Assistant prof of international relations and international law; former political adviser; book reviewer; all views personal.
Joined July 2014
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Could a modern and progressive historian really write in praise of African slave-traders for being better at slave-trading than their European competitors? My review of David Veevers' The Great Defiance.
thecritic.co.uk/issues/novem…
Yuan Yi Zhu retweeted
Bought two mislabelled vintage photo albums which turn out to be old Japanese photographs. One is of a high school during WWII, the other, of some sort of Buddhist pilgrimage in the 1960s. Does anyone know someone who collects this sort of thing?
Yuan Yi Zhu retweeted
The British media has a serious problem. No, a protest of 4 (yes, FOUR) people does not warrant being included in the headline as if it were on a comparable scale as a parade of thousands. Absolutely astounding how obsessed the British media is with amplifying protests
Parades and protests: King's Bahamas trip a 'strong diplomatic success', say staff
Royal Editor @chrisshipitv reports
itv.com/news/2026-10-29/para…
Yuan Yi Zhu retweeted
Oh look, Dignity in Dying don’t like being lumped in with Big Tobacco & arms dealers. But unlike with smoking & the military, sending people to an early death is actually Dignity in Dying’s whole objective, not just a possible consequence. Sadly they bullied the RCGP into backing down & are now boasting about it!
Yuan Yi Zhu retweeted
My wife Angela passed away last week.
I will be closing her vinted and Ebay accounts but would like to sell as much as i can to declutter and help pay towards her service. She is now happy with our daughter.
Links:
vinted.co.uk/member/56889306…
ebay.io/m/Jm5Opk
Yuan Yi Zhu retweeted
This is a v depressing sentencing appeal. Man with 162 previous offences including 55 for thefts burgles a Wagamama. Max sentence 10 years. An unelected quango nonetheless stipulates a guideline sentence of 6 months, or 12 months if “top of range”. Judge decides scale of previous offences means he should sentence outside the guideline. Appeal court reverses him. 15 months reduces to 7.
Yuan Yi Zhu retweeted
Peak British NIMBYism.
Montenegro cannot have an embassy in Pimlico because the daughter of an American diplomat thinks an embassy beside her place is a breach of the human rights and equality act because of her anxiety disorder and long Covid. 🥀🥀🥀
Hahahhahahahahahah fucken hell
theguardian.com/uk-news/2026…
Yuan Yi Zhu retweeted
Me in @unherd today on why Carney's attempt to graft a Canadian maple onto the European family tree just won't work.
"Carney is attempting to pull off a monumental act of historical reverse engineering — one that would see the New World returning to the shores of the Old. Finding itself in President Trump’s crosshairs, Canada is trying to pivot from being America’s dependent northern brother to Europe’s long-lost child returning home. “It is my strong personal view that the international order will be rebuilt, but it will be rebuilt out of Europe,” Carney has predicted. The problem is that this reunion will not work out. While their roots intertwine, Canada’s relationship with Europe faces hard geographic, economic, and cultural ceilings that cannot be overcome by mere treaties and titles. Canada is a non-native species on European soil."
READ: tinyurl.com/mu3svhkm
Yuan Yi Zhu retweeted
It's so fucking funny that the jury unanimously agreed that this guy was so annoying that he literally deserved to be shot
Yuan Yi Zhu retweeted
I have met so many extremely impressive center-right professionals in DC who either served in the GWB admin or just missed it and expected to return to government in 2016, but instead have been stuck in this political purgatory for the last decade. Really sad stuff.
Yuan Yi Zhu retweeted
If @Harvard wanted race quotas bc they thought it was better for the student body, they should have said that and fought on principle.
The issue is they wanted federal funding, which bans race-based admissions, so they were saying things like "Asians have bad personalities" to justify massive academic disparities in admissions. Cowards AND liars.
Yeah, I hate the 18 year olds who got mowed down in Flanders too. Fuck these guys.
Yuan Yi Zhu retweeted
Canadian Research Chairs are allocated according to equity targets pegged to population estimates. In other words, a quota.
chairs-chaires.gc.ca/program…
Yuan Yi Zhu retweeted
Sleep well, Stephen Kovacevich. For me, you were a greater human and kinder and more generous than your entire generation put together.
There are many great scholars of China at Cambridge. There are also a few CCP propagandists. At least one does it for the love of the game.
Yuan Yi Zhu retweeted
I wish more people remembered that *not* posting on the internet is always an option.
Under “dictator” Mao, life expectancy in China increased by 30 years, literacy rates went from 20% to 70%, steel output grew from 1 million to 23 million tons, 47 million hectares of land was taken from landlords and given to peasants, and China was unified under a strong central state and got nuclear weapons.
Despite his failures, it does not take a rocket scientist to understand why Mao is revered in China.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The post is misleading. The 30-year increase in the lifesman is from the bottom of the famine he created.
x.com/tomaszwyluda/s…
Yuan Yi Zhu retweeted
Is this the longest ever gap between first broadcast and repeat? 90 years later Television Come to London, next Wednesday on BBC Four as part of a night marking the start of the regular high-definition TV service from Ally Pally in 1936
Yuan Yi Zhu retweeted
The level of state involvement in the economy is sometimes breathtaking. The state deciding what beers are allowed to be sold in affiliated pubs under a legally binding “Pubs Code” is not “forty years of neoliberalism”.
