Hey folks! I took some time off to drive the kids to college and then flew to California to celebrate my brother John’s birthday. The upshot is there’s no interview this week, so in place of that, here’s my essay from this week. Hope you enjoy it. If all goes as planned, I’m back next week with regular interview for Sinica!

You can find the text of the essay at sinicapodcast.com.

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I was looking for a good episode to pull from the archive to run this week as I'll be traveling and I asked my good friend Deb Seligsohn for a recommendation. She went immediately to this one, and by God if it's not an oldie-but-goodie. This is from December 2015 and features Jeremy Goldkorn — I miss him dearly! — and Terry Townshend, an absolute institution in China's birding community.

I'll likely have to run another re-run next week, and I welcome your suggestions!

All best,

Kaiser

Recommendations and Links:

Birding Beijing

Action for Swifts

British Trust for Ornithology

Jonathan Franzen, Purity: A Novel

Cement and Pig Consumption Reveal China's Huge Changes

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This week on Sinica, Part 2 of the interview with anthropologist Stevan Harrell, professor emeritus at the University of Washington, about his magnum opus, An Ecological History of China. Be sure to listen to Part 1 first, as many important framing concepts are discussed in that episode!

1:44 “– The Four Horsemen of Ecopocalypse” and ecological disasters during the Mao period, and the story of the double-wheel, double-bladed plow

11:00 – The effect of the introduction of water systems and fertilizers on agricultural production 

21:03 – “The replumbing of China:” The South-North Water Transfer Project and the National Water Network

27:32 – Areas of progress: Air pollution and the energy mix 

32:48 – Areas lacking appreciable improvement: Soil contamination, water pollution, and flood vulnerability 

36:04 – Ecological civilization and breaking the binary between development and environmental protection

47:00 – Steve’s cognitive style: A fox of the two cultures

53:23 – nSteve’s views on authoritarian environmentalism 

58:46 – The Environmental Kuznets curve 

1:05:54 – A preview of Steve’s current book project about the Yangjuan Primary School in Liangshan 

Recommendations:

Steve: Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories; Hampton Sides’ The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook; and the 2023 film The Taste of Things, starring Juliette Binoche 

Kaiser: The Cold War: A World History by Odd Arne Westad 

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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"

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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

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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.

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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.

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This week on Sinica, Part 1 of a two-part podcast with Stevan Harrell, Professor Emeritus in Anthropology at the University of Washington. Steve's groundbreaking book An Ecological History of Modern China represents the culmination of a professional lifetime of work in disparate fields. It synthesizes ideas from geography, earth science, biology, anthropology, sociology, political science, and more. It's a book that will make you change the way you think not just about China, but about history more broadly, and about resilience in natural and social systems. In this first part, we focus on some of the core framing concepts of the book and how Steve demarcates China in both space and time. Part 2 is next week!

5:01 How Steve thinks about ecological history and resilience theory/ecology in relation to Chinese history 

17:09 Social-ecological systems and the systems approach

24:46 The importance of etic and emic scale 

30:15 How diversity contributes to resilience 

36:18 The Malthus-Boserup Ratchet 

42:43 The importance of buffers 

51:24 The adaptive cycle 

55:41 Ecological buffers and the threats they face] in the major regions of China: China Proper, Zomia, and Chinese Central Asia 

1:06:28 Steve’s periodization of modern Chinese history from the perspective of ecological history 

Recommendations at the end of Part 2 next week!

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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)

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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.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Maria Repnikova, assistant professor of global communications at Georgia State University, who recently published a short book under the Cambridge Elements series called Chinese Soft Power. A native Russian speaker who also reads and speaks Chinese, Maria has been a keen observer of China's response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and offers her perspectives on Chinese media coverage of the war and the impact of China's pro-Russian tilt on Beijing's soft power ambitions. She recently co-authored a piece in The Atlantic arguing that China's apparent pro-Russian position is about one thing only: the United States and China's opposition to American unipolar hegemony.

4:25 – Definitions of soft power: Joseph Nye's and China's

8:49 – The Chinese discourse on soft power: three major schools

14:09 – How talking about soft power allows the airing of hard truths

23:24 – Chinese soft power in the global South

37:49 – How badly has the Russo-Ukraine War eroded Chinese soft power?

41:44 – How Russian media has been talking about China since the invasion of Ukraine began

44:50 – Why China's pro-Russia lean is really all about America

54:40 – Is Russia's media style the future of Chinese media? On the "RTification" of Chinese media

A full transcript of this podcast is available on SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Maria: Prototype Nation by Silvia Lindtner; and an anti-recommendation for the show Inventing Anna, which is streaming on Netflix

Kaiser: Season 5 of the show The Last Kingdom; and the sequel to Vikings, called Vikings: Valhalla. Both are on Netflix.

