Sinica Podcast

This week on Sinica, veteran reporter Jane Perlez, who served as bureau chief for the New York Times in Beijing until 2019, joins to discuss her new podcast series Face-Off, which explores different facets of the U.S.-China relationship. We also talk about the state of Western journalism in China in the wake of tit-for-tat expulsions of reporters from the U.S. and China that took place during the Trump administration, and the challenges of covering China well without people on the ground in country. 5:16 – How Jane Perlez got into podcasting 7:59 – The challenge of understanding Xi Jinping 12:44 – The Face-Off podcast and appealing to a general audience 19:00 – Face-Off’s interview with Zhao Tong on the nuclear issue; the importance of quality diplomacy; and debating the efficacy of the S&ED 30:48 – The pleasure of meeting Yo-Yo Ma  36:52 – The state of Western journalists in China, and how the situation may eventually play out  48:44 – The difficulty of covering China from the outside  53:52 – What’s next for Jane Perlez and the Face-Off podcast Recommendations: Jane: Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia by Gary Bass Kaiser: The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History by Serhii Plokhy  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Iza Ding, associate professor of political science at Northwestern University and author of The Performative State: Public Scrutiny and Environmental Governance in China, joins to share her ideas on how American academia has framed and problematized authoritarianism, especially when it comes to China. A deep and subtle thinker, she offers thought-provoking critiques of some of the assumptions that have become nearly axiomatic in political science and other social sciences in their approach to understanding politics in China. 3:13 – Iza Ding’s concept of “authoritarian teleology” 15:31 – The concept of authoritarian resilience  19:58 – The question of regime legitimacy  24:09 – The question of whether authoritarianism is an ideology  26:24 – The China model?  30:58 – Finding a balance between generalizability and the sui generis, and striving toward cognitive empathy and “Verstehen”  42:04 – The state of area studies and avoiding essentialism  49:32 – Iza Ding’s advice on how to become a better writer  Recommendations: Iza: The Wife of Bath: A Biography by Marion Turner — the story of Alison, the Wife of Bath in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales  Kaiser: the guitarist Kent Nishimura, especially his recordings of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears, “Sir Duke” by Stevie Wonder, “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” by The Police, and “Hey Nineteen” by Steely Dan  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, I'm delighted to welcome Dá Wēi (达巍), one of China’s foremost scholars of China’s foreign relations and especially relations with the U.S. Da Wei is the director of the Center for International Security and Strategy (CISS) at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and is a professor in the department of International Relations at the School of Social Science at Tsinghua. Before September 2017, Professor Da served as the Director of the Institute of American Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), a leading think tank in Beijing. He was at CICIR for more than two decades and directed the Institute of American Studies from 2013 to 2017. We discuss the state of Chinese understanding of the United States: how China’s strategic class assesses the state of the relationship, what brought it to this point, and what the future might hold. 2:52 – American attitudes toward the U.S.-China relationship 5:32 – The focus of academic think tanks and strategic communities in the U.S. versus China  11:13 – The Chinese strategic community’s understanding of American domestic politics with respect to the upcoming U.S. presidential election   15:08 – The Chinese strategic community’s understanding of why and how the current state of relations developed, and why China changed its trajectory   23:12 – The Chinese strategic community’s perspectives on American policy: Do they see a difference between the parties? 27:02 – Da Wei’s concept of “Sullivanism”  33:41 – The question of mutual misunderstanding  38:37 – The role and influence of China’s think tanks in the policymaking process 43:29 – The idea of cognitive empathy — aka strageic empathy, or intellectual empathy — and how it could aid mutual understanding and the policymaking process 52:30 – The Chinese perspective on Russia and the war in Ukraine  57:37 – The Chinese perspective on China’s other international relations and the global context of the U.S.-China relationship  1:04:19 The issue of Taiwan and the question of the “status quo”  1:13:52 The importance of building people-to-people ties  1:16:51 – Da Wei's personal anecdote about an experience that influenced his understanding the U.S.-China relationship Recommendations: Da Wei:  Lust for Life by Irving Stone — a biography of Vincent van Gogh; Pablo Casals’s recording of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cello Suites; the films Cinema Paradiso (1988) and Forrest Gump (1994).   Kaiser: The Sopranos (1999-2007) TV series and The Sopranos Family Cookbook: As Compiled by Artie Bucco, written by Allen Rucker with recipes by Michele Scicolone.  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, a discussion of Netflix's adaptation of Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem (or more accurately, Remembrance of Earth's Past). Joining me to chat about the big-budget show is Cindy Yu, host of The Spectator’s “Chinese Whispers” podcast, one of the very best China-focused podcasts; and Christopher T. Fan, who teaches English, Asian American Studies, and East Asian Studies at U.C. Irvine and is a co-founder of Hyphen magazine. Cindy and Chris both wrote reviews of the show and a bunch of other folks answered the call and contributed their thoughts as well. 6:46 – 3 Body Problem as Chinese IP and audience reception  14:44 – The pros and cons of a more faithful adaptation, comparisons with Tencent’s adaptation, [and the Netflix production (process) (? Or keep it separate, 20:17)] 23:44 – How the show portrays its Chinese characters and China and audience responses 38:14 – Allegorical interpretations and real-world (political?) connections  48:11 – What to look forward to in (possible?) future seasons  51:14 – Chenchen Zhang’s humanity/autocracy binary and the 工业党 gōngyè dǎng  57:02 A win for Chinese soft power?  Recommendations: Cindy: The Overstory by Richard Powers  Chris: Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park Kaiser: Kaiser: Run and Hide by Pankaj Mishra; other novels by Pankaj Mishra, including Age of Anger: A History of the Present and From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia; and other novels by Richard Powers, including Galatea 2.2, Operation Wandering Soul, and The Gold Bug Variations  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica: I wandered the halls at the Association for Asian Studies Conference in Seattle and talked to 14 participants and asked them all the same question: What has become clear to you about our field recently? The fantastic diversity of areas of inquiry and of perspectives was really energizing. Hope you enjoy this as much as I did! 02:25 Michael Davidson from UC San Diego on working towards climate change goals 04:22 Timothy Cheek from University of British Columbia on the importance of continuing to study China despite political tensions  06:51 Chen Zifeng from LSE on Chinese propaganda that surrounds everyday life  11:08 Clyde Yicheng Wang (Wang Yicheng) from Washington and Lee University on Chinese propaganda and its spread into social media  16:57 Jeff Wasserstrom from UC Irvine on connections between events in China and the world 18:26 Ian Johnson from CFR on researching China from afar and the importance of online databases  21:01 Daniel Leese from the University of Freiburg on the work of digitizing Chinese sources  24:06 Tyler Harlan from Loyola Marymount University on opportunities for cooperation in the environmental field  25:41 Abby Newman from the University of Chicago Center for East Asian Studies on the importance of spaces for conversation within the field 27:55 Sophie Loy-Wilson from the University of Sydney on studying violence and war in Asia with more sympathy  33:45 Joe Dennis from the University of Wisconsin-Madison on the changes he has witnessed in Chinese studies at the university level  36:49 Ed Pulford from the University of Manchester on China’s differing perspective on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine  39:49 Emily Matson from Georgetown University on the importance of Marxist and Mao thought in analyzing modern Chinese history and World War II 42:14 Jan Berris from the National Committee on United States-China Relations on redirecting the U.S. government’s focus  Recommendation: The musical, poetic, and comedic work of Elle Cordova (formerly Reina Del Cid), on TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook; and the Led Zeppelin tribute band "Presence," fronted by singer Tamar Boursalian. (Alas, the band, which is new, has no online presence. See them if you're in Seattle!) See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, I speak with veteran China analysts Thomas Fingar and David M. Lampton — Mike Lampton — about a paper they published in the Winter 2024 edition of the Washington Quarterly. It's an excellent overview of how and why the bilateral relationship took such a bad turn roughly 15 years ago, citing mistakes both sides made and the reasons why China shifted around that time from one of its two basic behavioral modes — more open, tolerant, and simpatico in its foreign policy — to the other mode, which is both more internally repressive and externally assertive. Thomas Fingar is Shorenstein APARC Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He was Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research. He served as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and as chairman of the National Intelligence Council — and he’s the author of many books, including most recently From Mandate to Blueprint: Lessons from Intelligence Reform. Mike Lampton is Professor Emeritus and former Hyman Professor and Director of SAIS-China and China Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute. Mike was also formerly President of the National Committee on United States-China Relations. 05:04 – The problem with the use of the term "autocracy" to describe China's system 09:18 – Analysis of the motivation behind China's actions, questioning the assumption that all decisions are solely for perpetuating the Communist Party's power. 10:25 – Rethinking Xi Jinping's personal influence over China's policy decisions: the checks on his power within the Chinese political system. 15:58 – Critique of deterministic theories in political science regarding state behavior, particularly concerning China's foreign policy and domestic policy actions. 19:13 – The importance of avoiding oversimplified and deterministic explanations for Chinese behavior on the global stage. 23:43 – Discussion on the perception of China as an unstoppable juggernaut and the consequences of such a view for international relations and domestic policies in the U.S. 24:41 – Analysis of the notion that China seeks to recreate an imperial tribute system in its foreign relations and regional strategy. 28:09 – Introduction of the concept of two strategic constellations that have historically guided China's policy focus: national/regime security and economic/social development. 33:11 – Exploration of factors leading to China's shift from prioritizing economic and social development to focusing more on national and regime security. 37:38 – Examination of the internal and external dynamics contributing to China's policy shifts and the impact of globalization on societal and political tensions. 48:47 – Reflection on the post-9/11 period as a time of relatively smooth U.S.-China relations and speculation on the role of international crises in shaping bilateral dynamics. 52:59 – Discussion on the challenges and opportunities for the U.S. and China to adjust their policies and rhetoric to manage tensions and avoid further exacerbating the bilateral relationship. Recommendations:  Tom: The novels of Mick Herron (author of Slow Horses); the novels of Alan Furst, including Night Soldiers and The Polish Officer. Mike: Philip Taubman, In the Nation’s Service (a biography of George Schultz); and Liz Cheney, Oath and Honor Kaiser: The Magician, by Colm Tóibín — an unconventional novelized biography of Thomas Mann See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on the Sinica Podcast, a show taped in Salzburg, Austria, at the Salzburg Global Seminar with Kerry Brown of King's College, London, on the prolific author's latest book, China Incorporated: The Politics of a World Where China is Number One. 05:22 – Chinese worldview and historical perceptions 07:51 – The unease with China's rise 10:42 – Chinese exceptionalism vs. Western universalism 17:30 – Parallels between American domestic unease and perceptions of China 22:27 – Discussion on China's competing belief system 33:56 – China's raw form of capitalism 40:36 – What the West wants from China 46:10 – The internet as a reflection of Chinese power and limitations 51:17 – China's syncretism and its impact today 55:00 – The narrative of Chinese success and its PR challenges 1:05:32 – Revising Western narratives on China's development A complete transcript of this podcast is available at sinica.substack.com. Join the community on Substack and get not only the transcript but lots of other writing and audio to boot! Recommendations: Kerry: Civilization and Capitalism by Fernand Braudel Kaiser: Empire of Silver: A New Monetary History of China by Jin Xu; and re-reading Hilary Mantel's masterful Wolf Hall trilogy (Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, and The Mirror and the Light) See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Historian Rana Mitter joins Sinica this week in a show taped live in Salzburg, Austria at the Salzburg Global Seminar, in which he discusses efforts by Party ideologists to create a Confucian-Marxist synthesis that can serve as an enduring foundation for a modern Chinese worldview in the self-proclaimed “new era.” 01:28 – Is China a revisionist power? 02:16 – Right-sizing China's global ambitions 09:27 — How China utilizes historical narratives to support political ends 10:43 – Marxism and China's Historical Understanding 17:07 – China's "New Era" and Party history 28:38 – The Confucian-Marxist Synthesis  56:58 – China's ability to reinvent itself 1:02:15 – What’s the next big question? A complete transcript is available at the Sinica Substack. Recommendations:  Rana: Eliza Clark, Boy Parts Kaiser: Anthony Kaldellis, Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood: The Rise and Fall of Byzantium, 955 A.D. to the First Crusade  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, the winners of the 2023 Schwarzman Capstone Showcase. Two individuals and one team were selected as the best research projects after review of their projects and presentation of their findings. Their work is first-rate — and if you don’t factor in the very young age of the Schwarzman Scholars in competition. You’ll meet Shawn Haq, who won for his work on U.S. and Chinese expert perspectives on Taiwan; Corbin Duncan, who looked at the impact of the One Child Policy on the economic and social circumstances of only children in China; and the duo of Kelly Wu and Manthan Shah, part of a larger team that studied decarbonization efforts in Shandong province in steel, aluminum, chemical, and cement production. All three of these research efforts yielded fascinating insights. 2:15 – Introducing the Schwarzman Capstone Showcase: topics, judges, and process 4:41 – Self-introductions from Shawn Haq, Corbin Duncan, Kelly Wu, and Manthan Shah 15:07 – Shawn Haq: U.S.-China Expert Perspectives on Cross-Straits Relations 29:09 – Corbin Duncan: Only Children and Contemporary China 48:12 – Kelly Wu and Manthan Shah: Decarbonization of Shandong Province’s Materials Sector See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, a special taping of an online event I moderated on February 22, just two days shy of the second anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The session was titled “The Ukrainian Factor in China’s Strategy,” and it was organized by the Ukrainian Association of Sinologists, and featured that organization’s chairperson, Vita Golod; Bartosz Kowalski, senior analyst at the Center for Asian Affairs at the University of Lodz; Lü Xiaoyu of Peking University’s School of International Studies; and Klaus Larres, distinguished professor of history and international affairs, at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  Please support Sinica by becoming a subscriber at sinica.substack.com. Please note that I have discontinued Patreon, and ask all supporters to help out over on Substack.  2:42 – Introducing the guests 6:19 – Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba’s meeting with top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi 12:19 – What do Ukraine and its allies want from China? 16:59 – What inducements might Ukraine’s Western allies offer China? 21:51 – How has China’s position changed over the course of the last two years? 29:52 – The space for expression of pro-Ukraine voices in China 32:08 – Ukrainian and Chinese popular opinion  36:44 – Does the diplomacy of sanctimony work on a realist power? 48:00 – China’s 12-Point Position 51:48 – Does Russian economic dependency on China translate into leverage? 54:04 – The overlap between China’s 12 points and Zelenskyy’s 10 points 57:42 – How reliable is America as a partner in this election year? 1:08:53  – How will this war end? What compromises are the sides willing to make? 1:21:32 – Lü Xiaoyu’s trip to Ukraine and his meeting with President Zelenskyy There’s a complete transcript to this episode available at sinica.substack.com. Sorry, no recommendations this week, but here’s one from me: The new remake of James Clavell’s epic novel Shògun, which is out on Hulu and FX. It’s pretty mind-blowing! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica I'm delighted to bring you a live conversation with writer Peter Hessler, recorded at Duke University's Nasher Auditorium in Durham, North Carolina on November 10, 2023. The event was sponsored by the Duke Middle East Studies Center and the Asian Pacific Studies Institute, and was titled "Modern Revolutions in Ancient Civilizations." Peter, known for both his trilogy of books written in China — Rivertown, Oracle Bones, and Country Driving — as well as for his reporting for The New Yorker, talks about how his years in China gave him perspective when living in Cairo and writing about Egypt during the Arab Spring. His book on Egypt, The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution, was made richer for me by the comparisons and contrasts with China threading throughout. Special thanks to Griffin Orlando of the Middle East Study Center and Alex Nickley from the Asia Pacific Studies Institute, and Ralph Litzinger from Duke Anthropology. 6:27 – What Peter’s China experience brought to his writing on China — and vice-versa 9:45 – Contrasting the Chinese and Egyptian revolutions 18:37 – Revolution in thinking in Egypt and China 35:49 – Peter on his approach to the craft of reporting and writing 51:47 – Peter’s work in China as a longitudinal cohort study — and what it reveals so far 58:03 – A preview of Peter’s forthcoming book, Other Rivers Recommendations: Peter: Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals is one of the books Kaiser: Kenneth W. Harl’s book Empires of the Steppes: A History of the Nomadic Tribes Who Shaped Civilization. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sinica is proud to present historian James Carter's column "This Week in China's History," one of the most popular offerings from the late great China Project. I'm delighted to be able to bring this back and to narrate it. You can expect a new column every other week, and we'll be publishing on Fridays. This week, Jay looks at the last Qing emperor, Puyi's, abdication in February 1912, marking the end not only of the Qing Empire but of imperial Chinese history. Please enjoy! The music on this episode is from the song "Between the Mountains and the Sea" (山海间) by my old band, Chunqiu. This song was written and performed by Yang Meng. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this first post-TCP episode, Kaiser and Jeremy reminisce about their careers in China-focused media, and share some of their precepts for good China analysis.

