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 ...

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 Western na ...

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 Secretary of Sta ...

How Confucian culture first delayed and then accelerated China’s innovation.      Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  04.07.2025 Smashing the European myth For centuries, Western narratives have portrayed science and technology as exclusively Western achievements, ...

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 ...

China’s long term strategy paid off. The West never saw it coming    Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  08.07.2025 Since the turn of the 21st century, China has not merely participated in global systems shaped by Western powers; it has decisively reconfigured them. From trade gove ...

The devastating influence of having no future.     Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  01.07.2025 Losing faith in the future In many western societies, the erosion of faith in the future has become one of the defining psychological and political crises of the 21st century. E ...

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 ...

Short-term politics, media puppets, and the death of innovation.     Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  07.06.2025 The short term vision Western political and economic systems are collapsing under the weight of short-termism, media dependency, and the marginalisation of eng ...

It was high time to cut the cord and to end a toxic dependency.     Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  02.06.2025 Chinese brands, media, financial institutions and apps The Western grip: an uneasy dependence For more than two decades, I have been acutely aware of the growing ...

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 ...

Quantitative rigor vs. ideological echo chambers in higher education   Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  14.05.2025 STEM versus sociology To render the discussion more transparent, it is first necessary to define the concept of sociology and to delineate the precise scope of the STE ...

The case against western electoral ritualism Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  30.04.2025 Elections in China On the evening of 24/04/2025, I witnessed yet another masterpiece of acting … in a speech by the faction leader of the largest political party in our parliament to our service club. T ...