Please support my work by considering a paid subscription to Sinocities

Free subscribers still welcomed!

I rebranded my substack as Sinocities in June 2024, with this welcome post noting that,

“China is such a vast country that any attempt to grapple with its complexity needs to understand regional and local particularities. There’s a lot of good China content in the English speaking world, both from international scholars but also increasingly China-based scholars writing in English. But there’s still very little that focuses on specific locales and specific places as a lens into the complexity and variety of China’s development.

Since then, I’ve been pleasantly surprised and humbled by your interest in my work.In general I try to illuminate somewhat obscure topics that have not received much attention in English media (or Chinese media), such as the building of China’s nationwide data network, Xi Jinping’s construction of a new Archives 版本馆, or heritage tourism such as in Shanxi province. I’m not just interested in esoterica for esoterica’s sake. I also try to explain why these often overlooked and understudied topics actually matter—such as the importance of data centers to China’s digital infrastructure, or the importance of ideology and historic memory to contemporary governance under Xi. And throughout all of this, there is a focus on place and specificity—bringing under-examined places and stories to light, and examining their implications for broader issues and themes.

For the most part I intend to keep on doing what I’ve been doing. But I also have realized that the amount of time and research that I put into some of these stories is not without a significant time cost. The time in takes to undertake the research goes beyond the process of sitting down to write, and involves pulling in various types of data from geospatial to news reports from Chinese media, scholarly research, and interviews. Balancing this alongside ongoing research and teaching commitments at MIT, where I currently work, requires dedicated planning and time.This is why I have decided to turn on subscriptions and allow a paid subscription model.

However, to be clear, I intend to maintain a significant portion of Sinocities as free and open to everyone. For example, I intend to keep posts like CITY REPORTs (such as the one I’ve done recently on Chengdu), as free for all. For some in-depth reports that require a lot of research and data collection, I may paywall portions of the story, allowing free subscribers to get a short overview of the topic, while reserving in-depth reports for paying subscribers. The intention is not to put all of my content behind a paywall, but offer a way for dedicated subscribers who feel they benefit from the unique stories and perspective I bring to contribute to my work. For those of you who value and support my work, please consider subscribing. I will also think about developing unique and customized reports for paying subscribers—an idea that is still in development.

For those who do not have the resources or time to purchase a paid subscription, I value your engagement and continued interest and I will continue making a good deal of what I write and research available for non-paying subscribers. Thanks to everyone for your interest and support of my work, and please feel free to reach out with suggestions, ideas for topics or places you’d like to see covered, or any other feedback!