Arab spring

Of slightly greater importance than me defending my PhD and moving to Asia, the Arab Spring also started ten years ago. I remember being in Shenzhen with Anna when the CNN broadcast at the hotel would be interrupted by a message saying “satellite connection lost” every time there was reporting on the tumultuous events going on in Tunisia and then later across all of Northern Africa.

With the possible exception of Tunisia itself, little progress has been achieved in the decade hence. Instead, with authoritarianism spreading around the world, liberal optimism has become a source of ridicule rather than inspiration. Today, few people are willing to argue for engagement over sanctions or even defend basic democratic norms at home against those calling for ever greater surveillance. The most worrying aspect of this is perhaps the loss of a long-term vision, that it has become seen as outrageous to suggest that all of the world can one day become like the Nordic countries, that people everywhere should have the right to live free from want and oppression.

Thinking back to 2011 when I was blogging under the sulphurous haze in Beijing and visited Art District 798, the repressive reign of Xi Jinping was still in the future. Dark as things have become, in particular in Xinjiang, it is strange to think how curious and tolerant Chinese society seemed at the micro-level back then. I often wonder how much of that that remains.