Shanghai Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波 14/10/2025 ALDI in China The German ALDI supermarket giant opened its first stores in China in June 2019. Today in October 2025, there are some 80 ALDI stores, most in Shanghai. Only since April they started to expand to Suzhou and Wuxi. ALDI has built a ...

Beijing, Shenyang, Dandong Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波 07/10/2025 Westerners in China Walking along the streets of Beijing, Shenyang, Dandong and Shanghai, compared to 10 years ago, it is remarkable how few young Europeans or Americans are left in China. These days, there are many Russia ...

Beijing Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波 30/09/2025 The barbarians in Beijing The Old Summer Palace, the Yuanmingyuan “圆明园” in Chinese, located in the Haidian district of Beijing, was a large imperial garden that the emperors of the Qing Dynasty operated for over 150 years. It was known as th ...

Beijing Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波 16/09/2025 A short report of the first few days in Beijing Hainan Airlines flight HU494 BRU – PEKLast week, Hainan Airlines quickly swapped its scheduled Airbus A330-300 for a Boeing 787-9. Almost 10 hours in the air. Departed from Zaventem half an hou ...

My next adventure unfolds in China and beyond! Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  09.09.2025 Seventeen Arched Bridge, The Summer Palace, Beijing, China I’m thrilled to announce that my annual journey to Asia is almost here! This Sunday,  14 September, I’ll be embarking on my ...

How China’s Mandate of Heaven redefined legitimacy Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  20.08.2025 Qing Dynasty (Taoist) painting of the Chinese pantheon, Hunan Museum For millennia, rulers have sought divine justification for their power but none framed it as conditionally as China’s Mandate o ...

The ideologies we embraced don’t even begin to make sense in light of real-world evidence. Alex Krainer 15/07/2025 This article is re-published with the approval of Alex Krainer, the author of “TrendCompass” For generations now, western economic thought e ...

How Western audiences reveal their programmed biases when confronted with objective analysis of Chinese politics Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  22.07.2025 The whole situation with the awkward questioning after my lectures bears a strong resemblance to what happened to Marco Polo on ...

When language becomes a weapon The Frontier Man (Larry Johnson) 08/07/2028 Artwork: Rebellion of the Soul. The Frontier Man August 2024 This article is re-published here with the approval of the author at “Sonar21” On 5 February 2003, U.S. Secretary ...

The immense cultural differences between China and the West make the discussion about the technology competition pointless. Peter Peverelli • 15 july 2025 Chinese vs American application of AI; cartoon RedNote (disclaimer) Culture What most Westerners fail to understand is that the ...

How truth decays in a world of tribal narrative.     Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  23.06.2025 Trust, but verify, lessons in healthy scepticism When my father-in-law boasted of shooting 23 German soldiers in World War II, I didn’t take his word for it. Digging into archives ...

and no light at the end of the tunnel … guest author Jaak Peeters 26.05.2025 Glenn Diesen The Norwegian political scientist Prof. Glenn Diesen regularly brings conversations with interesting people from the West and the East. Some people take the latter amiss, because he ...

A plea for a fundamental rethink of Europe’s approach to the conflict in Ukraine. Guestauthor: Steven Arrazola de Oñate 09/05/2025 Steven Arrazola de Oñate served his country in the Belgian army.He was stationed in Kandahar (Afghanistan),an experience about which he wrote his most r ...

One constructed by the west, one lived by the Chinese   Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  12.05.2025 A mirror divided A friend asked me last week: “Are there two Chinas then ?” His question, while simple, struck at the heart of a deeper truth: our view of China is often not shaped by e ...

National identity as a catalyst for collective progress Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波 11.04.2025 A synthesis of cultural heritage and modern nationalism Introduction The interplay of peace (和平, hépíng), harmony (和谐, héxié), and happiness (幸福, xìngfú) in China is deeply rooted in its ...