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This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser chats with Evan Feigenbaum, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, former vice-chairman of the Paulson Institute, and (during the second George W. Bush administration), Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs under Condoleeza Rice. Evan offers a very compelling analysis of the difficult position that Beijing now finds itself in after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine — caught on the horns of a dilemma and unable to resolve conflicting commitments to, on the one hand, territorial sovereignty and, on the other, opposition to American unipolar hegemony. Meanwhile, Beijing is fearful of the repercussions of siding with Russia, fearing that sanctions may have a real bite. Evan also shares his thoughts on how China and Russia differ significantly in their posture toward the “rules-based international order,” on misguided thinking about Taiwan and the “strategic triangle,” and on the reshaping of the geopolitical and geoeconomic order that the Russian invasion of Ukraine will usher in.

4:48 – The basic contradictions in China's competing objectives

25:58 – Did Xi know about Putin's intention to invade?

31:34 – Are the U.S. and NATO pushing China into the Russian embrace?

35:15 – The economic impact of the war: China and sanctions

40:30 – Taiwan takes and why straight-line thinking doesn't cut it

48:53 – Does Beijing have an accurate sense of its ability to affect outcomes here?

50:26 – China and Russia: the differences in their international behavior

57:44 – The geopolitical and geoeconomic impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine

A transcript of this interview is available at SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Evan: Summer Kitchens, a Ukrainian cookbook by Olia Hercules

Kaiser: Fareed Zakaria on the Ezra Klein Show from March 4, 2022; and the new Steven Spielberg remake of West Side Story

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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."

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

A transcript of this podcast is available at SupChina.com

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.

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This week on Sinica, the highly-regarded writer Peter Hessler joins to talk about his new book, out July 9: Other Rivers: A Chinese Education. Over 20 years after teaching with the Peace Corps in Fuling (the subject of his first book, Rivertown, Pete returns to China to teach at Sichuan University in Chengdu. He writes about the two cohorts of students, with whom he has maintained extensive contacts, to offer fascinating insights into how China has changed across this momentous period with touching, deeply human stories.

3:47 – Why Pete couldn’t teach in Fuling again

6:56 – How Pete stayed in touch with his Fuling cohort 

9:46 – Pete’s SCUPI [(Sichuan University-Pittsburgh Institute)] cohort 

13:51 – Pete’s Fuling cohort 

19:35 – Chinese rural values: pragmatism and modesty

23:08 – The physical and psychological differences between the Fuling and Chengdu cohorts 

29:32 – “Educated acquiescence” in the Chinese education system 

35:07 – The Hessler family’s experience with Chengdu Experimental Primary School

43:04 – The impending lack of “Country feel,” and Pete’s sense of humor 

47:02 – Facing criticism over his reporting during the pandemic  

52:13 – Pete’s experience being jǔbào’ed and teaching Orwell’s Animal Farm 

59:01 – Pete’s take on the COVID origins debate

1:02:10 – Competition and authoritarianism in China, and the phenomenon of Chinese and Chinese American Trump supporters 

1:06:57 – Serena’s investigation for Chángshì and why Pete’s contract was not renewed 

1:15:28 What’s next for Pete 

Recommendations:

Pete: Burma Sahib by Paul Theroux, a forthcoming novel about George Orwell’s time in Burma as a policeman; Burmese Days by George Orwell 

Kaiser: the Meta Quest VR headset 

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with William (Bill) Klein, who served as acting deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing from 2016 to mid-2021. In a wide-ranging conversation, he offers insights about his postings at AIT in Taiwan in the aftermath of the Sunflower Movement, the APEC meeting in Hangzhou, and the vicissitudes of Sino-American diplomacy during the turbulent Trump years — Taiwan issues, the trade war, Huawei and diplomatic hostage-taking, the COVID-19 outbreak, and much more. Bill offers a measured and balanced view, exhibiting the same thoughtfulness and empathy that made him a great diplomat.

2:56 – The aftermath of the global financial crisis as the inflection point in U.S.-China relations

4:14 – Taiwan and the Sunflower Movement: Bill's years at AIT

8:33 – The G20 meeting in Hangzhou, 2016

12:12 – Chinese perspectives on the U.S. presidential race of 2016

16:40 – The Tsai Ing-wen phone call

19:17 – Trump pulls out of Paris

21:09 – The onset of the Trade War

24:44 – Ambassador Terry Branstad, his relationship with Xi, and what he accomplished

27:48 – The conflict over Chinese technology: Huawei, Meng Wanzhou, and the Two Michaels.

35:20 – The Trump response to early reports of the Xinjiang camps

39:35 – The view from the U.S. Embassy as the SARS CoV-2 virus began to spread

47:26 – The emerging Chinese consensus on U.S. intentions toward China — and how the Houston Consulate closure was a turning point.

A transcript of this interview is available on SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Bill: Project Hail Mary, a science fiction novel by Andy Weir.

Kaiser: "The Modern Chinese Novel," an online course available free on YouTube by Christopher Rea.

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This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser chats with Megan Walsh, journalist, literary critic, and author of the brand-new book The Subplot: What China Is Reading and Why It Matters. The book offers an accessible overview of China's literary scene, from better-known writers like Mò Yán 莫言 and Yán Liánkē 阎连科 to writers working in fiction genres like crime and sci-fi, and from migrant worker poets to the largely anonymous legions of writers churning out vast amounts of internet fiction. Megan talks about the burden of politics in the life of writers, the wild popularity of dānměi 耽美 (gay-male-themed web fiction), and the surprising streak of techno-optimism in Chinese science fiction.

