Peking Playbook – Details, episodes & analysis

An unscripted experiment where Zichen Wang, with Robert Wu of Baiguan, talk on January 24, 2025, about top China news of the day, covering Xi Jinping’s visit to northeast China, the government’s effort to bring long-term investment into its beleaguered stock market, the emerging controversy in China on the effectiveness of generic drugs via its universal health insurance system, and recent speculation on TikTok - all in around 25 minutes with minimal editing.

This is the very first episode.

Hello! Welcome to the 9th episode of the podcast “Peking Playbook,” featuring me (Zichen Wang), Robert Wu of Baiguan and China Translated substacks, and Johnny Zou of East8.

[00:41] Robert’s experience of publishing a guest essay on the New York Times discussing China’s resolve in the trade war.

[06:32] Significance of China halting Boeing deliveries

[8:08] Jensen Huang’s China visit: Is it a slap on Trump’s face, or could the Nvidia be some sort of “go-between”?

[17:13] Bloomberg’s scoop about China’s willingness to talk, with certain preconditions. How to take it?

[19:14] Reshuffling of top China’s trade negotiator at MOFCOM: what does it mean?

[21:00] The end of Chinese law enforcement’s domestic “high-sea fishing”?

[29:05] Xi’s Southeast Asia visit

The episode was recorded around 9:30 am ET, Saturday, April 19, 2025. At the time of recording, I’m in Princeton, New Jersey.

Robert Wu’s guest essay in The New York Times: Trump Has Botched His Tariff War With China

Many China-focused English-language podcasts are online, mostly run by Western institutions and individuals. Some have tried hard to include Chinese mainland guests in their conversations. I applaud their efforts. For various reasons, their success is uneven.

I guess—or I’d like to believe—I may be in a better position to bring some Chinese voices to a global audience, so let me have a try—starting with today’s guest, Hu Bo, Research Professor and Director of the Centre for Maritime Strategy Studies of Peking University.

Professor Hu is perhaps better known as the Director of the South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative (SCSPI), which has established itself as the most internationally well-known Chinese hub for data-based research on the crucial topic of the South China Sea.

In my opinion, the SCSPI stands out for publishing data-informed reports, unlike many in China churning out, basically, opinion pieces. Among its recent work is An Incomplete Report on US Military Activities in the South China Sea in 2024, which we talk about in this podcast.

I’m glad Hu Bo is willing to shed more light on the SCSPI, for example, where it sources its data and how its research reports are authored.

In the last 1/3 of the podcast, Hu Bo also laid out China's policy and thinking toward the Philippines and other South China Sea claimants, correcting some of my misconceptions about how and why Beijing does or does not do certain things.

I have no experience producing podcasts, and as usual, this is an attempt with no funding or support from anyone. So please forgive me if I don’t sound like Kaiser Kuo on Sinica or if the production quality is terrible - there are some instances where the sound is just awful.

And one of my rookie mistakes is that throughout the podcast, I mispronounced South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative (SCSPI) for South China Sea Probing Institute, which is inexcusable.

Let me thank Yuxuan JIA for the post-recording production and Adobe Podcast for its fabulous Enhance Speech. They are lifesavers.

Please subscribe to Peking Playbook on your favorite podcast platforms, be it Apple Podcast, Spotify, or something else.

[2:45] Hu Bo introduces South China Sea Probing Initiative (SCSPI)

[5:50] Hu Bo on the sources of SCSPI data

[8:50] Hu Bo on the annual Incomplete Report on US Military Activities in the South China Sea

[15:45] Hu Bo clarifies my mischaracterization of the Chinese official attitude against the U.S. reconnaissance activities in the South China Sea

[20:20] Hu Bo talks about the U.S. military’s Island-intrusive FONOPs and Taiwan Strait Transits

[24:00] Hu Bo on the Continuously Boosted Joint Operations with Allies

[29:00] Hu Bo on the China-Philippines standoff in the South China Sea

[31:15] Hu Bo emphasizes that the Nine-Dash Line is not China’s legal base to claim territorial waters

[35:50] Hu Bo on the dispute between China and the Philippines

[40:05] Hu Bo on the Second Thomas Shoal

Happy Lunar New Year to all those who celebrate it! The top news on the last day of the lunar year of Dragon is obviously DeepSeek, the Chinese AI start-up.

You’ve probably heard Americans talk about it all day now. Here is me, Robert Wu of Baiguan and China Translated, and Johnny Zou of MJFinance talking about it after the close of the brutal trading day when Nvidia sheds nearly $600 billion.

Listen to Peking Playbook on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube Podcast, and elsewhere! Don’t forget to subscribe!

Highlights

[2:43] Is DeepSeek China’s sabotage against the US?

[10:51] How “involved” is Beijing in all of this?

[19:44] Investment strategies in a post-DeepSeek world

[24:43] Effectiveness of US export controls

[31:02] Censorship on DeepSeek

Background links

Pekingnology

CEO of DeepSeek's parent, High-Flyer Quant, spoke in 2020: Lu Zhengzhe talks about a quantitative investment model fully reliant on AI. It is from there that DeepSeek was born

Geopolitechs

An Informative Closed-Door Discussion on DeepSeek: Vision Matters More Than Technology

DeepSeek, computing, and a victory for open-source over closed-source

DeepSeek Founder Becomes a Guest of China’s Premier, on the Same Day of the R1 Model Launch

DeepSeek Launches Next-Generation Model on Par with OpenAI-o1 Official Version

Does China's DeepSeek-V3 make the computing power advantages of US AI companies less important？

DeepSeek-V3: Chinese Large Model's Commercial Path From Compute Arms Race to Pursuing Maximum Model Efficiency

Hello! Welcome to the 8th episode of the podcast “Peking Playbook,” featuring me (Zichen Wang), Robert Wu of Baiguan and China Translated substacks, and Johnny Zou of East8.

