Sinica Podcast (Kaiser Kuo)

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Jeremy and Kaiser are joined by Benjamin Shobert, who visited the Sinica South studio in Durham, North Carolina, for this episode. He is a senior manager at Healthcare NExT, a healthcare initiative of Microsoft, and leads strategy with national governments. The topic of discussion is his compelling book, Blaming China: It Might Feel Good but It Won’t Fix America’s Economy. The three discuss the taxonomy of dragon slayers and panda huggers, and some realities with which the world is now grappling: the rise of China, outcomes of globalization, the watershed moment of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and the impact it has had — and will continue to have — on the bilateral relationship between the United States and China. What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast: 13:06: Ben talks about how, in 2016, traditional messaging by American politicians on the campaign trail in regard to China changed significantly: “...and to see [Mitt Romney] in the Rust Belt states talking quite vociferously about China as a near-peer threat and the source of economic anxieties…that was a signal.” 21:39: Ben explains the outsize role that the American Midwest has played in shaping the modern U.S.-China relationship: “Geographically, literally in parts of the American Midwest that matter to where this relationship goes, where there’s a realization that ‘China is not going to look like the way we thought, and I don’t know if we’re comfortable with that.’” 35:54: Ben reflects on the compatibility of views between “panda huggers” and “dragon slayers.” Is there any common ground between the two? “It’s almost as if this is a board game, and it’s not actual people making hard decisions in the context of different political systems, different cultures, different histories, and again the subtext for me in all of this is the United States during this modern global era has not been tending to its own knitting.” 37:24: “This is one of those conversations where if you get six people of both political persuasions in the same room, you’ll get more or less six people that agree: we need to invest more in infrastructure, we need to invest in healthcare and social spending, and yet, at the end of the day we didn’t do that. So we’re talking about China from this point of view of just extraordinary insecurity. Again, how much of that is because of what China has done? How much of that is because of things we haven’t?” Recommendations: Jeremy: Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors and the Drug Company that Addicted America, by Beth Macy, a nonfiction book that charts the opioid crisis in the United States. Ben: Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town, by Brian Alexander, a story of Lancaster, Ohio, and the upheavals globalization brought to the community Kaiser: Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age, by Stephen R. Platt, plus its (exceptional) audiobook narration by Mark Deakens.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

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 Danny Russel, career diplomat and former assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs from 2013 to 2017, and currently vice president for international security and diplomacy at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI). The conversation centers on all things diplomatic in East and Southeast Asia: the Trans-Pacific Partnership; internet freedom in China; the country’s “illiberal turn”; espionage and intellectual property theft during his time in Washington; the Obama administration’s position on the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB); and, finally, reflections on the current state of the U.S.-China relationship. What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast: 3:20: Kaiser begins the discussion with a question about the characterization of the Obama administration’s regional strategy, the “Pivot to East Asia.” Russel maintains that “[Barack Obama]…understood intellectually and understood viscerally, that America’s economic development, that America’s security interests and America’s future, was inextricably linked to the Asia-Pacific region, which was clearly the driver of global growth.” 38:25: Assistant Secretary Russel elaborates on the driving forces behind the “illiberal turn” that has fueled anxieties among China-watchers. “It felt as if the impact of the 2008 financial crisis had sent a pulse through Chinese thinking. This pulse seemed to dispel the long-held notion that there was something to respect, and to perhaps imitate, in the Western economic model.” 57:31: “If China’s going to throw a lot of money behind the laudable objective of promoting infrastructure development in Asia, why doesn’t it use the Asian Development Bank, or the World Bank, or some of the existing mechanisms that are proven institutions? And if then, if China is going to create not a national bank, but an international development bank, the starting point for any new multilateral banking institution had better be the high-water mark in terms of standards and operations that have been achieved over the last 70 years by the existing multilateral banks.” 59:00: “Early on in the time of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank’s conception, it was all label and no substance. What we were seeing, and hearing was that China was asking governments to buy what was a pig in a poke.” 1:05:36: Kaiser raises a question regarding the anxieties that have taken root between Washington and Beijing and now are straining the relationship, some deserved and others unfounded. “We’re seeing what’s almost a perfect storm in which the accumulated frustration and unhappiness among so many different elements of U.S. society, and so many stakeholders that traditionally have supported the U.S.-China relationship,” Assistant Secretary Russel comments on the continually worsening state of affairs, as there is a the “diminished willingness to speak up” in defense of the relationship. Recommendations: Assistant Secretary Russel: No book or show, but rather a plea for public service; the Foreign Service, joining a non-governmental organization, nonprofit work, etc. Kaiser: Educated, by Tara Westover, a memoir of a young girl raised in a fundamentalist, survivalist Mormon family in Idaho.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today, we bring you a special live panel discussion from the 2018 Harvard College China Forum on China's international relations. The panelists are: Jiang Changjian – associate professor of international studies, Fudan University; host, The Brain (最强大脑 zuìqiángdànǎo) Ira Kasoff – senior counselor, APCO Worldwide; former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of commerce Anthony Saich – professor of international affairs, Harvard Kennedy School; director, the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation The discussion of today's China and its influence in the world often centers on this question: How much has China's foreign policy changed since Deng Xiaoping famously advocated in the 1980s that the country should "conceal its strengths and bide its time" (韬光养晦 tāoguāngyǎnghuì), and how much does the recent change originate from Xi Jinping? Our panelists have different interpretations of the question, and address it from many angles, including, of course, the big ones: U.S.-China trade, the Belt and Road, the South China Sea, and the Korean nuclear crisis. 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 Nury Turkel, a prominent voice in the overseas Uyghur community and the chairman of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, now based in Washington, D.C. We discussed Nury’s own experiences as a Uyghur and an activist both in China and the United States; the increasingly vocal Uyghur diaspora around the world in the wake of widespread detentions in Xinjiang; the relative absence of state-level pushback outside of China; and the international organizations that advocate for Uyghur rights in China and the accompanying pushback from Beijing. If you aren’t yet up to speed on the deteriorating state of affairs for Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region, take a look at SupChina’s explainer for a comprehensive overview of the reporting of information from October 2017 through August 2018. What to listen for this week on the Sinica Podcast: 13:13: Nury elaborates on the most significant inflection points in the relationship between Xinjiang and Beijing: “The ethnic tension, the political repression, has already been there. But it has gotten worse over time. Starting in the mid-’90s, 2001, 2009, 2016. And now what we’re seeing is probably the darkest period in Uyghur history.” 22:11: Discussion of the goals of international organizations involved in documenting and researching Xinjiang and the plight of the Uyghurs, the largest being the World Uyghur Congress based in Munich, the Uyghur American Association based in Washington, D.C., and the Uyghur Human Rights Project, which Nury co-founded in 2004. Kaiser, Jeremy, and Nury discuss the ties to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the sharp rebuke these ties draw from Beijing. 33:19: “It is mind-boggling that, to this day, since this current nightmare started about 18 months ago, no Muslim country, no Muslim leader, has criticized the Chinese government in the slightest,” Nury said in response to a question raised by Jeremy about the growing trend of Islamophobia in China. 40:15: Nury notes that there is reason for optimism, despite the dire circumstances Uyghur residents in Xinjiang now face. “I think the current political environment in China has given an opportunity for the Uyghurs’ voice to be heard.” He continues, “This is a critical movement in Uyghur history. This is a terrible [humanitarian] crisis as it has been portrayed by some U.S. lawmakers. But, at the same time, this issue has put the Uyghurs on an international map.” Recommendations: Jeremy: Maus (1 and 2), graphic novels by American cartoonist Art Spiegelman. Nury: The Uyghur Human Rights Project report The Mass Internment of Uyghurs. Also: The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History, by Rian Thum; The Uyghurs: Strangers in Their Own Land, by Gardner Bovingdon; and Eurasian Crossroads, by Jim Millward. Kaiser: Harry Belafonte’s 1959 live album, At Carnegie Hall.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

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 chat with Wendy Cutler, vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute, about a new paper she has authored that calls for coordination between the U.S. and other countries in managing issues related to China trade. She makes the case for working through the WTO and other multilateral organizations, and explains why China is more apt to respond more positively to multilateral over bi- or unilateral approaches. What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast: 4:08: American and Chinese economic advisers Robert Lighthizer and Liu He are said to be inching toward finalizing an agreement on bilateral trade in the early weeks of May. To begin, Wendy offers some insight into what developments could come: “I think we’re going to see a pretty robust agreement between the United States and China. It’ll have up to 150 pages of commitments, including market access commitments, purchasing commitments, structural reform commitments, as well as an enforcement mechanism to make sure China lives up to its obligations under the commitments.” 16:11: Wendy suggests that the building of new coalitions may be necessary, given the difficulty in gathering the 164 votes from each World Trade Organization member country needed for a formal agreement, and urges openness on collaboration on different issues with a wider range of partners. “What we’re advocating is that the United States doesn’t get fixated on working with the same countries on certain issues… If the United States has concerns, chances are other countries have concerns, too. So reach out to other countries and see if, at a minimum, you can share information, and maybe, at a maximum, coordinate responses or even send joint representations to China on what needs to be changed. There’s a range of options.” 25:28: What of investment restrictions on Chinese companies in the United States? Wendy elaborates on her suggested strategy: “We suggest that the United States work and coordinate with other countries to see what they’re doing in this area. Because, for the United States, we don’t want to see a situation where we put so many restrictions on Chinese access to our market, and then China just turns elsewhere. Our measures are then less effective.” 29:41: Could this approach lead to a less antagonistic relationship with China, at least regarding trade? Wendy explains: “My hope is that with a U.S.-China trade agreement in the offing, I think, once again, we’re in the endgame and we’ll see a trade agreement soon. We’ll see, at least on the trade front, a reduction in tensions in this area and hopefully this reduction will maybe spread to other areas. I do think we’re in a new world now — that there’s going to be tensions between the United States and China in all of these areas — but I’m hopeful that through the close contacts our negotiators have forged as a result of the U.S.-China trade talks, that this could help deescalate a lot of tensions as they are emerging…” Recommendations: Jeremy: A free bird identification app called Merlin Bird ID, produced by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Wendy: Finding a few songs to help the Chinese and U.S. negotiators to get through the highs and lows of international trade talks. Kaiser: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, by John Carreyrou.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

