We need to inject some facts into a recent Reddit thread, a debate among several Asia Times readers that started when one of them posted, without comment, a link to an Asia Times article, “From low trust to high in China,” by our newest contributor, a Beijing-based financial industry veteran who goes by the pen name “Han Feizi.”
First to respond was snake5k, who recalled that a “suspended” Twitter/X user using the handle Doggy_Dog1208 had made “the exact same arguments as this guy Han Feizi.”
Next to chime in was bransbrother, who asserted that “Han Feizi does not exist.” A third reader, fix s230-sue reddit, asked, “Isn’t this author just Doggy_Dog1208?”
“Very likely yes,” snake5k replied.
In fact, there is no one using the handle Doggy_Dog1208 to post on X these days. X says it was indeed suspended (a badge of honor from Elon Musk’s enforcers?). But now there is an active DoggyDog1208 account, with no space and no underline between Doggy and Dog. DoggyDog1208 like the predecessor account does talk about the same subjects that interest Han Feizi and in a similar tone.
The surmises by two of the Reddit participants that a Han-Doggy connection exists, however, failed to deter bransbrother – who evidently was just getting warmed up – from taking a couple of flying leaps into speculation. “I’m sorry but does no one find this author a bit suspicious?” bransbrother asked.
After first suggesting that Han might be a hanjian (traitor to the Han Chinese state and/or to Han ethnicity), bransbrother concluded that
What is most likely is that this is just some random staff writer at Asia Times who concocted this story out of whole cloth, not simply some hanjian Chinese person. The author’s name is supposedly Han Feizi. But Han Fei (or often also referred to as Han Feizi) was a Chinese Legalist political philosopher in the 3rd century BCE. Han Feizi is also the name of one of his Legalist texts…. One might say this is just a pseudonym the author uses and, other than that, he is who he says he is. But why would the author need a pseudo to begin with? Of the articles he’s written, none of them in terms of topic, politics, etc, would incur any sort of negative financial/business, social, or personal consequence on him. And most people, who are unsuspecting and ignorant of Chinese history, won’t catch on that Han Feizi is the name of a Chinese historical figure.
Bransbrother, in discussing this, gave no indication of seeing irony in the fact that he and the other Reddit debaters on the thread also were posting under pseudonyms. He moved on to speculate that Asia Times “probably is just your standard Western large business and financial interests.”
Bransbrother concluded: “It is my contention that this Asia Times article is fake article/news. And the author is fake.”
That was the cue for snake5k to jump back in:
The author is clearly Western as he makes various references to his own life throughout this article, which seems very non-Chinese. Yes, Han Feizi is clearly a pseudonym and it appears only in Asia Times. I do agree that the shroud is strange but not necessarily underhanded. TBH I am not sure what his overarching narrative is except that in some general sense the West is underestimating China, which I agree with.
After further discussion of the specific article in question, the thread’s latest comment, from TserrieddnichHuiGuo, asked:
But what’s easier, actually having to hire these people or creating them out of thin air? That would require maintaining multiple “personalities,” which I find unlikely for anti-China propagandists, who are generally of limited intellect.
A little history
Asia Times began contending with similar issues right from the start, in 1995 when it was founded as a broadsheet printed newspaper based in Bangkok. The paper was owned then by the Thai media mogul Sondhi Limthongkul.
The editor in chief was also a Thai. The business model called for an English-language publication written and edited by and for Asians.
Recruiting to form the original news staff thus focused on Asians. Many responded.
But there were also difficult cases such as Japan. Established, prestige-conscious Japanese journalists, for the most part, were not keen on signing up with an unknown publication headquartered in a Third World Asian country. After a number of them had turned down offers to become Tokyo bureau chief, the paper hired me, then a veteran of nearly two decades as an Asia-based journalist.
Skeptics seemed to have been waiting eagerly for just such a lapse. A purported Nepalese reader (probably one of our Western rivals having some fun with the new competition) sent a letter to the editor pointing out that “Bradley Martin is not an Asian.” I responded with a tongue-in-cheek op-ed piece acknowledging the fact but saying that I planned to correct the problem with surgery.