This week on Sinica, a live recording from New York on the eve of the 2023 NEXTChina Conference. Jeremy Goldkorn joins Kaiser as co-host, with guests Maria Repnikova of Georgia State University, who specializes in Chinese soft power in Africa and on Sino-Russian relations, and Eric Olander, co-founder of the China Global South Project and co-host of the excellent China Global South Podcast and China in Africa Podcast. This show is unedited to preserve the live feel! Recommendations: Jeremy: Empire podcast William Dalrymple and Anita Anand, about how empires rise, fall, and shape the world around us Maria: A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy by Nathan Thrall Eric: Eat Bitter, a documentary by Ningyi Sun, a filmmaker from China, and Pascale Appora Gnekindy, from the Central African Republic Kaiser: Wellness, an ambitious novel by Nathan Hill about a Gen X couple in Wicker Park, Chicago; and the NOVA documentary Inside China's Tech Boom, of which Kaiser is correspondent, narrator, and co-producer. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, we're running an interview with Jeffrey Bader from early last year. We learned on Monday morning that Jeff had died, and we dedicate this interview to his memory. ___ This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Jeff Bader, who served as senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council during the first years of the Obama presidency, until 2011. Now a senior fellow at the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institute, Jeff was deeply involved in U.S.-China affairs at the State Department from his first posting to Beijing back in 1981 continuously for the next 21 years, through 2002. He later served as U.S. ambassador to Namibia and was tapped to head Asian Affairs at the NSC after Obama took office. Jeff is the author of a fascinating book on Obama’s China policy, Obama and China’s Rise: An Insider’s Account of America’s Asia Strategy. In this conversation, he offers a candid critique of the Biden China policy to date. Note that this conversation was taped in mid-February — before the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, and before the Department of Justice announced the end of the “China Initiative.” Note that this conversation was taped in mid-February — before the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, and before the Department of Justice announced the end of the “China Initiative.” 3:23 – How viewing China over 40 years of rapid development has shaped the way Jeff thinks about China 8:54 – Jeff Bader’s critique of the Biden administration’s China policy 19:40 – Is it important to have a China strategy? 24:55 – Right-sizing China’s ambitions: Is Rush Doshi right? 31:17 – Defining China’s legitimate interests 38:31 – Has China already concluded that the U.S., irrespective of who is in power, seeks to thwart China’s rise? 43:16 – How can China participate in the rules-based international order? 47:52 – Is it still possible for Biden to change his tune on China? 52:57 – How much room does Biden have politically? Can he exploit to electorate’s partisan divide on China? 59:54 – What is the “low-hanging fruit” that Biden could pluck to signal a lowering of temperature? 1:12:09 – Jeff Bader’s precepts for better understanding of — and better policy toward — China Recommendations Jeff: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom, a book by Stephen Platt about the Taiping Civil War focusing on Hong Rengan. Kaiser: Re-recommending two previous guests’ recommendations: Iaian McGilchrists’s The Master and his Emissary recommended by Anthea Roberts; and Unfabling the East: The Enlightenment’s Encounter with Asia by Jurgen Osterhammel, recommended by Dan Wang. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, a live recording from October 10 in Chicago, Kaiser asks Chang-Tai Hsieh of the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, Damien Ma of the Paulson Institute’s think tank MacroPolo, and our own Lizzi Lee, host of The Signal with Lizzi Lee, to right-size the peril that the Chinese economy now faces from slow consumer demand, high youth unemployment, a troubled real estate sector, and high levels of local government debt. This event was co-sponsored by the University of Chicago’s Becker-Friedman Institute, the Paulson Institute, and The China Project.  06:32 – What is the current state of the Chinese economy? 11:14 – The origins of China’s crisis in comparison to crises from 1990 in Japan and 2008 in the U.S. 14:25 – Real estate sector’s role in the crisis and possible solutions 22:51 – The significance of able management during times of crisis. Is this a crisis of confidence or expectations? 29:34 – The question of the general direction of the Chinese economy  43:33 – What does an actual debt crisis look like in China? 48:00 – The right  U.S. policy towards China in light of current affairs The complete transcript of the show is now in the main podcast page for the episode! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on the Sinica Podcast: a lecture by Robert Daly, director of the Wilson Center's Kissinger Institute, delivered last year to D.C.-based Faith & Law at their Friday Forum. The lecture, titled "Is Our Foreign Policy Good? American Moral Absolutism and the China Challenge," is a powerful and thought-provoking talk. Kaiser follows up with a long conversation with Robert about the themes raised in the talk, and then some. Enjoy. 03:04 – A talk by Robert Daly from June 24th, 2022, given at Faith & Law’s Friday Forum 45:49 – What is lacking in the mainstream dialogue about American policies on China-related issues? 49:37 – Over-willingness to turn towards a military approach in the U.S.-China relationship in recent years 1:00:48 – The missionary aspect of the American approach in dealing with China 1:05:02 – The differences and commonalities between Chinese and American exceptionalism 1:17:42 – Are we in a state of Cold War with China? 1:23:54 – The question of moral standing in light of whataboutism 1:27:08 – Comparing American intentions with Chinese realities and the issue of moral absolutism 1:44:50 – What a “Just Cold War” would involve? 1:51:34 – Can the U.S. imagine a world in which it is not a hegemonic power? A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations:  Robert: The House of Sixty Fathers (a Newbury Award-winning book) by Meindert DeJong with illustrations by the late Maurice Sendak Kaiser: Wolf Hall: A Novel by Hilary Mantel Anda Union (Inner Mongolian band) See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Jason McLure, a correspondent for a new investigative reporting outfit called The Examination, and reporter Jude Chan, who writes for Initium Media. The two worked with two other reporters on a fascinating expose, funded by the Pulitzer Center, of China's tobacco monopoly, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (or China Tobacco), and how it has managed to be both the biggest seller of tobacco in the world — and also the effective regulator of tobacco laws in China. 06:41 – The origins and mission of The Examination  09:24 – An overview of the tobacco industry in China  12:17 – What is the true power China Tobacco holds in the Chinese tobacco industry? 14:34 – The history and inner workings of China Tobacco 20:30 – China Tobacco - a manufacturer or a regulator? 28:42 – The current situation of anti-smoking advocacy in China 31:47 – The role of smoking in the Chinese culture and the gender discrepancy within the custom of smoking 39:09 – How does China Tobacco manage to prevent the implementation of smoking bans in Chinese cities? 48:07 – What was the reason behind the faltering of promising initiatives regarding smoking control? 55:33 – The approach of Chinese youth towards the unequal fight with China Tobacco? A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Jude: Zhang Chunqiao: 1949 and Beyond by Zheng Zhong Jason: Top Boy (British crime drama on Netflix) Kaiser: The music of Florence Price, and especially Symphony No. 1 and Symphony No. 3 recorded by the Philadelphia Orchestra See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the 1950 concert tour of China by the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1973, Kaiser chats with Matías Tarnopolsky, the orchestra’s president and chief executive; Alison Friedman, executive and creative director of Carolina Performing Arts; and virtuoso guzheng player and composer Wu Fei about the legacy of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s China tour, their continuing connection with China, and their concert performances in Chapel Hill, performed to the day on the two closing nights of that historic tour 50 years ago.07:00 – The China connection in the overall identity of the Philadelphia Orchestra 11:32 – 缘分 [yuánfèn] and the serendipity of the commemorative concert in Chapel Hill 14:19 – What can we learn from the original Philadelphia Orchestra members? 19:49 – Has the interest in the China-U.S. culture exchange started to fall off in recent years? 25:04 – Music as the common ground in the light of worsening relations with China 28:02 – “What’s the orchestra of today?” - as the leading theme for the commemorative concert  31:10 – The significance of Beethoven’s Symphony No.6 to the orchestra’s history in China 33:41 – The inspiration for Hello Gold Mountain and its connection to the Jewish history in China  A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Matias: Soave sia il vento (the trio from Mozart’s opera Così fan tutte) Alison: Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics (podcast) Shanir Blumenkranz’s music Fei: Sleepytime Gorilla Museum (avant-garde metal band) Kaiser: Good Harvest 大丰收 (restaurant)  Matteo Mancuso (Sicilian guitar virtuoso) See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Pulitzer Prize-winning veteran journalist Ian Johnson, now a senior China fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, joins Kaiser to discuss his new book, Sparks" China's Underground HIstorians and their Battle for the Future. Profiling both prominent and lesser-known individuals working to expose dark truths about some of the grimmest periods of the PRC's history, including the Great Leap Forward famine and the violence of the Cultural Revolution, Johnson argues that the efforts of China's "counter-historians" have managed to survive the stepped-up efforts of Xi Jinping to control the historical narrative completely. 03:27 – Is the obsessive control of historical narratives a particularly Chinese phenomenon? 07:19 – The life of Ai Xiaoming and the creation of a collective memory as one of the main themes in the book 21:46 – The story of Jiang Xue, citizen journalist 25:22 – Journalistic stubbornness of Tan Hecheng 28:39 – Cheng Hongguo and the Zhiwuzhi salon 30:26 – Common traits shared by many Chinese regime critics 37:17 – Is there a link between dissent in China and Christianity? 39:53 – Historical nihilism and sensitive topics for the Chinese Communist Party 47:08 – Are counter-historians especially noteworthy because they’re exceptional, or representative? 57:36 – The most important insight the book adds to our understanding of regime critics in China A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Ian: The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas by Gal Beckerman Unofficial Chinese Archives  Kaiser: Death in Venice and Other Tales by Thomas Mann, translated by Joachim Neugroschel See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser speaks with Representative Rick Larsen of the Washington 2nd District, the co-founder and continuously serving Democratic co-chair of the bipartisan U.S.-China Working Group. Last month, he published a white paper outlining his recommendations for how the U.S. can more effectively compete. That paper and its recommendations are the focus of this week's show. 02:35 – The origins of the U.S.-China Working Group 04:44 – Updated version of the white paper: new priorities and recommendations in response to the new reality 07:42 – What is the danger of bifurcating the world into blocs in Biden's administration? 11:16 – Four guiding principles behind a four-point strategy. 16:09 – Five issue areas mainly affected by the four-point strategy: national security, development, diplomacy, technology, and education. 18:38 – What should be the approach we take toward China’s Belt & Road Initiative? 29:40 – The ideas for changes in education investment in the U.S. and the role of China 34:08 – The response to the paper from the members of Congress as well as the general public  37:53 – Is there a bigger change happening regarding the relations with China? A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations:  Rep. Larsen: Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe by David Maraniss Kaiser: The Driftless Area (a topographical and cultural region in the Midwestern United States) See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Karen Hao, a reporter recently with the Wall Street Journal whose previous work with the MIT Technology Review has been featured on Sinica; and by Deborah Seligsohn, assistant professor of political science at Villanova University, who has been on the show many times just in the last three years. Both Karen and Deborah have written persuasively about the importance of renewing the U.S.-China Science and Technology Agreement, first signed in 1979 shortly after the normalization of U.S.-China relations under Jimmy Carter and renewed, for the most part, every five years without much fuss — until this year. Karen and Debbi make clear what has been accomplished under the agreement's auspices, and why GOP concerns are largely misplaced. 03:45 – The origins of the STA and the reasons for establishing it 07:34 – Criticisms against the agreement — the question of IP theft and PLA’s engagement 17:53 – What is the real reason behind such a strong opposition towards the agreement? 22:23 – How have the dynamics between China and the U.S. contribution to the STA changed over the years? 30:36 – The consequences of ending the scientific relationship with China on the example of the terminated space exploration cooperation  35:23 – Which specific projects would be put on hold in case of lack of renewal of scientific cooperation with China? 41:23 – Other scenarios for cooperation in the area of AI in the possible absence of the STA 50:10 – Are there parts of the agreement that should be enhanced or improved? 53:50 – What’s the chance for a renewal of the agreement after the six-month extension? A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com Recommendations: Debbi: Abortion Opponents Are Targeting a Signature G.O.P. Public-Health Initiative by Peter Slevin (in The New Yorker) Karen: Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity by Daren Acemoglu and Simon Johnson Kaiser: King’s War (Chinese TV series 《楚汉传奇》Chǔhàn chuánqí on Netflix See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, MIT professor Yasheng Huang joins Kaiser to talk about his brand new book The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why they Might Lead to its Decline. This ambitious and thought-provoking book is bound to stir up quite a bit of controversy. It’s a long conversation — but worth the listen! A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Something different this week on Sinica: A selection of "This Week in China's History" columns by James Carter, all narrated by Kaiser with a little interstitial music by Chunqiu (Spring & Autumn). The columns:Not just a metaphor: Dragons of imperial China show us how people lived (1517)The ‘Empress of China’ and the beginning of U.S.-China trade (1784)The rise of Empress Dowager Cixi (1861)In the 7th century, a Chinese coup of Shakespearean proportions (626)Titanic’s six Chinese survivors tell a story that goes far beyond a shipwreck (1912)The problem with Mao’s ‘continuous’ revolution (1967)The Battle of Red Cliffs and the blurring of fact and fiction (208-209)The music: snippets fromThe HuntsmanThe Last Page (intro)The SubcelestialA Call from AfarBetween the Mountains and the SeaBorn of the StormBorn of the Storm (again)A New DayThe Last Page (outro) All these tracks and more are available on Spotify here or on YouTube here. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser welcomes back Lyle Goldstein, director for China engagement at the think tank Defense Priorities and previously a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, where he taught for 20 years. Lyle offers his perspectives on an extensive wargaming exercise focusing on a Chinese amphibious assault on Taiwan, conducted under the auspices of CSIS (the Center for Strategic and International Studies) and published in January of this year — the first such exercise whose findings were made public. He offers insight into the real value of the exercise, as well as some of its shortcomings. 01:03 – The First Battle of the Next War: Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan – the first large-scale publicly available wargame conducted by CSIS 04:05 – The history of wargaming and its significance 09:09 – What is the value of wargaming? 13:12 – The physical setup of the wargames and the role of dice and technology in contingency 17:49 – The assumptions that go into the game 22:05 – How much agency do the players have? 24:16 – How are the decisions of other countries factored in the wargame? 26:11 – Pros and cons of the CSIS wargame 31:57 – Thoughts on the possibility of nuclear escalation 38:43 – A take on the report’s assumptions and conclusions 47:37 – Will we get a warning? A complete transcript of this episode is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: CSIS Report: The First Battle of the Next War: Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan Lyle: Yin Yu Tang in Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts Kaiser: The Story of Civilization [Volumes 1 to 11] by Will & Ariel Durant Our Oriental Heritage: The Story of Civilization, Volume 1 by Will Durant Mentioned: Meeting China Halfway: How to Defuse the Emerging US-China Rivalry by Lyle J. Goldstein See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Paul Triolo returns to the show to give us a rundown on what’s happening in the exciting arena of generative AI in China. The veteran China tech watcher, who is now Senior VP for China and Technology Policy Lead at Dentons Global Advisors ASG, is Just back from a trip to China during which he spoke with numerous companies working in the space, Paul offers a great overview of what various companies are doing, and how they’re responding to U.S. restrictions on the export of key hardware needed for large AI training and modeling. 03:38 – The Chinese AI community’s reaction to the unveiling of ChatGPT by OpenAI 08:14 – What drives China’s National AI Development strategy? 