7:09 – The long shadow of the May Fourth Movement

12:09 – Politics and the western gaze

17:51 – Why Yan Lianke is Megan's favorite Chinese writer

26:51 – The literary scene in Beijing in the 2000s

29:05 – China's ginormous and mostly terrible internet fiction industry

39:19 – What makes Chinese science fiction Chinese?

A transcript of this interview is available on SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Megan: Yiyun Li's memoir, Dear Friend, from my Life I Write to You in Your Life; and the New Zealand singer-songwriter Aldous Harding

Kaiser: The Audible Original epistolary audio drama When You Finish Saving the World by Jesse Eisenberg

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This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser chats with Indiana University political scientist Jason Wu about his work on China's ideological landscape. With so many now framing the contest between the U.S. (or, more broadly, "the West") and China in terms of ideology, it makes sense to examine what "ideology" means to each party, to get a sense of what China's actual ideology consists of, and how Chinese people understand their own ideological positioning relative to concepts like "left" and "right" that are familiar in the West. Wu's research yields some very surprising results: In most countries that have been studied, the degree of ideological constraint — coherence or consistency among different issue positions — tends to be higher among people with greater knowledge of politics. But in China, as with so many other things, just the opposite appears to be true.

4:23 – What is the meaning of "ideology"?

15:37 – What is China's ideology?

20:17 – On "The Nature of Ideology in Urban China" and the odd inverse correlation between political knowledge and ideological consistency in China

40:18 – On "Categorical Confusion: Ideological Labels in China" and the meaning of "left" and "right" in China

A transcript of this podcast is available on SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Jason: The campus novels Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis and Straight Man by Richard Russo; and the two-person board game Twilight Struggle

Kaiser: The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Jeremy Daum, senior research scholar in law and senior fellow at Yale University's Paul Tsai China Center. Jeremy runs ChinaLawTranslate.com, a Wiki-style resource for translations of Chinese laws and regulations and an invaluable resource not just for legal scholars but for anyone interested in understanding China's policy direction. In a wide-ranging conversation, Jeremy talks about why the law remains important despite frequent assertions that there is no rule of law in China, critiques the "techno-authoritarian" narrative on China, and offers an informed take on the much-maligned "social credit system." Jeremy's work on the social credit system has earned him a reputation as a debunker, and in this episode, he makes clear what the system is and is not.

3:28 – The ChinaLawTranslate.com project and its origins

5:21 – Why does the law matter in China?

10:09 – The technology narrative in Xinjiang

13:12 – Can the U.S. learn anything from Chinese law?

17:59 – Juvenile law and the Chinese conception of the state's role in the family

24:13 – The paternalistic conception of law and the COVID-19 response in China

28:49 – Mythbusting and the social credit system

42:21 – China's Plea Leniency System and the case for engagement in jurisprudence

A transcript of this interview is available on SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Jeremy: The Fixer, a novel by Bernard Malamud

Kaiser: Going back to basics: Chinese stir-fry lessons on the YouTube channel "Chinese Cooking Demystified"

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This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser welcomes back Rory Truex, who teaches politics and international affairs at Princeton. In a fascinating as-yet-unpublished paper, Rory draws on extensive survey research that examines both political attitudes and personalities among Chinese participants and finds a strong correlation between political discontent and "isolating personality traits," like introversion, disagreeableness, and lack of close personal ties with others. Rory and Kaiser discuss the paper, the fascination with authoritarian resilience among Rory's cohort of China scholars, and the fertile intersection of psychology and politics.

4:03 – What's with the obsession among young China-focused political scientists with authoritarian resilience?

10:02 – The problem of "preference falsification" in social science research in China — and the solution!

16:29 – Rory describes the dataset and the approach behind his paper on personality and political discontent

33:14 – What do the personalities of Party members look like?

42:15 – Personality and politics in Russia vs. China

A transcript of this podcast is available at SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Rory: The work of the Center for Security in Emerging Technology (CSET); and the Fan Brothers' oeuvre of children's books, including The Night Gardner and The Barnabus Project

Kaiser: The immensely popular daily word game Wordle

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This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser welcomes back Dan Wang, technology analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics, to talk about this year's annual letter. Dan's letters have become something of an institution: wide-ranging, insightful, and always contentious, his missives are read by a great many observers of contemporary China and spark some lively conversations. This year's letter contrasts the major megacities that Dan has lived in (Beijing, Shanghai, and the "Greater Bay Area" of the Pearl River Delta), examines Xi Jinping's efforts to shift the energies of China's technologists and entrepreneurs away from the consumer internet and toward deep tech, ponders the causes of China's "cultural stunting" and the challenges that China faces, and has not yet overcome, in creating cultural products that the rest of the world wants, and warns of the dangers of focusing only on China's weaknesses and problems and ignoring its prodigious capabilities. Tune in for a fascinating conversation with one of the Sinosphere's more original thinkers.

