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Iza Ding

@izading.bsky.social
2.1K followers 98 following 14 posts

Political science professor at Northwestern • Writer • Photographer izading.substack.com

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Iza Ding @izading.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
"Technology diffusion should therefore be China’s core offer. This is the genuinely irreplaceable thing China brings to the table: not moral authority, but a recipe that has made decarbonization affordable for the first time." In @the-breakdown.bsky.social with Deborah Seligsohn
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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
China now leads the way with green technology, but how did they manage it? According to @izading.bsky.social and @debseligsohn.bsky.social, China's path to climate leadership was far more mundane than the both China's boosters and its detractors will admit.
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New Lines Magazine @newlinesmag.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
A new documentary about Novak Djokovic tells the origin story behind his unfailing drive and explains how he feeds off criticism. @izading.bsky.social  reviews the film.
f.mtr.cool
The Darkness That Drives Djokovic
A new documentary portrays the most successful tennis champion in history as fueled by his detractors, his mindset rooted in his childhood experience of war
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The BREAK—DOWN @the-breakdown.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
On September 23rd, we'll be launching ISSUE #4: CHINA in collaboration with Phenomenal World. Join us at the Verso Books' office from 7:00pm luma.com/event/manage...
Launch party for Issue #4 titled "CHINA" — a live podcast featuring Iza Ding in conversation with John Merrick; 23 Sept, 7:00–late at Verso Books, 207 32nd St, New York, NY 10016, purple poster with tree-branch background.
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New Lines Magazine @newlinesmag.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
“He is not faultless but, to much of the world, he is familiar. Watching Novak Djokovic is a redemptive experience.” | @izading.bsky.social 
f.mtr.cool
The Darkness That Drives Djokovic
A new documentary portrays the most successful tennis champion in history as fueled by his detractors, his mindset rooted in his childhood experience of war
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thomas ruttig #AntiAbschiebungsIndustrie @thomasruttig.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
this sentence about djokovic should be processed well beyond tennis: "A child who spends 78 nights squeezed into a bomb shelter was never going to come out mild and mannerly."
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Iza Ding @izading.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
In tennis, love means nothing. My essay on Djokovic, inat, and who gets to define grace in @newlinesmag.bsky.social newlinesmag.com/review/the-d...
newlinesmag.com
The Darkness That Drives Djokovic
A new documentary portrays the most successful tennis champion in history as fueled by his detractors, his mindset rooted in his childhood experience of war
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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
featuring an incredible essay on Chinese energy politics from @kaiserkuo.bsky.social and David Fishman; @izading.bsky.social and Deborah Seligsohn on China's accidental climate revolution; reportage on Hungary's EV factories and Inner Mongolian herders
g.bsky.social
Bluesky
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John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
First preview of what i've been working on over the past couple of months: The BREAK–DOWN #4: China!
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Iza Ding @izading.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
What does Hegel have to say about Heated Rivalry
izading.substack.com
Heated Rivalry as Hegelian Romance
quick post
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Iza Ding @izading.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
New Yorkers had not really been missing an NBA championship. They had been missing an excuse to be released from themselves and dissolve into one another. -- I wrote about the night the Knicks won. izading.substack.com/p/that-ocean...
izading.substack.com
That Oceanic Feeling
The night the Knicks won
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Omar Wasow @owasow.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
“When the Knicks won the NBA Cup this season, Brunson devised a plan to make sure that the peripheral people in the Knicks organization—medical staff, locker-room attendants, etc.—received a portion of the money that the players get for winning the in-season tournament. This is who Brunson is.” 🎁
nytimes.com
Jalen Brunson, NBA champion and finals MVP, is officially the greatest Knick ever (Gift Article)
Jalen Brunson has placed New York back on top of the basketball world, where it belongs.
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Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs @buffett.northwestern.edu · 05/05/2026
@polisciatnu.bsky.social Professor @izading.bsky.social returned from leading the Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs' student delegation to #COP30 this past fall questioning the concept of "soft power" resurfacing in public conversation... 1/2 🧵
izading.substack.com
The Grinning Defiance of Chinese Soft Power
My new piece in The Ideas Letter. I’ve enjoyed writing for them since 2024. Props to TIL for giving their authors maxx intellectual and stylistic freedom. Reprinting it here with my own pictures. Than...
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Iza Ding @izading.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