(Since then, if I may digress for a moment, such issues have become so fraught in some places that humor is less effective as a defense. I wrote a novel whose protagonist is half white Southern American – my own roots – and half Korean-American. A Hong Kong literary agent declined to represent me, explaining that the New York and London publishing industries would object to my cultural appropriation of the Korean side of the leading character.)
Getting back to this article’s purpose of injecting facts into the Reddit thread’s debate, let’s consider bransbrother’s attempt to lump Asia Times among “standard Western large business and financial interests.”
Print didn’t work out economically for the original Asia Times. Soon the paper went digital-only. And there have been ownership changes over the decades since the paper’s founding. But, after all the changes, the largest shareholder of Asia Times today, just as was the case back then, is Asian – in the current case, to be specific, Chinese.
Use of pseudonyms has been rare among our writers. In the most notable case, David P. Goldman created a column under the byline Spengler, channeling with conscious irony a real historical person: the author of The Decline of the West. (Asia Times has never been terribly rah-rah about the West’s outlook.)
Spengler revealed his real identity in a 2009 column in which he also explained why he’d felt the need to use a pseudonym.
In 1999 or so, I started writing a column bylined ROAH (short for Really Old Asia Hand) in which (speaking of stories concocted “out of whole cloth”) I channeled the long-missing Thai silk king Jim Thompson. My conceit was that ex-OSS spy Thompson had reappeared as a nonagenarian after a Rip van Winkle absence. ROAH was given to marveling at the changes that had come to the region since his mysterious disappearance in Malaysia’s Cameron Highlands in 1967.
The man who was serving as Asia Times publisher at that time in the early digital-only days didn’t like my column. There was a certain balance there since I was not a fan of his. (Have I mentioned that he and his wife, who was close to then-Asia Times owner Sondhi, had turned part of the newsroom into a nursery? Don’t get me started.)
As I sat across the publisher’s desk from him in Bangkok, the publisher ordered the column spiked. I was the managing editor and I told him, undiplomatically but truthfully, that he was a businessman, not qualified to make such a journalistic judgment. As quick-triggered as Donald Trump in the TV Apprentice days, the publisher instantly fired me.
That hired-hand publisher didn’t last much longer himself and, decades later, here I am back working at Asia Times. I’ve thought recently of bringing the Really Old Asia Hand back, as well, for his own encore. It’s unlikely, but perhaps not totally impossible, that Jim Thompson, managing to avoid being eaten by tigers or murdered by Communist guerrillas, simply drank a potion and fell asleep in the mountains a la Washington Irving’s fictional character. If so – and if he’s still alive – ROAH is approaching his 118th birthday now.
Even if bringing Thompson back turns out to be no more than a dream, though, Asia Times readers who are fans of channeled old guys nevertheless are in luck on two counts: 1) Spengler still favors us with the occasional update. And 2) we’re now happily receiving the occasional contribution from Han Feizi.
I haven’t spoken with Han, and don’t know his real identity, but in his columns he describes, in detail, life in the Chinese diaspora. Han has revealed his real identity to a couple of other senior Asia Times editors, and they say he is ethnic Chinese. For me, that takes care of any suspicions of cultural appropriation.
If Han is DoggyDog1208 – and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn they are one and the same – he’s not using that handle as his Asia Times byline.
Indeed, if he were signing off that way on our home page, some critics (even if only for lack of anything better to do) might well conclude that pen-naming yourself after a black rapper is grounds for bringing a charge of first-degree cultural appropriation.
As for why a pseudonym is needed, I guess that – since the world was able to wait decades for Spengler to address the issue in his own case – we can wait at least that long for Han to explain.
Meanwhile, let me extend to our new contributor a belated welcome to Asia Times writers’ very exclusive (three members) Channelers’ Club. Although I mustn’t reveal the secret handshake, I can whisper the password. It’s: “So’s your old man.”
Bradley K Martin is an associate editor of Asia Times.