[3:30] Did Trump plan for all of this?

[12:42] Optimism about China-EU relationship

[21:06] Pessimism about China-EU relationship

[23:10] Will China see Trump’s sexemption for consumer electronics as a chance to soften its stance?

[27:13] Who in the Trump team can actually call the Chinese side now?

[30:31] The hope for China’s domestic demand stimulation

[35:11] What’s the right policy to boost domestic demand?

[39:58] Where does the money to boost domestic demand come from?

[47:01] Are Chinese assets in the US in danger of confiscation?

The episode was recorded on night of Saturday, April 12, ET.

On Monday, April 7, I was invited to the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), a 70-year-old nonpartisan think tank, to talk in front of an audience with Neysun A. Mahboubi, a Non-Resident Senior Fellow with the FPRI Asia Program as well as Director of the Penn Project on the Future of US-China Relations at the University of Pennsylvania.

The title of the program A Grand Bargain Between the US and China? was finalized less than a month ago, and I was called in at the 11th hour to take the stage. In the hour-long program, which also includes Q&A with the audience, we instead had to talk about the ongoing tariff war.

The FPRI posted the videotaped event on YouTube and generously allowed me to extract the audio and post it as a podcast. Adobe Podcast’s Enhance Speech was used to improve the sound quality in the process.

Basically, I shared my observation that the Chinese response to Washington’s bullying was not at all unexpected and that Beijing would not back down from the extreme pressure.

At the time of this post, President Donald Trump raised the tariff on Chinese imports to 125% on Wednesday, hours after China boosted the duty on American goods to 84%. He also hit pause on the trade war with other countries for 90 days, levying only 10% surcharge in tariffs on them.

Hello! Welcome to the 7th episode of the podcast “Peking Playbook,” mainly featuring me (Zichen Wang) and Robert Wu of Baiguan and China Translated substacks, just talking about recent news. Today, we have Johnny Zou of East8 join us as well. Johnny was with us on the January 28 episode.

In the following 43-minute conversation recorded on Sunday morning ET, April 6, 2025, we talked about:

[00:46] Tariff, first impressions

[09:46] Is the US underestimating China?

[15:00] How would countries from Japan to Vietnam respond?

[22:44] Will China have closer integration with the rest of the world or more trade friction?

[29:27] Investment strategy post-”Liberation Day”

[35:48] How will this affect China’s domestic demand

[40:02] Zichen: shoutout to a Pekingnology piece on some science reporting in SCMP

[40:54] Johnny: We shouldn’t ignore RCEP, which could be important for this tariff war

Hello! Welcome to the 6th episode of the podcast “Peking Playbook,” mainly featuring me (Zichen Wang) and Robert Wu, of Baiguan and China Translated substacks, just talking about recent news.

In the following 39-minute conversation recorded on Saturday evening ET, March 29, 2025, we talked about:

[00:52] Xi met global CEOs

[04:25] What’s more serious for foreign businesses in China, organic domestic competition or the alleged policy discrimination?

[10:00] Some Western firms (such as top consulting firms) are facing pressure at home to do business with China

[12:06] There is also discrimination against local businesses, benefiting the foreign businesses.

[15:22] Bo’ao and the discussion to increase pension payments for farmers

[21:12] Trump's tariffs on all auto imports and their indirect impact on China

[25:20] SOE automaker consolidation policy, as a counter-argument against the idea that China’s EV sector was successful mainly because of government support

[27:48] The US is doing it wrong when it comes to supporting its own auto industry

[30:57] YouTuber IShowSpeed in China

[36:23] A new English-language book “Should the World Fear China?” by Zhou Bo, retired Senior Colonel of the PLA, on Taiwan and for China to get rid of the mindset of victimhood.

For reference:

Hello! Welcome to the 5th episode of the podcast “Peking Playbook,” mainly featuring me and Robert Wu, of Baiguan and China Translated, just talking about recent news.

In the following half-hour conversation recorded on Sunday evening ET, March 23, 2025, we talked about

[01:32] Some observations during Zichen’s ongoing study at the mid-career Master in Public Policy (MPP) program at Princeton School of Public and International Affairs

[04:40] The ongoing controversy regarding CK Hutchison’s coerced Panama ports sale

[20:16] New top-level policy document dedicated to boosting domestic demand

[27:03] China Development Forum

[29:16] Will Xi and Trump meet soon?

Hello! Welcome to the 4th episode of the on-and-off podcast that has been tentatively named “Peking Playbook,” mainly featuring me and Robert Wu, of Baiguan and China Translated, just talking about recent news.

In the following half-hour conversation recorded on Sunday morning ET, March 9, 2025, we touched on

[00:56] Two Sessions?

[03:31] Birth subsidies

[06:33] 1-trillion-yuan state VC fund?

[11:33] China’s retaliatory tariff on US agricultural products

[17:32] Trump’s impact on stock market confidence

[19:47] TSMC’s $100b investment in the US

At the time of the recording, I was in Princeton, New Jersey and Robert is in Shanghai.