very importantly, the lack of trust that others will trust ourselves, prevent us from doing the right thing.

But still, my gut feelings tell me that had the same event happened in 2025, it’s very likely that it would have a better ending, as we as a people have also grown, and our societal trust level is visibly higher than before.

The cameras

Talking about the cameras, it’s also an important factor to consider here.

Some of you find it jarring that if China’s society has so little trust to strangers, how come there are endless tales of people leaving their phones on the tables for restrooms?

Both are true at the same time. I do that all the time.

Video surveillance is a key factor here. About 20 years ago, in the pre-camera age, I lost phones and bikes very regularly. It was very painful experience for a teenager.

Also, we have to recognize that it's one thing to leave stuff on the table trusting the surveillance cameras to protect you against strangers, but a whole another thing if you come into the same restaurant, asking total strangers to help you do something, like taking a survey, answering a question and asking for a favor. The success rate is not high.

There was a funny video of Lei Jun, founder of Xiaomi, asking random pedestrians for surveys in 2013. He was not very famous back then, although he is the richest person in China right now. It was like a disaster. A scene of rejection after rejection.

The west

The last caveat is that in my characterization of China as “low-trust”, I set up the West as an example of “high trust”. But just as the society-wide trust level in China increases, it is possible that it is decreasing in the West, or at least I have heard anecdotal evidence of it.

I have not been living in the West for many years, and “the West” is a large concept and is made of many countries, so I will stop making generalizations here. But I vaguely sense that the political turmoil we are seeing in many of the western societies is at least partially related to the question of “trust”.

The interplay between trust and politics will be the focus of Part 3. But still, in terms of my core criteria of “untrustworthy until proven otherwise” mode vs “trustworthy until proven otherwise” mode, I believe there is still a clear distinction between China and the West.

For those of you who are waiting for Part 2, I assure you that it is coming out soon! Hopefully, I can finish it over the weekend. But I just think it is necessary to mention the above-mentioned points before I go ahead.

Part 2, at least according to my plan, will be an all-encompassing review of how “low-trust” society shapes the business and investment landscape of China today. I will discuss why because of lack of trust, that:

• Many of China’s best companies tend to be vertically integrated

• Mergers and acquisitions are still not a thing

• There is a clear bias towards “hard” products instead of software

• Why P2P lending in China became a disaster.

• Why there is a prevalent “quick money” culture in China’s stock markets

But the real meat of Part 2 will be a discussion of what unique opportunities a low-trust society will present, that you would not be able to find anywhere else.

Stay tuned!

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All there is is just pure dedication and pure self-funding for an open-source project that creates an outsized impact on humanity.

I increasingly believe Liang is not alone, but only an example of a new generation of billionaires trying to live a meaningful life after achieving great material success.

Almost 3 decades ago, Chen Tianqiao founded Shanda Group. If you were around at the time, you would remember that Shanda used to be China's most profitable video gaming company, even more successful than Tencent and NetEase.

But as early as 2014, way before China's true internet bubble, Shanda Group sold the lucrative game business and left that space for good, shocking everyone at the time.

And then, just like that, Mr. Chen faded away from the limelight, but that's when I really started to pay attention to him.

Because he found his true calling. After suffering from neurotic disorders, Mr. Chen decided to devote the rest of his life to supporting cutting-edge research for understanding human consciousness and founded the CalTech-based Tianqiao & Chrissy Chen Institute (TCCI) with a billion-dollar donation.

I think I have never said it publicly until now, but how human consciousness is formed and why we exist as we are, are the most important non-professional questions I study daily. (I might even start a newsletter about this topic one day.)

This is because, at age ~15, I started to have a deep existential crisis, questioning the meaning of life and the meaning of death. In my 20s, after reading enough about the subject (especially with the help of Douglas Hofstadter’s great works), I started to realize that the question of life and death is essentially a question of consciousness. It’s a question about what “I” means, thus starting my fascination with everything related to brain science.

Naturally, I was intrigued by Mr. Chen’s bold decision for his life and have been following TCCI's newsletter for many years. Ever since then, I have seen Mr. Chen as my role model, quite different from “just another businessman.”

Fast forward to today, large language models are hitting an observable bottleneck. GPT and DeepSeek are wonderful tools for general research about information accessible from the public internet, but internal knowledge (both personal and corporate) is still beyond reach, making it still a tantalizing big step away from AI’s true potential of unlocking productivity gains.

The LLMs don't seem able to be customizable, and they are not able to adapt to various changes on the go for each individual and each company.

The LLMs seem not to possess...memory.

But without memory, both long-term and temporary memory, there will be no true intelligence.

Just like neural networks and transformers drew inspiration from human brains, can AI also draw inspiration from how human memories are formed?

The idea sounds very intuitive, but nobody has proved it yet. This is why when I found out a Shanda-backed project called Tanka is drawing inspiration from the cutting-edge frontier of brain research to build an instant messaging tool with AI long-term memory, I was instantly intrigued and tried out for the team. I also approached the Tanka team, if just for an opportunity to showcase this latest project backed by one of my role models.