14:31 – Chinese AI researchers and their perspectives on regulation 21:28 – Is there a lot of investor money going into Generative AI startups? 24:25 – U.S. policy on China’s AI development 35:53 – What will China’s Generative AI look like? 44:14– Companies involved in Chinese AI 51:31 – The changing availability of innovative AI scientists in China 55:10 – How will decoupling effect AI competition? A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Paul: The Alignment Problem by Brian Christian A Lonesome Dove trilogy by Larry McMurtry Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy Kaiser: The Righteous Gemstones on HBO Justified: City Prime Evil on Hulu  T See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, with Kaiser on holiday we're running a terrific Twitter Spaces conversation convened by Neysun Mahboubi of UPenn's Center for the Study of Contemporary China. He's gathered a great group including Yawei Liu, whose U.S.-China Perception Monitor under the Carter Center is the co-sponsor for Neysun's series, as well as Anna Ashton of the Eurasia Group, Robert Daly of the Kissinger Institute, Rorry Daniels of the Asia Society Policy Institute, and Ian Johnson of the Council on Foreign Relations. Enjoy this in-depth exploration of the state of U.S.-China relations — as well as the opening segment on the fate of ex-PRC Foreign Minister Qin Gang. No transcript this week, but enjoy the show! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Margaret (Maggie) Lewis, professor of law at Seton Hall University and veteran Taiwan observer, and Paul Heer, former national intelligence officer for East Asia in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) under the Obama administration. Both were members of the Council on Foreign Relations’s task force on U.S.-Taiwan policy, which produced a report titled “U.S.-Taiwan Relations in a New Era: Responding to a More Assertive China.” Both also wrote dissents, included in the report, about some of its findings and recommendations. They discuss what they think the report got right — and what it got wrong. 01:01 – Introduction to the CFR’s report U.S.-Taiwan Relations in a New Era: Responding to a More Assertive China 05:09 – The mechanics of producing the report 06:46 – Areas of common consensus among participants 08:48 – What is the significance of the PLA’s centennial in 2027 in view of the CFR task force? 10:54 – Is the report too focused on the military at the expense of political, diplomatic, and economic considerations? 14:22 – Taiwanese perspectives in the report 16:36 – Strategic ambiguity and President Biden’s “gaffes” as a new baseline for U.S. declaratory policy 20:48 – The issue of deterrence: American and Chinese approaches 25:48 – What has the United States done to move the status quo in terms of the Taiwan issue? 41:06 – Is there evidence yet of Chinese preparation for a military action against Taiwan? A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Maggie: Fever: The Hunt for Covid’s Origin by John Sudworth (podcast) Paul: Oppenheimer by Christopher Nolan  Kennan: A life between Worlds by Frank Costigliola  Kaiser: The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline by Yasheng Huang See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser welcomes back Jeremy Daum, senior research scholar in law and senior fellow at the Paul Tsai China Law Center. Jeremy has a well-deserved reputation as a debunker of myths and misperceptions about China. This time, he takes on the much-discussed “overseas police stations,” and examines how they are — and aren’t — related to China’s transnational repression. 01:03 – The overview of the investigation on Chinese overseas police stations 06:19 – The disparity between the press release and the actual charges against the investigated Chinese individuals 08:48 – The functions of so-called Chinese secret police stations in the U.S. 11:10 – What was wrong with the report written by Safeguard Defenders? 16:57 – What is being national in the aforementioned policies? 19:22 – Evidence of a link between physical presence with transnational repression or repatriation of criminals 26:29 – Is the media narrative regarding popular myths about China slowly changing? 30:22 – Other governments’ views on and actions towards Chinese police stations 31:38 – Tactics used on the return of alleged criminals to China 34:11 – An update on the topic of draft regulations on Generative AI A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Jeremy: I’m a Virgo, a television show on Amazon Prime. Kaiser: A perfect family dinner for the summer: An easy recipe for spicy salmon/tuna See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, UPenn legal scholar Neysun Mahboubi talks about his recently-concluded trip back to China — his first time back since the outbreak of the pandemic. Neysun talks about the importance of in-person, face-to-face scholarly exchange, and despite concerns over the more restrictive political space in China, sounds a hopeful note about what the restoration of in-person exchange might mean for the future of U.S.-China relations. 05:02 – Neysun Mahboubi’s YouTube-based initiatives on the U.S.-China relations 10:15 – The changes in Beijing in recent years 13:49 – The recently observed growing reticence of Chinese people to speak up, and the third-rail topics 16:50 – The effect of Chinese administrative handling of the pandemic on people’s trust 25:01 – What is the view of Chinese liberal intellectuals on the role of the U.S. in the worsening U.S.-China relations? 28:29 – Have the Biden administration’s recent efforts to thaw the U.S.-China relations been well received by the Chinese side? 32:48 – The future of scholarly exchanges from China and the U.S. in light of the pandemic and escalating political tensions 40:13 – The Ukraine War from the perspective of Chinese intellectuals A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Neysun: To Live, directed by Zhang Yimou Kaiser: The Status Kuo, an American politics substack by Jay Kuo Mentioned:  To Live: A Novel by Yu Hua (translated by Michael Berry) See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Elsa Kania, a Ph.D. candidate in Harvard University's Department of Government and adjunct fellow at the Center for a New American Security who researches China's military strategy, defense innovation, and emerging technologies. Elsa joins the show to discuss China’s push for Military-Civil Fusion, debunking some of the myths about the program that U.S. pundits and policymakers have imbibed. 03:54 – Did the concept of Military-Civil Fusion start with the leadership of Xi Jinping? 06:48 What were the barriers to MCF’s successful implementation before Xi’s leadership? 09:50 – The comparison between attempts and successes of MCF in China and the U.S. 15:39 – Areas of focus of China’s MCF. Which areas offer the most significant possibility for success? 20:17 – A look at the perceived legal obligation of Chinese companies to participate in MCF 24:59 – The collaboration between Chinese and American researchers in light of MCF 31:00 – The awareness of Chinese policy-makers of the sensitivities associated with MCF by other nations 34:56 – Does MCF have the same place of prominence in the Biden administration  that it did in the Trump’ administration? 37:20 – How should we approach the policy of MCF? 42:27 – Is the U.S. trying to “out-China” China? A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Elsa: Translation State by Ann Leckie Kaiser: A recipe for making homemade nuomi cha / genmai cha — green tea with roasted glutinous rice See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

With Secretary of State Antony Blinken's two days of meetings in Beijing just concluded, Kaiser spoke with Dennis Wilder, managing director for the Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues at Georgetown University, where he also serves as an assistant professor of practice in Asian Studies in the School of Foreign Service. Dennis was the National Security Council's director for China from 2004-2005, and then served as the NSC special assistant to the president and senior director for East Asian affairs from 2005 to 2009. From 2009 to 2015 Dennis served as the senior editor of the President’s Daily Brief, the worldwide intelligence update produced under the auspices of the director of national intelligence. He also served from 2015 to 2016 as the CIA’s deputy assistant director for East Asia and the Pacific. Who better to give an informed take on Secretary Blinken's diplomatic mission? Today is a public U.S. holiday so we'll get the transcript and podcast page with show notes up later in the week. Look for it on the TheChinaProject.com website. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Keyu Jin, associate professor of economics at LSE, who talks about her new book, The New China Playbook: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism, a wide-ranging, ambitious, and accessible book that explains the unique Chinese political economy, emphasizing both its successes to date and how it must change to meet the challenges to come. 01:01 – An overview of the book The New China Playbook: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism by Keyu Jin 09:22 – Is the criticism about being pro-China justified? 14:25 – The element of culture in the Chinese economy 27:56 – What is the mayor economy and what are its pros and cons? 38:00 – The power of the Chinese state to affect changes in the macroeconomy 42:52 – The modern state-owned enterprise and its purpose 47:39 – China’s financial system – the disparity between China’s GDP growth and its abyssmal stock market 52:07 – The current situation with the real estate market: Is the bubble going to pop? 1:02:03 – Pros and cons of the growth of the shadow banking sector in China 1:06:32 – The position of China in the global trading system 1:13:52 – How does China respond to technology restrictions in key areas such as semiconductor manufacturing? A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Keyu: When the Facts Change: Essays, 1995-2010 by Tony Judt Kaiser: 1776 (Musical) Mentioned: The New China Playbook: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism by Keyu Jin See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with David Ownby, the University of Montreal historian who runs the excellent ReadingTheChinaDream.com website — a trove of translations of writings by mainstream Chinese intellectuals. David talks about the website’s mission and about tells about his recent three-week trip to Beijing and Shanghai, in which he met with many of the people he translates on his site. Many of them are profoundly disillusioned with the leadership’s handling of the end of Zero-COVID, he found. 03:38 – Genesis of the project Reading the Chinese Dream 09:32 – The choice of intellectuals being translated 14:11 – An overview of common ideological denominators for the New Confucians, the Liberals, and the New Left. 24:19 – The emerging groups as a direct response to certain phenomena happening in the West 25:58 – How did we fail to understand the intellectual life in China? 30:30 – An overview of David’s recent trip to China 35:12 – How does the post-COVID reality in China affect Chinese intellectuals? 45:34 – Are we observing a turning point in the intellectual community and its relationship with the Chinese government? 47:41 – The attitudes of Chinese intellectuals towards the U.S. 56:04 – Will the negativity currently observed among Chinese intellectuals a temporary or enduring issue? A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: David: Ties by Domenico Starnone, translated by Jhumpa Lahiri Kaiser: The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy by Peter H. Wilson Mentioned: Translating Myself and Others by Jhumpa Lahiri Simplicissimus by Johann Grimmelshausen See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

With the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue kicking off in Singapore on Friday, June 2, Kaiser chats with the organizer’s managing director for Asia, James Crabtree, about the history, structure, and significance of this Asian answer to the Munich Security Conference, James, who joined the Institute for International Strategic Studies in 2018, offers a great sneak-peek and a curtain raiser on the three-day event, which will bring ministers and secretaries of defense together from all over the region and beyond. 05:54 – What are the differences between the Munich Security Conference and the Shangri-La Dialogue? 10:21 – Notable past Shangri-La Dialogues 14:42 – Who are the guests of this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue? 19:53 – The programming of the Shangri-La Dialogue 26:48 – The Chinese participation in the event and the background of China-US and Sino-Japanese relations 34:16 – European delegations in recent years attending the event and the challenges they face 37:42 – The connotation of Indo-Pacific as opposed to the Asia-Pacific 41:17 – The dynamics on the axis China-India-US and a multipolar vision for Southeast Asia 52:33 – The current intentions for the bilateral relationship between the United States and China? A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: James: The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark; and The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life by John le Carré Kaiser:  A Perfect Spy: A Novel by John le Carré  Mentioned: The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India’s New Gilded Age by James Crabtree See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Harvard’s eminent sinologist William Kirby joins Kaiser to talk about his book Empires of Ideas: Creating the Modern University from Germany to America to China, and to share his views on the state of higher education in China and the U.S， 03:12 – Wissenschaft and the German contribution to the creation of the modern research university 06:30 – The decreasing number of Chinese students willing to study in the U.S. and the defunding of American public universities 12:17 – What is the current state of higher education in China? 18:19 – Continuities between the old imperial civil service examination system and the current higher education system in China 23:08 – The state of Chinese universities before the Cultural Revolution 29:23 – How China revived higher education on the model of American universities in the early years of Reform and Opening 33:00 – Why does China maintain the gaokao examination despite its great unpopularity? 41:38 – Differences between the two leading universities in China: Peking University and Tsinghua University 44:00 – Institutional entrepreneurship at Tsinghua University 50:01 – The origins of Nanjing University and how it evolved over the years 57:21 – The importance of governance and management in the example of the University of Hong Kong 1:05:23 – What is the future of the joint programs between American and Chinese universities?  A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Bill: Made in Hong Kong: Transpacific Networks and a New History of Globalization by Peter E. Hamilton The Dean of Shandong: The Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University by Daniel A. Bell The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be by Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner 9,000 Years of Wine: A World History by Rod Phillips Red Mandarin Dress: An Inspector Chen Novel by Qiu Xiaolong Kaiser: Adventures of Horatio Hornblower by Entertainment Radio Mentioned: Empires of Ideas: Creating the Modern University from Germany to America to China by William C. Kirby See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser is joined by The China Project's CEO Bob Guterma, who just so happens to have served at Chief Compliance Officer (and later Managing Director for Europe and the U.S.) for the expert network Capvision. Capvision, as listeners may well be aware, was the Shanghai-based company whose offices in China were raided by Chinese law enforcement, resulting in the detention of two experts for allegedly passing on military secrets to foreign companies. Does this signal a major crackdown on consultancies? And what are the implications for foreign businesses in China? Bob shares his insights — and things are more complicated than you might think. 03:39 – Background information on Capvision 10:29 – The national security concerns in the Capvision case. 12:27 – Is there a connection between the case of Capvision with the previous cases of Bain and Mintz? 20:13 – Is there changing optics for Western companies doing business in China? 22:13 – The possible connection between the Capvision case and the Espionage Law 32:22 – The context of bigger changes in the past three years in China in light of achieving government goals. 34:34 – The inner workings of a compliance officer in expert networks 36:44 – Media outlets’ misconceptions and a lack of diligent research regarding the Capvision case  A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Bob:  Energy and Civilization: A History by Vaclav Smil Kaiser: Mr. Bungle’s debut album Mr. Bungle See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kendra Schaefer, a partner specializing in technology at China-focused consultancy Trivium, and Jeremy Daum, Senior Research Scholar in Law and Senior Fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center. discuss the new draft regulations published in April by the Cyberspace Administration of China that will, when passed, govern generative AI in China. Will it choke off innovation, or create conditions for the safe development of this world-changing technology? 04:36 – What is the difference between deep synthesis internet services and generative AI? 06:17 – Areas affected by the set of newest regulations: recommendation algorithms, deep fakes 11:15 – Major national regulations governing generative AI in China vs. in the West. 15:35 – The question of the privacy policy in China 18:25 – How far along are the tech companies when it comes to truly applying generative AI? 24:16 – Main areas of concern about ChatGPT raised in China and the US. What are the government and companies doing to deal with these issues? 28:04 – Is the idea to label AI-generated content sufficient? 38:28 – Requirements and concerns for training data for generative AI. Questions of accuracy and authenticity. 47:21 – Will the generative AI stay in the social media landscape, or spread toward the industrial sector? 