Paper Tigers

Chinese Truths, Chinese Whispers

Bright traditional Chinese lanterns and ornate temple rooftops illuminated at night, showcasing vibrant red and gold colours, intricate architectural details, and cultural symbolism for authentic Chinese heritage.

13 September 2025  2:00pm  – 5:00pm

Event type: symposium

Event location: Verdurin

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We regret that owing to circumstance beyond our control, this event has been postponed. We will announce a new date as soon as possible.

From the shirts on our backs to the devices in our pockets, China produces the goods our civilisation seemingly depends on. We are steeped in Chinese materiality and aesthetics that are indistinguishable from our own at the point of consumption. Viewed from the West, therefore, China is a cultural and political entity made up entirely of our projections.

But while China’s products are ubiquitous in Walmart, Beijing’s ideas assert themselves only by proxy. China’s relationships to concepts like capitalism and democracy are obscure to the Western mind, which views their Eastern implementations as corruptions. For all the work of globalisation, China remains a stubborn distant universe in our collective imagination despite its constant presence in our lives.

How did the world’s nominally capitalist corporations become dependent on a regime which continues to re-affirm its commitment to Marxism? Are we China’s competitors or collaborators? Does the prospect of re-shoring, hailed by some as a solution to the West’s questions of sovereignty, mean throwing money at Chinese companies in an attempt to persuade them to open new factories in the West?

As we ponder what China actually looks and feels like – what human rights really mean, and which system of governance delivers the greatest happiness of the greatest number – how would we compare its success to Britain’s in ages past? Is it worth giving up multi-party democracy and our so-called freedom of speech for high-speed rail that works, pristine shopping malls, and a golden future of equity and universal comradeship guaranteed by social credit scoring?

Symposium programme

Paper Tigers is an event for everyone interested in the long tension between East and West, from specialists to armchair experts.

Lee Jones will present insights from over a decade of research on China’s fragmented, decentralised, and internationalised party-state. Far from the strategic monolith of our imaginations, even under Xi, China is a fractured entity ridden by internal contradictions, with global consequences as Chinese agencies and companies exploit loose guidance to pursue narrow self-interest.

David McGrogan will challenge the dominant perception of the West and East as embarking on different trajectories. Both China and Britain are wrestling with the same problem: how to ground authority in modernity. Both Western ‘liberalism’ and Eastern ‘Marxism’ approach this subject in the same way, through a promise to actualise some ideal of justice. China and Britain are, in other words, more similar than is comfortable for either to acknowledge.

Daniel James will discuss the legacy of Samuel Pisar, the Polish-American lawyer and Holocaust survivor who heralded the ‘promise of transideological enterprise’ in a 1971 Wall Street Journal editorial. Did Pisar’s best-selling book Coexistence and Commerce inspire President Nixon’s visit to the ailing Chairman Mao? Is it feasible to ascribe one man with such influence, given that Pisar knew seemingly everyone in the international power world, from JFK and Alexander Solzhenitsyn to Steve Jobs?

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Paper Tigers is organised with Daniel James.

  • Man with brown hair and beard in office environment, casual business attire, close-up portrait for professional profile.

    David McGrogan

    David McGrogan is a legal scholar and writer interested in the sociology of human rights law and the legitimacy of the state.

  • Portrait of a young man wearing tortoiseshell glasses and a blue shirt, standing outdoors against a textured stone wall, showcasing modern eyewear and fashionable casual style.

    Lee Jones

    Lee Jones’ researches sovereignty, intervention, and state transformation and the ‘New Cold War’ between the US and China.

  • Portrait of a man wearing glasses in front of a brick wall, showcasing a casual and confident appearance suitable for professional or social context.

    Daniel Howard James

    Daniel James is an independent researcher working on a conspiracy-free theory of ‘consumer-communism’.

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