That’s why I am taking this special note to encourage you to check out the detail-packed interview below between the Baiguan team and @KissonL, a contagious serial entrepreneur, parttime sci-fi writer, and the CEO of Tanka, and Dr. Lidong Bing, chief scientist at Shanda AI Research Institute, to see how Tanka achieves this remarkable feat:

Baiguan - China Insights, Data, Context

After DeepSeek, what next?

In recent years, the story of Chinese companies going global has shifted. It’s no longer just about traditional sectors like infrastructure and manufacturing. We’re now seeing a surge of startups—ranging from small, nimble teams building apps and e-commerce stores to tech-driven ventures pushing for game-changing products and technologies—expanding beyo…

Read more

a year ago · 14 likes · Amber Zhang and Robert Wu

Again, if you are a paying subscriber of Baiguan, please contact me for complimentary access to this newsletter if you haven’t done so already.

I almost never say it publicly, but the difference between Baiguan and China Translated is that the former will focus very much on business and investment opportunities (a.k.a helping you make money), with lots of data. This newsletter, however, is my personal take on broader and sometimes more sensitive topics that can 1) help you better understand what is really going on here and 2) focus on events with a long-term impact so you can put them within the right context.

This week, despite Trump’s Greenland ambitions and California’s wildfires taking the world’s attention, a lot is happening in China, too. So next week, if I do a real review, I will also include some events of this week. Of all the events below, which one do you want me to write on the most?

The article was published before the conclusion of this year’s Central Economic Work Conference (CEWC) and could be seen as a relatively successful prediction of what CEWC was about. You can read it here:

Baiguan - China Insights, Data, Context

China is serious about boosting domestic consumption

[We will host an AMA on Thursday evening Hong Kong time, in which you can ask me any questions about China, including the subject matter of this article. If you are a paying subscriber of us, you may find the dial-in details at the end of this article, behind the paywall…

Read more

a year ago · 10 likes · Robert Wu

On the same evening of the final announcement of CEWC, I also did an AMA with paying members of Baiguan, in which I also commented on other issues such as China’s recent anti-monopoly investigation against NVIDIA, as well as the significance (and insignificance) of the nationwide rollout of the personal pension fund scheme.

You can find a full recording of the AMA here:

Baiguan - China Insights, Data, Context

EP18. CEWC, consumption, stimulus, personal pension fund

This is a recording of Baiguan’s 3rd AMA exclusive for paying subscribers which ended just now…

Listen now

a year ago · 2 likes · Robert Wu

The above contents are at least partially paywalled for paying subscribers of Baiguan. Please note that a paying subscriber of Baiguan also gets FREE access to all contents of this newsletter (If you haven’t yet, please write to me to get it), plus access to our member-exclusive Discord community.

To the great joy of her 20+ million followers, Li Ziqi, the super-star China-based YouTuber is finally back after a long 3-year hiatus marked by a legal dispute with her former agency.

Widely loved for her beautiful videos about rural China that transcend cultural boundaries, Ziqi returned with a new video about making a lacquered wardrobe for her beloved grandma, gaining 12 million views within a week:

Like many things Chinese, this video also carries a subtle pun.

“紫漆衣柜purple lacquer wardrobe”, whose pronunciation “Ziqi Yigui” can also stand for “子柒已归 Ziqi is back”.

Yes, Ziqi is so back.

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Ziqi’s PR team also paired this re-appearance with a public explanation about her whereabouts and future plans, in an interview with state media Xinhua News Agency. Below is a translation of the interview, in case you are interested in knowing more about this globally phenomenal influencer from China.

Interviewer: You haven't updated videos for about 3 years. Many fans who care about you must be wondering, what have you been busy with during these 3 years?

Li Ziqi: Sleeping, catching up on naps, making up for all those all-nighters I pulled editing videos in previous years. Actually, I spent more time with my grandmother. In previous years when I was filming and editing, she was the one taking care of me. She would often bring me food and heat up meals late at night. So in recent years when I had more time, I took her out to explore and see the world, and we tried some good food together. It's been quite nice. Also, I've had a major achievement in these 3 years - I visited over 20 provinces and met with more than 100 inheritors of intangible cultural heritage and cultural workers. I guess I've found my motivation and direction for moving forward.

Interviewer: People have been following your updates for the past 3 years. Why did you choose this particular time to suddenly update videos? Are you trying to convey any particular message?

Li Ziqi: The decision to update was actually only made about a month ago. Though I haven't been active online these 3 years and have been quietly doing my own things, I see news about my "comeback" every year. Originally, I wanted to wait until I had results from what I'm currently working on before meeting everyone again. But after seeing more comeback news recently, to avoid people worrying and speculating too much, I decided to just come out and tell everyone what I've been doing these 3 years and what I plan to do in the future, so people won't worry. As for the videos, I just edited and posted what I could in the month since deciding to update. It's fine, nothing particularly special about the timing.