50:12 – To what extent will export restrictions affect the development of generative AI in China? A transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com Recommendations: Kendra: Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara Jeremy: The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan Kaiser: The Earth Transformed: An Untold History by Peter Frankopan; Belafonte: At Carnegie Hall by Harry Belafonte; and Belafonte Returns to Carnegie Hall (Live) by Harry Belafonte See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Andrew Stokols, a Ph.D. researcher at MIT who has been studying the “techno-natural utopia” that the Chinese government is now building a hundred kilometers southwest of Beijing: Xiong’an. Andrew breaks down why he sees it as an urban manifestation of the fundamental ideas embodied in Xi Jinping’s ideological vision for China. 02:02 - Xiong’an New Area as a bold vision for China 07:36 - Planned stages for the development of Xiong’an. Milestones in 2035 and 2050. 12:03 - Cities as expressions of political ideas 15:32 - Different facets of the Xiong’an as the legacy of Xi Jinping 20:03 - The elements of ecological civilization intended to be built into the new city 27:41 - Technologies employed with the intention of making Xiong’an a smart city 31:56 - The idea of incentivizing the digital yuan into the city of Xiong’an 34:55 - Xiong’an as an expression of Chineseness 40:05 - How is Xiong’an discussed in the English-language press outside of China? 47:59 - Approaches to technology and nature in Western and Chinese discourses. The   concept of techno-naturalism. A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com Recommendations: Andrew:  The Institutional Foundation of Economic Development by Shiping Tang Kaiser:  Five Families by Selwyn Raab Mentioned: Andrew’s article on Xiong’an:  Chinas techno-natural utopia: A deep dive into Xiong’an Shanghai Future: Modernity Remade by Anna Greenspan See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, an Earth Day special: Kaiser chats with Marilyn Waite, managing director of the Climate Finance Fund; Alex Wang, a UCLA law professor who specializes in China climate and environmental law; and Deborah Seligsohn, a political scientist at Villanova University who served as the Environment, Science, Technology and Health Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. This episode was taped live on Thursday, April 20, as a webinar from The China Project. 5:24 – Taking stock: Where have we come since the first Earth Day in 1970? 14:24 – Is the Inflation Reduction Act an unalloyed good for the environment and climate? 17:17 – The good and the bad of China’s recent record on climate 20:45 – The unmet need for climate finance globally, and what China’s PbOC is doing right 27:54 – Should we roll our eyes when China speaks of “ecological civilization”? 31:57 – Embracing the JEDI approach in addressing climate change 35:30 – Can the U.S. and China harness competition to drive better climate outcomes? 39:54 – Why pushing each other won’t work, and cooperation is still needed 45:15 – Addressing hard-to-abate sectors like agrifood 50:30 – Balancing cooperation and competition between the U.S. and China on climate A complete transcript of this episode is available at TheChinaProject.com. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Jeremy and I chat with Mike Chinoy, the legendary award-winning TV newsman who helmed CNN in Beijing for many critical years. Mike talks about the video documentary series and accompanying book Assignment China: An Oral History of American Journalists in the People’s Republic, for which he interviewed about 130 journalists whose careers spanned an 80-year period, from the 1940s to the present. 04:08 – The genesis of the Assignment China project 11:15 – Editorial decisions: What was included, and what wasn’t 16:13 – The big takeaways for Mike on finishing this project 25:13 – The role of contingency and the observer effect 32:52 – How Tiananmen really made CNN and changed the future of cable news 36:30 – Tough ethical calls in the reporting of China  42:42 – Structural biases in American reporting on China… 50:50 – …and what news consumers can do to adjust for those baked-in biases 52:54 – Does where the reporters are actually determine what the story is? 1:02:17 – What went wrong with TV news? A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Mike:  Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai by Matti Friedman Jeremy: From the Jewish Provinces: Selected Stories by Fradl Shtok, translated by Jordan Finkin and Allison Schachter Kaiser: Father's Laszlo Ladany's "Ten Commandments" on China-watching, and playing around with ChatGPT 4 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kishore Mahbubani, who served as Singapore's UN Ambassador and has written extensively on ASEAN and the U.S.-China rift, returns to the show to discuss his recent essay in Foreign Affairs, and to advocate for the pragmatic approach that's held ASEAN together for over five decades of continuous peace and growing prosperity. 4:36 – Kishore talks about Macron’s state visit to China and the controversy around his comments in media interviews 8:53 – How the Ukraine War has highlighted divisions between the West and the Global South 11:45 – Pragmatism: is this a euphemism for amorality? 15:26 – ASEAN as a template for multipolarity 19:38 – Cultural relativism, moral absolutism, and the shift in the American intelligentsia 24:56 – How does ASEAN handle specific issues of U.S.-China tension? 29:12 – Investment and trade: China and ASEAN vs. U.S and ASEAN — guns and butter 40:04 – The Belt and Road Initiative and American attitudes toward it 44:10 – Kishore’s “three rules” for U.S. engagement with ASEAN 49:49 – China’s recent diplomatic efforts: Saudi-Iran, and the Ukraine War 52:34 – How receptive has the American strategic class been to Kishore’s ideas? A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Kishore: John Rawls, A Theory of Justice Kaiser: The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, something different: Kaiser asks over a dozen scholars of various facets of China studies to talk about their work and make some recommendations! You'll hear from a variety of scholars, from MA students to tenured professors, talking about a bewildering range of fascinating work they're doing. Enjoy! 3:00 – Kristin Shi-Kupfer — recommendations: this essay (in Chinese) by Teng Biao on Chinese Trump supporters; Han Rongbin's work on digital society; and Yang Guobin's work on digital expression on the internet in China. 7:48 – Lev Nachman — recommendation: Ian Rowen, One China, Many Taiwans: The Geopolitics of Cross-Strait Tourism; and the city of Taichung, and especially its night market food on Yizhong Street and the Fang Chia Night market. 9:27 – Lin Zhang — recommendation: Victor Seow, Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia; and Gary Gertle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the 20th Century 15:32 – Maura Dykstra — recommendation: Richard von Glahn's contribution to the Oxford History of Modern China about registration in imperial China 19:00 – Jonathan Elkobi — a Rand Corporation study on economic cooperation between Israel and China; the fusion band Snarky Puppy 22:22 – Seiji Shirane — Seediq Bale (Warriors of the Rainbow) and Lust, Caution 25:18 – Zhu Qian — Rebecca Karl, Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the 20th Century, and two films: Hou Hsiao-hsien's A City of Sadness and Jia Zhangke's A Touch of Sin 31:23– Fabio Lanza — Sarah Mellors Rodriguez, Reproductive Realities in Modern China: Birth Control and Abortion, 1911–2021; and Leopoldina Fortunati, The Arcane of Reproduction: Housework, Prostitution, Labor and Capital by Leopoldina Fortunati  33:04 – Catherine Tsai —:Hiroko Matsuda’s The Liminality of the Japanese Empire 34:46– Lena Kaufmann — Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China and other works by Francesca Bray 39:05 – Josh Freeman — Works of Uyghur poetry by Ghojimuhemmed Muhemmed, Ekhmetjan Osman, Tahir Hamut Izgil, Perhat Tursun, Dilkhumar Imin, Abide Abbas Nesrin, Erkan Qadir, and Muyesser Abdul'ehed Hendan. 41:32 – Susan McCarthy — Joanna Handlin Smith, The Art of Doing Good: Charity in Late Ming China 49:18 – Brian DeMare — William Hinton, Fanshen 50:47 – Juliet Lu — Maria Repnikova, Chinese Soft Power, and Samuel L. Jackson reading Adam Mansbach's Go the F--k to Sleep 58:29 – Sabina Knight — Wu Ming-Yi, The Man with the Compound Eyes, translated by Darryl Sterk A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Chris Marquis, a professor at Cambridge University’s Judge Business School, and formerly at Cornell’s business school, about the book he co-authored with Kunyuan Qiao, Mao and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise. In it, they examine how even in China's private sector, socialization into the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party among some entrepreneurs has left an enduring legacy that is visible in some of the ways Chinese private enterprises conduct business. 3:35 – Motivation for Mao and Markets 5:34 – Enduring elements of Maoism in contemporary Chinese enterprise 12:35 – Variation among “Maoist” entrepreneurs 20:40 – Differentiating superficial and authentic Maoist entrepreneurship 35:04 – Is today’s China ideological or simply nationalistic? 39:17 – Xi’s Maoist revival: real or imagined? 44:30 – Chris’s transition from business and sociology to Chinese politics 47:09 – Chris’s experience as a Thousand Talents recipient A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Chris: The Entrepreneurial State and The Big Con by Mariana Mazzucato Kaiser: This calendar of lunar phases from theoriginallunarphase.com, and Mongolian salty milk tea, or sūūtei tsai which is easy to make at home See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser welcomes Tuvia Gering of Israel's Institute of National Security Studies, where he focuses on China's relations with Israel and other countries of the Middle East. Tuvia breaks down the agreement to normalize relations between Riyadh and Tehran, which Beijing brokered during secret talks that were only revealed, along with the fruit they bore, on March 10. 6:05 – How was China able to broker the Saudi-Iran normalization? 17:00 – Notable commitments from Saudi, Iran, and China 25:01 – China’s non-energy interests in and engagement with the Middle East 29:03 – Reactions from world capitals 39:28 – Saudi’s balancing act between U.S. security partnership and engagement with China 49:52 – Implications for China as a mediator in Ukraine and other international conflict zones 52:44 – Overview of China-Israel relations A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Tuvia:  King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard on YouTube Kaiser: The Venture of Islam by Marshall G. S. Hodgson Mentioned: Tuvia's Discourse Power Substack The China-Global South Podcast Tuvia’s interview with retired PLA Colonel Zhou Bo See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, a bonus episode to keep you caught up on the week's biggest China story: Xi Jinping's two days of meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Maria Repnikova, a Latvian-born native Russian speaker who is also fluent in Chinese and who teaches Chinese politics and communications at Georgia State University, joins the show again to talk about what each side hoped for, what each side got, and the asymmetries of power on conspicuous display in Moscow. 1:53 – Does Beijing look at the Ukraine War and still see the United States, as Maria argued last year? 3:06 – How Xi and Putin spoke to their own domestic audiences, and to each other’s 4:43 – How the Xi-Putin meeting was viewed in the Global South 8:10 – Why was the elephant in the room go mostly unremarked upon? 10:27 – Junior partner, senior partner, and “optionality” 16:27 – Did Putin come away disappointed from the meeting? 18:03 – How did China’s peace framework come off in the West vs. in China? 21:11 – What might the United States have done differently — and what might it still do to prevent China from drifting too close to Russia? A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Maria: Solomon Elusoji, Travelling with Big Brother: A Reporter’s Junket in China  Kaiser: The Polish progressive rock band Riverside, and its latest album ID.Entity See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser welcomes Taisu Zhang, professor of law at Yale University, who discusses his recent work on the expansion of the administrative state down to the subdistrict and neighborhood level — changes that are far-reaching, and likely permanent. They also discuss a recent essay in Foreign Affairsi n which Taisu argued that Beijing is shifting away from "performance legitimacy" as the foundation of political rule, and more toward legality — not to be confused with the rule of law. 3:29 – Nationalism as legitimacy, and its grounding in economic performance 7:45 – The CCP’s unique approach to “legal legitimacy” 21:28 – Evidence from the Two Meetings, or 兩會 liǎnghuì 35:56 – Chinese Administrative Expansion in the Xi Jinping Era 49:40 – The role of the anti-corruption campaign in expanding local government authority 56:18 – Changes in local governance after COVID 1:01:27 – Who were the dàbái? 1:04:10 – Technology in China’s post-pandemic power structure A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Taisu: The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy by David Graeber; The Rise and Fall of Imperial China: The Social Origins of State Development by Yuhua Wang; Uncertainty in the Empire of Routine: The Administrative Revolution of the Eighteenth-Century Qing State by Maura Dykstra; The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu; and The Lower Yangzi Trilogy by Ge Fei Kaiser: Kaiser: Assignment China: An Oral History of American Journalists in the People's Republic by Mike Chinoy; and the many uses of beeswax See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A second full episode this week for you Sinica listeners! Jude Blanchette joins to talk about the House Select Committee on United States Competition with the Chinese Communist Party, and all that is wrong with it, from its framing of the CCP as an "existential threat" to its focus on the CCP, and how all of this adds up to an embarrassing moral panic that distracts from the serious issues the U.S. confronts when it comes to China. 4:37 – What’s wrong with the Select Committee’s framing of China as an “existential threat,” and why the first hearing was an embarrassment 9:01 – The current moment as a moral panic over China 12:09 – Domestic political drivers of U.S. China policy 15:04 – Why the United States versus the Chinese Communist Party is the wrong framing too 22:46 – Is this more like McCarthyism — or antisemitism?  28:58 – The downstream effects of U.S. tech containment policy toward China 42:01 – The advantage of simplistic, Manichean messaging 46:15 – Prioritizing U.S. issues with China: why Confucius Institutes and TikTok are so far down the to-do list, and what really matters48:59 – And what are the real issues that deserve priority? A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com Recommendations: Jude: Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon by Malcolm Gladwell and Bruce Headlam, from Audible Kaiser: This podcast interview with Angela Rasmussen, the virologist who has been in the front lines fighting back against the resurgent lab leak theory, from the Slate What Next: TBD podcast See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Lulu Chen, who has reported on tech in China for over a decade and is the author of the book Influence Empire: The Inside Story of Tencent and China's Tech Ambition. It's a fascinating look at not only Tencent but at the overall internet sector in China, focusing on the travails and the triumphs of some of the most consequential Chinese internet entrepreneurs. 5:31 – Motivation for and background of Influence Empire 10:15 – Ma Huateng and Martin Lau at Tencent 19:56 – How the Chinese internet sector went from copying to innovating 30:59 – Cutthroat company cultures 33:20 – What made Allen Zhang successful? 37:25 – The Tencent-Meituan food delivery coup 45:21 – Tencent’s position in the online game industry 51:58 – Understanding China’s 2020-2022 tech crackdown A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Lulu: The Gay Talese Reader: Portraits and Encounters by Gay Talese Kaiser: Cunk on Earth on Netflix See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy speak with Henry Sanderson, a former AP and Bloomberg reporter who was based in China for many years, about his book Volt Rush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green — a book that reminds us of the very ugly fact that the metals that are needed to make electric vehicle batteries need to be dug out of the earth, and processed in ways that are anything but environmentally friendly. Henry talks about China's outsize role in lithium, cobalt, and nickel processing, as well as some promising chemistries that allow for EV batteries without some of the problematic metals. 2:49 – China’s role in the EV battery supply chain 9:36 – Global Chinese investments in lithium mines 14:04 – Is cobalt a necessary evil? 18:56 – Can NGO pressure induce better corporate behavior in EV battery supply chains? 21:28 – How Indonesia used its nickel resources to attract Chinese FDI 26:17 – China’s efforts to innovate around scarce metals 32:08 – China’s metal processing industry: State- or market-driven? 36:06 – Lessons from Europe’s battery industry 40:42 – Electrification of two-wheeled vehicles A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Jeremy: London Review of Books Henry: The Impossible City: A Hong Kong Memoir by Karen Cheung Kaiser: Tracking the People’s Daily newsletter by Manoj Kewalramani See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It's been one year now since Vladimir Putin launched his assault on Ukraine, and China has sought to maintain the same difficult, awkward straddle across a difficult year. Did Beijing's efforts to project the impression that it had distanced itself from Russia in the wake of the Party Congress mean anything? And how should the U.S. manage its expectations of what China can or will do? Evan Feigenbaum, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, joins us again as he did a year ago. We're also joined by his colleague Alexander (Sasha) Gabuev, who is a senior fellow at Carnegie, who headed the Carnegie Moscow Center until recently. 4:37 – Are Beijing’s actions surprising? 7:34 – The nature of China-Russia relations 15:45 – How has Beijing concretely supported Russia? 22:07 – Did Beijing know Putin was going to invade? 29:48 – European perspectives on the No Limits partnership 37:02 – Beijing’s assessment of Russia’s military performance 39:07 – What Beijing has learned from Russia’s invasion 46:47 – What carrots can the United States offer China? A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Sasha:  Writing From Ukraine: Fiction, Poetry and Essays since 1965 by Mark Andryczyk Evan: The Road Less Traveled: The Secret Battle to End the Great War,1916-1917 by Philip Zelikow Kaiser: Jessica Chen Weiss on The Ezra Klein Show and The Problem With Jon Stewart; "Avoiding Catastrophe Will Be the True Test of Fractious U.S.