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 chat with Matthew Kohrman, associate professor of anthropology at Stanford University, about his work on China’s tobacco industry – and why China isn’t doing more to curb smoking. His new book on the subject is titled Poisonous Pandas: Chinese Cigarette Manufacturing in Critical Historical Perspectives. Recommendations: Matthew: Jia Zhangke, a Guy From Fenyang. In this documentary, Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles accompanies the prolific Chinese director Jia Zhangke 贾樟柯 on a walk down memory lane, as he revisits his hometown and other locations used in creating his ever-growing body of work. You can stream it on Netflix. Kaiser: Cigarette Citadels Map, an interactive project that aims to locate all factories producing cigarettes worldwide and expose information about their practices. And Calypso, David Sedaris's new story collection. Jeremy: Arbor Day Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the world greener and healthier by planting trees. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Fakes, knockoffs, pirate goods, counterfeits: China is notorious as the global manufacturing center of all things ersatz. But in the first decade after the People’s Republic joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, a particular kind of knockoff began to capture the public imagination: products that imitate but do not completely replicate the designs, functions, technology, logos and names of existing branded products. An old Chinese word meaning “mountain fortress” — shanzhai — was repurposed to describe this type of knockoff. Chinese internet users began to use the word shanzhai with a degree of approval. This was partly because shanzhai products, though aping the designs and names of established brands, often add innovations that the originals lack. This is particularly notable with mobile phones, the shanzhai versions of which were among the first to feature more than one camera lens and the capacity to use two SIM cards from different networks. Starting around 2008, the creativity and speed of release of such knockoff products began to be discussed as a type of innovation with Chinese characteristics and a creative approach suited to a poor country developing at breakneck speed. This episode of Sinica is a conversation about shanzhai and the whole universe of Chinese knockoff culture with Fan Yang, an assistant professor in the Department of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the author of the book Faked in China: Nation Branding, Counterfeit Culture, and Globalization. You can read the SupChina backgrounder here. Recommendations: Jeremy: A Guide to the Mammals of China, edited by Andrew T. Smith and Yan Xie; A Field Guide to the Birds of China, by John MacKinnon and Karen Phillipps, in collaboration with He Fenqi; Beijing Bird Guide (野鸟图鉴), edited by Gao Wu. Fan: The Zhongshuge Bookstore in Hangzhou; Wei Zhuang, a branch of the famous Zhiweiguan restaurant (established in 1913) in Hangzhou. Kaiser: Underground Airlines, by Ben Winters. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Andy Rothman has interpreted the Chinese economy for people who have serious and practical decisions to make since his early career heading up macroeconomic research at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. He is now an investment strategist for Matthews Asia, where he continues to focus on the Chinese economy and writes the Sinology column. His analysis often diverges from what’s in the headlines, and the contrast between Andy’s interpretation and the dominant, deeply gloomy media narrative of the last year or more is especially pronounced. In this podcast, Sinica hosts Jeremy and Kaiser ask Andy to explain why he’s still bullish after all this time. Don't miss our backgrounder for this episode, "The truth about the Chinese economy, from debt to ghost cities," and a Q&A with Andy, in which he talks about how he got started in China. Recommendations: Jeremy: The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War, by Michael Shaara, and Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, by James M. McPherson. Andy: The Man Who Stayed Behind, by Sidney Rittenberg, and After the Bitter Comes the Sweet: How One Woman Weathered the Storms of China's Recent History, by Yulin Rittenberg. Kaiser: The Honeycrisp apple cultivar. 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, we’re live from the US-China Business Council’s Forecast 2019 Conference in Washington, D.C. This show was recorded on January 31 — the day (and hour) that Donald Trump met with China’s top official in charge of trade negotiations, Liu He. Kaiser and Jeremy spoke with Tim Stratford, the chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in the People's Republic of China, and with Craig Allen, the president of the US-China Business Council. Stratford has also headed the leading law firm Covington’s office in China for many years, while Allen has had a long career representing American economic interests at the Department of Commerce and in the State Department, most recently as the U.S. ambassador to Brunei. The wide-ranging conversation covers everything from technology policies to the structural changes that China is being asked to make to address U.S. complaints over unfair trade practices. What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast: “If you want a quiet life, don’t study China.” —Ambassador J. Stapleton Roy, per Craig Allen 5:22: Tim offers an analogy to describe the U.S.-China competitive relationship: a football match with one side playing American style, the other playing English style. “So, think of a Chinese SOE as an American-style football player that’s protected — it can receive subsidies and it can receive other protections from the state and it’s competing against, say, an American company that’s out there to play English-style football — and you can see how there could be an injury.” 15:14: The foreign business community, previously a reliable ballast in the bilateral relationship between the U.S. and China, has soured in recent years. According to Tim, results in the annual Business Climate Review conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce in China were shocking, with 75 to 80 percent of its membership saying they feel less welcome than in the past. He explains: “There’s a credibility gap that still needs to be addressed, and I also think that a lot of things that have been offered up by the government have not really addressed the core structural issues we’ve been addressing.” 24:48: Is the Trump administration committed to technological decoupling? Craig notes: “There is a sense that seems to be shared between national security elites both in Beijing and in Washington — that both countries are too interdependent from a supply chain and technological perspective… It is clear that a lot of new thought is going into our export control plans and to our investment regimes, and it is very likely that the tightening up of both of those programs are going to have an effect on supply chains and innovation.” 30:48: To finish the live show, Tim and Craig do a bit of forecasting for the new year. Tim contends, “It’s going to take a little bit longer than just one year. I think it’s going to take three, four, or five years, even.” Craig emphasizes the relative health of the U.S. and Chinese economies, stating, “My hope is that both governments will both congeal around the rules that both have formally agreed to under the WTO and find common ground in the technology, trade, and investment space.” Recommendations: Jeremy: Civics study materials for the United States naturalization test, and Hello Gold Mountain, an original composition by Wu Fei for chamber orchestra, which tells the story of Jews who fled Europe for Shanghai after World War II. Craig: Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, by Francis Fukuyama. Tim: “Building a better deal with China,” by Scott Kennedy and Daniel H. Rosen. Kaiser: The Water Margin Podcast: Outlaws of the Marsh, by John Zhu, a retelling of one of the four classic Chinese novels in English.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ken Liu is a science-fiction writer, translator, computer programmer, and lawyer. He has written two novels and more than 100 short stories. His short story “The Paper Menagerie” is the first work of fiction, of any length, to win all three of the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards. Among his translations are two of the three parts of the Chinese science-fiction hit The Three-Body Problem, by Liu Cixin. In this episode of the Sinica Podcast, Ken talks to Kaiser and Jeremy about his own work, the significance of The Three-Body Problem in the Chinese literary world, and the current state of Chinese science fiction. Recommendations: Jeremy: Understanding China Through Comics series, by Liu Jing: Foundations of Chinese Civilization: The Yellow Emperor to the Han Dynasty, Division to Unification in Imperial China: The Three Kingdoms to the Tang Dynasty, and Barbarians and the Birth of Chinese Identity: The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms to the Yuan Dynasty. Ken: Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat, by Bee Wilson. Kaiser: Deadwood TV series. References: The Three-Body trilogy, by Liu Cixin: The Three-Body Problem, translated by Ken Liu, The Dark Forest, translated by Joel Martinsen, and Death’s End, translated by Ken Liu. Invisible Planets: An anthology of contemporary Chinese science fiction, translated by Ken Liu. Fiction by Ken Liu: The Grace of Kings, The Wall of Storms (read an excerpt on SupChina here), and The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories.   See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, Kaiser chats with Huihan Lie, founder of the genealogical research startup MyChinaRoots, and with two of his colleagues, Clotilde Yap and Chrislyn Choo. The three have fascinating things to say about why a growing number of people are taking a new interest in their ancestry in China, how their company goes about finding information on the family histories of people even several generations removed from China, and some of the surprising and occasionally scandalous things they unearth when they start digging. What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast: 5:17: While working as a consultant, Huihan began to research his own family history on the side. He describes the meaning of the experience to him: “I went to some ancestral villages on my father’s and my mother’s side, and I had never felt such a deep impact, such a personal connection to myself, to history, also to my parents, my family, and my grandfather. And as I started speaking to other people about my experience, I noticed the effect that it had on them.” 21:57: What are some of the methods that the team at MyChinaRoots uses to investigate undocumented family lines? Clotilde says that there are sometimes extraordinary clues written on tombstones, where ancestors “would have transcribed their names depending on the dialect that they spoke, but also the language that they spoke in the country of arrival.” She adds that some Chinese graves include not only the names of ancestors but also their hometowns back in China. 24:54: What remained of Confucian-rooted family records, or 族谱 zúpǔ, which one could assume were destroyed, after the Cultural Revolution? Huihan explains that their success rate of finding these records are quite high, roughly 80 percent. “A lot of it, of course, has [been destroyed]. But very importantly, in the south, there was a big resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s of clans getting back together and, basically, elderly villagers doing a collective brain dump and reestablishing and republishing their collective family records.” 