Interviewer: So you satisfied everyone's years-long wish at once by showing many of your works. In these works, we noticed that besides your usual lifestyle series that people love, you focused more on the intangible cultural heritage works you mentioned earlier. Do you have a strong desire to express yourself in this area of intangible cultural heritage? Or is this, as you mentioned earlier, a direction you want to pursue in the future?

Li Ziqi: Actually, six or seven years ago, when I visited craftsmen, it was mainly to learn techniques. In recent years, with more time on my hands, I've had more opportunities to hear their stories and chat with them. After spending time with them, you discover that traditional culture for them isn't just some fancy label - it's more about the ordinary aspects of life.

I remember in 2018, I went to learn blue calico printing from Mr. Wang Zhenxing in Nantong, Jiangsu. He was 80 years old then, and his three children were all learning dyeing from him. When I was leaving, I asked if his grandchildren were learning it too. He said they were, but weren't doing it professionally. When I asked why, he said they needed to make a living first. But as traditional culture has gradually gained more appreciation and attention in recent years, when I visited them again this year, Wang was so happy to hold my hand and show me his newly dyed fabrics and new products - very fashionable and appealing to young people's taste. I asked if he had hired a designer, and he proudly told me, "No, these are designs my granddaughter is helping us with."

At that moment, I felt this was exactly the meaning of the innovative development of traditional culture. When these crafts can keep up with trends and market demands, when they can truly integrate into our daily lives, more people will want to learn these skills, creating a self-sustaining cycle and complete ecosystem for traditional culture inheritance. I've been thinking about what else I can do in this area, so I've been working on many traditional culture-related projects.

Interviewer: After encountering so many craftsmen and so many intangible heritage products, including the videos you've edited this time, do you have a favorite?

Li Ziqi: I actually like them all, but there is one that really stands out. It's the first video I posted - about lacquerware. That was truly a case of 'no pain, no gain.' Last spring, when I was preparing to make this video, I was bragging to my cameraman, saying "What if I turn out to be naturally gifted at lacquerwork?"

Little did I know that after my first time collecting lacquer and returning home, my face swelled up like a TV screen, and my whole body was covered in huge red welts. My cameraman and my assistant were also itching so badly they couldn't sleep, their skin was scabbing over and getting scratched open, raw, and bleeding. We finally couldn't take it anymore and went to the hospital as a group to get anti-allergy shots. We tried other methods too, like wearing protective suits, but in the height of summer, the sweat inside those suits - oh, it was mind-numbing. I thought the allergic reactions would pass if we endured it, but then my work failed.

The beauty of carved lacquer with hidden patterns is that under normal light it appears black, but when strong light shines on it, golden patterns appear. I chose to make it because I felt it perfectly represented something in Chinese people's character - appearing modest and humble on the outside but containing endless wonders within.

But in my piece, when I shined a flashlight on it during the final polishing, I found only gold lines with no pattern - my heart sank. Teacher Yin Liping had told me the carving would be the hardest part, but I never expected my biggest problem would come at the end. I ran to the bathroom with my phone and called Teacher Yin, crying. I broke down. I thought about how my team had suffered allergic reactions for months to help me make this piece, their bodies covered in scratches, never complaining once. The more I thought about it, the more upset I became, sobbing uncontrollably on the phone. But Teacher Yin was so kind - she didn't interrupt me, waiting until I finished crying before slowly telling me that allergic reactions were completely normal. She'd been working with lacquer for 50 years and still gets allergic reactions. As for failure, that's normal too - even experienced craftsmen fail sometimes if they're not familiar with the particular properties of the lacquer, let alone a large piece like mine. She finally said that failure leads to success, we must respect both failure and the craft itself.

So I sanded down the wood panel and spent another 3 months redoing all the steps. It was finished by the Chinese New Year. It worked out well as a New Year's gift for my grandmother. When she saw the final pattern revealed by strong light, she thought it was a loong. I said no, and she said "Then it's a dinosaur?" I said "No, it's a Qilin, 'When the Qilin looks back, all worries disappear.'"

She didn't know that I had specifically chosen a design of a backward-looking Qilin. There's a Chinese saying that "When the Qilin looks back, a hundred ailments disappear" - I just wanted her to be healthy.

Oh, and I especially love the final sequence of shots, where grandmother and I are by the window watching the heavy snow outside. While editing the video that day, I was grinning at the footage so I kept 8 seconds for that scene. I thought, how wonderful if moments like these could last longer and longer. I couldn't bring myself to cut it shorter. This is probably the longest shot I've ever kept in my videos. So this video brought out extreme emotions in me and left a really deep impression for me.

Interviewer: As a vlogger who became well-known through the internet, a lot can change in 3 years, and public tastes can quickly shift to other things. Were you worried about being forgotten, both your work and yourself?