-China Relations," an op-ed in the Financial Times by Jude Blanchette See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Raffaello Pantucci, co-author of the 2022 book Sinostan: China's Inadvertent Empire, which examines China's presence in Central Asia. Based on extensive travel and interviews undertaken both before and after the tragic murder of his co-author, Alexandros Petersen, in 2014, the book is a highly readable if difficult to categorize melange of analysis and anecdote, history and travelogue, and it paints a complex portrait of China's extensive efforts to build out a network of commercial and cultural ties throughout the pivotal region. 3:48 – Remembering the late Alexandros Petersen 9:35 – Xinjiang’s importance in Beijing’s Central Asia policy 13:36 – Central Asian states’ reactions to Xinjiang internment camps 24:39 – Assessing China’s soft power in Central Asia 37:10 – BRI: strategic calculus or ad-hoc scramble? 43:32 – Evolution of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization 49:45 – China’s characterization of terrorism 54:45 – The SCO today and China’s growing security footprint 1:03:03 – China in Afghanistan 1:10:36 – Current status of the BRI A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Raffaello: The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan; The Geographical Pivot of History by Halford Mackinder Kaiser: Volt Rush by Henry Sanderson See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, we've got a short show focused on the Chinese balloon that became the obsessive focus of American attention from Thursday through Sunday, February 5, when an F-22 shot it out of the sky off of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Gerard DiPippo, a senior fellow with the Economics Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, CSIS, joins to discuss the incident and its potential fallout. We'll have the transcript for you on the website in a day or so. 2:27 –Establishing the facts about the Balloon 4:32 – Precedents for U.S. reactions to aerial surveillance 7:36 – Was the balloon’s flight path intentional? 9:34 – Why did the Pentagon go public? 13:26 – The thinking behind Blinken’s postponement 15:47 – Reactions in U.S. media 17:19 – Beijing’s perspective on the U.S. reaction 20:23 – How Gerard Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Balloon A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Gerard: The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present, by John Pomfret Kaiser: Improbable Diplomats: How Ping-Pong Players, Musicians, and Scientists Remade US-China Relations by Pete Millwood See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, our live recording from the Rizzoli Bookstore in the Flatiron district of Manhattan with the legendary Ian Johnson, who has covered China for a host of publications spanning 35 years. Ian, who is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, offers his analysis of media coverage, shares some pet peeves in the way China is reported, and offers a sneak peek at some of the themes of his forthcoming book. 4:31 – Beijing’s shifting diplomatic messaging 12:10 – U.S. media coverage of China’s COVID-19 policies 14:45 – Structural biases of reporting on/in China 24:05 – Reporting on China through social media 29:46 – Resisting and recasting the blob’s China narrative 39:52 – How think tanks affect China discourse in the U.S. 43:03 – The importance of history to the CCP A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Jeremy: Paul French's Ultimate China Bookshelf, a new feature at The China Project Ian: Golden Age by Wáng Xiaǒbō 王小波, translated by Yan Yan; Blue Note jazz LP re-issues  Kaiser: Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy, narrated by Julia Whelan and Edoardo Ballerini See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When the National Bureau of Statistics recently revealed that China's population had shrunk in 2022 for the first time in 60 years, conventional wisdom predicted that China was headed for catastrophe, as its workforce shrank, its pension coffers dried up, and its healthcare system grew overtaxed. Not so fast, says Bert Hofman, who spent 22 years in Asia with the World Bank, focused chiefly on China. Now a professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Government at the National University of Singapore, Bert offers a deeply-informed take on the challenges China does face — and how it might address them without suffering economic stagnation. 4:24 – Why population decline isn’t necessarily bad 5:55 – Why are low birth rates a challenge for China? 7:49 – How China can offset the “demographic tax” of population decline 13:40 – Is declining investment such a bad thing for China? 18:27 – Common prosperity and the pension system 23:45 – Challenges and solutions for healthcare reform 27:41 – The logic of beginning with fiscal reform 33:18 – The shortfalls of focusing on raising fertility rates 38:06 – What can China learn from other countries? A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com Recommendations: Bert: China Reconnects by Wang Gungwu; The Last of Us on HBO Max Kaiser: Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, we welcome back Deborah Seligsohn, assistant professor of political science at Villanova University. Debbi spent October 2022 through early January 2023 in Shanghai and Beijing, experiencing quarantine, testing, and lockdown at firsthand — and witnessing the protests and the sudden reopening. As a close observer of public health issues, she lends valuable perspective to what happened in these critical months. 8:13 – Overview of how zero-COVID impacted different demographics in China 17:54 – Which level of government was held accountable during the zero-COVID protests? 23:03 – Factors that contributed to the breakout of protests 29:05 – Rationale behind the sudden lifting of COVID regulations 38:17 – Assessing Beijing’s failure to effectively expand its medical capacity 45:45 – Efficacy of Chinese vaccines 49:45 – Understanding poor vaccination rate amongst the elderly population 55:45 – Breakdown of China’s COVID situation after the relaxation of zero-COVID measures 1:03:32 – Unpacking the new negative test requirements imposed on Chinese travelers 1:09:56 – Is China under-reporting its death rate? A transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Debbi: two-part interview with Jesse Jenkins from the Volts Podcast, detailing the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS act, and the Infrastructure Bill Kaiser: Demon Copperhead, the latest novel by Barbara Kingsolver. A coming of age story set in Southern Appalachia. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, we're proud to introduce you to Susan St. Denis, who joined The China Project full-time recently after running the China Vibe Official TikTok channel for The China Project for the last several months. Kaiser and Susan talk about what people are getting wrong about TikTok, the challenges of presenting complex issues in this medium, and much more! 1:01 – Introducing The China Project’s official TikTok channel: China Vibe TikTok 08:25 – Challenging the assumption that TikTok content is inherently dumbed down 12:13 – Why Susan’s content was a good fit for The China Project 14:30 – Unique challenges of covering China on TikTok 19:16 – Providing a balanced account within TikTok’s landscape of extreme views on China 21:52 – How different generations view China 28:35 – How to access Susan’s China TikTok content 29:39 – How legitimate are the security and privacy concerns surrounding TikTok? A transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations –  Susan: Eldest Son: Zhou Enlai and the Making of Modern China by Han Suyin; The China America Student Conference (www.iscdc.org) Kaiser: Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford; and an ambivalent endorsement of the Conqueror series by Conn Iggulden. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, we proudly present Episode 1 of the newest season of Strangers in China: Lockdown Part 1: A day in the life. The 2022 Shanghai lockdown came to Clay’s neighborhood early and caught him off-guard. Struggling with his mental health, Clay documents how lockdown works on a granular level giving listeners an audio tour of his neighborhood as it plunges into the uncertainty of all the minutiae of day-to-day life living under the control of the apparatuses that shut down an entire city for several months. The boredom, the stress, the terror. He documents clashes with local bureaucracy and the ingenuity of the people of Shanghai who had to live through these dark and strange times. Clay ventures out into a city as it’s about to enter the full city lockdown and gives listeners a sense of what a city looks like before it's irrevocably changed.  Music credits: Csus https://soundcloud.com/csus Moss Heim- https://soundcloud.com/mossheim-experimental/cutup-test-cycle-7000 Trey https://soundcloud.com/tristan-phipps-1/trance Jaies https://soundcloud.com/jaiess Bary https://soundcloud.com/bary_is_cool Ginger pitcher https://soundcloud.com/gingerpitcherfredfroh TDP-Experimental https://soundcloud.com/user-99078702 Xxiuk https://soundcloud.com/xxiuk Lakey Inspired https://soundcloud.com/lakeyinspired TazLazuli https://soundcloud.com/tazlazuli Terri skills https://soundcloud.com/beatz-by-terri-skillz Lofee https://soundcloud.com/lofeetunes Dr3am____ https://soundcloud.com/dr3am-official Purrple Cat https://soundcloud.com/purrplecat Ye Old Experimental Junk https://soundcloud.com/ye-old-experimental-junk Le gang https://soundcloud.com/thisislegang Obani https://soundcloud.com/obani Jozwyn https://soundcloud.com/jozwyn MCV https://soundcloud.com/just-chillin-654995634 Works consulted https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-60893070 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-12/shanghai-residents-remain-largely-under-lockdown-despite-easing https://isdp.eu/publication/xi-jinping-and-the-administrative-hierarchy-and-subdivisions-in-china/ https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/elizabethperry/files/managed_campaigns_-_proofs.pdf https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1178528.shtml https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1184356.shtml https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/694299 https://elibrary.law.psu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1209&context=psilr https://www.smh.com.au/world/pocket-of-poverty-the-new-shanghai-has-left-behind-20121109-293dl.html https://www.scmp.com/video/china/3187061/shanghais-old-west-gate-neighbourhood-emptied-demolition-and-redevelopment https://academic.oup.com/columbia-scholarship-online/book/20259/chapter-abstract/179324873?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false The work of Michel Foucault See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We proudly present Episode 1 of the new season of Strangers in China, part of the Sinica Network from The China Project. In this season, host Clay Baldo provides an intimate look at the lockdown in Shanghai, from the foreboding that preceded it through the harrowing days of the lockdown itself. Be sure to subscribe to the show, too! Just look up Strangers in China in your podcast app of choice and hit subscribe. 2:21 – A preview of this season of Strangers in China 8:23 – The Shanghai fāngcāng方舱 and emergence of spontaneous mass gatherings 13:28 – Explaining the role of neighborhood committees/ jūwěihuì 居委会 in China   18:39 – The exploration of mental health throughout this podcast 24:21 – Clay’s process in producing the podcast 28:06 – The editorial choice to not dub over Chinese speakers  31:29 – Can the protests like the one that broke out on Urumqi Lu emerge again? 37:15 – Examples of strong group solidarity during the lockdown 43:35 – Clay’s thoughts on the recent loosening of restrictions A transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Clay: 3 Shanghai fashion Instagram accounts to follow – Windowsen (@windowsen), Susu, (@_su.su.su.su). Lexi (@jing_sen_); and the book Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott.  Kaiser: The Long Ships by Frans Bengtsson See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Rebecca Kuang (who writes under the name R.F. Kuang), the author of the best-selling historical fantasy novel Babel. Set in the 1830s in England, the novel’s Chinese-born protagonist sets out to prevent a war with China over the opium trade. It’s a novel about the industrial revolution, labor activism, revolution, and — surprisingly — language, etymology, and translation. 2:28 – On Rebecca's own connections to China and her anxieties about losing the Chinese language 8:27 – What historical insights Rebecca hoped her readers would take away from Babel 14:37 – Parallels between the U.K. of the early 19th century and the U.S. of the early 21st 20:26 – Refections on revolution and revolutionaries 25:48 – Silver working: the magic system in Babel and its relation to language 30:37 – Issues with translation theory presented in the book 38:04 – How Rebecca’s background in debate influenced her writing style 45:03 – Rebecca's forthcoming novel Yellowface A transcript of this podcast will be available soon at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Rebecca: The film Banshees of Inisherin and other works by its director, Martin McDonagh, including the dark comedy In Bruges (2008). Kaiser: The new novel by Cormac McCarthy The Passenger, and a review of it by James Wood in The New Yorker. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Jude Blanchette (Freeman Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies) and Ryan Hass (Armacost Chair at the John L. Thornton Center at the Brookings Institute) join Kaiser to discuss their new essay in Foreign Affairs, "The Taiwan Long Game: Why the Best Solution Is No Solution.” 3:05 – Reconceptualizing Taiwan as “a strategic problem with a defense component”  6:00 – Why expanding the scope of the Taiwan issue beyond the military dimension should not be conflated with capitulation 13:34 – Has current U.S. policy abandoned preserving status quo cross-strait relations? 17:27 – Why has China refrained from the use of force thus far? 27:05 – China, U.S., and Taiwan’s heightened sense of urgency 31:22 – How Ukraine alters China’s decision calculus on Taiwan 36:44 – What pertinent challenges should the US be planning for rather than exclusively focusing on the threat of invasion? 43:58 – The issue with democracy vs authoritarianism framing 46:01 – The importance of considering Taiwanese agency when crafting US policy 48:40 – How the U.S. should define its one-China policy 53:19 – Opportunities for a detente between Washington and Beijing A transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Ryan: "How We Would Know When China Is Preparing to Invade Taiwan," by John Culver; the film White Christmas  Jude: The podcast In the Dark from American Public Media Kaiser: "A Professor Who Challenges the Washington Consensus on China," Ian Johnson’s piece in The New Yorker about Jessica Chen Weiss See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy welcome Diana Choyleva and Dinny McMahon, who recently published a report for the Wilson Center on China's efforts to internationalize the Renminbi, its currency. Diana Choyleva is chief economist and founder of Enodo Economics, an independent macroeconomic forecasting consultancy she set up in 2016. Dinny McMahon is a former Wall Street Journal reporter and author of the book China's Great Wall of Debt. Their report is called “China’s Quest for Financial Self-Reliance: How Beijing Plans to Decouple from the Dollar-Based Global Trading and Financial System.” 2:38 – The advantages the U.S. enjoys through the dollar’s global primacy 4:40 – How Beijing sees the dollar’s dominance as a strategic vulnerability 7:11 – Other countries who actively pursued internationalization of their currency 10:07 – International trust deficit regarding China’s currency 13:37 – Right-sizing China’s currency ambitions 15:13 – How China incentives increased demand for the RMB 24:19 – Are we currently at a critical turning point of currency displacement? 36:42 – The role of digital currency in China’s monetary strategy   43:42 – The BRI as a mechanism for expanding the circulation of the RMB  A transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Jeremy: This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay; Kay's Anatomy by Adam Kay  Diana: Picking up dancing as a pastime; China: The Gathering Threat by Constantine Menges Dinny: Lombard Street by Walter Bagehot Kaiser: The Amazon miniseries The English See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Michael J. Mazarr, author of the book Leap of Faith: Hubris, Negligence, and America's Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy, which examines the decision to invade Iraq in March 2003. Mike is a senior political scientist at the Rand Corporation and a former professor at the National War College, and he warns of certain parallels between what happened 20 years ago and the growing sense of urgency and moral imperative to confront China that he now senses in Washington. 3:40 – Patterns that lead to poor decision-making in the realm of foreign policy and warfare 8:30 – Parallels between American discourse on Iraq and China 13:54 – American exceptionalism and the missionary mindset   15:51 – Much like the US experience after 9/11, could an equivalent “deeply felt imperative” trigger catastrophic conflict with China? 21:15 – The danger of moralistic thinking overriding rational cost-benefit analysis 27:37 – What does Washington hope to gain from the imputation of CCP illegitimacy?   