4:15 – Dan appraises Beijing, Shanghai, and the PRD Greater Bay Area

20:48 – How to think about the "common prosperity" agenda (a.k.a. the Red New Deal)

39:21 – The tradeoff between efficiency and resilience: China as an inefficient but anti-fragile economy

45:34 – Should the United States be learning from China? The case for reform of American institutions

50:38 – A technocratic resurgence in China? The rise of a "Beihang Clique"

58:17 – The causes of "cultural stunting" in China

A transcript of this podcast is available on SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Dan: Charles Dickens, Bleak House, and Jurgen Osterhammel, Unfabling the East: The Enlightenment's Encounter with Asia

Kaiser: Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680 to 1790

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What we think about China depends in large measure on how we think about China. As a nation of 1.4 billion people in the throes of world-historic change, it's more important than ever to examine our own mental models when it comes to our understanding of China. This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser kicks off an informal series on "thinking about thinking about China" with a conversation with Anthea Roberts and Nicolas Lamp, co-authors of the book Six Faces of Globalization: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why it Matters. While the book focuses on globalization, in which China has been a central actor, it's really a book about ways to approach all complex issues — and will equip you with immensely useful ways to conceptualize any number of problems related to China. Kaiser calls the book "an upgrade to [his] mental operating system." Please enjoy this fascinating discussion with two brilliant scholars.

5:36 – What are the building blocks of a "narrative?"

8:08 – The six main narratives on globalization laid out

26:23 – The challenge of articulating problematic or objectionable narratives in good faith

53:54 – How China fits into the six "Western" narratives on globalization

56:55 – Chinese perspectives on globalization

1:11:58 – Different metaphors for integrative complexity

1:21:01 – Disciplines and training that prepare or predispose people toward complexity

1:24:33 – Name-checking the influences

A transcript of this conversation is available on SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Anthea: The Master and His Emissary, by Ian McGilchrist

Nicolas: The Once and Future Worker, by Oren Cass; and the China Trade Monitor website, run by Simon Lester and Huan Zhu.

Kaiser: "China's Reform Generation Adapts to Life in the Middle Class," by Peter Hessler

Other Links: This episode mentions a great many books and authors. Here's a partial list!

Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Slow and Fast

Howard Gardner, Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice; and his memoir, A Synthesizing Mind

Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion

Paul Blustein, Schism: China, America, and the Fracturing of the Global Trading System

Julia Galef, The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't

David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

C.P. Snow, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution

Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

George Lakoff, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think

Gareth Morgan, Images of Organization

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with David McCourt, associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis. For the last several years, David — who is not himself a China specialist — has undertaken a sociological study of "China-watchers," and has presented his findings to date in a series of papers as he prepares to publish a book. Focusing on China-watchers as a community, he offers fascinating insights into how they interact to shape the major narratives of "engagement" and "strategic competition.

5:24 – Who counts as a “China-watcher”?

13:53 – A taxonomy of China-watchers

 21:43 – Small e engagement and capital E Engagement

 28:35 – The sociological sources of China policy

 37:54 – What China policy positions tell us about America

 45:14 – Habitus and China policy orientation

 55:19 – The China-watching community and American presidential administrations, Obama to Biden

A transcript of this conversation is available at SupChina.com.

 Recommendations: 

 David: Gregoire Chamayou, The Ungovernable Society: A Genealogy of Authoritarian Liberalism

 Kaiser: The works of the great American political scientist Robert Jervis, who died on December 9, especially Perception and Misperception in International Politics and System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Damien Ma, managing director and co-founder of the Paulson Institute’s think-tank, MacroPolo. Damien discusses MacroPolo's new forecast of the property market in China and the likely impact of the predicted contraction of that market. Damien also offers advice on what smart China-watchers will be keeping their eyes on in the coming, highly political year in China in the leadup to the 20th Party Congress. And he shares the amusing story of what happened the evening after he last appeared on Sinica way back when.

2:58 – Damien recalls how he nearly led Sinica's interns to their doom one fateful night in 2014

7:23 – MacroPolo's forecast of the property market through 2025

16:28 – How will local governments fund themselves without land sales?

20:11 – Damien's take on Xi Jinping's "common prosperity" agenda

28:53 – Understanding China today through the lens of scarcity

30:49 – Tips for watching developments in China in this political year

40:00 – Cool stuff from MacroPolo

A transcript of this conversation is available on SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Damien: Derek Thompson, "America is Running on Fumes," in The Atlantic.

Kaiser: Peter Jackson's epic Beatles documentary Get Back on Disney+

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This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser chats with Eileen Guo and Jess Aloe, two members of the three-person team of reporters at the MIT Technology Review who took a data-centered look at the U.S. Department of Justice's China Initiative and uncovered serious problems: an ill-defined mission, low conviction rates, post hoc efforts to remove cases previously described as falling under the China Initiative, and strong evidence of racial profiling.

3:03 – The genesis of the report

9:15 – How the Department of Justice defines — or doesn't define — the China Initiative

19:00 – The deletion of China Initiative cases from the DoJ's website

22:34 – Was the Anming Hu case a watershed?