Li Ziqi: Actually, by the end of 2022, when I had mostly sorted out my affairs, I thought about updating. But during that Spring Festival, I met a woman selling bean jelly who gave me a new perspective. At that time, I took my grandmother to visit Yuntai Temple in Mianyang, and when we got hungry, we ate bean jelly at the entrance. The vendor showed me her social media while chatting. She said she used her phone to film videos of her bean jelly for the internet, and people come from far away to buy her chili oil and eat her bean jelly.

At that moment, I realized something I had overlooked but had existed for a long time - the internet is really different from before, it's developed so fast. Look at the past thousands of years - when has there been a time like today when we can share our joys and sorrows, our talents and knowledge, reaching millions of people through the internet in a second? Even if you're just someone who makes authentic bean jelly. So this is truly an ideal era for telling the stories of our culture.

As for me, I've been making short videos for many years - it's what I'm best at. I'm 35 this year, and I had to choose between continuing what I've been doing or trying something new. I chose the latter. I believe that whether it's the internet, short videos, technology, or AI, they can all become ways for me to showcase my life and spread culture, so I want to keep moving forward and see if I can leave some new footprints. As for being forgotten, I don't think it's entirely a bad thing. Over the past 3 years, I've actually experienced being somewhat forgotten, but it gave me more time to think and do my own things. Without interruptions, I could focus without being pulled in different directions. But having web traffic is also a really good thing because I can use that attention to do more meaningful things. It's all good, really all good.

Interviewer: In the past few years, many new media content creators have emerged on the internet, and many "Li Ziqi-style" videos have appeared. Now that you've released your signature-style videos again, are you worried that people might not like your style anymore, that their tastes might have changed, or that your work might not be as unique anymore?

Li Ziqi: Let me tell you about something that happened in 2018. When I heard from a friend that there were only 2 people left who could actually master the wooden movable type printing of Dongyuan Village, I rushed to learn it. After returning, I spent a very long time compiling an article about the past and present of wooden movable type.

At that time, I really hoped these nearly disappearing, almost lost crafts could be seen by more people. And if more people were willing to learn about it, promote it, or even if parents would just tell it as a story to their children, I would find it extremely worthwhile.

So I organized and published how a single seal evolved through various dynasties into today's tiny movable type. Actually, when I was writing the final paragraph, I was crying at my computer. Because I wrote about something I'd seen elsewhere, describing how many traditional cultural elements are like elderly people who, after traversing the long river of history, constantly look back, hoping to find some value for themselves in an era that doesn't seem to need them anymore.

But today, because of more traditional craftspeople and those of us creating traditional culture-related media content, these elderly figures are truly being seen and loved. This is the result of society's collective participation - it would have been impossible with just me alone.

So does it matter anymore whether my work stands out? I don't think it does. Because it has already become a trend, and I actually hope more people will move along this trend. What I want to continue doing is to inject younger blood into these elderly figures through various means. I want to make them young again, to help them move forward with the times.

Interviewer: Ziqi just mentioned many of your future plans. Could you tell us more specifically what your work plans are following these video releases? In which direction do you plan to make your choices and career plans?

Li Ziqi: Right now, I'm mainly focusing on work related to the innovative development of traditional culture's ecosystem. This includes protecting craftspeople's intellectual property rights and building systems, as well as specifically addressing some practical issues I've encountered during my research over the past 2 years.

For example, I've found that these craftspeople's main issues are centered around the age gap - some craftspeople are quite elderly and far removed from the internet, so I came up with a solution to have older inheritors and young media creators help each other. Creators can teach the inheritors about the internet, like livestreaming and shooting short videos to showcase their work. Young designers can help provide more youth-oriented designs. The inheritors, in turn, can teach media creators their crafts and help review their content to avoid any errors. Things like that.

Interviewer: Are there any commercial considerations in your future plans?

Li Ziqi: Of course, there will definitely be such considerations, though I don't have very clear plans yet. I just want to continue doing what I love, and if it can be recognized and valuable, and even make money, that would be wonderful.

Interviewer: Now that you've updated so many videos, does this mean Ziqi's videos will regularly meet with everyone from now on, and won't suddenly stop updating?

Li Ziqi: It's not that I won't make videos anymore, because I still really enjoy sharing my life and meaningful traditional cultural things with everyone, but the timing might be more flexible - we'll have to wait until I finish the things I'm currently working on. I really can't help it because I can only do one thing at a time, otherwise, I can't do anything well, so I'll take it one step at a time.

Interviewer: Ziqi has shared so much today, and I believe many people will trust that you'll forge a new path of exploration from your honest communication. Could you say something more to the friends who care about you regarding what you're about to do?