31:47 – Debunking the claim that Washington exaggerates threats for the sake of increasing the defense budget 35:49 – The role of media and Congress in the lead-up to the Iraq war 40:49 – The difference between effective policymaking and policy negligence: assessing the Bush and Biden administrations   47:29 – Adapting the liberal “rules-based international order” to reflect contemporary realities   52:27 – The shortcomings of a reductionist “democracy vs. authoritarianism” foreign policy A full transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Mike: Mr. X and the Pacific by Paul Heer; The Guardians: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment by Geoffrey Kabaservice Kaiser: Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R.F. Kuang See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We've got a special bonus episode this week on the protests over the weekend of November 26th-27th in multiple cities around China. Joining Kaiser and Jeremy are old friends David Moser and Jeremiah Jenne, co-hosts of the Barbarians at the Gate podcast, who have 50 years in Beijing between them. David Moser is a linguist, academic administrator, and accomplished jazz pianist and composer. Jeremiah Jenne is a writer and historian. Both David and Jeremiah are still in Beijing, and they offer an on-the-ground account of what happened and what it all means. A transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations –  Jeremy: The Twitter account 李老师不是你老师 (Lǐ lǎoshī bùshì nǐ lǎoshī), with the handle @whyyoutouzhele; Cindy Yu’s Twitter account @CindyXiaodanYu Jeremiah: Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China by Ruth Rogaski David: The Globe and Mail article “In rare show of weakness, China's censors struggle to keep up with zero COVID protests” by James Griffith; Speak Not: Empire, Identity and the Politics of Language by James Griffith Kaiser: Happiness is 4 Million Pounds, a New York Times documentary by Hao Wu See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser & Jeremy welcome Yuan Yang, a reporter for the Financial Times who was until recently covering technology in Beijing. Now based in London, her beat is China-Europe relations, and on this episode she discusses German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's recent trip to China, and how Europe and European countries are navigating the fraught U.S.-China relationship. 6:09 – Providing a balanced account of China’s tech ecosystem     9:38 – German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's recent trip to Beijing 16:00 – The strategic autonomy of European foreign policy 18:41 – European countries’ fractured response to US tech restrictions on China 21:58 – EU policies towards Xinjiang  24:31 – The impact of tech restrictions on European supply chains 27:39 – The efficacy of sanctions 30:12 – How China’s position on Russia damaged its reputation in Europe 33:48 – European reaction to Biden-Xi meeting 35:57 – How a change in the American presidency could disrupt the Transatlantic alliance system 40:55 – The formulation of Sunak’s China policy   43:50 – Yuan’s new forthcoming book Private Revolutions   A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com Jeremy: Jewish comedian Ari Shaffir Yuan: The Emily Wells album Regards to the End; The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin Kaiser: mongulai.com, an e-commerce website specializing in Mongolian artisanal crafts; the Netflix show Barbarians See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, in lieu of the regular show we present a keynote address given by Evan Feigenbaum, VP for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, at the recent East Asia Strategy Forum, held on November 1-2 in Ottawa, Canada. The forum is put on annually by the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada — APF Canada — and by the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy. The Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada is a not-for-profit organization focused on Canada’s relations with Asia. Its mission is to be Canada’s catalyst for engagement with Asia and Asia’s bridge to Canada. The Institute for Peace & Diplomacy (IPD) is non-profit and non-partisan international affairs think tank operating in the United States and Canada dedicated to promoting dialogue, diplomacy, prudent realism, and military restraint. The event's moderator was Jeff Nankivell, CEO of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada or APF Canada. Jeff was the Consul General to HK before taking his post at APF Canada. Kaiser also offers his quick take on the three-hour meeting between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden in Bali, Indonesia. 3:23 – Kaiser’s analysis of the recent Biden and Xi Meeting  10:19 – Start of Evan Feigenbaum's speech  13:26 – The tension between economic and security interests in the Indo-Pacific  20:06 – The tension between coalition-building and fragmentation in the Indo-Pacific   24:02 – The American approach to strategic competition with China in the region  32:34 – Question 1: What role can American allies play in setting a positive agenda? 37:54 – Question 2: Do American national security issues have a tendency to get distorted by domestic political and economic considerations? 51:34 – Question 3: Given domestic political constraints, is there any chance of diminishing the bipartisan consensus against China? 54:29 – Question 4: Is there a conflict between the ‘rules-based international order’ and implementing targeted restrictions towards China? 57:17 – Question 5: How sustainable is China’s position on the Russia-Ukraine war? A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Anne-Marie Slaughter, a leading American public intellectual who serves as president of New America and was Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department during the first Obama administration. Anne-Marie talks about how collaboration on issues of global concern — pandemics, global warming, and more — requires the U.S. to deprioritize some aspects of its competition with China. 1:59 – Contradictions of the Biden doctrine 5:18 – Reconciling Biden’s China policy and the possibility of climate cooperation 13:43 – Deemphasizing national security on the American foreign policy agenda    20:23 – Potential for “positive competition” 21:50 – The concept of networked governance 36:04 – The dynamics of groupthink in US decision-making 43:05 – Hope for the younger generation’s prospective policy shift   47:38 – Does race factor into our hostility towards China? 50:19 – Potential for an affirmative vision on Biden’s China policy 54:52 – How revisionist are China’s ambitions? 59:49 – American tolerance for a diminished global role A transcript of this interview is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Anne-Marie: To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara; A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara; The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson; What It Feels Like to Be a Bird by David Sibley Kaiser: Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century by Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, our friends at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs invited us for a live show taping before a small group. Kaiser is joined by Lizzi Lee, MIT-trained economist-turned-reporter who hosts the Chinese-language show "Wall Street Today" as well as The China Project's "Live with Lizzi Lee," both on Youtube; and by Damien Ma, who heads the Paulson Institute's in-house think tank MacroPolo. These two top-shelf analysts of Chinese politics break down what was important — and what was just a sideshow — at the 20th Party Congress, and offer their knowledgeable perspectives on the individuals named to key posts and what this likely means for China's direction. Don't miss this one! 2:40 – Findings from MacroPolo’s “fantasy PBSC” experiment    8:18 – Did China watchers overemphasize Xi Jinping’s political constraints?   12:31 – Support for Li Qiang across different political factions 17:23 – The changing factional composition of Chinese elite politics 20:20 – Return of the technocrats 23:27 – “Generation-skipping” in China’s recent political promotions 28:26 – The selection of Cai Qi 32:46 – Li Shulei as a successor to Wang Huning  37:07 – The future of China’s economic leadership 39:52 – Selection of the vice premiers  41:18 – The future of China’s diplomatic core 45:28 – The Hu Jintao episode 49:22 – Revising the “Zero-COVID” policy 51:17 – Reassessing China’s intentions vis-à-vis Taiwan  A transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations:  Lizzi: Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao by Joseph Torigian Damien: Slouching Towards Utopia by Brad DeLong Kaiser: "Taiwan, the World-Class Puzzle," a Radio Open Source podcast hosted by Christopher Lydon See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Evan Osnos, staff writer for The New Yorker, joins hosts Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn to talk about his new piece on one of the most puzzling figures to come out of China: Guo Wengui, a.k.a. Miles Kwok, who took what he learned about dealing with power and money in China and applied those lessons to the U.S., insinuating himself with leading figures of the American right. Who is this mysterious man, and what is he really after? In an unscripted episode that will bring some listeners back to the grotty apartment in Beijing where Sinica recorded in its very early days, Evan, Kaiser, and Jeremy parse the mysteries of the strange phenomenon of Guo Wengui. 03:37 – Who is Guo Wengui? 10:07 – Orville Schell’s experience with Guo Wengui 14:48 – Steve Bannon’s comparison between Guo and Trump 17:40 – The process of fact-checking this piece   23:03 – Guo’s potential ties to the pro-Xi Jinping clique 26:02 – VOA’s interview with Guo 30:06 – Guo’s campaign against Teng Biao and other Chinese dissidents 33:57 – Guo’s role as an interlocutor on behalf of the MSS 39:00 – Steve Wynn’s efforts to extradite Guo 42:10 – Guo’s impact on the Chinese diaspora community 45:11 – Guo’s influence on US-China relations A transcript of this interview is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Jeremy: "President Trump's First Term," by Evan Osnos, a New Yorker article written in 2016 predicting what would happen to the U.S. if Donald Trump won in 2016. (Spoiler: he did. And Evan was right). Evan: An audio tribute to legendary New Yorker editor John Bennet:  https://www.cjr.org/special_report/johnbennet.php   Kaiser: The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet, a forgivably melodramatic historical fiction novel with an emphasis on architecture See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Susan Shirk, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Pacific and Research Professor and Chair of the 21st Century China Center at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UCSD, about how the deliberately collective leadership of the Hu Jintao years set the stage for the over-concentration of power under Xi Jinping and created conditions for overreach. She argues that Chinese overreach was met with American overreaction — not just in the Trump years, but continuing into the Biden administration. 11:35 – The thesis of Overreach and misconceptions based on the title 15:50 – The decline of collective leadership   19:57 – Selection process of politburo members 27:48 – The advantages of China’s former collective leadership system 31:40 – How collective leadership often lead to overreach 39:40 – How personalistic, overly centralized rule can also result in overreach 43:02 – Increased paranoia, insecurity, and “permanent purge” culture under Xi 49:59 – American overreaction to China’s ambitions A transcript of this episode is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Susan – Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World by Howard French  Kaiser – His hobby of Asian archery and finding a community/activity you’re passionate about outside your professional line of work See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy are joined by Sue-Lin Wong, who until recently covered China for The Economist and hosted an eight-part podcast series all about Xi Jinping called The Prince. The podcast features interviews with a wide range of China-watchers, peers of Xi, dissidents, and many others who offer insights into what makes Xi tick. 3:38 – Reason behind naming the podcast “the Prince” 5:53 – Differences between traditional journalism and podcasting 9:52 – The role of Sue-Lin’s mother in the podcast 13:37 – How corruption influenced Xi’s leadership style 19:29 – Identifying Xi’s greatest anxieties: party in-fighting, the collapse of the USSR 22:48 – Early signs of Xi’s ideological underpinnings most China watchers missed   29:33 – Did the CCP’s internal crisis make Xi’s rise inevitable? 32:57 – Is Xi Jinping the most powerful man in the world? 37:12 – Reframing the engagement debate after Xi’s administration 41:51 – David Rennie’s view on China: “a giant utilitarian experiment” 46:45 – Key insights on Xi that listeners of the Prince should walk away with 52:16 – How Sue-Lin would brief an American policymaker on Xi Jinping’s main motivations A transcript of this episode is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Jeremy – A Matter of Perspective: Parsing Insider Accounts of Xi Jinping Ahead of the 20th Party Congress, an article on The China Story written by Neil Thomas  Sue-Lin – Race to the Galaxy, a two-player board game  Kaiser – Interview with the Vampire, a new AMC TV series See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy were live in London with a very special guest: Carrie Gracie, whose career with the BBC spanned three decades as a China-based correspondent, news presenter, and China editor. She talks about her podcast series on the Bo Xilai scandal, her longitudinal documentary series on White Horse Village, and her struggle with the BBC to win equal pay for women. 6:02 – Murder in the Lucky Holiday Hotel and Carrie’s coverage of the Bo Xilai scandal and Chinese elite politics in 2012 11:38 – Overview of the main characters: Bo Xilai, Gu Kuilai, Neil Heywood, and Wang Lijun  35:18 – How the 2012 power struggle shaped Xi Jinping’s leadership style 41:42 – Carrie’s key takeaways from following the Bo Xilai case 44:33 – White Horse Village: documenting life of farmers across a decade in rural China 50:56 – Changing conditions for foreign journalists in China 56:52 – Advice to reporters starting in China 1:01:05 – Assessing media organizations’ progress on dismantling the gender pay gap A transcript of this episode is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations:  Jeremy: Yellowstone, a drama series about a family-owned ranch in Montana  Carrie: Everything Everywhere All at Once; the Disney animated film Mulan Kaiser: the UK progressive rock band Porcupine Tree's current Continuation/Closure tour — Europe dates See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Minister Xu Xueyuan, Deputy Chief of Mission at the PRC Embassy in Washington, D.C. A few words about the process, in the interest of transparency: Minister Xu’s team did request questions in advance, and they were all accepted without alteration except to suggest that two questions, both related to public diplomacy efforts, be combined. Questions on subjects like Taiwan, Xinjiang, and China’s Zero-COVID policy were all accepted without even any suggestions on changes of wording. Kaiser was also able to follow up on questions without any objection at all. Where Minister Xu cited numbers and made factual claims, we made a good faith effort to check them — for example, on the number of acres in the recent offshore oil lease approvals made by the Biden administration.  Doubtless, there will be listeners who will wish that Kaiser had been more forceful, and there may be some who believe I was perhaps too forceful. Sinica is not a “gotcha” show and never has been, and we believe there is value in hearing the perspectives of a ranking Chinese diplomat, and we hope you agree that the interview is very much worth listening to. The interview has only been edited only for clarity and concision — taking out filler or hesitation words and pick-ups.  2:56 – Does the Biden administration’s China policy diverge from Trump's?  8:29 – China’s role in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization 15:09 – China’s position on the Ukraine war  19:21 – How the Ukraine conflict factors into Beijing’s decision-making on Taiwan  23:11 – The diminishing appeal of “one country, two systems” 29:56 – Beijing’s suspension of climate talks after the Pelosi visit 38:20 – U.S.-China coordination on alleviating global economic issues 46:37 – The possibility of diplomatic concessions to improve relations 52:29 –The decline in people-to-people exchange between China and the U.S. 1:00:27 – China’s Dynamic Zero-COVID policy 1:08:16 – The 20th Party Congress’ impact on U.S.-China relations 1:10:51 – Considering the Xinjiang issue from the American perspective 1:20:10 – The unintended consequences of wolf-warrior diplomacy 1:24:45 – Differing views on China in the Global South vs. Global North A full transcript of this interview is available at thechinaproject.com. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, we kick off the new network show, the China-Global South Podcast, with a conversation with the show's hosts and co-founders of the China-Global South Project (formerly the China Africa Project), Eric Olander and Cobus van Staden. Kaiser chats with them about where the show is going, and common misconceptions about China's role in the Global South. 1:45 – Reasons for launching the new China-Global South Podcast 13:50 – What Washington’s framing of China’s activity in the Global South gets wrong 19:24 – Explaining the lack of China expertise in Africa and the Global North 25:27 – The unresolved history of Western colonialism in Africa 28:44 – How Chinese statecraft navigates Africa’s colonial legacy 36:00 – The infantilization of African agency 45:03 – The limited development options of African stakeholders 47:33 – China’s environmental impact on the Global South 57:13 – How small states can effectively navigate great power politics A transcript of the podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Eric: Following Gyude Moore, Senior Policy Fellow at the Center for Global Development: @gyude_moore; Hannah Ryder; CEO of Development Reimagined: @hmryder; Ovigue Eguegu; Policy Analyst at Development Reimagined: @ovigweeguegu; and Christian-Geraud Neema; and Francophone Editor at the China-Global South Project: @christiangeraud Cobus: The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa by Ching Kwan Lee Kaiser: Chinese traditional bow maker AF Archery; The Way of Archery by Gao Ying, translated by Jie Tian and Justin Ma See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Wall Street Journal reporters Josh Chin and Liza Lin join the program to discuss their new book Surveillance State: Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control. From Urumqi to Uganda and from Hangzhou to the Bronx, the book explores every facet of technological surveillance from the technocratic mindset that birthed it to its spread, with Beijing's help, to many countries of the developing world. But it also examines the role that U.S. tech companies played in giving rise to it. 6:05 – The story of Tahir Hamut: a Uyghur poet living under Xinjiang’s surveillance state  12:50 – Will the Xinjiang model for surveillance be expanded to other parts of China?  16:37 – Is China actively pushing other countries to adopt its surveillance state practices?  