51:14: In a race against time, the team at MyChinaRoots is making efforts to preserve family histories as well as investigate them. They are in the process of creating an online database for customers to interact and connect with relatives. Huihan tells Kaiser that there is “nothing left” of his own mother’s ancestral village, stating, “What we feel strongly about is preserving these cultural treasures because we wouldn’t want to stop economic development, even if we could. But what we can do is preserve cultural heritage online, and let it live on virtually.” Recommendations: Clotilde: A food blog on modern Chinese cooking, The Omnivore’s Cookbook, complete with starter kits and a guide to essential Chinese spices and ingredients. Chrislyn: The one-stop shop for pop culture television, TV Tropes. Huihan: “Haitian Fight Song,” by Charles Mingus — in Huihan’s words, the “most intense, greasy, fat, ugly, in-your-face music” available. Kaiser: A Richmond, Virginia-based band named Collin Phils, which Kaiser saw live in Chapel Hill. Soon to be headed to tour throughout China — check out the tour dates on the website.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Fifty years ago, Mao Zedong launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, inaugurating a decade of political turmoil with his calls for young people to "bombard the headquarters." In this special live edition of our podcast recorded at The Bookworm Literary Festival in March, Kaiser Kuo and David Moser welcome Melinda Liu, the longtime China bureau chief of Newsweek for a discussion of the 50th anniversary of this definitive event. Melinda shares stories about her brother, who remained in China after the civil war and experienced it firsthand. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A spate of suicides leaves ten dead at the Shenzhen campus of Foxconn, the giant electronics manufacturer that makes many of the world's most popular consumer electronics. A rare strike paralyzes production at Honda Motors, shutting down all of the company's manufacturing lines in the country. In response, both companies offer substantial concessions to workers, causing many to ask if this marks the end of China's reign as the low-cost "workshop to the world"? This week on Sinica, host Kaiser Kuo welcomes Kathleen McLaughlin, a prolific reporter for the Bureau of National Affairs and Global Post who has written extensively on electronics manufacturing trends in China. We're also joined by Jonathan Watts, Beijing-based correspondent for The Guardian, who is just back from a visit to the massive Foxconn facility in Shenzhen. Also with us is Danwei founder Jeremy Goldkorn. We look at the problems afflicting labor in China: are these simply the result of poor working conditions, or is there more at work here? See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

  “We hear, in the media and in comments by politicians, a lot of very glib statements that oversimplify China, that suggest all of China is one thing or one way,” says Michael Szonyi, a professor of Chinese history and director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. China, of course, is as complicated as — if not more complicated than — any other country, and misunderstandings about it among Americans are both common and consequential. The relationship with China is “arguably — in anyone’s estimation — the most important bilateral relationship that the U.S. has,” says Jennifer Rudolph, a professor of modern Chinese political history at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Jennifer and Michael edited a book to address 36 questions that ordinary people, especially Americans, ask about China. The book is titled The China Questions: Critical Insights Into a Rising Power, and it draws on the expertise of the Fairbank Center and prompts these accomplished academics to write 2,000-word essays for a general audience that they typically never aim to reach. View the entire list of questions on the Harvard University Press website. A sampling: “Is the Chinese Communist Regime Legitimate?” (by Elizabeth J. Perry) “Is There Environmental Awareness in China?” (by Karen Thornber) “Will China Lead Asia?” (by Odd Arne Westad) “What Does the Rise of China Mean for the United States?” (by Robert S. Ross) “Can China and Japan Ever Get Along?” (by Ezra F. Vogel) “Will Urbanization Save the Chinese Economy or Destroy It?” (by Meg Rithmire) “Why Does the End of the One-Child Policy Matter?” (by Susan Greenhalgh) “Why Do Classic Chinese Novels Matter?” (by Wai-yee Li) Recommendations: Jeremy: Drawn Together: The Collected Works of R. and A. Crumb, by Robert Crumb and Aline Kominsky-Crumb. The husband-and-wife pair became known for their funny, vulgar comics in the late 1970s, though Robert’s zany work goes back a decade earlier. Jennifer: Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, by Katherine Boo. A work of creative nonfiction about a young boy and his family, and how the system is stacked against them. Michael: The Fairbank Center website, which features a blog and a podcast. Also, Michael’s new book, titled The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China. And The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World, by Greg Grandin. Kaiser: The North Water: A Novel, by Ian McGuire. A dramatic tale that includes whaling, murder, and brutality, and whose overall flavor Kaiser describes as Joseph Conrad meets Cormac McCarthy meets Herman Melville meets Jack London. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, Kaiser chats with Paul Haenle, who is the Maurice R. Greenberg Director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, and previously served on the National Security Council as a staffer under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Their conversation — which runs the gamut from North Korea to Taiwan to the Belt and Road — was recorded live at Schwarzman College in Beijing on September 6. Recommendations: Paul: The China in the World podcast, which he hosts, and which recently published its 100th episode. The work of Tong Zhao, a North Korea scholar at the Carnegie-Tsinghua. “Singapore Sham,” a highly critical article by Jessica Matthews about the Trump-Kim summit. And The Impossible State, a podcast about North Korea by four experts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Kaiser: Listennotes.com, where you can find topics and people in podcasts all neatly sorted and searchable.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What is the state of the art of artificial intelligence (AI) in China and the United States? How does language recognition differ for Chinese and English? And what’s up with self-driving cars? To answer these and many other questions, Kaiser and Jeremy talk to Andrew Ng, founder and chairman of Coursera, an associate professor in the department of computer science at Stanford University, and the chief scientist of Baidu, where he heads up the company’s research on deep learning and AI. The discussion delves into the differences between Chinese and American engineers, entrepreneurial culture in China, artificial neural networks, augmented reality, and the role big internet companies and their resources play in advancing AI. Check out the SupChina backgrounder on their conversation here. Recommendations: Jeremy: Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen by Larry McMurtry, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove and co-writer of the screenplay of Brokeback Mountain. Andrew: Talking to Humans (free download). Kaiser: Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart, the series from The New York Times on the Arab Spring and its aftermath, by Scott Anderson. Download this episode. Subscribe on Overcast, iTunes or Stitcher, tune in with your favorite app using our feed or check out the Sinica archives. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Lucy Hornby is a China correspondent for the Financial Times. She has previously been on Sinica to speak about China’s last surviving comfort women and about women’s representation in China expertise. Li Shuo is the Senior Climate & Energy Policy Officer for Greenpeace East Asia. He oversees Greenpeace’s work on air pollution, water, and renewable energy, and also coordinates the organization’s engagement with the United Nations climate negotiation. Lucy returns to the podcast to discuss her reporting on Chinese environmental challenges — particularly overfishing and soil pollution — issues that Li Shuo, on the pod for the first time, has also researched. Recommendations: Jeremy: “The Anaconda and the Elephant,” an essay by Xu Zhiyuan 许知远 about self-censorship and how to be a Chinese writer in these strange times under Xi Jinping. Lucy: The latest book of her FT colleague Richard McGregor: Asia's Reckoning: China, Japan, and the Fate of U.S. Power in the Pacific Century. McGregor previously wrote The Party, a popular book among those wanting an in-depth look at Chinese politics. Li Shuo: A Chinese book called huanjing waijiaoguan shouji (环境外交官手记; “Notes of an Environmental Diplomat”), an autobiography of one of China’s early environmental diplomats, Xia Kunbao 夏堃堡. He was born in the 1940s, learned English, lived through the Cultural Revolution, and ended up at the highest levels of environmental governance in China. The book is written in fairly simple, short sentences. Kaiser: Washington Post reporter David Weigel’s new book, The Show That Never Ends: The Rise and Fall of Prog Rock. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"Under the Dome," Chai Jing's breakout documentary on China's catastrophic air pollution problem, finally hit insurmountable political opposition last Friday after seven days in which the video racked up over 200 million views. The eventual clampdown raised many questions about the extent of internal support for the documentary. In this episode of Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and David Moser interview Calvin Quek of Greenpeace, who works on pollution problems and has significant experience lobbying the private sector to curtail investments into the worst-offending, environmentally unsustainable technologies. We are also joined by Peggy Liu, chairperson of JUCCCE (Joint US-China Collaboration on Clean Energy), a non-profit organization focused on Chinese government training and other green initiatives. Recommendations: Kaiser: “Travels with My Censor,” by Peter Hessler for The New Yorker. “The 'Deaf' Composer Who Fooled a Nation,” by Christopher Beam for The New Republic. Peggy: The China Coal Consumption Cap Plan and Policy Research Project and A New Way to Eat. Calvin: “The Most Brilliant Politician You Never Knew,” by Beverly Murray at Back That Sass Up. David: “China's carbon emissions could save the world—or doom it,” by Hudson Lockett for China Economic Review   See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On April 15, 2010, on the 21st anniversary of former Party Secretary Hu Yaobang’s death, Premier Wen Jiabao published an essay to eulogize his former mentor in the People’s Daily. On April 15, 1989, the death of this foreign-minded general secretary of the Communist Party famously touched off the student demonstration of that year. It is a highly-emotional essay, which recalls a trip he took to Guizhou in 1986 with Hu Yaobang, a good friend of his that he worked with and admired. He particularly emphasizes Hu’s qualities, especially the populist rhetoric that he learned and now applies. In today's episode, we first visit this speech and ask what it really tells us about the political landscape in China. Does it telegraph an ongoing rift between a “populist” faction headed by Wen Jiabao, Hu Jintao, and Li Keqiang and a competing “princeling” elite represented by Xi Jinping? Early in the morning of April 14th, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake leveled roughly 90 percent of the buildings in Yushu County in southern Qinghai Province. So far more than 2000 people are now reported dead, and practically the entire population of the affected area is living in tents or in temporary housing. Qinghai, and particularly this area of Qinghai, is heavily Tibetan. This dimension of the quake as well as Beijing’s handling of the rescue have become part of the focus of the story. Is the ethnic dimension of the rescue overplayed by Western media? Do encounters between Tibetan monks and Chinese government officials demonstrate tension or a successful relationship? How does the government’s ability to deliver disaster relief relate to the historical concept of the Mandate of the Heaven? Joining Kaiser Kuo this week are Gady Epstein, Beijing bureau chief for Forbes magazine and Guardian correspondent Tania Branigan, fresh back in Beijing after a reporting trip to the remote earthquake