Li Ziqi: Actually, this question has made me the most nervous today - I'm afraid I won't express myself well and won't be able to show people my truest emotions. First, I want to sincerely thank everyone for their support and attention over these 9 years. Many friends have witnessed my growth along the way. I used to have many flaws - I was insecure, timid, and even too shy to greet people when meeting them. But because of receiving so much unconditional love from you all, I've become more confident and realized that I am actually worthy of being loved. Because of you, I've gradually become a better version of myself. On the professional side, I went from being a novice who filmed with just a phone to becoming proficient and achieving some small successes. And now, I seem to have even higher goals. Though I'm not certain exactly how things will turn out in the future, I want to try my best. Because I firmly believe the path I've chosen is correct and meaningful. Thank you all, I miss you.

For me, it has been an incredible journey. I got to express ideas long simmering in my mind but which have not found the right medium only until now. It’s also my delight to have chatted and debated with many of you, which is always an inspiration for further thoughts.

I have 2 plans to celebrate this anniversary.

Although the main format of this newsletter is a “weekly review”, I actually have an agenda in mind. So far, I have probably filled in ~20% of that agenda. So I think it will be helpful for you to have a place where you can locate key contents of the past as well as to have a taste of what the remaining 80% would look like. This is why I will publish a “Master Plan and Table of Core Contents” about this newsletter and pin it on my homepage.

My second plan will need your participation. As my subscribers (as well as Baiguan’s) grow, it’s inevitable that some people will get confused about who I am, what interests I represent, and what axe I have to grind. Naturally, I have got haters too.

But fulfilling my stated mission of this newsletter, which is to translate for China for the sake of peace and understanding between China and the outside world, requires me not to turn a blind eye to misunderstanding, criticism, suspicion, and even hate of me. I almost never block or cancel views that are diametrically opposed to mine, a practice I found common in many accounts that I have tried to follow. I will lose all my credibility if I can’t face up to your questions and challenges.

So, in the spirit of full transparency, I will answer all your questions about me in an upcoming post.

Some of the questions that I have already got and will try to answer in that post include:

1. Can you criticize Xi Jinping? Do you self-censor? Can I trust you if there are things you can’t say?

2. Do you get paid by the Chinese state? What are your commercial interests in doing this?

3. Why do you pick fights with Noah Smith?

4. You are a China shill. Prove to me you are not.

5. Why do you hate Wei Lingling so much?

What else do you want to ask me about? Write to me, DM me, or simply comment down below to let me know. My promise is to answer all of your questions with full transparency. (The only condition is that it’s asked in a civil, non-vulgar way.)

Rest assured, these two terrifying enforcers from the state security service will stare at me until I finish this job in time.

Stay tuned!

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Update:

The upcoming post is here:

But I think I should still say a thing or two about the stabbing incident in Suzhou. According to SCMP:

A Chinese woman who was seriously wounded while trying to stop a knife attack on a Japanese school bus in the Chinese city of Suzhou has died.

Suzhou police said on their website on Thursday that they would give the title of “righteous and courageous role model” to the woman.

The announcement confirmed that Hu Youping, 54, was the Chinese victim of an attack on a Japanese school bus on Monday afternoon. A later report by the state news agency Xinhua said Hu died on Wednesday.

Ever since the Monday attack, China’s online discourse has been dominated by fierce controversy and debates, which culminated with Ms. Hu’s eventual death.

To be honest, if it’s just up to me, I wouldn’t think this event has anything to debate about. It’s an attack on innocent people, including children. Plain and simple.

But anything that has to do with Japan is inherently sensitive in China. If it’s only an attack on Chinese citizens, it would just be a simple piece of local news. But as soon as it involves foreigners, like the Jilin stabbing of American instructors from Cornell earlier this month, it will instantly become sensitive. And if it involves Japanese people, oh boy, you are destined to see a pile of ugly mess here, the same kind of ugly mess that spews conspiracy theories and xenophobic hate speech that’s increasingly common in every part of the world now.

Overall, I applaud our government’s treatment of this tragic event. When Ms. Hu died, the government wasted no time to praise her for who she is: a commoner who is also a real hero. Proclaiming Ms. Hu as a hero implies an obvious statement that the aggressor is no hero. But a “hero statement” is a way more powerful statement than jail time or even the death penalty for the perpetrator.

They are also very careful not to dwell too much on the fact that the attack was on a Japanese school bus and that Hu died from saving a Japanese mother and son. I think that’s shrewd. Highlighting the nationality difference not only may practically incite even more tension, but is just morally wrong. This event shouldn’t be about Japan and China. This is about innocent people being attacked by lone-wolf terrorism, and brave people trying to help.

More than that, the state media is also quite steadfast against hate speech, according to People’s Daily:

The stabbing incident was an extremely rare and isolated case and is not representative. We also do not accept the behaviour of individuals who stir up ‘xenophobia’ and make hate speech

According to SCMP:

After Monday’s attack, some ultranationalist and anti-Japanese comments appeared on Weibo. The platform released an announcement on Wednesday night saying it had suspended 36 accounts for such comments.