23:26 – The case of Hangzhou: the benefits of the “smart city” model   27:17 – Is there a fundamental difference between the concept of “privacy” in China and the West?  30:55 – How Xu Bing’s film uses surveillance footage 35:39 – What accounts for Chinese society’s changing views on privacy? 40:12 – China’s tendency to apply an “engineering” mindset to fixing social problems 47:57 – Assessing US companies’ role in enabling Chinese surveillance  52:27 – Devising a policy that effectively bans hardware used for Xinjiang surveillance 1:01:03 – China’s new laws on digital data protection 1:05:05 – What the social credit system’s popular narrative gets wrong  1:10:40 – An example of Chinese propaganda fabricating the surveillance system’s success   1:14:29 – The future of privacy protection in China and the West A full transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Liza: The Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy Josh: The Backstreets: A Novel from Xinjiang by Perhat Tursun (translated by Darren Byler), a short novel about life for Uyghurs in modern China; The Wok: Recipes and Techniques: by Kenji Lopez Kaiser: After the Ivory Tower Falls: How College Broke the American Dream and Blew Up Our Politics and How to Fix It by Will Bunch See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser welcomes back University of Michigan political scientist Yuen Yuen Ang, who discusses a recent piece in the Journal of Democracy titled "How Resilient is the CCP?" The essay examines how China's bureaucracy remains surprisingly competent and even relatively autonomous despite Xi Jinping's highly personalistic style of rule. 3:51 – Summarizing debates on Chinese governance in the current China watcher field  8:43 – Defining the concept of institutionalization and contextualizing it to China 13:39 – Explaining Xi’s bureaucratic objectives: maintaining competence but limiting autonomy 18:57 – Remaining areas of autonomy for China’s state bureaucracy 22:11 – Key areas where Xi weakened bureaucracy 26:08 – Institutionalization prior to the Xi era  29:00 – Main sources of resilience and threat under Xi’s new model for authoritarianism  31:45 – Fundamental difference between Mao and Xi 34:52 – The revival of state bureaucracy and technocrats after Mao’s death 40:13 – How do we understand the tension between expertise and ideology in Xi’s governance agenda?   46:15 – Historical roots of technocracy in the Chinese government 49:09 – The CCP’s technocratic bureaucracy as an integral source of resilience A complete transcript of this podcast is available on TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations:  Yuen Yuen: Chinese drama series Zǒuxiàng gònghé 走向共和 (Towards the Republic); and Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick Kaiser: Children of Earth and Sky, A Brightness Long Ago, and All the Seas of the World — a historical fantasy novel trilogy by Guy Gavriel Kay  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser welcomes back the Cornell political scientist Jessica Chen Weiss, who is back in Ithaca after a year spent as a CFR International Affairs Fellow working in the State Department's Office of Policy Planning. She talks about an important essay published in the latest edition of Foreign Affairs, titled "The China Trap: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Perilous Logic of Zero-Sum Competition,” which calls on the U.S. to formulate an affirmative vision for the relationship with China instead of pursuing an ad-hoc policy predicated simply on countering what China does. 7:17 – Moving away from the current zero-sum framing of U.S.-China competition and adopting an “affirmative vision” 12:29 – Shortcomings of the U.S. response to China’s strategy in the developing world 15:11 – How competition with China framing has adverse consequences for domestic American politics   18:37 – Can the U.S. benefit from adopting certain aspects of the Chinese approach?  20:49 – The steps needed to return to normalized U.S.-China diplomacy 25:00 – How can the US properly calibrate its China threat assessment?  34:05 – The relationship between China’s domestic challenges and its foreign policy A transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Jessica: Stephen Walt and Dani Rodrik’s essay on a establishing a new global order in Foreign Affairs [forthcoming]; and After Engagement: Dilemmas in U.S.-China Security Relations by Jacques deLisle and Avery Goldstein Kaiser: The Lord of the Rings trilogy audiobooks narrated by Andy Serkis See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser and Jeremy welcome back Tom Orlik, Bloomberg's chief economist and author of the book China: The Bubble that Never Pops. Ahead of the release of the new, updated edition of his book, we ask him about all that has changed in the two-and-a-half years since the publication of the first edition — and whether the real estate crisis, the Common Prosperity agenda, China's fraying foreign relations, or the COVID lockdowns are finally going to bring about the crash long predicted by the "China bears." 4:40 – Tom offers a succinct summary of the chief arguments in the first edition of China: The Bubble that Never Pops 8:05 – Is China looking quite as clever as it was four months ago? 11:08 – The Chinese economy’s great COVID shutdown stress test 13:53 – China’s stimulus response 20:22 – The future of the Common Prosperity agenda 25:49 – China’s push for tech self-sufficiency 33:00 – China’s present real estate crisis 38:15 – Xi Jinping’s priorities: triage for the ailing Chinese economy 44:00 – How bad will the damage be from China’s 2022 lockdowns? A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com. Recommendations: Jeremy: The Parker series,: crime fiction by Richard Stark, pen name of Donald E. Westlake Tom: Surveillance State by Josh Chin and Liza Lin; and Coalitions of the Weak by Victor Shih Kaiser: The TV drama from Hulu, The Bear See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy welcome Leroy Chiao, a NASA astronaut who flew three shuttle missions and served as commander of the International Space Station for over six months. Leroy is also very knowledgeable about China's space program and was the first American astronaut to visit the Astronaut Center of China outside of Beijing. He discusses the abortive history of Sino-American space collaboration, attitudes toward China's space program in the U.S., and China's impressive accomplishments and its grand ambitions for space. 4:27 – How Leroy became an astronaut 9:09 – The effects of long-term weightlessness 15:10 – Leroy’s access to the Astronaut Center of China 18:16 – The peak years of Sino-U.S. collaboration in space exploration 23:11 – The Wolf Amendment and the end of Sino-American space collaboration 26:36 – Leroy on the most impressive accomplishments of the Chinese space program 37:53 – U.S.-China competition as a driver of advances in space technologies 48:04 – Sino-Russian space cooperation? 49:12 – The weaponization of outer space 52: 58 – Recommendations A complete transcript of this podcast is available on SupChina.com. Recommendations: Jeremy:  Nuremberg Diary by G.M. Gilbert. Leroy: Old Henry, a micro-Western film Kaiser: Putin by Philip Short; and a preview of a forthcoming paper about the Cyberspace Administration of China, CAC, written by Jamie Horsley See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser chats with Ali Wyne, senior analyst at the Eurasia Group's global macro geopolitics practice and author of the brand new book America's Great Power Opportunity: Revitalizing U.S. Foreign Policy to Meet the Challenges of Strategic Competition. Ali's book calls on American policymakers to craft a strategy that is guided by confidence and a clear vision of American renewal and emphasizes America's competitive advantages, rather than being determined by the behavior of our notional competitors, especially China. 2:09 – The framework of great power competition and building a foreign policy that is not dictated by the actions of other great powers 16:13 – The competitive challenges from China and Russia 25:38 – America's psychological anxiety over China's rise 39:30 – Eight principles for building a new foreign policy: Principle one – renew America's competitive advantages 51:35 – Principle two: regard the power of America's domestic example, not as a supplement to external competitiveness, but as a precondition for it. 56:22 – Principle three: do not use competitive anxiety as a crutch and principle four: frame internal renewal as an explicit objective of U.S. foreign policy, not as a desired byproduct 1:01:19 – Principle five: enlisting allies and partners in affirmative undertakings 1:08:26 – Principle six: appreciate the limits to American unilateral influence 1:13:38 – Principle seven: pursue cooperative opportunities that can temper the destabilizing effects of great power competition 1:17:29 – Principle eight: rebalance toward the Asia Pacific within economic focus 1:20:12 – How Russia's invasion of Ukraine has affected the framework laid out in Ali's book A complete transcript of this interview is available at SupChina.com. Recommendations: Ali: The Foreign Affairs essay "Beijing Is Still Playing the Long Game on Taiwan: Why China Isn’t Poised to Invade" by Andrew Nathan Kaiser: The Swedish TV show Clark on Netflix See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In a week dominated by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, Kaiser welcomes John Culver, who served as national intelligence officer for East Asia from 2015 to 2017 and as a CIA analyst focusing on China for 35 years. John offers his perspective on Pelosi's trip and provides important context with a discussion of the last Taiwan Straits Crisis, in 1995-96 — a crisis touched off by Lee Teng-hui's decision to visit Cornell University, his alma mater. John also draws important parallels to the Diaoyu/Senkaku crisis of the fall of 2012, after the Japanese government nationalized the disputed islands. 2:47 – A walkthrough of the last Taiwan Strait crisis 13:45 – How China's growing capabilities could affect its decision-making in future Taiwan crises 19:52 – Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan and the political environment surrounding her decision 25:14 – Explaining China's interpretation of U.S. actions and the Chinese domestic political context 32:21 – Parallels to the 2012 Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands episode 35:22 – The potential fallout of this crisis A complete transcript of this podcast is available at SupChina.com. Recommendations: John: The late Alan Romberg's exegesis of the US-China negotiating record, "Rein In at the Brink of the Precipice" and Ryan Hass's book Stronger: Adapting America’s China Strategy in an Age of Competitive Interdependence Kaiser: Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada — and the town of Canmore as a great place to stay nearby. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, we offer listeners a sneak preview of one of the new shows coming soon to the Sinica Network: Café & Seda, or Coffee and Silk. While this episode is in English, the podcast will be mostly in Spanish — our first non-English show. The host is Parsifal D'Sola, who is Executive Director of the ABF China Latin America Research Center and a nonresident senior fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub. Parsifal is a native of Venezuela, and his focus is on Sino-Latin American relations. Between 2019 and 2020, he acted as Chinese Foreign Policy Advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs under the Interim Government of Venezuela of Juan Guaido. In this episode, Parsifal talks with Dr. Evan Ellis. Evan is a research professor of Latin American Studies at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College. His work focuses on the region’s relationships with China and other non-Western Hemisphere actors as well as transnational organized crime and populism in the region. He previously served on the Secretary of State’s policy planning staff with responsibility for Latin America and the Caribbean as well as international narcotics and law enforcement issues. Evan has also been awarded the Order of Military Merit José María Córdova by the Colombian government for his scholarship on security issues in the region. Latin America has been the world’s most affected region due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Poverty levels have risen considerably, and economic contraction is several points higher than the global average. How will this affect Sino- Latin American relations? Furthermore, while the United States increasingly loses influence across the region, Chinese foreign policy has become more sophisticated and localized, filling many of the spaces traditionally filled by the United States and other Western actors. Evan helps us answer these questions and offers recommendations both for the United States in dealing with China’s growing role in the region, as well as advice for Latin American countries in managing the challenges that greater engagement with China will bring about.       A complete transcript of this podcast is available at SupChina.com. Recommendations: China Engages Latin America: Distorting Development and Democracy? By Evan Ellis Links of interest: Articles from Evan Ellis at Global Americans Andrés Bello Foundation - China Latin America Research Center Twitter: @FABChinaLatam | @REvanEllis See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser chats with Silvia Lindtner of the University of Michigan about her book Prototype Nation. In a wide-ranging conversation, they discuss how China's maker movement inspired the Party leadership to encourage tech entrepreneurship, how Shenzhen rose to such prominence in technology production, the fetishization of the shanzhai movement, and much more. 5:29 How narratives on Chinese tech innovation have shifted 14:10 What made China's technological innovation possible? 20:37 State support for the maker movement and mass innovation 29:52 The technocratic and entrepreneurial mindset of the CCP 38:45 Techno-optimism in China versus the West 45:57 Shenzhen's "hacker paradise" as a transnational project 50:02 Orientalism in the West's fascination with shanzhai, or copycat, culture A complete transcript of this podcast is available at SupChina.com. Recommendations Silvia: In This Moment, We Are Happy by Chen Qiufan and Surrogate Humanity: Race, Robots, and the Politics of Technological Futures by Kalindi Vora and Neda Atanasoski Kaiser:  Sarmat Archery based in Kiev, Ukraine See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Paul Triolo, Senior VP for China and Technology Policy Lead at Dentons Global Advisors ASG, formerly and probably better known still as Albright Stonebridge Group. Paul provides an in-depth overview of today’s semiconductor landscape, from export control issues, to the unstable equilibrium between U.S., China, and Taiwan’s industries. He walks us through the strategic importance of semiconductors in U.S. national security considerations — and how unintended consequences of our current policies toward China might actually end up undermining U.S. national security.  04:45 – An overview of semiconductor geopolitics and supply chains 20:33 – Why the U.S. is cutting China off from advanced semiconductor technologies 27:02 – The shift in technology export controls from Trump to Biden 32:08 – The CHIPS Act and subsidies for the semiconductor industry 37:43 – Deterrence and Taiwan’s semiconductor industry as a “silicon shield” 46:16 – Lessons learned from the chip shortage 52:30 – Why is the U.S lighting a fire to Chinese self-sufficiency efforts? 57:57 – The implications of Pelosi’s planned visit to Taiwan A transcript of this podcast is available at SupChina.com. Recommendations: Paul: Rob Dunn, A Natural History of the Future; and Ryan Hass, Stronger: Adapting America's China Strategy in an Age of Competitive Interdependence Kaiser: The Boys on Amazon Prime See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Villanova University historian Andrew Liu. Andy published an excellent essay in n+1 magazine in April that captured how the eclipse of the "wet-market" theory of COVID origins and its replacement by the "lab-leak" theory illustrates how an old racial form — "Orientalism," which sees countries of Asia as backward, dirty, and barbarous — gave way to what's been termed an "Asiatic" racial form, which reflects anxiety over Asians as hyperproductive, robotic, and technologically advanced. 3:05 – Andy's n+1 essay on the lab leak theory and the two racial forms 6:26 – A primer on Edward Said's Orientalism and why it's a poor fit for Asia today 10:41 – The "Asiatic racial form" and the notionally "positive" Asian stereotypes 13:58 – How Orientalism and the Asiatic racial form interact today and historically 23:50 – Conspiracies on China, and what's wrong with the Asiatic form 27:51 – Japan's rise as a parallel 30:57 – How to talk about Chinese attitudes toward tech without invoking Asiatic stereotypes 37:27 – Race, culture, and global capitalism A full transcript of this podcast is available on SupChina.com. Recommendations: Andy: Stay True: a memoir by the New Yorker writer Hua Hsu and donating to abortion providers in states affected by the end of Roe v. Wade:, like Abortion Care for Tennessee, abortioncaretn.org Kaiser: The Danish political drama Borgen on Netflix See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Jing Tsu, John M. Schiff Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures & Comparative Literature at Yale University, about her wonderful new book Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution that Made China Modern. Jing talks about her role as culture commentator for NBC during the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, about how the written Chinese language has helped shape China, and about the fascinating individuals who worked to bring a writing system so deeply rooted in history and tradition into the modern world. Link to Jing and Kaiser interviewed for the Radio Opensource Podcast here. 4:59 – Jing's role as cultural commentator for NBC during the Winter Games 10:43 – The impetus for writing Kingdom of Characters 16:09 – Why the critics of the Chinese writing system called for its destruction 18:57 – What the defenders of the Chinese writing system love so much about it 25:51 – The challenge of writing about the technology of Chinese writing 29:05 – The Chinese writing system as a metaphor for China 32:46 – The next technological frontiers for Chinese 35:48 – Language and how it shapes thinking in China A complete transcript of this podcast is available at SupChina.com. Recommendations: Jing: Everything Everywhere All at Once Kaiser: The Pattern of the Chinese Past by Mark Elvin; and Closure/Continuation, a new album by the British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Shelley Rigger of Davidson College returns to the show to talk Taiwan. She's joined by Simona Grano, a sinologist and Taiwan specialist at the University of Zürich. They talk about President Joe Biden's recent "gaffes" that call into question the longstanding, unofficial U.S. policy of "strategic ambiguity," talk about how Taiwan has been impacted by the Ukraine War, and much more. 4:59: – What did Joe Biden's latest "gaffe" on Taiwan actually signify? 