region and with a first-hand account of the rescue efforts there. We're also joined by Jeremiah Jenne, Dean of Chinese Studies at the IES program in Beijing, who helps put both events in historical perspective. You may know Jeremiah as Qing historian and author of the blog Jottings from the Granite Studio. References: Returning to Xingyi, Remembering Hu Yaobang, by Wen Jiabao After Quake, Tibetans Distrust China’s Help, by Andrew Jacobs Robert Barnett on the Qinghai Earthquake, by the China Beat See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Washington Post recently published an open letter signed by five scholars and former government officials: M. Taylor Fravel, Stapleton Roy, Michael Swaine, Susan Thornton, and Ezra Vogel. The letter laid out seven main arguments for why the U.S. should not treat China as an enemy, and not surprisingly, the letter got a lot of pushback from more hawkish China-watchers. This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy talk to Michael Swaine, the primary author of the open letter, about the origins and intentions of the letter and the reactions to it. Michael is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast: 17:40: Michael expands on a point highlighted in the letter that was met with criticism from the wider community — “We do not believe Beijing is an economic enemy or an existential national security threat that must be confronted in every sphere” — which he says was “in part intended to try to get at [the] point that [China] is not a predatory economic entity, as the White House tends to describe it.” He acknowledges economic malfeasance by China, but pushes back on prevailing opinions on Pennsylvania Avenue regarding China’s approach to trade with the United States, noting that “of course, it’s based upon this one-dimensional, categorical, hair-on-fire notion that the Chinese are this predatory economic entity that’s out to screw everybody except themselves. It’s a fundamentally cartoonish depiction of what China is.” 27:27: What do Chinese leaders think of the United States leadership and its change of posture in the past few years? Michael speculates on where he thinks the Chinese bureaucracy’s mind is regarding foreign policy, arguing that, while there may be two highly polarized parties on either end of the spectrum, Xi Jinping lies somewhere between the two: “Xi Jinping may actually be in that middle ground, not in terms of domestic policy, but in terms of foreign policy. That is to say, he recognizes, or he thinks that, China can’t get out of the world, it can’t un-integrate from the world, it’s got to keep on trying to work with the world. And there are very concrete reasons why the United States and China, even though they may not like each other in terms of values and such, they have to cooperate.” He goes on to explain the shock that the leadership felt from the policy shifts after the 2016 election: “The Chinese leadership were taken aback by the rapidity and the extremity of the shift in the Trump administration against China. They didn’t quite expect it. They didn’t see it coming.” 36:52: What of the U.S.-China relationship beyond the current era of Trump? What should U.S. policymakers and interlocutors be articulating to their counterparts in Beijing? Michael provides his view: “We from China, a country with whom we can engage on issues that are vital to both countries and the world, we want a China whose interests are going to be supportive of continued global economic growth and development, and we want a China who is not bellicose or intimidating, through military arms, its neighbors…and that it needs to work with other parts of the international order in order to establish a more common approach to these security issues, economic issues, et cetera,” 46:05: What is the most effective approach in the U.S.-China relationship? Has the West “created a monster,” as described by Janos Kornai in a recent Financial Times article, or is there a case for reciprocity? Michael says that we “need to implement policies that are more based upon the idea of mutual accommodation,” and emphasizes the “problematic” view that “there is no such thing as mutual accommodation with the Chinese, because the Chinese will take what you give and they will pocket it and give you absolutely nothing in return.” He adds, “I think the historical record does not support that.” Recommendations: Jeremy: Read the letter ‘China is not an enemy’ in the Washington Post. Michael: Check out the exhibit on the pre-Raphaelites in the United States, located in the National Gallery in Washington, or just check out some art in general. Kaiser: The music of Anais Mitchell, a folk singer/songwriter, and the musical author behind the musical Hadestown. 

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When journalist Bill Lascher received an old typewriter from his grandmother and was told it belonged to “my cousin the war correspondent,” he set off on a search to learn more about the life of Melville (“Mel”) Jacoby, who reported from the front lines of the conflict in China during World War II. Mel and his wife, Annalee Whitmore Jacoby, met many of the key figures of the day, from Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek to General Douglas MacArthur; worked as propagandists for the KMT; and ended up fleeing from Manila to hide in the caves beneath Corregidor with MacArthur’s troops. In this podcast, Kaiser and Jeremy talk to Bill about his discovery of the fascinating life story of his first cousin twice removed: from Mel’s romance with his wife, Annalee, to his multimedia journalism, and from his harrowing brushes with the Japanese to his evolving attitudes toward China. You can also read an excerpt from Eve of a Hundred Midnights and find a list of background reading materials here. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

John Holden has one word of advice for people trying to understand China: humility. "Anybody who tries to come to grips with China, a country with a very rich civilization, a long history... You just have to be humble in recognizing that there are things you will get wrong, things you will miss," he says around the 36-minute mark of this week's episode. John is one to know. After completing his master's degree in Chinese language and literature at Stanford University in 1980, he worked on a project to translate the Encyclopedia Britannica into Chinese. In 1981, he served as an interpreter for National Geographic during an expedition along the Yellow River. From 1986 to 1998, he was chairman of the China branch of Cargill, a large multinational company, and from there he went on to provide high-level consulting and business leadership to a number of firms working in the nation. He also served as president of the National Committee on United States–China Relations from 1998 to 2005, was chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, and currently holds a position with the Asia program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In addition, he is associate dean with the Yenching Academy of Peking University, which offers a master's degree in China studies. Being humble isn't the only advice John has for people trying to understand China. Business leaders looking for insight should listen around the 27-minute mark. There John explains the value of taking the time to "double down" on researching the local market and mastering customer communication on Chinese social media. And if you want a peek at the personalities of some of China's top political leaders of the past, check out the 18-minute mark or so, where John discusses meeting with the "very, very smart" Wu Yi and Zhu Rongji. Amid all of the changes John has witnessed in China over the past several decades — he notes its business environment has become increasingly competitive and challenging for foreign firms, and access to political leaders has become more difficult — he has also observed at least one steadfast feature: "That drive to be more open and to learn and to study — that is the most salient feature of my experience with China over the past 35 years, and it's still very much there today," he says near the 12-minute point of the podcast. At the present, John sees China at a crossroads of rapid economic and political change that is fueling a stream of news reports about the nation becoming more closed to foreign culture and investment. He is hopeful it is just a phase of the development of an increasingly complex country. "China has been a story in my lifetime of two steps forward, one step back," he says around the 26-minute mark. "We may be one step back at the moment." Recommendations: John: Review of the American Chamber of Commerce's involvement in China: "AmCham China Legacy: A Better Business Environment," by Graham Norris, and The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present, by John Pomfret. Jeremy: Article from the South China Morning Post about Cuban-Chinese: "Lost in Cuba: China’s ‘forgotten diaspora'" Kaiser: Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power, by Howard French. Ada: The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, by Ian Johnson. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Amazing research now suggests that Beijing's swifts, the tiny creatures most residents pass by without noticing, are some of the most well-travelled birds on the planet, averaging an astonishing 124,000 miles of flight in their life, barely landing for years on end, and migrating as far as the southern tip of Africa. This week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn spoke with Terry Townshend, founder of the environmental education and travel organization EcoAction China and creator of the "Birding Beijing" website, for an inside look at how the scientific community discovered these amazing facts. We also discuss how the changing urban landscape of Beijing is affecting the natural environment for these amazing creatures. Recommendations:   Birding Beijing http://birdingbeijing.com/ Action for Swifts http://actionforswifts.blogspot.com British Trust for Ornithology http://www.bto.org Purity: A Novel, by Jonathan Franzen http://www.amazon.com/Purity-A-Novel-Jonathan-Franzen/dp/0374239215 Cement and Pig Consumption Reveal China's Huge Changes http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-33802777 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Huang Guangyu, the founder of home electronics chain GOME, was China’s richest man, with a fortune of over 6 billion dollars in 2006, according to Forbes. However, the multi-billionaire was detained in November 2008 on suspicion of bribery, insider trading, and money laundering. The dragnet in the investigation leading up to the trial has already widened, and has implicated a number of high-ranking cadres in the Ministry of Public Security's white-collar crimes division. Is Huang’s case a warning to the Chinese emerging wealthy class? What does Huang's trial mean for rule of law in China?  Whether they own property or not, there is nothing that people across China are talking about more than real estate prices. Property prices in 70 cities in China rose by a whopping 11.7% just in March 2010. Records show that new real estate loans grew to over 1.4 trillion dollars in 2009. People all over China talk about the phenomenon of “house slave” — people who are enslaved to their mortgage, and working only to pay off their homes. What dilemma does China face over the soaring property prices? In the mean time, Beijing issues sharp new policies to curb speculation. Do the government's actions portend the collapse of the real estate bubble? Joining host Kaiser Kuo this week are Gady Epstein, Beijing bureau chief for Forbes magazine, and Sinica regulars Bill Bishop and Will Moss. Bill is a tech entrepreneur in Beijing who blogs regularly on politics and economic issues at Sinocism.com. Will is a public relations expert in China and the force behind the popular imagethief.com. References: The Curse of Forbes, by Gady Epstein Rule of Law Implications of Huang Guangyu Trial?, by Stan Abrams  How China's Property Bubble Works, by Andy Xie See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sidney Rittenberg is a labor activist from Charleston, South Carolina, who went to China as a translator for the U.S. Army in 1945 and stayed until 1980. In this episode, Sidney talks about the conditions he endured during his two periods of solitary confinement, Sino-American relations, the behavior of Russian advisers sent to China by the Soviet Union, and much more. Part one of our interview is here. You can read a Q&A with Sidney on SupChina here. You can buy Sidney’s books: an autobiography, The Man Who Stayed Behind, and Manage Your Mind: Set Yourself Free, on lessons he learned while in solitary confinement. The Revolutionary is a documentary film about his life (also available on Amazon). See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Richard McGregor is the former Washington and Beijing bureau chief of the Financial Times, and a notable writer on Chinese politics. His last book was The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers. His new book, Asia's Reckoning: China, Japan, and the Fate of U.S. Power in the Pacific Century, tells the story of the triangle of the three most important powers in East Asia, none of which can be fully understood without some knowledge of the other two. Richard talked with Jeremy and Kaiser about the events and issues that have impacted relations between China, Japan, and the U.S. since World War II. These include: how the U.S. blindsided Japan by acknowledging Beijing as the Chinese capital with only a few hours of notice in 1971; how Japan’s leaders have refused to grapple with the reality of comfort women during the war; and how China’s leaders and media have comfortably settled into using anti-Japanese sentiment as a convenient political tool. Recommendations: Richard: The Invention of Russia: The Rise of Putin and the Age of Fake News, a book by journalist Arkady Ostrovsky, who has written for the Economist and the Financial Times. And Fauda, an Israeli TV series about the Israeli Special Forces and Hamas. Jeremy: The Twitter feed of Jorge Guajardo, former Mexican ambassador to China. Kaiser: The works of Alan Furst, specifically, his book Dark Star, which unpacks the mentality of the purge of the mid-1930s in Russia. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Pulitzer Prize–winning author and journalist Ian Johnson returns to the Sinica Podcast to introduce his new book, The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao. It tells the stories of different religious groups and the relationship of their beliefs and practices with consumer society and a government that is officially atheist. Jeremy, Kaiser, and Ian discuss the variety of rituals and religions practiced within Chinese society, the tension between Chinese religious communities and notions of liberalism and democracy, and the changing attitudes toward religion under Xi Jinping’s leadership. Ian has written about China and religion for decades and has been published in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and other publications. His last appearance on the Sinica Podcast was in the episode “Ian Johnson on the Vatican and China.” Recommendations: Jeremy: Tabitha Speelman’s biweekly newsletter, Changpian, features a selection of Chinese creative nonfiction. These pieces reflect the recent popularity of long-form journalism in China. Also check out her article on SupChina, “Telling true stories is a booming business in China.” Kaiser: Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, by Yuval Noah Harari, explores how technology poses new challenges to humankind, specifically how technological advancement could undermine the fundamental assumptions of liberal humanism.   Ian: Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, by Ross Douthat, explores how the mainline religious communities in the United States have fallen and how alternative religious groups, prosperity preachers, and politics acting as religion have filled the void. Additionally, check out Ian’s short video of a jinganggong (金刚功) demonstration. Jinganggong is a physical cultivation technique — similar to tai chi — and is growing in popularity in China. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week's podcast was recorded at the Caixin "Talking China's Economy: 2019 Forecasts and Strategies" conference in Chengdu in April. Kaiser spoke with Professor Hé Fān 何帆 of the Antai College of Economics and Management at Shanghai Jiaotong University, and Michael Anti, CEO of Caixin Globus, which tracks Chinese global investment. They chat about how "globalization," which once meant "Americanization" to many Chinese, has taken on a much broader meaning as SAFE concerns over capital flight have reeled in the "gray rhinos" after an investment spree, and as a stricter CFIUS regime has made U.S. investments more difficult. What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast: 7:04: Professor He Fan explains the nature of the bilateral investment relationship between the United States and China in the 21st century: “Recently, the number [of Chinese investment in the United States] in 2017 is above six billion US dollars and accounts for four percent of China’s outbound foreign direct investment. And I haven’t seen — even when talking about [China’s investment in] other parts of the world, the Belt and Road, other countries — but I haven’t seen a dramatic decline of China’s investment in the United States. And if you look at the numbers, I think we tend to overestimate the importance of bilateral investment.” 14:13: How much scrutiny is being placed on Chinese investment in the United States, and what does the outbound investment landscape from China look like at the current moment? Michael: “Actually Chinese companies have two challenges to put the investment out: first, is the government ... But, in terms of the many Chinese internet companies — they have US dollar funds. Because they have US dollars in Hong Kong. Not all in Silicon Valley, not necessarily in Beijing. So that kind of money isn’t really controlled by the Chinese government. Then, they meet the second challenge. The American government, [or] CFIUS. CFIUS is now blocking, I would say 90 percent of Chinese tech investment in the United States.” 19:10: Are immigration and Chinese investment linked? Michael sees a link, and points out investment in southern Europe and Japan as examples - however Professor He Fan pushes back: “I think we can find this link between immigration and investment, but then, it would be very difficult to use this as a proxy to predict where Chinese money will go, because Chinese people are everywhere. I’ve traveled to more than fifty countries and there is only one country where I cannot find many Chinese people. It’s Cuba. Because it’s a planned economy and Chinese people are not allowed to do business there.” He Fan continues, “People are talking about decoupling of China and the United States. For me, it’s very difficult to imagine the decoupling of the two largest economies in the world … to be frank, I think people in Washington D.C. and Beijing tend to overestimate their influence. And people in Chengdu are much better.” 28:13: Who is doing the overseas investment in areas outside of the United States, state-owned enterprises or privately owned enterprises? Professor He Fan introduces the Wenzhou index: “In other foreign markets, in Africa and Southeast Asia for example, my understanding is private companies discovered those new markets first and then [were] followed by some of the state-owned enterprises. So, private companies, like businessmen in Wenzhou and Yiwu, they always move faster than state-owned enterprises.” 42:14: He Fan give a prognosis for China’s relationship with its regional neighbors, Japan and Korea. Besides a notable warming of relations — could the downturn in U.S.-China relations rekindle the bilateral relationship in these countries? He Fan doesn’t think so, whose compass points southward: “I think this improvement of the bilateral relationship between China and Japan is a strategy … there’s no place where China can close the gap, if there’s really decoupling between China and the United States. But, maybe a new market in China will increase their investment and trade in the near future — my guess is Southeast Asia.” Recommendations: Michael: Two TV shows: Billions and The Good Fight. He Fan: His new book, 变量 biàn liàng by Hé Fān 何帆, and a French book, Le piège américain (“The American Trap” in English). Kaiser: A Woman First: First Woman by Selina Meyer and Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hydropower dams are a source of debate in the environmental and international relations communities alike. China has made use of hydropower in the past to supplement its reliance on coal and other energy forms, and in total the country has 40 percent of the world’s large hydro dams. While the power from electricity-producing dams is relatively clean, the construction and placement of the massive pieces of infrastructure has long-term ecological consequences and severe impacts for communities downstream. This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser and Jeremy chat with Stephanie Jensen-Cormier, China Program Director for the NGO International Rivers, about the consequences of China’s aggressive building of large dams and other issues related to rivers in China – and to Chinese involvement in international dam building projects. She shares bad news, but also some surprisingly good news. Recommendations: Stephanie: River of Life, River of Death: The Ganges and India's Future, a book by Richard Mallet that discusses the Ganges’ cultural and economic importance. She also recommends Unbowed: A Memoir by Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Laureate who started the Green Belt movement. Kaiser: The audiobook for David Tod Roy’s translation of The Plum in the Golden Vase. The narrator, George Backman, has a perfect voice for the story, and performs it with decent Chinese pronunciation. Jeremy: Mortality, Christopher Hitchens’ last book. Jeremy insists that despite the bleak subject matter, it is a good, short, and enjoyable read. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Kaiser sat down with Nury Turkel, chairman and founder of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, at the recent Association for Asian Studies conference in Denver for an impromptu catch-up on the current crisis in Xinjiang. Nury last appeared on the Sinica Podcast half a year ago. They discussed the policy options available to the U.S. as well as the difficulties of trying to get through to Chinese elites and ordinary Chinese people alike. What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast: 2:31: The conversation begins with a recap of vote counts and support behind bipartisan bills that are currently working through the U.S. Congress: the Uighur Intervention and Global Humanitarian Unified Response (UIGHUR Act) and the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act. Nury says that there could be more news on these bills in the coming months: “We were told that there’s a chance that [the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act] will be finalized…sometime this summer.” 6:44: Nury calls for a larger international coalition to decry the horrors in Xinjiang, and highlight the shadow that Uyghur internment will cast on the longer history of China, stating, “In the end, we want two things. One, we want the camps to be shut down. It’s an embarrassment to the Chinese people, even in their history. It needs to be shut down. And, two, we want to be able to restore the Uyghur people’s basic dignity. Give them their dignity and respect back.” 17:48: After reporting emerged on the supposed death of famed Uyghur musician Abdurehim Heyit, Beijing pushed back with a dubious “proof of life” video. This has resulted in a social media movement to raise awareness about the horrors being committed in Xinjiang, #MeTooUyghur. Nury comments: “So, this #MeTooUyghur movement is building up still. What is amazing about this is that a lot of Uyghurs who were not comfortable sharing their stories are coming out. So, the more people show up and come out telling their stories, the more people know about it. Eventually, it will result in some tangible action.” 27:12: The Uyghurs’ ongoing internment has taken a heavy toll on them. Nury explains: “The Uyghur communities around the world [are] going through a really tough time. Crippling anxiety, a sense of guilt, hopelessness…basically [making] the Uyghurs feel disconnected from their family members. Just basic things, such as calling your parents to say, ‘How are you?’ Just imagine that you hear your mother died in a concentration camp through Radio Free Asia. Just imagine that you recognize your children in the Chinese government propaganda material as a happy child…just imagine that you manage to go to your homeland and you are not able to see your sister because your iris was not scanned or [not] part of the government data. Just imagine that you walk out and try to go to your parents’ cemetery and the Chinese government prevents you because of your religion.” 39:58: How can individuals reach out and help sympathetic Han Chinese who are in China and willing to make a stand for the Uyghurs in Xinjiang? Nury underlines the high stakes involved, not only for the Uyghurs, but for all of China: “At least recognizing that what the Chinese government is doing in the 21st century, criminalizing the entire population [of Uyghurs] collectively, is not good for Chinese civilization.”