I believe by now you have been quite familiar with my “duo-China model”, a vocal minority of “Liberalist China” and a relatively silent majority of the “Traditionalist China”. The government in China plays this “Grand Balancer” role to ensure peace and cohesion between the two “camps”, while economic growth and common prosperity may, in the end, upend the imbalance between the two.

A good “balancing act” involves not pushing too hard against either camp. But it also involves drawing a clear red line when things go out of control. Killing innocent people is such a line, and despite the tragic fact that a real human life has been sacrificed along the way, I am relieved that they have drawn this line fast and firmly, and have thus made the only right choice in this case.

The message sent to all corners of our society is unambiguous. You may want to dislike Japan, you may even want to do some indecent stupid acts and we can’t stop you. But violence is a big no-no.

I am also glad to see that in both the Suzhou and Jilin stabbings, it’s common to see brave Chinese people stepping up to protect the innocents. In the Jilin incident, a brave Chinese man, whose name has never been disclosed, got himself injured trying to fight the aggressor, while Ms. Hu in Suzhou became the first death victim from these two unrelated events.

That’s a thing we need to remember about China (apart from the fact that it’s still one of the safest places on earth with a homicide rate of less than 1/10 of the US level) which is how modern Chinese people, who might look meek to you, can be very brave, very compassionate and very hotblooded热血 in the face of aggression.

Finally, for you, my dear subscribers, let me reprint the same thing I said on X after the Jilin stabbing:

I can't comment too much on this from a macro perspective. I can only say this much, as a fellow human being:

My dear friends, if you walk on the streets of China with me acting as your tour guide, and things like this happen (they rarely do), I will be there defending you from attacks the best way I can, with rocks and sticks if possible, with bare hands and my elementary Muay Thai skills if necessary.

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Talking about acting as your tour companion, I also had two interesting conversations this week. One is a dinner gathering with Mr. Bertrand Arnaud as the main guest, a serial entrepreneur from France, and a top X influencer famous for sharp pro-China tweets. The only thing I can reveal about that dinner is that the real Monsieur Arnaud looks far more low-profile and soft-spoken than his online persona suggests.

The other conversation is at the German Embassy in Beijing, where me and my friend Johnny Zou at spoke at a breakfast meeting about recent developments in China’s venture capital industry, in front of a table of economic counselors from several European countries and central bankers of some major Indo-Pacific economies. My main thesis during that talk was covered in this article.

This is my first time visiting ANY embassy, so it has been quite a thrilling experience. I was not allowed to bring electronics in, so sadly I can share no pictures of this great event. I am not a diplomat, but it’s quite rewarding that I can add value to cross-border understanding in my humble capacity.

This week has been one of the slower ones, with not much happening. I will stick with writing at least once a week, but if not much happens for me to do a proper weekly review, and if I also have no time to write those big essays, I will simply write this kind of “short takes”.

Xi in Europe

Xi paid his first visit to Europe (ex. Russia) in 5 years. Much of the symbolism in that trip, ranging from the China-France joint statement on Gaza, to Xi’s gift to Macron, deserves some discussion. But what I find to be most interesting is his visit to Serbia, on the 25th anniversary of the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.

First, I want to highlight the importance of that bombing in the contemporary Chinese psyche. In 1999, I was barely 9 years old and too young to have an opinion. But I do remember the outrage during those days. It became one of the very few political events that got seared into my childhood memory during those years (alongside the handover of Hong Kong, the crackdown on Falun Gong, and 911. Not so much memory about Monica Lewinsky though.) In fact, looking back, this event marked the moment when Chinese people felt most outraged by a foreign power in the last many decades.

To this date, the official US line was that the bombing was a mistake. Almost nobody in China believed it. It’s likely that even those in the West don’t believe it, such as this famous story on The Guardian, claiming the bombing was deliberate. The Guardian story’s core thesis was that China was helping Milosevic's Yugoslavia forces by hiding the radio broadcast station inside the embassy. The US found out about it and destroyed the embassy.

I don’t know if this story is true. (Even if I know I probably will not talk about it here.) What I do know is intentionally or not, Chinese lives did get lost in Serbia, at the hands of American missiles. And despite the common exaggeration that China seems to have changed under Xi to be “more adversarial” toward the West, maybe, nothing has really changed. And whatever tension - the balloon, TikTok, the “overcapacity” - between China and the US today is almost nothing compared with the event in 1999. Just imagine what nightmarish situation we will get ourselves into if the embassy of China (or of the US) gets bombed by the other side today.

But the bright side is that, if we can get over 1999, I don’t see why we can’t get over the tension of today.

As for Xi’s Serbia visit, two things about that visit are really interesting to me.

First, I guess it’s one of the only times when a Chinese state leader greets a large crowd in a foreign country. Just from the pictures, we see at least ~10,000 people gathering there. Please note that the entire population of Serbia is around 6 million, even smaller than my hometown of Nanjing, which is a city. If the same proportion of Chinese people come out in a crowd, you will be looking at a 2-million-large crowd. I mean, you simply don’t see this kind of image that often, not for a Chinese leader in a foreign land.

