I'm Dan Kurtz-Valen, and this is the Foreign Affairs Interview.
Overall, my feeling was that things had really changed a lot,
not for the better, and that China was heading down essentially a dead-end path.
In March 2020, as COVID-19 spread across the globe,
the Chinese government expelled a handful of American journalists from China.
Among them was Ian Johnson, who had been living there for 20 years.
This spring, Johnson finally returned to China.
While he was there, he spoke to a cross-section of Chinese people, scholars and officials,
but also small business owners and bus drivers and students and nuns,
people he did many cases known for years.
What he found was grim, a country in a state of stagnation, a turning inward.
Its leader, Xi Jinping,
seemed so intent on control and so obsessed with security that no price was too high.
Yet, under the surface, there may be more dissent than most observers realize.
Ian, thanks for joining me and for the essay that you wrote in our current issue.
It's called She's Age of Stagnation and it's really a uniquely illuminating mix of both humane reportage and incisive analysis.
So thank you for that.
Well, thank you.
It was really great to write the essay and your crack editing team did wonders with my prose.
Well, it did not do a lot of work, but glad to hear that.