Views: 3 Reflecting on articles that challenged comfortable narratives. Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波   29/12/2026 The year 2025 stripped away our last illusions as European mirrors reflected only a diminished and unflattering truth. Global events have forced us to acknowledge our fa ...

Views: 15 Ideology in the west and the search for analytical rigour in China Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  17.12.2025 Sociology in crisis: China’s alternative paradigm. This article examines the profound crisis in Western sociological and liberal art education and the vigorous d ...

Views: 48 Freedom, democracy and truth. Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  10.12.2025 For the fainthearted: In this article, I will invite you to some self-reflection. I will challenge you with some uncomfortable observations about common patterns in our society. For those who prefer not t ...

Views: 91 Beyond confrontation: How China unveils the West’s imperative to adapt Gordon Dumoulin 22/07/2025 Puji Temple in Putuo Mountain This article is reproduced with the permission of Gordon Dumoulin, the author(s) of “China21 Journal” The gloves of ...

Views: 71 Final reflections on an extraordinary travel. Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波   25/11/2025 Koh Samui Our journey home took us from Koh Samui to Singapore, then Zurich, and finally to Brussels. The airport on Koh Samui features a simple single landing strip, with its te ...

Views: 185 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 ha ...

Views: 101 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 m ...

Views: 102 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 k ...

Views: 84 Beijing Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波 23/09/2025 Core values The 12 core socialist values: 富强 (Fùqiáng) – Prosperity and Strength民主 (Mínzhǔ) – Democracy文明 (Wénmíng) – Civility和谐 (Héxié) – Harmony自由 (Zìyóu) – Freedom平等 (Píngděng) – Equality公正 (Gōn ...

Views: 85 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 ha ...

Views: 132 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 ...

Views: 117 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 ...

Views: 40 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 ...

Views: 58 A comparison with China Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  28.07.2025 Performance of 歌剧魅影 Phantom of the Opera in a shopping mall (Shanghai 20.05.2023, my own photo)  Social cohesion decline in the West and the role of gaslighting by elites The erosion of social cohesion in W ...

Views: 64 From confrontation to cooperation Jan Oberg  08.07.2025 This is an article, re-published with the approval of the authors of “If You Want To Understand China” – Foreword, Intro and Content of a TFF anthology. In July 2020, former US Secreta ...