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

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In this episode of the Sinica Podcast, taped live at the US-China Strong Foundation’s China Careers Summit in Washington, D.C., on May 31, Kaiser talks to former assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs Kurt Campbell about his career, his critique of engagement, and the fascinating events that happened on his watch — including the extrication of blind activist lawyer Chen Guangcheng and the attempted defection of Bo Xilai’s former police chief in Chongqing, Wang Lijun. Recommendations: Kurt: Darkest Hour, a movie about Winston Churchill in the early 1940s that shows what is possible even in our darkest moments. Additionally, Kurt recommends The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a book by Richard Flanagan about an Australian POW’s experiences during World War II. Kaiser: Road to Unfreedom, a book by Timothy Snyder about the developments in Putin’s Russia and their implications for democracy and law across Europe, the United States, and other regions. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jane Perlez is the Pulitzer Prize-winning Beijing bureau chief of the New York Times, and her own reporting focuses on China's foreign policy, in particular its relations with the United States and China’s Asian neighbors. She was previously on Sinica in March 2017 to discuss Chinese foreign relations in a new age of uncertainty. In this episode of Sinica, she discusses Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing on November 8 and November 9, 2017. In this podcast: Is Trump’s rapport with Xi genuine? How did his performance in China compare with his performance in Japan and South Korea? Were human rights discussed? Was Taiwan mentioned as a bargaining chip? What do Chinese leaders actually think of Trump? Was Trump’s “I don’t blame China” line intended as strategy, or an off-the-cuff remark? And, most importantly, how has this visit changed U.S.-China relations? Recommendations: Jeremy: Huang Fei Hong Spicy Crispy Peanut, which you can buy online or at some Asian grocery stores in the U.S. Jane: Pachinko, an excellent historical novel about the Korea-Japan relationship by Min Jin Lee. Also see an interview with the author (paywall) on the New York Times by Jonathan Soble. Kaiser: World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech, a book on the perils of monopolistic behavior by Google, Facebook, and Amazon, by former New Republic editor-in-chief Franklin Foer. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of Sinica, Clay Shirky, the author of Here Comes Everybody who has written about the internet and its effects on society since the 1990s, joins Kaiser and Jeremy to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of China's tech industry and the extraordinary advances the nation has made in the online world. The hour-long conversation delves into the details and big-picture phenomena driving the globe's largest internet market, and includes an analysis of Xiaomi's innovation, the struggles that successful Chinese companies face when taking their brands abroad and the nation's robust ecommerce offerings. Clay has written numerous books, including Little Rice: Smartphones, Xiaomi, and the Chinese Dream in addition to the aforementioned Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. He is also a Shanghai-based associate professor with New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and the school's Interactive Telecommunications Program. Please take a listen and send feedback to sinica@supchina.com, or leave a review on iTunes. Recommendations: Jeremy: Among the Ten Thousand Things by Julia Pierpont, and Modern China is So Crazy It Needs a New Literary Genre by Ning Ken Clay: Internet Literature in China by Michel Hockx Kaiser: A Billion Voices: China’s Search for a Common Language by David Moser   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 are delighted to be joined by Lucy Hornby, China correspondent for the Financial Times, and author of this phenomenal piece on China's last surviving Chinese comfort women and their longstanding — and often futile — attempts to seek reparations in both China and Japan. Join us today as we talk about this piece, and also other stories of reparations and post-war politics that may leave you, like us, somewhat less cynical going out than coming in. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Big news: The Sinica Podcast network is expanding! Today, we introduce a new podcast: TechBuzz China by Pandaily, a weekly show about technology, innovation, and startups in China, created by Pandaily, a China-focused tech news site. The show is co-hosted by Rui Ma and Ying-Ying Lu, seasoned China-watchers with years of experience working in tech in China. They discuss the most important tech news from China every week, and include commentary from investors, industry experts, and entrepreneurs. Subscribe to TechBuzz China on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, or Stitcher, or click here for the RSS feed. Right after the TechBuzz preview episode (the third of the series; subscribe to listen to previous episodes), Joanna Chiu of Agence France-Presse joins Kaiser to discuss the illicit wildlife trade in Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Joanna went undercover in the two cities to search for stores that would illegally sell her two items in particular: scales of the endangered pangolin — the most heavily poached mammal in the world — and rare totoaba swim bladders. Click on the links to read her AFP reports on her investigations. Recommendations: Joanna: Crime and the Chinese Dream, by a leading criminologist of China, Børge Bakken, who discusses different examples of how Chinese people are sometimes pushed into a life of crime, as they feel the “Chinese Dream” is unattainable for them by normal means. Kaiser: “Homo Orbánicus,” by Jan-Werner Müller in the New York Review of Books, an analysis of how the strongman Viktor Orbán came to power and maintains power in Hungary. Also, “The Right to Kill,” an essay by Cleuci de Oliveira in Foreign Policy, which asks the question, “Should Brazil keep its Amazon tribes from taking the lives of their children?” 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 Sulmaan Wasif Khan, assistant professor of international history and Chinese foreign relations at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, about his book, Haunted by Chaos: China’s Grand Strategy from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping. He makes the case that China’s overriding concern is for maintaining the security and integrity of the state — something that, given China’s long history of foreign invasion, warlordism, civil war, and contested borders, hasn’t been easy. What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast: 4:55: Does grand strategy need to be articulated, or communicated clearly to the general population? Usually the answer is yes, where nation states unify diplomatic, economic, and military power to pursue broadscale goals. However, China’s case is different, according to Sulmaan: “There does seem to be this overarching national objective, there is a sense in which the different categories of power [diplomacy, economics, and military] were calibrated to achieve that overarching national objective, but you don’t get it articulated that often, if at all.” 14:44: How much useful insight on contemporary Chinese politics can be gleaned by looking to the past? Sulmaan breaks it down: “China’s imperial past [is] much less grand than it’s typically considered to be… China’s empires at different points had different security threats. At various points, it wasn’t an Asia-centric order. So, simply imposing one version of the imperial past on China’s millennia of history, and saying, ‘This is the way it’s always been,’ seems to be a little misguided.” One feature from the imperial era that sticks out? Disorder. Sulmaan continues: “If you think about the Taiping Rebellion, for example, if you think about the Opium Wars — these are things that I think Chinese leaders still look to in the imperial past and worry about. The stories of the Opium Wars have never left the consciousness of the leadership, or Chinese people, for that matter. And that’s important to remember.” 30:07: “Hide your strength and bide your time” is a maxim spoken by Deng Xiaoping that has been used to define much of the era of reform and opening up. But is this truly an apt description of the time? Sulmaan states: “Hide and bide doesn’t really begin to sum up what [Deng] is up to. If you think about the sheer scale of economic change going on there, it’s kind of hard to keep that hidden — he’s almost like a kid when it comes to one country, two systems and joint development, how much he brags about those to anyone who will listen. That’s not hide and bide. If you’re sitting across the strait in Taiwan, you’re not seeing a lot of hiding and biding. 41:58: What are China’s future intentions on a grand strategic scale, and how do policymakers in the West feel about it? Sulmaan explains his view: “It says something about the way we typically think about China and other countries — that that kind of alarmism gains traction. There’s that old Atticus Finch line about walking around in someone else’s shoes and seeing how they feel, and I think much of the American foreign policy establishment is pretty bad at that. If the Chinese are doing something that we don’t like, it’s undemocratic or tyrannical. If the Russians are doing something we don’t like, ditto. If you’re not doing it our way, there’s something fundamentally wrong with you.” Recommendations: Jeremy: Nathan Hale — cartoonist, author, and illustrator of graphic novels for children. Sulmaan: Watership Down, by Richard Adams. A useful vessel for understanding China and a source of grand strategic wisdom. Kaiser: Everything You Love Will Burn: Inside the Rebirth of White Nationalism in America, by Vegas Tenold, and Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, by Kathleen Belew.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