30:57 – The evidence for racial profiling

38:26 – Biden's conundrum

A transcript of this podcast is available on SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Eileen: America for Beginners, a novel by Leah Franqui

Jess: The Expanse, a science fiction series on Amazon Prime

Kaiser: Cloud Cuckoo Land, a novel by Anthony Doerr

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This week on Sinica, a conversation that I moderated on May 30th called “Assessing the Impact of US-China Rivalry on Ukraine and Taiwan,” put on by the Ukrainian Platform for Contemporary China. The main organizer was my friend Vita Golod, who is the chair of the Ukrainian Association of Sinologists.

The panelists are:

• Dmytro Burtsev, a Junior Fellow at A. Krymskyi Institute of Oriental Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
• Da Wei, Director of the Center for International Security and Strategy and Professor at the School of Social Sciences at Tsinghua University.
• Emilian Kavalski, Professor at the Centre for International Studies and Development at Jagiellonian University in Krakow.
• I Yuan, Adjunct Research Fellow at the Institute of International Relations, National Chengchi University, Taiwan.

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The recently-concluded Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) meeting in Dakar, Senegal, generated surprisingly little international press coverage — except for a few stories that seized on what looked, at first blush, like a significant decrease in Beijing's overall investment commitment on the continent. If Beijing sees a concerted effort by the U.S. and Europe to diminish, tarnish, or counteract China's position in Africa, it might well be excused: Its triannual Sino-African love fest, after all, didn't receive nearly as much attention as two problematic stories did: one centering on the alleged Chinese seizure of Uganda's Entebbe Airport, and another claiming that China plans to build a military base in Equatorial Guinea — a base that could threaten the East Coast of the United States, as reports suggested.

And then there's the U.S.-led "Build Back Better World" (B3W) initiative, which was launched at the G7 summit in June, and the European Commission's own answer to China's Belt and Road Initiative: the Global Gateway Strategy, which was announced on the final day of FOCAC. 

This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy speak with the Nairobi-based development economist Anzetse Were and Eric Olander, host of the China in Africa Podcast. They both have a lot to say about FOCAC coverage, media narratives on China in Africa, and the likelihood that programs like B3W and Global Gateway can move the needle when it comes to China's position on the continent.

5:08 – Major takeaways from FOCAC 2021

7:19 – Just how much money did China commit this time?

15:57 – FOCAC 2021 as an inflection point in China-Africa relations

19:05 – Media disconnects on the China-Africa story and "psychological self-soothing"

23:33 – The mistaken reports on China's alleged seizure of Entebbe Airport in Uganda

30:28 – The Wall Street Journal's report on China's alleged plans to build a military base in Equatorial Guinea

44:55 – China's vaccine diplomacy in Africa

52:12 – B3W (Build Back Better World) and Global Gateway as counters to the BRI

A transcript of this episode is available on SupChina.com

Recommendations:

Jeremy: Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society by Paul Hollander

Anzetse: Market Power and Role of the Private Sector by the China-Africa Business Council; and "Africa's economic transformation: the role of Chinese investment," by Linda Calabrese and Xiaoyang Tang

Eric: "Guānxì: Power, Networking, and Influence in China-Africa Relations," by Paul Nantulya

Kaiser: Beware of Pity, a novel by Stefan Zweig

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This week, we bring you a selection of the best of our China Stories podcast. Launched in late January this year, it has published nearly 400 narrated pieces from the best English-language media outlets focused on China: Sixth Tone, Caixin Global, The Wire China, Protocol China, The World of Chinese, and Week in China — plus, of course, SupChina. The stories are read by Chinese-speaking narrators who won't badly mispronounce Chinese names and other words. If you enjoy this sampling, please make sure to subscribe to China Stories wherever you get your podcasts.

3:04 – Peter Hessler's last class, published in Sixth Tone, written by He Yujia, and read by Elyse Ribbons

25:07 – Luo Jialing, a.k.a. Liza Hardoon, and the height of global Shanghai, written by James Carter, published in SupChina, and read by John D. Van Fleet

37:22 – Qianlong Emperor: The worst poet in Chinese history?, written by Sun Jiahui, published in The World of Chinese, and read by Cliff Larsen

46:52 – Partners in profit, published by Week in China, and read by Sylvia Franke

52:36 – Shot heard round the world: China's Olympic return, written by Sam Davies, published in The World of Chinese, and read by Sarah Kutulakos

58:32 – China's culture wars, now playing on Bilibili, written by Shen Lu, published in Protocol China, and read by Kaiser Kuo

1:07:23 – I sacrificed 16 years to the mines, as told to Gushi FM in Chinese by Chen Nianxi, translated by Nathaniel J. Gan, published in The World of Chinese, and read by Elyse Ribbons

1:34:50 – Family values, excerpted from One Thousand Years of Joys and Sorrows, by Ai Weiwei, published in The Wire China, and read by Kaiser Kuo

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This week on the Sinica Podcast, we bring you Part 2 of a conversation with Lizzi Lee, an economist turned China analyst, and Jude Blanchette, the Freeman Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). In September, Lizzi and Jude joined Kaiser and Jeremy to discuss the wide-ranging set of regulatory moves by Beijing, touching on many disparate realms of Chinese life — from real estate to renewable energy, and from entertainment to education. But much has happened since then, and as we promised at the end of that episode, we reconvened to discuss the same topic at our NEXTChina 2021 conference on November 10-11. Don't miss this one!

3:53 – A reappraisal and clarification of the Red New Deal

9:02 – Kaiser's hypothesis about why Xi Jinping is pushing such far-reaching changes now

10:29 – Lizzi Lee offers her take on the timing

14:41 – Jude on why "Red New Deal" doesn't quite go far enough in describing the changes afoot

18:50 – Lizzi on the dangers of bursting the real estate bubble

27:26 – Has Xi Jinping left any off-ramps?

A transcript of this episode is available at SupChina.com.

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Recent polls conducted by organizations like Gallup and Pew have shown a precipitous decline in U.S. public opinion toward China. But how do the Chinese feel about the U.S.? This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Yawei Liu, senior China advisor at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia, and with Michael Cerny, associate editor of the Carter Center's China Perception Monitor, about a survey commissioned by the center on Chinese attitudes toward the United States and Chinese perceptions of global opinion on China.

7:48 – The methodology behind the survey

13:02 – The survey's central questions

25:30 – The polarized 55-64 age group

28:17 – The drivers of Chinese negative perceptions of the U.S.

37:35 – Inflection points in Chinese perceptions of the U.S.

45:31 – Generational effects on Chinese perceptions

50:27 – The causal direction: Do negative perceptions of the U.S. boost Chinese notions about international perceptions of China?

A transcript of this interview is available at SupChina.com

Recommendations:

Michael: Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner; and Causal Inference: The Mixtape by Scott Cunningham

Yawei: How the Red Sun Rose by Gao Hua;, translated by Stacey Mosher; and The Battle of Chosin, a documentary film from PBS

Kaiser: Y: The Last Man, a post-apocalyptic TV show from FX, available on Hulu

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This week on Sinica, a live show taped on November 11 at the fourth annual NEXTChina Conference at the China Institute in New York, featuring Peter Hessler. Pete returned to the U.S. from Chengdu over the summer after his contract at Sichuan University, where he was teaching journalism and freshman composition, was not renewed. His departure sparked speculation about government displeasure at his reporting for The New Yorker — despite earlier criticism that his coverage of China's COVID-19 response had been too favorable to Beijing. Pete joins Kaiser and Jeremy to discuss his latest book, The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution, his approach to writing on China, his interactions with his students, and the real reasons for his departure from China.

3:18 – How Egypt sheds light on China

7:00 – Language-learning as a device in Pete Hessler's writing

9:50 – How Pete kept in touch with over 100 students from Fuling — the making of a longitudinal cohort study

18:33 – How Pete is viewed in China vs. in Egypt

25:10 – Pete's writing on Chinese entrepreneurship

29:02 – Why Pete & Leslie moved to Chengdu — and why they had to leave

A transcript of this podcast is available on SupChina.com.

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy discuss mental health in China with George Hu, a Shanghai-based clinical psychologist who serves as president of the Shanghai International Mental Health Association and leads the United Family Mental Health Network. George describes how American ideas of psychiatry and psychology have shaped the way Chinese mental health professionals understand mental wellness and mental distress, resulting in the importation of approaches to diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders that may not always be the best fit with China's cultural, sociological, and historical realities.

5:14: – Trying to assess the scale of mental illness in China

9:45 – How mental health is diagnosed and classified in China

19:00 – Mental health and the extraordinary competitiveness of life in China

28:09 – The growing focus on the intersection between culture and mental health in China

37:21 – Issues faced by American students in China

46:17 – Mental health and the COVID-19 pandemic

50:42 – Bicultural therapy

A transcript of this interview is available on SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Jeremy: Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures

by Merlin Sheldrake

George: Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche by Ethan Watters

Kaiser: Awakening from Dukkha from the Inner Mongolian band Nine Treasures

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This week on Sinica, we present a deep-dive into the worldview of China’s leading Party theorist, Wáng Hùníng 王沪宁. Wang — the only member of the Politburo Standing Committee who has not run a province or provincial-level municipality — is believed to have been the thinker behind ideas as central (and as ideologically distinct) as Jiāng Zémín’s 江泽民 signature “Three Represents,” which brought capitalists into the Chinese Communist Party; Hú Jǐntāo’s 胡锦涛 “Scientific Outlook on Development” that focused on social harmony; and Xí Jìnpíng’s “Chinese Dream” that aimed at the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” While much of Wang’s life since he entered government has been hidden from view, his earlier writings contain many ideas that appear to have shaped Party policy across the tenure of three Party general secretaries over a period of nearly three decades, and offer clues about what still might be in store. Kaiser is joined by Joseph Fewsmith III, an eminent professor of political science at Boston University; the intellectual historian Timothy Cheek, professor of history at the University of British Columbia, whose work has focused on establishment intellectuals in the PRC; and Matthew Johnson, principal and founder of the China-focused consultancy AltaSilva LLC, who has studied and written about Wang extensively.

4:31 – An outline of Wang Huning's career

8:36 – Wang Huning's personality and temperament

12:28 – Wang speaks

16:45 – Wang as an example of post-charismatic leadership loyalty

24:02 – Wang's America Against America

31:04 – Wang Huning's concepts of cultural security and cultural sovereignty

46:36 – Wang and Document Number Nine

55:39 – Chinese conceptions of democracy

A transcript of this podcast is available on SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Matt: The Nerves of Government: Models of Political Communication and Control by Karl Deutsch; and

The Logic of Images in International Relations by Robert Jervis.

Joe: Now that more Americans recognize that China is not becoming "more like us," they need a deeper understanding of China, and not one just rooted in hostility and militarism.

Tim: In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova.

Kaiser: River of Stars 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.

A warm Sinica welcome to our newest network member, the China Sports Insider Podcast!

If it's about sports and there's a China angle, our hosts Mark Dreyer — the China Sports Insider himself — and Haig Balian, the show's producer, will talk about it. 

This week: fewer than a hundred days to go to the Beijing Olympics, and foreign athletes have been trickling in for test events. What's happening? What are they saying? (7:18)

The IOC released their playbook — their game plan for the Olympics. How will visiting media and athletes react to Beijing’s health and safety measures? (12:42)

Then we talk to USA Today’s Dan Wolken. He's covered four Olympics, and he's coming to Beijing. What does he make of the playbook? (19:06)

And we end with the saga of China's men’s national ice hockey team. Their story is getting a lot of attention from foreign media. At the Olympic tournament they'll be in a group with Canada, USA, and Germany, and there's a real chance they’ll get blown out. How did we get here? What’s the way out? (41:06)

Update: Since we recorded this, the IIHF has announced that China will not be kicked out of the Olympic tournament. 

For more stories read China Sports Insider

Find Mark Dreyer on Twitter

Find Haig Balian on Twitter

Learn about the Olympic playbooks

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This week on Sinica, we present a talk delivered on October 19 by Kaiser at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, as part of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations China Town Hall. In this 30-minute speech, Kaiser offers his views on Xí Jìnpíng's 习近平 "Red New Deal," discusses the many lenses through which China is viewed, and argues that the changes now afoot in China constitute a major historic shift — and perhaps even the end of the modern period in China's history.

We'll be back next week with a conversation about Wáng Hùníng 王沪宁, the Chinese Communist Party's leading theorist, featuring three leading scholars on modern China's politics and intellectual history: Timothy Cheek of the University of British Columbia, Joseph Fewsmith III of Boston University, and Matthew Johnson, a historian who now runs a China-focused consultancy but has made Wang Huning a major focus of his work.

A transcript of this episode is available on SupChina.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: Did the Trump-era tariffs have their intended effects? In other words, did they prompt companies to pull up stakes in China and re-shore jobs to the United States? Kaiser chats with two political scientists, Samantha Vortherms of UC Irvine and Jack Zhang, director of the University of Kansas’s Trade War Lab, about the paper they recently published with the intention of answering that question. The paper is called “Political Risk and Firm Exit: Evidence from the US-China Trade War.” They share their findings and explore the paper’s policy implications.

4:16 – Sam and Jack offer their thoughts on U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Katherine Tai’s recent speech on U.S.-China trade

10:05 – Distinguishing between tariffs and other aspects of the trade war

13:46 – Previously, on the U.S.-China Trade War: A brief recap of the trade war to date

18:35 – The Foreign Invested Enterprises in China dataset

23:14 – A summary of the paper’s findings: Tariffs did not increase the likelihood of firms exiting

47:15 – What explains the relative reticence of affected firms when it comes to voicing opposition to tariffs?

55:36 – What would you tell Katherine Tai and Gina Raimondo if they were your captive audience?

A transcript of this interview is available on SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Sam: The podcast Invisibilia, and specifically, a recent episode called “International Friend of Mystery.”

Jack: The Masters of Chinese Economics and Political Affairs (MCEPA) degree program at UC San Diego's School of Global Policy and Strategy, and Amitav Ghosh’s River of Smoke (part of the Ibis series).

Kaiser: A Song for Arbonne, a semi-historical fantasy novel 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 is joined by Jonathan Chatwin, author of a new book about Deng Xiaoping's "Southern Tour" of early 1992 — a pivotal event that renewed a commitment to economic reforms after they'd stalled following 1989, and seized the initiative from conservatives in the Chinese leadership. The book is called The Southern Tour: Deng Xiaoping and the Fight for China's Future.

2:10 – Why Jonathan focused on the Southern Tour, and the narratives surrounding it in China

7:19 – How the events of ’89 influenced Deng’s thinking 

11:08 – How the political fates of Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang affected Deng’s planning 

14:31 – The reformers’ path to victory from the second half of ’89 to January of ’92

20:32 – Deng’s vision of opportunity in the face of communism’s apparent global retreat

24:53 – How Deng’s personal experiences shaped his policy decisions 

27:07 – The strategic signaling and risky timing of the Southern Tour 

34:07 – The influence of the Chinese horoscope, and “The Story of Spring”

37:33 – Shenzhen speed 

40:57 – What Jonathan learned about Deng Xiaoping 

45:00 – Jonathan’s recommendations for learning more about Deng Xiaoping and the post-Mao era 

46:18 – Xi Jinping, the “end” [not sure how to phrase] of Deng’s reform and opening era, and the [parallels with the?] Chinese economic situation today 

Recommendations

Jonathan: China’s Hidden Century, edited by Jessica Harrison-Hall and Julia Lovell, produced to accompany the British Museum’s exhibition by that name; and the app Voice Dream, a text-to-speech reader 

Kaiser: Andrea Wulf’s Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self, a book about the group of German Romantics gathered in Jena, Germany 

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Shelley Rigger, Brown professor of political science at Davidson College and author of the new book The Tiger Leading the Dragon: How Taiwan Propelled China’s Economic Rise. Shelley recounts Taiwan’s rise as an export-led powerhouse and one of the Asian Tigers, and explains the wave of Taiwanese SMEs (small and medium enterprises) that transformed China into the factory to the world. She also opens a window on world-class Taiwanese companies like Foxconn, which employs some 15 million people in China and assembles some of Apple’s most iconic and consequential products, and TSMC, the world’s most valuable semiconductor company, and discusses how the island’s business relationship with China has complicated politics in Taiwan.

4:34 - The story of Chen Tian-fu, Umbrella King of Taiwan

9:27 - Explaining the psychological distance between Taiwanese and mainland Chinese

19:08 - The conditions that created the Taiwan manufacturing boom

33:42 - Why Taiwan manufacturing moved to the Mainland

48:36 - The vulnerability of Taishang on the Chinese mainland

53:03 - Moving up the value chain: Foxconn and TSMC

1:07:31 - Beyond business: the impact of Taiwan on Chinese cultural life

1:13:52 - Taiwan influence on Chinese institutions

A transcript of this interview is available on SupChina.com

Recommendations: 

Shelley: Giri/Haji, a joint BBC-Japanese crime drama on Netflix.

Kaiser: Jonathan Franzen’s new novel, Crossroads

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Michael Davidson, a leading scholar on China’s environmental policy, who holds joint appointments at UC San Diego as an assistant professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy and the Jacobs School of Engineering. Michael unpacks recent announcements out of Beijing, including Xí Jìnpíng’s 习近平 decision to cease all funding for coal-fired power plants outside of China, and explains the linkage between China’s push for non-fossil energy and the recent power shortages that have affected 20 provinces. He also explains China’s new emissions trading scheme, or ETS, and discusses what China still needs to do to meet the ambitious targets set by Xi Jinping last year: reaching peak carbon emissions by 2030, and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060. 

3:26 – Xi Jinping’s announced end to funding for coal-fired generators outside China at UNGA

12:00 – China’s recent power outages and their relationship to emissions reduction

19:32 – The basics of China’s new emissions trading scheme

38:37 – Coercive environmentalism, command-and-control, and market instruments

47:15 – Can U.S.-China competition result in a “race to the top” in emissions reduction?

54:24 – GHG reduction and the Red New Deal

A transcript of this interview is available on SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Michael: The Chair, a Netflix show starring Sandra Oh.

Kaiser: Bewilderment, the new novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory, Richard Powers

Mentioned in the show: Valerie Karplus’s paper on China’s ETS; New York Times Magazine piece on The Many Saints of Newark, a Sopranos prequel.

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This week, Kaiser chats with Manfred Elfstrom, an assistant professor in the Department of Economics, Philosophy, and Political Science at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. Manfred’s new book, Workers and Change in China: Resistance, Repression, Responsiveness, examines the state’s dynamic approach to handling labor actions — petitions, protests, strikes, and the like — and how it has blended compromise and coercion to address the demands of workers. The book makes an important contribution to a growing body of literature that seeks a deeper understanding of authoritarian governance in China and more generally among autocratic regimes. 

3:27 – How the book’s argument fits into the broader literature on authoritarian governance

9:32 – The book’s geographic focus: The Pearl River Delta and the Yangzi River Delta

22:12 – Repression and responsiveness

32:39 – Why repression and responsiveness undercut one another

43:58 – The bureaucratic incentive to handle labor unrest well

50:28 – Labor issues, common prosperity, and the “Red New Deal”

55:58 – The Jasic protests and the crackdown on the Peking University Marxist study group

A transcript of this interview is available on SupChina.com

Recommendations:

Manfred: Elizabeth Perry’s book Anyuan: Mining China’s Revolutionary Tradition; and James Green’s The Devil Is Here in These Hills: West Virginia’s Coal Miners and their Battle for Freedom.

Kaiser: The Ezra Klein Show, and particularly the episode featuring Adam Tooze, “Economics Needs to Reckon with What it Doesn’t Know.” 

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