Ian Johnson, founder and president of China’s Unofficial Archives dives into the country’s way to deal with religion for the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. How does religion work in China? Officially, the government recognizes five religions, but people and their practices don’t fit neatly into these categories, Ian Johnson tells.Read More →

China’s government and Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, are at loggerheads on what will happen when the latter dies, and a such for a new Dalai Lama will start. Get ready for two Dalai Lamas, predicts Ian Johnson, fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, at the ChinaFile.Read More →

Berlin-based journalist and researcher Ian Johnson, author of  The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Ma0,  joins an Asia Society panel on moral authority and how the Chinese government has dealt with faiths over the past decade. While Christianity and Islam are curtailed, traditional faiths are embraced, he says. Other participants include professor Xi Lian, and Whitman College Assistant Professor Yuan Xiaobo. Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis Fellow G.A. Donovan moderates the conversation.Read More →

Islam and Christianity often get a hard time from China’s authorities, while local beliefs, Taoism, and Buddhism enjoy the support of the government. Journalist and researcher Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, followed local pilgrimages for almost a decade and recently joined the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin to study the relation between those beliefs and the state, he tells in an introduction at the start of his new study.Read More →

A unique set of meticulous diaries, written by communist party member and reformist Li Rui, the secretary of Mao Zedong, have emerged in legal battles. Stanford University obtained them from Li’s daughter, but China is eager to get them back. Historian Ian Johnson, author of Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future, comments on the diaries and fears they will disappear into the black hole Beijing’s archives are nowadays, he tells at ABC News.Read More →

Independent Australia reviews Ian Johnson’s latest book Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future and supports his effort to avoid pressure from the government to forget the past. “Johnson gives us access to some of the recent events that have already been obliterated from Communist China’s official history, from the murderous disasters of Mao’s crackdowns on critical thinking to the cult rise of Xi Jinping.”Read More →

Why is China calling itself a democracy when it is not according to most definitions? China scholar Ian Johnson, a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, discusses this and other political issues at the Council on Foreign Relations. In the same way, it is not a dictatorship where Xi Jinping can decide on all issues in the country, he says.Read More →

China veteran Ian Johnson, author of China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future (September 2023), announces he will leave as senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations and move from New York to Berlin. He will work as a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and work from Berlin starting on July 1, 2024, writing a new book on the misuses of religion in Xi’s China in the summer of 2024.Read More →

Foreign media too often focus on China’s crackdown on religion, but former foreign correspondent Ian Johnson, author of Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future, sees an opposite trend as China’s government started to support traditional faiths, in an effort to gain new legitimacy, he writes in the Council on Foreign Relations. Read More →

During the Cold War, authors from Eastern Europe and Russia belonged to household names among Western elites, but today translations of their Chinese counterparts failed to make it to Western bookshelves, says Ian Johnson, author of Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future. One of the reasons is the changed commercial business models of publishing houses, he says in an extensive interview in China Law & Policies.Read More →

Journalist and author Ian Johnson discusses his latest book, Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future, at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, on why and how he came to write his book. Questions are asked by Orville Schell is the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society in New York and Glenn Tiffert a distinguished research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a historian of modern China.Read More →