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Rob Schmitz, China correspondent for American Public Media’s Marketplace, has been living in the nation on and off since 1995. He is the author of Street of Eternal Happiness: Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road, a book about the people living and working on Changle Lu in Shanghai. You can read the fourth chapter here. Many of the characters who Rob writes about are waidiren — people who moved to Shanghai from elsewhere and tried to make a living by catering to the tastes of well-off residents of the city. One of them, CK, is an accordion salesman turned sandwich restaurant proprietor. Other people featured in the book are Shanghai natives, such as a couple who fights to keep their old house while facing fire-setting thugs hired by developers trying to remake the neighborhood. And then there are Auntie Fu and ‘Mr Clean,’ veterans of the People’s Liberation Army’s Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, or the bingtuan. They’re spending their pensions and trying to make a fortune selling questionable sexual potency medicines. We also talk about some people who didn’t make the final edit and why they were left out. They include a paranoid kung fu master and a gay clothing merchant whose sister put the kibosh on his participation in the book. Recommendations: Jeremy: Longform Podcast. Rob: Forthcoming book by Ian Johnson about religion in China (release scheduled for year end). Kaiser: Flipboard reading app for mobile phone.   See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"Having read hundreds and hundreds of these cases, I have decided that I'm never going to drive in China." That is what Benjamin Liebman, the director of the Center for Chinese Legal Studies at Columbia University, concluded after his extensive review of laws relating to traffic violations in Hubei Province. Geoffrey Sant, a partner at the law firm Dorsey & Whitney, notes that traffic accidents in China are substantially more fatal than traffic accidents in the U.S. While the U.S. only sees about one death per 70 traffic accidents, China sees one death per four accidents. Whether it be the explosion of car ownership and road infrastructure (new drivers in new places), more drunk and reckless driving, an expectation that traffic laws (such as stopping at red lights even when no one is coming) are "optional," or a variety of other factors, Chinese roads can be dangerous. There are also some quirks in the legal system that create perverse incentives, leading to some pretty extreme cases. For example, as Geoffrey detailed in an article on Slate, more than a few videos have surfaced of drivers intentionally running over or otherwise killing people they have injured on the road. The reason for this? In China, the liability payout for an accidental traffic death is a small fraction of what you have to pay out if you cripple someone for years. The way that courts deal with these extreme cases, as well as more routine traffic tort cases, reveals a lot about the function of courts in Chinese society. That is what Geoffrey and Ben argue and discuss in this live Sinica Podcast, recorded on February 26 at the offices of Dorsey & Whitney in New York. Recommendations: Jeremy: The Twitter feed of Tong Bingxue 仝冰雪 (@tongbingxue), a great place to find rare old photos and videos of China. Geoffrey: Persuasive Business Proposals: Writing to Win More Customers, Clients, and Contracts, written by his father, Tom Sant. It’s useful for writing pitches when you’re trying to get people to hire you — for example, when you’re a lawyer trying to get clients. Ben: The Handpulled Noodle, a restaurant in New York at the corner of 148th and Broadway, which serves genuine Xinjiang noodles. And China in Ten Words, by Yu Hua, which explores the lack of trust in Chinese society. Kaiser: The work of MacroPolo, specifically, a piece by Evan Feigenbaum titled “A Chinese Puzzle: Why Economic ‘Reform’ in Xi's China Has More Meanings than Market Liberalization.”   See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Michael Bristow was stationed in Beijing as the Asia Pacific editor for the BBC World Service from 2005 to 2013. He has written a book called China in Drag: Travels with a Cross-Dresser, in which he recounts his time in China — his travels, his reporting, and his myriad experiences — through the prism of his relationship with his Chinese teacher. The Teacher — who insisted on anonymity — is a Beijinger. He’s a thoughtful and educated man, and also a transvestite. Yet his transvestism is just one aspect of a many-faceted individual whose life has mirrored incredible changes in Chinese society since the Cultural Revolution. On this episode, we talk to Michael about his teacher, and what he learned about China — and about cross-dressing — while traveling through the country with this fascinating man. Recommendations: Jeremy: The Mala Market, where you can get fresh Sichuanese ingredients shipped straight to your door (in the U.S.), and the accompanying blog called Mala Project — not to be confused with the New York City restaurant of the same name, which Jeremy has previously recommended. Also, the BBC’s new West African news service in Pidgin, a form of English common in West Africa, something completely original to the BBC. Michael: The book A Whole Life, by Austrian author Robert Seethaler. It’s about an ordinary guy who lives in a valley in the Alps in Austria. Almost nothing noteworthy happens to this guy, but he’s lived a full and rich life nonetheless. Kaiser: 1MORE Triple Driver In-Ear Headphones, affordable and excellent in-ear monitors that sound infinitely better than what you’re probably using now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On August 17, 2017, the global community of China scholars erupted in outrage over one particular and unusual case of censorship in China — the decision of Cambridge University Press (CUP) to comply with requests to censor 315 articles deemed sensitive by the Chinese government. Jim Millward, a professor of history at Georgetown University, who has written many articles on China and the book The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction, was one responder. He quickly published on Medium an “Open Letter to Cambridge University Press about its censorship of the China Quarterly,” which condemned what he called the “craven, shameful and destructive concession to the PRC’s growing censorship regime.” CUP reversed its decision on August 21, and in the following weeks, other academic publishers and journals revealed that they had received similar requests. The Guardian later noted on September 9 that China’s State Council had indirectly responded to CUP, warning that “all publications imported into China’s market must adhere to Chinese laws and regulations,” and that an additional journal, the American Political Science Review, had also received and rebuffed censorship requests from China. What does the CUP fiasco mean for censorship and academic freedom in China? Why did CUP yield to the censorship pressure, and how should other academic institutions approach their operations in the country? In many ways, these questions are still unanswered, and Jim sat down with Kaiser and Jeremy to sort through what happened and discuss where it might lead. Recommendations: Jeremy: Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship, by J. M. Coetzee, a South African (now Australian) who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2003. The book was written in apartheid-era South Africa, which had a system of censorship that has many features in common with China’s today. Jim: “Travels with my censor,” a piece by Evan Osnos in the New Yorker, which portrays the censor as a very sympathetic individual. Osnos has been engaged in a back-and-forth with fellow New Yorker staff writer Peter Hessler, who, unlike Osnos, decided to go forward with publishing a censored version of his book for the Chinese market. Osnos explains his reasoning for refusing to publish censored content in China in this New York Times op-ed. Also, a young Chinese musician and composer named Baishui, who grew up in Sichuan and now lives in the U.S. He has a Chinese folk music background, but also does abstract and electronic music. Find his website here, or find him on Spotify or iTunes. Kaiser: Porcupine Tree, an English neo-progressive rock band active in the 1990s. Albums to check out: In Absentia and Deadwing, plus two solo albums by the band’s founder, Steve Wilson, The Raven That Refused to Sing and Other Stories and Hand.Cannot.Erase. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Joan Kaufman is a fascinating figure: Her long and storied career in China started in the early 1980s, when she was what she calls a “cappuccino-and-croissant socialist from Berkeley.” Today, she is the director for academics at the Schwarzman Scholars program at Tsinghua University and a lecturer in the department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Joan shares some stories about her time in China at organizations like the United Nations Population Fund and the Ford Foundation, including a visit to a condom factory in the 80s. She discusses the newest developments in the China educational and non-governmental organization (NGO) sectors after the adoption in 2016 of new laws regulating foreign NGOs, and the realities of working on the ground with NGOs in China. We also talk about current trends in China’s openness to U.S.-China academic partnerships, and questions of censorship at the China campuses of U.S. universities. Recommendations: Jeremy: Kishore Mahbubani, former senior diplomat and dean at the Practice of Public Policy of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, usually has an interesting perspective on China’s relationship with the rest of the world, particularly on the U.S.-China relationship. Check out his article in the Huffington Post: “It’s a problem that America is still unable to admit it will become #2 to China.” Joan: China File’s new China NGO Project, recently launched on June 7. The website has five sections, including the latest updates, laws, and regulations, and other resources to help NGOs understand the ins and outs of operating in China under the new NGO law. Kaiser: The Hi-Phi Nation podcast produced by Vassar College philosophy professor Barry Lam uses investigative journalism techniques to look at real-world events through a philosophical lens, all while weaving in creative narrative storytelling and sound design. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sidney Rittenberg was a labor activist in the American South before going to China as a translator for the U.S. Army in 1945. He stayed there until 1980, joining the Communist Party and going to the revolutionary base at Yan’an, where he got to know Mao Zedong and other senior members of the Party who went on to govern China. He also spent 16 years in solitary confinement. In this first episode of a two-part interview, Kaiser and Jeremy talk to Sidney about his fascinating life story. You can read a Q&A with Sidney on SupChina here. You can buy Sidney’s books: an autobiography, The Man Who Stayed Behind, and Manage Your Mind: Set Yourself Free, on lessons he learned while in solitary confinement. The Revolutionary is a documentary film about his life.   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 traveled across the Atlantic to host a live podcast at the Asia Society of Switzerland in Zurich. The topic of discussion is the social credit system (SCS) in China, a fiercely debated and highly controversial subject in the West, often construed as a monolithic and Orwellian initiative. Our guests are Manya Koetse, editor and founder of What’s on Weibo — a wonderful resource that aggregates and examines trending information from social media platform Sina Weibo — and Rogier Creemers, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Leiden, who has done extensive research on China’s governance and digital policy and has translated extensive primary source materials from Chinese government sources and publications on SCS. Rogier and Manya provide fresh perspectives on a subject that has become a wedge in the China-watching community. They discuss the varying perceptions of SCS around the world; what observers have gotten right and wrong about the system according to government publications; the relative lack of integration in the many different moving parts that comprise the SCS; and the changing role of technology in daily life and how big of a role that could play when one thinks of social credit. What to listen for this week on the Sinica Podcast: 13:19: Manya explains to Kaiser that “We in the West have somehow been trapped in this one-dimensional vision of this system, or this policy. Just looking at it from that angle, politically and also from the idea that it’s the state versus the people. Always the state versus the people … and it’s much more multidimensional than that.” 27:01: Is discussion of social credit systems suppressed in China? Manya answers, “This was a little bit difficult for me … I see it everywhere on Twitter, but it’s not a trending topic on Weibo, so I was looking on Weibo on what to write about.” Kaiser asks if this is because of internet censorship, to which Manya responds, “I don’t think so … there are some websites like freeweibo.com [that show uncensored trending topics] and social credit system definitely is not one of them. Another thing is that state media is trying to propagate articles that are about the system and various local credit systems are on Weibo. If anything I have the feeling that there are probably people out there that wish this was more talked about on Weibo.” 