Day: June 27, 2024

For nearly a decade Roxie was one of Shanghai’s (and China’s) few lesbian bars. It hosted speed dating and pole dancing, and boasted an unusually risqué decor (patrons were encouraged to hang their bras above the counter). But earlier this month the bar announced that it would close. It blamed “forces beyond our control”, a euphemism for official pressure. On June 16th, Roxie’s last night, grieving revellers danced and drank while holding a large rainbow flag over their heads. The Economist

When Cheng Yingsheng, the director of one of China’s top university hospitals, was placed under investigation for alleged corruption in June, it marked a difficult spell for doctors in China. The authorities have recently rattled them with a string of high-profile arrests of leading medical figures. But that is not the doctors’ only worry. The government is also pushing through a health-care reform that is upsetting many of them. The Economist

China’s lunar probe, called Chang’e-6 (pictured), landed in Inner Mongolia on June 25th after a nearly two-month-long mission to the Moon’s far side. Scientists hope that the samples it collected will provide new insights into lunar geology and the formation of planets. China is the only country to have explored the side of the Moon that is always facing away from Earth. The successful mission is a boost for China’s space programme, to which it has devoted vast resources. It hopes to send astronauts to the Moon by 2030. And…

In politics, fringe ideas can become mainstream and vice versa. The “window of political possibility” can expand or move, as Joe Overton, an American political analyst, once put it. The same is true even in communist China. In 1978, for example, the country’s Overton window made a momentous shift. Two years after the death of Chairman Mao Zedong, it became possible for the party to acknowledge that the great helmsman was not infallible. This pragmatism paved the way for faster economic reform and for Deng Xiaoping to become China’s paramount…