Second, despite the fact that Xi arrived exactly on the 25th anniversary of the bombing, he did not pay a visit to the bombing site. It was obvious that he tried to pay tribute to that event while avoiding the impression that he was using this occasion to further antagonize the West. It was a masterful, well-balanced choice of action.

The Market

After a major rally last week in Hong Kong, the momentum lost a little bit of steam in the first half of this week, prompting Morgan Stanley to make the call that the current rally will “abate”, only to see the index finishing even higher later this week.

Generally, I think there is just too much noise in the world. Way too much of our attention is wasted on these noises in the news cycles.

That is essentially why this newsletter of mine exists for you: clearing out the noise, getting down to the basics, putting things in perspective, and looking through a long-term view.

And no, I don’t think the current rally is a one-trick pony anymore. For my core reasoning, please revisit my commentary last week. And as I said last week, the remaining skepticism in the market only serves as the proof that the rally is not over anytime soon.

Some discussion about the future of this newsletter

Now let me me talk about this newsletter itself. It’s been more than 7 months since I started to write here. Through these many months, I have proven at least one important thing to myself, that I can commit to writing at least once a week even while working as a full-time CEO.

At the same time, I see this newsletter less and less as just a personal hobby (I love writing! Otherwise I can’t keep doing it consistently). Instead, I see it as something more and more integrated with what my company is doing.

I consider myself one of the lucky people who blend what I love to do with what I do for a living. And what I do at BigOne Lab and at Baiguan is absolutely what I love to do: providing honest, balanced, and high-value information for the world. In this sense, this newsletter is no different from those projects. I am quite sure that this is something I will do for life, and to me, the lines between myself, the company, the Baiguan newsletter, and this newsletter become increasingly blurry.

So, to help create more synergy between those different projects, I am contemplating introducing paid features to this one. My rough thinking about it is that I will keep most of the content for free. But for the weekly review, I will keep it paid for the first few days (like the first 5 days?), so the more time-conscious bunch among you may pay for timeliness and punctuality.

Also, if you are a paid subscriber of Baiguan, I am thinking about giving you complimentary access to this newsletter, so you don’t need to pay twice.

Pricing will simply be $10/month or $100/year.

Will you pay for this kind of arrangement?

Further discussion about the name of this newsletter

It’s also high time we talk about the name of this newsletter “Lost in Translation 迷失南京”. I explained on the About page about why is it “Lost in Translation”. But I have never explained the Chinese characters in it, “迷失南京”, which translates as “Lost in Nanjing”.

I just mentioned, Nanjing is the city where I was born and raised. It’s major metropolis on the bank of the Yangtze River, some 300 kilometers (170 miles) upstream from Shanghai. Famously, Nanjing was the capital of China for at least 6 (short-lived) imperial dynasties. All of those 6 dynasties were at best “ regional dynasties” for Southern China (such as the Kingdom of Wu in the Romance of Three Kingdoms), and never got to be one of those “big” dynasties such as the Tang or the Ming, who ruled the entire China proper for several centuries.

All of those “mini-dynasties” in Nanjing were also short-lived. And if you count some of the even more short-lived polities, including Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and Chiang Kai-shek’s erstwhile KMT regime, Nanjing has been a center of power for China for at least 10 times, throughout the millennia. This city also marked the nadir of the “Century of Humiliation” for China, because of our “Rape of Nanking” fame.

Long story short: Nanjingers have seen stuff, usually the more fragile and futile part of that “stuff”, and usually through the perspective of an onlooker standing on the periphery. We never really get ourselves to the center of the stage. But this vantage point sometimes qualifies us as good, overall balanced observers.

The reason I included “Nanjing南京” into the name of this newsletter was also because of a small wordplay. When people think of “Lost in Translation”, most of you will think of the 2003 film by Sophia Coppola, starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. But you may not know the Chinese translated name of the movie is, artfully, 迷失东京, or “Lost in Tokyo”. In Chinese, Tokyo is pronounced as “Dongjing”, or the “Eastern Capital” (It’s also the real Japanese meaning of Tokyo, the eastern capital, as opposed to the previous “western capital” of Kyoto).

“Jing京” means the capital. Nanjing means the “southern capital”, and Beijing means the “northern capital”. So in fact, Nanjing is the only city in China (other than Beijing) that also carries a “Jing” in her name. So I replaced “Tokyo” with “Nanjing” in this name, to highlight my Nanjing roots, and also to link with “Lost in Translation” the movie, a subtle piece of art about the futility of cross-cultural understanding that I watched multiple times.

Ironically, a major downside of using “Lost in Translation” is that the movie was so successful, that it would take perhaps decades for my substack to ever get to appear on the first page of a Google search. It’s just hard to set a distinct brand identity around this name.

