CHINA & SILK

What the West Borrowed from Asia and What It Left Behind Jan Krikke October 8, 2026 The article was originally published here In the late 1960s, the musical Hair announced that the Age of Aquarius was dawning. Its opening anthem promised a transformation of human consciousness: an era of peace, harmony and understanding. Half a century later, a familiar echo of that promise is a meditation app offered by your employer. You can find it in the same list of benefits as the pension plan and the gym discount. How did a spiritual revolution become an employee benefit? The answer lies in the history of the movement known as New Age: where it came from, what it borrowed from Asia, and why the meaning of what it borrowed changed in the process. Two definitions will help. New Age is a loose label for a wide range of spiritual practices and...

Jan Oberg May 15, 2026 Go to this Fox News page and scroll the whole way down: President Donald Trump tells the world that his meeting with President Xi Jinping yielded a lot of very concrete political and economic results – of course, only where the Chinese side, according to him, agreed with him. He does not mention the Taiwan issue, but Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, says that it did not feature prominently in their talks and that the US policy on Taiwan has not changed. Then go to China Daily – or Global Times – and you will see that for the Chinese it is framework, principles, structure of cooperation etc. that matters – all embedded in the overall idea of “constructive bilateral relationship of strategic stability.” Nowhere is any concrete agreement or deal – all that Trump refers to – mentioned. At the general level, this gives you insights into the very different social...