Iza Ding @izading.bsky.social · 12/09/2026www.break-down.org/an-accidenta...break-down.orgAn Accidental Climate RevolutionRather than taking up the mantle of "climate leadership", China is walking a mundane path to global transformation. 011
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 172
Reposted by Iza DingJohn Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 08/09/2026China 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. 152
Reposted by Iza DingNew Lines Magazine @newlinesmag.bsky.social · 08/09/2026A 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.coolThe Darkness That Drives DjokovicA new documentary portrays the most successful tennis champion in history as fueled by his detractors, his mindset rooted in his childhood experience of war 011
Reposted by Iza DingThe BREAK—DOWN @the-breakdown.bsky.social · 04/09/2026On 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... 021
Reposted by Iza DingNew 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.coolThe Darkness That Drives DjokovicA new documentary portrays the most successful tennis champion in history as fueled by his detractors, his mindset rooted in his childhood experience of war 011
Reposted by Iza Dingthomas ruttig #AntiAbschiebungsIndustrie @thomasruttig.bsky.social · 03/09/2026this 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." 021
Iza Ding @izading.bsky.social · 03/09/2026In 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.comThe Darkness That Drives DjokovicA new documentary portrays the most successful tennis champion in history as fueled by his detractors, his mindset rooted in his childhood experience of war 272
Reposted by Iza DingJohn Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 19/08/2026featuring 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 herdersg.bsky.socialBluesky 111
Reposted by Iza DingJohn Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · 19/08/2026First preview of what i've been working on over the past couple of months: The BREAK–DOWN #4: China! 22613
Iza Ding @izading.bsky.social · 08/08/2026What does Hegel have to say about Heated Rivalryizading.substack.comHeated Rivalry as Hegelian Romancequick post 140
Iza Ding @izading.bsky.social · 16/06/2026New 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.comThat Oceanic FeelingThe night the Knicks won 040
Reposted by Iza DingOmar 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.comJalen 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. 291861379
Reposted by Iza DingRoberta 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.comThe Grinning Defiance of Chinese Soft PowerMy 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... 172
Iza Ding @izading.bsky.social · 30/04/2026In the Ideas Letter again, on Labubu and Joe Nye. www.theideasletter.org/essay/the-gr...theideasletter.orgThe Grinning Defiance of Chinese Soft Power - The Ideas LetterDing 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… 021
Reposted by Iza DingLondon 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.ukIza Ding · Studying is harmful: China sits the GaokaoIn a country plagued by corruption, China’s national college entrance exam, the gaokao, is remarkably clean. ‘Open... 04414
Iza Ding @izading.bsky.social · 04/08/2025New essay for my readers! Sorry-this one is long :)izading.substack.comSchopenhauer’s East Asian RenaissanceHow a forgotten 19th-Century German philosopher became a TikTok sensation 280
Iza Ding @izading.bsky.social · 06/06/2025Beneath 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.comAnora, Russia, AmericaBeneath a Cinderella story gone wrong lies the tangled reality of class, sex, and Great Power politics. 030
Iza Ding @izading.bsky.social · 02/06/2025Thanks Nat. This is encouraging as my next essay will be on Mary W, who I believe is 2 centuries under-read and misread! 010
Reposted by Iza DingNat Henry @nathenry.com · 24/05/2025So 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.” 🔥 121
Iza Ding @izading.bsky.social · 16/05/2025The 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.orgThe Sorrows of Burkean Liberals - The Ideas LetterThe 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... 062
Iza Ding @izading.bsky.social · 04/03/2025Really 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/fp3c001open.spotify.com#21 - Iza Ding: Social Polarization, Climate Change Perception, and the Power of StoriesA Seat at the Table · Episode 072
Reposted by Iza DingCarwyn Morris @carwynmorris.bsky.social · 03/03/2025The 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.nlAuthoritarian TeleologyAfter 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 ... 1122
Reposted by Iza DingCarwyn Morris @carwynmorris.bsky.social · 27/11/2024This was a great episode and @izading.bsky.social dissected the pre-existing discourse in a brilliant manner. 042
Reposted by Iza DingKaiser 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.comPolitical 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... 181
Reposted by Iza DingBruno 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.orgGoodbye, Gibbon - The Ideas LetterWestern 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… 121
Iza Ding @izading.bsky.social · 14/11/2024My 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.orgGoodbye, Gibbon - The Ideas LetterWestern 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… 0176
