It is late summer 2023, and I have just returned to Shanghai after some months away. The fall term at NYU Shanghai, where I teach, is about to begin. It is a familiar routine, but everyone knows that this year is different. A new wave in the city’s history has begun. In the early 2000s when I first arrived, Shanghai tasted of the future. At the 2010 World’s Fair, the metropolis revealed itself to the world as a riotous mix of glittering skyscrapers, dazzling infrastructure, street markets, dense laneways, and art deco heritage. Its hybrid culture enthusiastically embraced a romantic recollection of a future past that was poised and ready to be reborn as a central hub in the new millennium.
For the past few years, this cosmopolitan openness has been under pressure, threatened by increasing geopolitical tensions and an authoritarian, inward turn. The COVID-19 pandemic was a turning point....