37:16: Despite popular belief, there is local pushback against some local credit systems, which Rogier elaborates on: “One of the local trials, run in a place called Suining close to Shanghai in Jiangsu province, was actually shut down after it was criticized quite harshly in national official media. There is some jostling for ‘we want the system on the whole,’ but as with any system there are going to be negative consequences … not to want to present the Chinese government as more benevolent than it is … but it is also too simplistic to say that this is top-down impulse, no questions asked.” 43:01: Rogier provides two key takeaways to Kaiser’s question on how our expectations towards the world outside of the West have changed in the age of the internet. How have our perceptions of technology changed in the modern era? Towards China as a rising technological power? What role is an acceptable role for technology to play in our lives and in governance? Recommendations: Kaiser: The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, the Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of Alexandre Dumas written by Tom Reiss. Rogier: DigiChina, a platform for information on the development of China’s digital economy and digital politics, and The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, by Peter Frankopan. Manya: Manc.hu, a digital platform for studying the Manchu language.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

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This live recording of Sinica at the Smyth Hotel in New York City on July 13 features the journalists Mary Kay Magistad and Gady Epstein discussing the increasingly complex "frenemyship" of China and the United States. They also talk about the South China Sea, the role of "old China hands," and how the Middle Kingdom is changing the world and being changed by it. The title of the episode is taken from Mary Kay's radio show and podcast, Whose Century Is it? Mary Kay is a veteran radio journalist who has covered China, North Korea, Southeast Asia, Ethiopia, the Western Sahara, Kashmir and many other places for NPR, PRI and other outlets. Gady has reported on business, current affairs, the internet, and politics in Asia and particularly China since 2002 for the Baltimore Sun, Forbes and The Economist, where he also began covering the media industry after moving back to the U.S. in 2015. They both are regular guests from the podcast's early days. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week's podcast was recorded live on March 13 at The Bookworm in Beijing as part of the Bookworm Literary Festival, which is why you'll notice the prolonged and decidedly rambunctious audience pop at the start of the show. No matter where Sinica goes, it'll always be most enthusiastically received in the city where it began. The entire episode is a hoot, as SupChina Asia managing editor Anthony Tao sat in for Kaiser and Jeremy to talk music with longtime jazz musicians David Moser (no stranger to Sinica listeners) and Jess Meider. Moser is associate dean of Yenching Academy at Peking University, but his true passion is jazz. He studied music as an undergrad in the U.S. before moving to China, where he happened upon a band at a place called Maxim’s in 1993. You’ll need to listen to get the story. Other highlights include his explaining of swing (11:25), retelling of particular adventures translating for Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (22:30 mark), and what makes for good jazz (31:45 — including a Charles Mingus anecdote, featuring one of the three times we had to press the bleep button on him). Jess Meider has spent more than two decades singing in China, and can still be seen (and heard) around Beijing. She was previously the resident jazz artist at East Shore Jazz Club and booker/resident artist at Chao Hotel. She’s worked with Cui Jian, the father of Chinese rock ‘n’ roll, and voiced a part in his movie Blue Sky Bones. She talks about that experience just before the 19-minute mark. Also listen to what she has to say about playing with Chinese musicians (30-minute mark) and her thoughts on the future of jazz in China (39:45). Be sure to stick around for the musical performance at the end. Recommendations: David: The young Chinese jazz pianist A Bu 阿布 (real name Dai Liang 戴梁), who is a prodigy. “Very modest and unassuming, but the future of Chinese jazz right there,” Moser says. “He grew up listening to it.” Check out videos of him playing here and here. Jess: Contemporary jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, who is relatively new on the scene but is amazing. (She won a Grammy last year for her album Dreams and Daggers; here she is singing You’re My Thrill from that album.) Anthony: Three recommendations: 1. The American Jazz Museum coupled with the Negro Leagues Museum in the 18th and Vine District of Kansas City, Missouri. (Tao grew up in Kansas City — though on the Kansas side of State Line.) 2. Contemporary poetry: Poetry 180 (a project of former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins, highlighting contemporary poems) and the Poetry Foundation podcast. 3. The Bookworm Literary Festival: May we all spread the lore of The Bookworm and the Bookworm Literary Festival ever far and forever. It is truly special. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

  While the African community in Guangzhou has taken to the streets to protest the suspicious death of a foreign national in police custody, the Chinese internet has proven equally volatile as gruesome photos of a late-stage abortion have circulated online to the shock and horror of many netizens. This week, Sinica turns its attention to both events, but mostly to the one-child policy, as we discuss first the history of China's family-planning restrictions and then the political forces within China arrayed for and against the status quo. Trying to steer the discussion through these controversial waters is your host Kaiser Kuo, who is joined in our studio by Alexa Olesen, a long-time China watcher and journalist for the Associated Press who has written extensively on how China's family-planning policies work at the local level. We're also delighted to be joined by Evan Osnos, a staff writer for the The New Yorker, who has covered the African community in Guangzhou. Conspicuously absent for the second week running is Sinica's co-host, Jeremy Goldkorn, who, any minute now — and probably by the time you're reading this — will have become father to a baby girl named Viola!   See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This year marked the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, a chaotic decade of Chinese history made infamous in the West through books such as Wild Swans and Life and Death in Shanghai, which describe in horrific detail the suffering endured by millions of people. Most histories of the period focus on violence committed by the Red Guards, the imprisonment of people in cow sheds and other terrifying acts, but Paul Clark's book examines the art of the era. For this episode of Sinica, he joined Jeremy in Auckland, New Zealand, to discuss the large number of new operas, plays, films and other creative works that emerged from the tumultuous time. You can read the SupChina backgrounder on the topics of their conversation here. Paul is a pioneer in the academic study of Chinese films and was one of the first of three New Zealand students to go to Beijing on an official exchange for two years of study in the 1970s. He has published books on Maori history, Chinese cinema, Chinese youth culture, as well as The Chinese Cultural Revolution, which looks at the creation, dissemination and innovation of art, film, theater and architecture in China from 1966 to 1976. Recommendations: Jeremy: Visiting Queenstown, New Zealand, and the surrounding mountains and lakes. Paul: Red Sorghum, directed by Zhang Yimou. Kaiser: Hillbilly Elegy, by J.D. Vance, a Q&A with the author. Special thanks to Podcasts NZ for the use of their studio in Auckland.   See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

With equity markets in free fall, housing prices skipping downwards, foreign reserves plummeting and industrial production on a road trip back to the last decade, it's no surprise that permabears like Gordon Chang are stocking up on popcorn to bask in what they see as the long-due collapse of the Chinese economy. It all raises the question of how bad things are going to get, which leads to the question of how bad they are right now. Joining Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn and David Moser in the studio today to talk about the Chinese economy and its recent tailspin is none other than Tom Orlik, an economist at Bloomberg and author of the book Understanding China's Economic Indicators. Tom has years of experience writing about China and joins to share his thoughts on what parts of the economy are doing decently and where the real problems lie. Recommendations: Jeremy Goldkorn A People’s Friendship, by James Palmer http://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/postcard/peoples-friendship David Moser Billionaires, by Darrel M West http://www.amazon.com/Billionaires-Reflections-Darrell-M-West/dp/0815725965 New Koch, by Jane Mayer http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/25/new-koch Tom Orlik Outside Over There, by Maurice Sendak http://www.amazon.com/Outside-Over-There-Caldecott-Collection/dp/0064431851 The Adventures of Augie March, by Saul Bellow http://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Augie-March-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143039571 Kaiser Kuo Mass Flourishing, by Edmund Phelps http://www.amazon.com/Mass-Flourishing-Grassroots-Innovation-Challenge/dp/0691165793/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Adam Segal is the Ira A. Lipman Chair in Emerging Technologies and National Security and director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations. You may remember him from an episode of Sinica last year, when he discussed his excellent book The Hacked World Order: How Nations Fight, Trade, Maneuver, and Manipulate in the Digital Age. Adam returns to Sinica to comment on China’s recent cybersecurity law — where it came from, how it changed as it was being drafted, and how it may shape the flow of information in China in the future. Other issues discussed include the bargaining power — or lack thereof — of foreign companies such as Apple when faced with new rules and regulations in China, and related crackdowns on VPNs and other aspects of China’s ironically anti-globalized view of the internet. Recommendations: Jeremy: A three-part BBC documentary, about 30 minutes long, about live streaming in China. It follows the story of a very popular 24-year-old woman who claims to make $450,000 per year by performing and sharing her life with adoring fans online. