Editor’s Note for Tuesday, May 3, 2022

My thoughts today:

Correction: Mea maxima culpa, yesterday we referred to Changsha as a city in Henan province. Changsha is — of course — the capital of Hunan, and one of my favorite cities in China for its nightlife, spicy food, and at least in an earlier era, vibrant media scene.

News of the leak of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that looks set to remove legal protections for abortion made the news in China today. Here are a handful of social media reactions (on Weibo, or see screenshots), in my translation:

• Women don’t even have the right to abortion, what kind of world is this? I am simply dumbfounded.
• … I just want to say that China is different from the core of European and American culture, so no matter what, don’t involve China in this, and let the American people play by themselves.
• …No matter how glorious the cloak of democracy and the rule of law, religious countries cannot break free from spiritual shackles, and will eventually impose gender oppression. Only by continuously advancing social civilization and progress toward the goal of communism can women truly be liberated.
• …The root cause is that white people have become a minority in the United States.
• If a woman can’t even control her own uterus, what else does she have the power to control?
• White male supremacy is like this.
• This is a good thing 🙈
• What kind of monsters are American politicians now? [referring to a video statement by right-wing extremist and Jewish space laser lady Marjorie Taylor Greene]

Our word of the day is cancer drugs developed in China (中國研發的抗癌藥物 zhōngguó yánfā de kàng ái yàowù).