10:06 – Did "strategic ambiguity" serve its intended purpose? 16:23 – The mood in Taiwan 20:51 – The impact of the Ukraine War on thinking in Beijing and in Taipei 34:12 – European countries navigating relationships with Taiwan 43:54 – The "One China Principle" versus the "One China Policy" 47:20 – Are bilateral trade agreements enough for Taiwan? 50:27 – Ethnicity, nationality, and the Taiwan issue 59:00 – Making sense of the PRC claim to Taiwan A complete transcript of this podcast is available at SupChina.com. Recommendations: Simona: Orphan of Asia, a novel by Wu Zhuoliu; and the show Orange is the New Black Shelley: Occupied, a Norwegian thriller series on Netflix Kaiser: Meizhong.report, a Chinese-language resource from the Carter Center's U.S.-China Perception Monitor, covering official, media, and social media commentary on U.S.-China relations See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with James (Jay) Carter, Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia. Jay, who joined us on the show in December 2020 to talk about his book Champion's Day, is the author of one of the most widely-read columns that SupChina runs: This Week in China's History. In honor of two full years of contributions, with over 100 columns, Kaiser asked Jay to talk about his process, his purpose, and the challenges and the rewards of writing this excellent column. 6:34 – The origin story of the column, and its original intention 11:34 – How the hell does Jay do it week in and week out? 23:84 – Jay talks about Jonathan Spence and what it was like to study under him at Yale 31:32 – On the diversity of perspectives in the column 40:53 – How the column keeps Jay connected to academic work and intellectual life 43:35 – Threading the needle in deploying historical analogy, and right-sizing historical "rhymes" and patterns A complete transcript of this podcast is available at SupChina.com. Recommendations: Jay: The Broadway musical Hadestown; and the New York City Ballet Kaiser: The inaugural Sinologia Conference on June 10 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser welcomes back Dr. George Hu, a clinical psychologist based in Shanghai, who has a lot to say about the state of mental health in Chinese cities under lockdown. Unsurprisingly, mental health disorders like anxiety and depression have been exacerbated under conditions of isolation and food insecurity. Surprisingly, there's a silver lining or two to the whole thing. 6:52 – Getting a sense for the scale of mental health problems related to the lockdown in Shanghai 16:23 – Have the lockdowns increased awareness of and empathy for people suffering from mental health disorders in Shanghai and in China? 20:07 – The lockdowns and impact on children and on the elderly 34:05 – The impact on essential workers 42:21 – What other Chinese cities are learning from Shanghai's COVID-19 experience 45:22 – The quarantine centers and mental health services A full transcript of this podcast is available at SupChina.com. Recommendations: George: How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid For Success by Julie Lythcott-Haims Kaiser: Nicholas Confessore's series in the New York Times on Tucker Carlson, "American Nationalist" See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser welcomes veteran Asia reporter Demetri Sevastopulo, who covers the U.S.-China relationship for the Financial Times. They discuss some of Demetri's scoops, like the news that Vladimir Putin had requested military aid from Xi Jinping, leaked just before National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan's meeting in Switzerland with State Councillor Yang Jiechi and just three weeks after Russia's invasion; and the news that China had tested a hypersonic glide craft in October of last year. But the focus of the discussion is on the Biden administration's China policy and its Indo-Pacific Economic Framework — an Asia strategy that, by all accounts, has met with a tepid response in the region. 1:47 – How Demetri landed a beat as U.S.-China relations correspondent 5:24 – How the FT scooped the story on Putin's military assistance request to Xi Jinping in March 2022 12:05 – The Chinese hypersonic glidecraft 24:42 – The DC China policy scene: A dramatis personae 40:11 – The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework: all guns and no butter 52:54 – The Quad and AUKUS: American-led security arrangements A full transcript of this podcast is available at SupChina.com Recommendations Demetri: Gunpowder, an Irish gin from County Leitrim; and Roku, a Japanese whiskey by Suntori Kaiser: Chokepoint Capitalism, a forthcoming book on how monopolies and monopsonies are ruining culture, by Rebecca Gilbin and Cory Doctorow See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Mark Leonard, founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations and author most recently of The Age of Unpeace: How Connectivity Causes Conflict. Mark talks about how despite the bright promise that increasing connectedness — whether in trade, telecommunications, or movements of individuals — would usher in a world of better mutual understanding and enduring peace, the reality is that this connectedness has made the world more fractured and fractious. He explains how the three "empires of connectivity" — the U.S., China, and the EU — each leverage their extensive connectivity to advance their own interests. He also unpacks his assertion that the world is coming to share China's longstanding ambivalence toward connectedness. 1:05 – Kaiser tells how researching an abortive book project presaged Mark's conclusion that familiarity can breed contempt 7:58 – How Mark came to be a deep ambivalence about connectivity 16:03 – The three "empires of connectivity" and how they leverage or weaponize connectivity 31:41 – How all the connected empires are taking on "Chinese characteristics" 41:41 – How the Russo-Ukrainian War fits into Mark's framework in the book 51:49 – Chinese intellectuals and the shift in their thinking A full transcript of this interview is available on SupChina.com. Recommendations: Mark: Chinese Hegemony: Grand Strategy and International Institutions in East Asian History by Zhang Feng Kaiser: "A Teacher in China Learns the Limits of Free Expression," the latest piece by Peter Hessler in The New Yorker; and the Israeli spy thriller Tehran on AppleTV. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Deborah Seligsohn returns to the show to talk about the sad state of U.S.-China scientific collaboration. As the Science Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing from 2003 to 2007 — arguably the peak years for collaboration in science — she has ample firsthand experience with the relationship. Debbi, who is now an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University in Philadelphia, sees the U.S. decision to dismantle what was a diverse and fruitful regime of collaboration as a consequence of the basic American conception of the relationship: our tendency to see that relationship as one of teacher and student. She also argues that the American obsession with intellectual property protection is fundamentally misguided and inapplicable to scientific collaboration, which rarely deals with commercial IP. 3:15 – The rationale for prioritizing U.S.-China scientific collaboration in the 1970s 9:11 – A highlight reel of Sino-American scientific collaboration across four decades 31:03 – The stubborn American belief that freedom and democracy are necessary — or even sufficient — conditions for technological innovation 39:37 – The price we've paid and will continue to pay for the collapse of collaboration 44:00 – The end of collaboration and the DOJ's "China Initiative" 48:17 – How to rebuild the U.S.-China scientific partnership A full transcript of this podcast is available on SupChina.com. Recommendations: Deborah: A Buzzfeed story by Peter Aldous about the strange origins of the "lab-leak theory" in the right-wing of the animal rights activist community; and two podcasts — Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast and the Brookings podcast by David Dollar, Dollar and Sense. Kaiser: The sci-fi thriller Severance on AppleTV. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined again by Yawei Liu, Senior Director for China at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia; and by Danielle Goldfarb, head of global research at RIWI Corp, an innovative web-based research outfit headquartered in Toronto. They discuss a survey commissioned by the Carter Center to look at Chinese attitudes toward the Russo-Ukrainian War: whether Chinese people believe supporting Russia to be in China's interest, what they believe China's best course of action to be, and whether they're aware of — and if so, whether they believe — disinformation pushed by Moscow about U.S.-run bio labs in Ukraine. Danielle also discusses other survey research that RIWI has conducted about China that relates to the war in Ukraine. 2:41 – Why public opinion still matters in authoritarian countries 5:35 – Has the debate over the Russian invasion of Ukraine been completely shut down in China? 12:17 – RIWI’s technology and survey methodology 18:47 – The Carter Center questionnaire and its results 28:05 – RIWI’s Military Conflict Risk Index, and the China-Taiwan results 35:26 – The puzzling correlation between education level and propensity to believe disinformation 42:00 – Popular attitudes about the relationships among Russia, China, and the U.S. A transcript of this podcast is available on SupChina.com Recommendations: Yawei: How China Loses: The Pushback Against Chinese Global Ambitions, by Luke Patey. Danielle: Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez. Kaiser: Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser is joined by Manjari Chatterjee Miller, Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations and associate professor of political science at Boston University; and Manoj Kewalramani, chairperson of the Indo-Pacific Research Programme and a China studies fellow at the Takshashila Institution, a leading Indian public policy education center. They offer fascinating analysis and insight into the complex relationship between China and India in light of the Russo-Ukrainian War, as powerful and populous Asian nations caught between their commitments to Russia and their well-founded fear of alienating the West. Their predicaments, however, are about all they have in common: despite Chinese overtures, New Delhi and Beijing have too much historical baggage, too many open wounds, and visions for a post-war geopolitical map that are too divergent to allow them to make anything like common cause. 3:31 – Indian media positions, political elite takes, and popular opinion on the Russo-Ukrainian War 9:05 – Is there a partisan divide in India on the Ukraine War? 12:44 – Manoj's amazing potted history of Soviet/Russian relations with India, from 1947 to the eve of the war 29:38 – Manjari on how China figures into the Indo-Soviet/Indo-Russian relationship 35:33 – China as a factor in Indo-U.S. relations 43:17 – China's relative tone-deafness when it comes to India 55:56 – Sources of tension in the Russia-India relationship A full transcript of this podcast is available at SupChina.com Recommendations: Manjari: Bridgerton on Netflix Manoj: The 1995 Bollywood film Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge Kaiser: The high school comedy Metal Lords on Netflix; and Matt Sheehan, "The Chinese Way Of Innovation: What Washington Can Learn From Beijing About Investing In Tech" in Foreign Affairs See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Marina Rudyak, assistant professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Heidelberg. She offers her unique perspective on the underlying tensions and potential conflicts between Russia and China, the "dialogue of the deaf" that was the China-European Union summit on April 1st, Beijing's failure to understand the European perspective on Ukraine, and China's diplomatic and developmental policies in the Global South. 4:41 – Marina's personal background and its relevance to our topic 6:53 – China and Russia are simpatico in Central Asia? Not so fast. 17:14 – Europe, China, and the national security lens 22:30 – China's goals with respect to Europe 30:32 – What went wrong at the April 1st summit between Beijing and Brussels? 41:37 – European and American efforts to counter China's presence in the Global South A transcript of this interview is available at SupChina.com. Recommendations: Marina: Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges, by Otto Scharmer Kaiser: Robert Draper, "This Was Trump Pulling a Putin," in the New York Times Magazine; Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing For You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-first Century; and Steven Johnson, "AI is Mastering Language. Should We Trust What it Says?" in the New York Times Magazine. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The COVID lockdown in China's biggest city, Shanghai, hasn't been going exactly according to plan. This week on Sinica, we speak with our business editor Chang Che, who flew back to Shanghai in early March and emerged from quarantine just in time for "dynamic clearing." He gives us a first-hand look at the scramble for basic food, and offers his take on China's vaunted state capacity, the role of neighborhood committees in implementing central government policy, what went so badly wrong in Shanghai, and what lessons might be learned for the next Chinese city that sees an Omicron outbreak. 2:38 – Chang's experience of the lockdown 7:46 – The current mood in Shanghai 11:02 – Neighborhood Committees: the foot soldiers of pandemic prediction 14:00 – Explaining the relatively low rate of vaccination among the elderly in Shanghai 18:47 – The case for locking down Shanghai, and how they might have done it better 31:01 – The reputational damage to China 33:31 – Schadenfreude 41:04 – Why a state that can test 26 million in a day can't keep people fed A transcript of this podcast is available on SupChina.com. Recommendations: Chang: Tokyo Vice on HBO Max Kaiser: The National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on the Sinica Podcast, in a show taped on March 23, Chinese foreign policy expert Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, and former national intelligence officer for East Asia Paul Heer join Kaiser for a discussion of possible scenarios that China might face in the eventual aftermath of the Russo-Ukrainian War. 5:03 – The uncertain outcome of the war 10:06 – Russia as a pariah state 14:43 – Which is the junior partner, Russia or China? 17:17 – Can China impact the course of the war? 22:32 – The three levels of Chinese support for Russia 31:39 – What inducements could the U.S. offer China to move decisively away from Russia? 36:35 – Scenarios beyond the war: Pax Americana, the Extended Director's Cut; and the Law of the Jungle 40:43 – The West Divided, the Pivot Delayed 44:19 – Bandung II 51:01 – What about India? A transcript of this podcast is available at SupChina.com. Recommendations: Yun: The Great Game In The Eurasia Continent by Fang Jinying Paul: Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate by Mary Sarotte; and Nazis of Copley Square by Charles Gallagher Kaiser: The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping's China by Kevin Rudd See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Susan Thornton, former Acting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and a veteran diplomat. Susan makes a compelling case for the importance of diplomacy in the U.S.-China relationship — and the alarming absence of real diplomacy over the last several years. She helps interpret American and Chinese diplomatic engagements over the Russo-Ukrainian War and assesses the prospects for China actually playing a role in negotiating an end to the conflict. 3:42 – What diplomacy is really all about, and why it's so conspicuously absent 7:32 – Does it make sense for the U.S. to expect Beijing to outright condemn the invasion? 10:40 – What should the U.S. actually expect from China? 13:55 – Is China willing and able to play a meaningful role as a mediator? 17:06 – What's up with the leaks? 21:32 – Reading the readouts 28:20 – What is China's optimal endgame here? 32:06 – China's "southern strategy" 34:50 – Do upcoming U.S. midterm and presidential elections matter to Beijing? 41:29 – What are we missing when we talk about China's perspectives on the war? A full transcript of this interview is available on SupChina.com Recommendations: Susan: Butter Lamp, a short film directed by Hu Wei, nominated for Best Live Action Short at the 87th Academy Awards Kaiser: Birria Tacos. Here's a good recipe! (These should come with a doctor's warning)       See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica: Chén Dìngdìng 陈定定, professor of international relations at Jinan University in Guangzhou, offers his perspective on how Beijing views the war in Ukraine that began on February 24 with the Russian invasion. He concludes that while Beijing's short-term alignment with Russia is fairly locked in and unlikely to shift soon, the long-term prospects for the partnership are far less certain. Kaiser and Dingding discuss where Russian and Chinese worldviews are congruent, the unlikelihood that China will put itself forward as some kind of mediator in the war, and China's domestic considerations in the Russo-Ukrainian War. 4:37 – China's assessment of Russia's comprehensive national power 8:09 – Has the course of the war and Russian underperformance caused Beijing to recalibrate? 10:37 – When did the Sino-Russian convergence really happen? 24:47 – India and Vietnam as complicating factors in the Russo-Chinese relationship 27:26 – Does Xi's personal relationship with Putin matter? 29:16 – The leaks of alleged intel showing Russia asked for Chinese military assistance 38:23 – The significance of the Hu Wei essay calling for Beijing to break with Moscow over the war 46:38 – Domestic considerations A transcript of this interview is available on SupChina.com. Recommendations Dingding: The late Ezra Vogel's Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China Kaiser: Kingdom of Characters: the Language Revolution That Made China Modern by Jing Tsu See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.