Selina Xu

This year life tapped me on the shoulder and said, Hey, here’s a chance to do something you can uniquely do. Before this, I hadn’t known what I was waiting for exactly, beyond an unarticulated urge and belief that there’s gotta be something that my life has been building up to. There’s gotta be a meaning to all this. I now have a slightly sharper inkling of what that may be, but there are still miles to travel ahead before I can connect all the dots looking back. But my faith, often a flickering flame, has been rekindled. This is the year when more doors opened, beckoning with a series of possibilities.

Here are some little milestones:

1. Moved in with my boyfriend ❤️ Thanks for being my best friend hehe
2. Published in the New York Times (twice!), which I once applied to and gotten rejected several times. So seeing my name in the byline there feels like a dream come true. Read some of what I wrote this year:
   • DeepSeek. Temu. TikTok. China Tech Is Starting to Pull Ahead.
   • Silicon Valley Is Drifting Out of Touch With the Rest of America
   • China Is Building the Future
   • The Cartoon That Shows China’s Bet on Consumption
   • From TikTok to DeepSeek: America needs to out-innovate China, not ban its apps
   • The Chinese Robots Are Coming
   • China’s DeepSeek Is America’s AI Sputnik Moment
3. Wrote, read, and thought more about China than ever before. What are people missing? What have I gotten wrong? How to try to make sense of a country so full of contradictions? What’s going to happen next? I found myself engaging with China in more unexpected ways: through a myriad of Track II dialogues, the World AI Conference, accompanying and planning my boss’s trip to Shanghai/Hangzhou, leisure travel to far-flung provinces.
   • Substacks and WeChat are my go-to sources. Aside from those, some longform China books that I really enjoyed: Apple in China by Patrick McGee, Red Roulette by Desmond Shum, Breakneck by Dan Wang, House of Huawei by Eva Dou.
   • On tech more widely, my favorites are probably Empire of AI by Karen Hao and Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams.
4. Spoke in public for the first time since high school – check out the clips below 😀
   • Center for Humane Technology’s Your Undivided Attention podcast
   • The Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Stop The World podcast
5. Got quoted/cited by very cool writers and journalists:
   • China Has a Different Vision for AI. It Might Be Smarter, WSJ
   • Silicon Valley Has China Envy, and That Reveals a Lot About America, NYT
   • Another Reckoning, The Ideas Letter
   • Why AI Companies Are Pivoting to Short-Form Video, TIME
   • AI = Asian Intelligence? Chinese talent powers American AI now, but for how long?, The Straits Times
   • And even in Spanish (on Sinofuturism) and French (on DeepSeek)!
6. Traveled!!! 2025 is a tale of many cities, with my dearest parents, with my boyfriend, and by myself: wandering around Huaqiangbei in Shenzhen, meeting old friends in Singapore, eating unagi in Kyoto, soaking in the onsen in Hakone, gazing at digital art exhibits in Tokyo, AI workshops in D.C., playing charades and jigsaw puzzles in Toronto, dancing at weddings, a whirlwind in Shanghai and Hangzhou, experiencing grottoes in Datong, thinking about AI in San Francisco, watching Totoro in London, dialoguing in Beijing, eating paella in Seville, marveling at Gaudi in Barcelona, speaking on China in Sydney, and of course at last life in New York, oh, New York.
7. Remembered what it’s like to stay up to devour a good novel, the propulsive momentum of being simply unable to stop. It’s been a long time (maybe back when I read and blogged about YA novels). Reading has since become so much more about craft, knowledge, and performative signaling that it feels like a luxury to regain the pure joy and insatiable hunger for a good story. Some of the novels I read and loved this year:
   • Gone Girl: pure chef’s kiss; brilliant writing, plot twists, even better than the movie (wouldn’t have thought that was possible). It’s surprising that I found some of the most resonant passages on love in a novel that’s categorized as a psychological thriller. In truth I think Gone Girl is a book about marriage—the ecstasy, intimacy, demands of greatness, painful disillusionment, self-destruction and amelioration, and a remaking of selfhood that happens in every intense union. Love is surrender. Love is brutal honesty. Love cannibalizes.
   • Disgrace: Coetzee at his best. Can’t believe I only read it this year. I found this a more compulsive read than some of his other books like The Childhood of Jesus and Waiting for Barbarians. A book of incredible fragility — Coetzee conveys shocking violence with delicate beauty. This is no country for old men.
   • Other fun reads: The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides, The Housemaid by Freida McFadden, The Original Daughter by Jemimah Wei.

In 2026, I’m ready to write more, think harder, embrace myself, live more freely, love gloriously, keep following my gut, and bravely chase my dreams. Thank you for reading and accompanying me on this journey—grateful that my words echo upon other screens and meet other minds in this vast universe ❤️

Happy New Year!!!