Eric Fish

50 years ago today, a tsunami tore through central China, hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean, taking as many as 230,000 lives with it—a result of engineering hubris and political fanaticism, which would remain a well-kept state secret for decades. chinachronicles.org/2025/07/06/the…

The United States will face a “critical shortage” of China experts with on-the-ground experience within a decade if the number of Americans studying there continues to be perilously low, a new report warns. chronicle.com/newsletter/lat…

Upon hearing the suggestion, the people of Taiwan all simultaneously shrugged, said "well, gas has gotten more expensive," proceeded to lower Republic of China flags, cancel all future elections, and turn their military over to the PLA. scmp.com/news/china/pol…

Watermelon production by country in 2023

“The competitive reality is that the Chinese are the 700-pound gorilla in the EV industry,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told me in an interview last year. “There’s no real competition from Tesla, GM or Ford with what we’ve seen from China.” wsj.com/tech/personal-…

For the past 30 years, Chinese internet users had no choice but to learn to "dance in shackles" against the Great Firewall. They evade censors and carve out dignity in a surveilled internet. I used to think this was uniquely Chinese. But watching America in 2025 and 2026, the algorithm manipulation and the recent TikTok stories, I keep thinking about what @yilingliu95 said to me: "Americans are going to have to learn to be wall dancers, too." Writer and journalist @yilingliu95 spent eight years documenting how Chinese internet users became "wall dancers." Her new book is coming out soon. This is my full conversation with her: on writing as craft, the convergence of walls, living within truth, and more. link to the conversation in reply.

Read the whole issue here: wired.com/china-issue/

"This is the Chinese century" started as a meme, but it speaks to something tangible: a crumbling international order and a profound shift in collective psychology. @WIRED's new China issue explores "23 Ways You're Already Living in the Chinese Century," covering everything from AI and energy to EVs and Labubus. I contributed a "Chinese internet lore" piece on this issue. It's about a sprawling, never-ending sci-fi story created collaboratively on the Chinese internet (the theme of the story is about 500 people time-traveling to the Ming dynasty to industrialize China). Thousands of contributors keep expanding this universe, building its time-travel mythology chapter by chapter for two decades. The full issue is great and ambitious. also happy to be alongside writers I deeply admire @yilingliu95 @ZeyiYang, Johanna Costigan, @willknight, etc

Nick Shirley’s viral video about alleged day-care fraud in Minneapolis turned the tropes of the TV-news investigation into millions of streaming views. His content was questionable, but his methods will likely inspire scores of imitators. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/htg6_d

Meanwhile, the number of students from India grew by 10%, bringing their numbers to 363,019. If that growth trend continues another year, there will be more Indian students in the US than there ever were Chinese students at their peak.

New data out from Institute of International Education. Chinese student numbers in the US during the 2024-25 school year continued their 5-year slide, dropping another 4% to 265,919.

Still wondering where 600k number comes from. PRC students peaked at 372k in 2019 (now down to 277k). Most push/pull factors that drove the PRC student boom continue to dissipate. Even w/ wide open political/immigration arms, don't know how you get to 600k newsweek.com/maga-turns-on-…

My first solo-authored publication is out in The International Journal of Press/Politics! Based on 50+ interviews with foreign correspondents in China, it explores how authoritarian media control operates and the responses it provokes (1/3) journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/19…

By 2100, China's population is projected to cut in half from where it is today, falling to just 633 million people. And more than half of that population will be over 60 years old, compared to about 20% today. washingtonpost.com/world/interact…

The world’s smartest students have been drawn to our universities for decades. No longer as Trump policies are driving them away. - The New York Times nytimes.com/interactive/20…

There are few people I enjoyed talking about China with as much as Jerome Cohen. Amazing life, sharp as a tack, and hilariously witty even into his 90s. wsj.com/world/china/je…

Americans who say there's a lot of discrimination against people who are: In US illegally 57% Transgender 48% Gay or lesbian 37% Black 36% Muslim 34% Hispanic 34% Jewish 30% Immigrants in US legally 29% Women 22% Asian 21% Religious 17% Older 16% Evangelical 13% White 12% Men 10% Atheist 7%

Critical part of the President's new $100,000 charge for H1-B visas: The Administration can also offer a $100,000 discount to any person, company, or industry that it wants. Replacing rules with arbitrary discretion. Want visas? You know who to call and who to flatter.

We haven’t seen the text of this yet, but to be clear, the president has literally zero legal authority to impose a $100,000 fee on visas. The only authority Congress has ever given the executive branch here is to charge fees to recover the cost of processing the application.

In late April, Dong Mingzhu, chairwoman of China’s home appliances giant Gree Electric told a shareholder meeting that the company “will never use any returnees because there could be spies among them.”

Chinese international students are getting targeted abroad as suspected spies for China, then they get home and have trouble finding jobs because they're suspected of being spies for foreign countries. cnn.com/2025/09/12/chi…