At the same time, some of my Chinese subscribers often “mistakenly” refer to this newsletter as “Lost in Nanjing”, instead of “Lost in Translation”.

So, I am thinking, hey, maybe those subscribers are right. Maybe I should simply call this thing Lost in Nanjing instead.

What do you think?

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In case you have not read it, yesterday at I wrote an article, refuting Financial Times’ big hit piece on Pinduoduo/Temu (PDD). Many seasoned investors brushed off the lightly researched FT article as laughable. However, publishing low-quality journalism on a highly influential mainstream platform gives it outsized power. On the day after FT's report, PDD's share price tumbled.

In my article, titled, “PDD's secretive founder, his mentor and Warren Buffet - and why Financial Times was clueless”, I draw from data points from my years of observing this company, as well as from my personal encounters with PDD founder Colin Huang, to make a case that PDD becomes who they are for a reason, and you can't understand Colin Huang without understanding people he makes friends with, including his mentor, (who is perhaps the richest guy in the world whom you haven't heard of), as well as one of the richest guys you have definitely heard of, Warren Buffet.

My article was well-received. Many friends have messaged me showing support. Thank you!

For this newsletter, however, I am afraid I have exhausted my writing energy for this week. I still have a full-time job as the CEO, (although I dream of being a full-time writer when the time comes.) So allow me to be lazy and skip this week.

However, there have been so many things to talk about for the past few weeks, and, including my “Hong Kong is not over” series, this week has already been the third week in a row when I haven’t done a typical weekly review! How can I forgive myself…

I will try not to fail you next week, for which there are several topics in my head right now. Which topics would you love to hear more about? Substack doesn’t allow multiple-choice poll, so either you name me the most wanted one in the poll below or just leave me a comment!

Cheers, and have a great weekend!

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An “imagined reality” (as defined by Harari) of “China” did not yet exist.

It took a long string of chaos, pains, and wars to shape this imagined reality. The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), costing close to 10 million Chinese lives, finally jolted “China” into being and made everybody realize that we are a people. We are a nation-state. We are a country.

Suddenly, unambiguous and clearly delineated national borders became a thing. The vagueness of sovereignty was no longer allowed.

Throughout the years, one by one, China fixed border issues with its neighbors. But it’s a long and complicated process. (It’s a process that took Europe a few centuries to more or less complete, by the way.) To this date, China has resolved border disputes with 10 neighbors. The most notable one is the 1991 border treaty with Russia, to whom China lost millions of square meters of territories pre-PRC era. But China gave that up. Now, apart from occasional shouts from ultra-nationalists, we mostly shut up on the issue.

And yes, China still has border disputes with India, Japan, and in the South China Sea. But that is just that, a border dispute, and we are looking for ways to resolve them. (For example, with Vietnam). It is not about aggression and military conquest. It is surely not a foreboding for even more incursions beyond the disputed borders.

The issue with Taiwan is a separate topic, as China always sees this as a domestic issue, as unresolved vestiges of a civil war. But, the bottom line here has always been clear: peaceful reunification always is the preferred choice, but not giving up the use of force if provoked. But again, it’s only about Taiwan. There is no talk and no willingness to go further beyond Taiwan.

Hi everyone! For this week I am struggling to find the right content to talk about. It has been one of those “slower” weeks when not many consequential events have happened. As you know, my guiding principle for this newsletter is that I will only review events with lasting impact beyond news cycles, so I won’t write for writing’s sake. Otherwise, you will not know the difference between important ones and unimportant ones and I will just end up creating more noise. 

However, I am debating with myself whether to write about this one thing. It’s this tweet from , of fame:

What Noah commented on was the apparent mass removal of PLA generals. (As always, I think had a pretty good analysis on this topic.)

When it comes to Noah however, well, let me put it this way: if you need to apply as many as 4 possible theories to explain an event, it can only mean you are clueless about the topic.

The reason I want to talk about this tweet is because this one captures very well what some of the intellectual elites in the US get wrong about China, mainly by mistakenly applying their own biases, frameworks and fantasies about this country.

Also, I understand Noah is a highly influential figure and one of the most profitable Substackers. I like his writings about economics in general. But each time he ventures into China-related topics, I can only laugh. Given his huge influence, I am worried that this may help shape what a vast number of people think about China, in the wrong way.

I have long wanted to expose Noah’s China-related cluelessness. I genuinely would like him to either learn more or just stay away from the issue.

But it could be pointless. Perhaps, serious China watchers like you (who are the core of my subscriber base) already know that Noah doesn’t understand China, so there may be nothing interesting for me to add here. At the end of day, I only want to write about things you care about.

So I will leave the decision to you. This is my question:

I will send a detailed post over this weekend, if and only if I get over 50% Yes, and at least 30 people join this poll.

Sidenote: Last week I predicted that online game regulator will heavily modify the new regulation draft, and “heads will get rolling”. Heads indeed got rolling this week.

Have a good weekend!

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