In the Ideas Letter again, on Labubu and Joe Nye. www.theideasletter.org/essay/the-gr...
theideasletter.org
The Grinning Defiance of Chinese Soft Power - The Ideas Letter
Ding revisits the concept of “soft power” that Joseph Nye coined three decades ago and later applied to China, to say the country was in deficit. As China’s global cultural…
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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 30/01/2026
‘China’s gaokao factories and America’s college-industrial complex are not accidents. They are the logical outcome of a global system that has mistaken education for investment and human life for capital.’ @izading.bsky.social on China’s university entrance exam. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
lrb.co.uk
Iza Ding · Studying is harmful: China sits the Gaokao
In a country plagued by corruption, China’s national college entrance exam, the gaokao, is remarkably clean. ‘Open...
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Iza Ding @izading.bsky.social · 04/08/2025
New essay for my readers! Sorry-this one is long :)
izading.substack.com
Schopenhauer’s East Asian Renaissance
How a forgotten 19th-Century German philosopher became a TikTok sensation
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Iza Ding @izading.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
Beneath a Cinderella story gone wrong lies the tangled reality of class, sex, and Great Power politics. My new essay: "Anora, Russia, America" izading.substack.com/p/anora-russ...
izading.substack.com
Anora, Russia, America
Beneath a Cinderella story gone wrong lies the tangled reality of class, sex, and Great Power politics.
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Nat Henry @nathenry.com · 24/05/2025
So many great lines in this piece, but Mary Wollstonecraft's take on Edmund Burke feels fresh two centuries later: “Misery, to reach your heart, I perceive, must have its cap and bells.” 🔥
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Iza Ding @izading.bsky.social · 16/05/2025
The father of modern conservatism considered himself a liberal. My new essay in The Ideas Letter explores liberalism’s existential crisis—from 1789 to now. www.theideasletter.org/essay/the-so...
theideasletter.org
The Sorrows of Burkean Liberals - The Ideas Letter
The liberal temperament espoused by Edmund Burke and revered by contemporary conservatives is marked by a profound ambivalence. Committed in principle to ideals like liberty, equality, and justice, Di...
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Iza Ding @izading.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
Really enjoyed this conversation with two young leaders I met in Berlin, meandering through the worlds of climate change, belonging, polarization, and how to break out of echo chambers. Young people are by definition on the right side of history, and we all need to pay attention. tiny.cc/fp3c001
open.spotify.com
#21 - Iza Ding: Social Polarization, Climate Change Perception, and the Power of Stories
A Seat at the Table · Episode
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Carwyn Morris @carwynmorris.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
The brilliant @izading.bsky.social will be giving a talk at Leiden University on March 19th, discussing authoritarian teleology 🔥 www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/events/20... Looking forward to it.
universiteitleiden.nl
Authoritarian Teleology
After the fall of the Soviet Union and the withering away of planned economies, the 20th-century literature on communism shifted decisively toward the 21st-century literature on authoritarianism. Iza ...
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Carwyn Morris @carwynmorris.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
This was a great episode and @izading.bsky.social dissected the pre-existing discourse in a brilliant manner.
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Kaiser Kuo 郭怡廣 @kaiserkuo.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
Definitely one of my favorites of the year was a conversation with political scientist @izading.bsky.social, who offers trenchant critiques of some current ideas in Western studies of Chinese politics. art19.com/shows/sinica...
art19.com
Political Scientist Iza Ding on Authoritarianism, Legitimacy, and "Resilience"
This week on Sinica, Iza Ding, associate professor of political science at Northwestern University and author of The Performative State: Public Scrutiny and Environmental Governance in China, joins to...
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Bruno Schmidt-Feuerheerd @brunofeuerheerd.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
@izading.bsky.social 's deep dive into Chinese view of "declinism". TLDR: "We should be careful not to let a question turn into a prophecy. Rises and falls need not be an inter-civilizational zero-sum struggle, however seductive Thucydides’ lair may seem" www.theideasletter.org/essay/goodby...
theideasletter.org
Goodbye, Gibbon - The Ideas Letter
Western historiography generally understands history as a line and is preoccupied with the rise and fall of empires. In China however the line of history is an ever-repeating circle, with…
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Iza Ding @izading.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
My essay “Goodbye, Gibbon” for The Ideas Letter theideasletter.org from the Open Society Foundation. In which I offer non-answers to the question “Is America in decline from a Chinese perspective?”
theideasletter.org
Goodbye, Gibbon - The Ideas Letter
Western historiography generally understands history as a line and is preoccupied with the rise and fall of empires. In China however the line of history is an ever-repeating circle, with…
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