Read on Twitter
1/ The polls have closed and it seems you'd like me to expose a 'China Watcher', so here goes.... https://twitter.com/TheDailyMao/status/1337099802442514432
2/ Our China Watcher today is James Lin, a respectable professor for a respectable school with a sizeable Chinese student body
3/ How did I hear about James? Well, a few months ago, someone sent me these screencaps
4/ He tags me and invites me to take some courses... then blocks me. I'm intrigued, what is this guy hiding?
5/ To start with, some standard China Watcher stuff, such as "China’s economy is a house of cards and will collapse! Also US military flexing on China’s borders = totally innocent"
6/ Tone policing China scholars and delegitimizing Chinese perspectives… all this seems ordinary...
7/ ...until we get to "Chinese economic growth is not poverty reduction"... wait, what?
8/ But Chinese growth definitely is like the white walkers (???)
9/ Taiwan islanders only speak Chinese because the KMT made them (????)
10/ Because the ethnicity that makes up 92% of China is an artificial construct (?????)
11/ You know who seeded this type of research? The Imperial Japanese Army. While it was invading China.
12/ And guess what type of ‘colonization’ Professor Lin likes because it brings 'civilization'?
13/ But James doesn't just like Imperial Japan. He thinks it's 40 year campaign of wanton bloodlust in Asia - which killed 20 million people - compares favorably to China's Belt and Road project
14/ James also gets pretty touchy when you say anything about Japan doing anything remotely aggressive in the present day
15/ James sure likes thinking about Japan doesn’t he, but he has never tweeted, once, about the Nanking Massacre, Comfort Women, state-sponsored narcotics dealing in Manchukuo, or biological warfare in Unit 731
16/ But he did tweet one thing about Imperial Japan between 1931 and 1945… their trains. Because trains are super cool and what the IJA built while killing and enslaving everyone is definitely the same as China’s BRI /sarcasm
17/ All this could just be coincidence, but the other day, he straight up liked a post denying the Nanking Massacre
18/ You could think this is all due to some odd racial hierarchy James has absorbed in his head…
19/ But this isn’t just Twitter, continuing Imperial Japan's "China ethnography studies" is his day job
20/ James: “I am not influenced by money but my career as a junior faculty is precarious and only senior faculty consistently stand up to govt pressure”
21/ Also James: "all the funding for me is totally innocent!" Also also James: "Taiwan studies needs more funding"
22/ Also also also James: "And even though Taiwan pays our bills, we should totally keep hiding what that funding is used for"
23/ But James isn't just funded by Taiwan's government. He's also funded by an anonymous donor... which totally isn't influencing the views of our ever-so-eager Imperal Japanese apologist
24/ So if it’s innocent, why not share it? Maybe James should share his donor’s name with all of us. But he’ll probably toss out an excuse about respecting their wish to remain anonymous, so let’s give him that
25/ But we don’t have to give him an ounce of the supposed objectivity or legitimacy he quite so obviously craves.
