Had a conversation with two Chinese friends living in America this week about how they feel like there is no space in diaspora media/debate for voices like theirs. As they see it, Chinese language public sphere in places like Twitter is dominated by three clusters:

1) Nationalist wolf-pups, and their allies, Confucian LARPer conservatives, who see there job as defending China from the West. These people usually write in English and save their Chinese writing for Chinese-internet forums.

2) post-60s/70s dissidents & liberals, who are bombastically anti-Party and have no idea how to engage with anyone younger than 40. These ppl are on intl platforms, are usually writing 100% in Chinese (thus mostly ignored by Western China discourse).

3) "independent minded" Chinese who hate both China hawks and Chinese nationalists, and who tend to frame view issues through a race and gender lens. These people are really popular with Western journalists., They do things in both Chinese and English, usually on intl platforms.

My two friends, on the other hand, see both the little-pink "defend China's national honor crowd" and the "lets frame everything through social justice rhetoric" crowds as silly and grievance driven.

They seem like natural allies of the old liberals, but being young, think those guys are old fogueys hopelessly out of touch. (They also don't appreciate the oldies willingness to champion Trumpish policies that will get these younger common-sense liberals kicked out of the USA).

They feel isolated & alone. But they aren't alone. I know so many CH students who are tired of the grievance driven politics of the pups and the baizuo copycats. It is just they don't have anything to rally around.

Of course, I suggested that the two of them start a podcast.