We had a chat with Michael Szonyi on Access and you should’ve been there

One of the perks of being a The China Project Access member — in addition to receiving a Friday weekly summary email and discounts for The China Project events (e.g., 100 percent discount to Tuesday’s Sinica live show in Beijing) — is getting 24/7 access to our Slack channel. For those who aren’t hip to millennial work habits, Slack is a chat service (not blocked in China) that we’re all on, and it’s where you can participate in discussions with us and our growing community.

It can also be fun, as evidenced earlier today when Michael Szonyi, Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University, swung by for an hourlong chat about “China, Taiwan, politics, and the Ming Dynasty.”

Taiwan was a hot topic, as expected:

Szonyi is author of the recently released The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China. He was also a recent guest on Sinica to talk about the book The China Questions: Critical Insights Into a Rising Power, which he co-edited with Jennifer Rudolph.

Sinica Podcast: The China Questions, with Jennifer Rudolph and Michael Szonyi

We’ll organize more of these chats with China experts like Szonyi in the future. In the meantime, we’re always around. As Snoop Dogg once said, “We’re just hanging out, having a good time, and we’re in the gang.” Come join our gang. Let’s chill.

p.s. Shut up, Slackbot.