Writing

I regularly write essays, feature stories, reports, and op-eds for the public. Below is a selection.

Digital culture

• “Whose Domain Is It?” Reboot, September 2023.
• “Creating the Photogenic City.” Kernel Magazine, September 2022.
• “King of Fairy Tales, King of Posts.” Chaoyang Trap, May 2021.
• “The Party Is Your Idol.” Index on Censorship 50, April 2021.
• “Rich Kids English Police, and IG’s Chinese Meme Boom.” Chaoyang Trap, March 2021.
• "‘Your Mom Is Dead’: The Origins of the Chinese Internet Slang NMSL." SupChina, April 2020.
• “Who’s Chinese? The Farmer-Turned-Livestreaming Star Who’s Challenging China’s Ideas of Racial Identity.” RADII, April 2019.
• “To Earn Points on China’s Little Red App, I Downloaded a Cheat Tool from GitHub.” SupChina, March 2019.
• “Meet Rural China’s Viral Online Celebrities.” SupChina, June 2018.

Technology policy

• “The Rise of Techno-Nationalism” (with Tim Hwang). New America, November 2023.
• “America Is Getting TikTok All Wrong” (with Tim Hwang). The Atlantic, May 2023.
• “TikTok and the Retreat of the Open Web” (with Tim Hwang). Wired, April 2023.

U.S.-China relations

• “To Win the Tech Race with China, Unleash the Venture Capitalists” (with Tim Hwang). TIME, September 2023.
• “Ghosts of Communists Past.” SupChina, January 2021.
• “Tough-on-China Joe? Why America’s Mistrust of Beijing Is Here To Stay.” VICE, January 2021.
• “The Man Who Took China to Space.” Foreign Policy, March 2019.

Misc

• “When EV startups shut down, will their cars still work?” Rest of World, August 2024.
• “Out of the Sandbox.” Reboot, February 2024.
• “Esperanto, China’s Surprisingly Prominent Linguistic Subculture Is Slowly Dying Out.” RADII, June 2021.
• “License to Nil: Why China’s Tourists Aren’t Able to Drive Abroad.” Sixth Tone, January 2019.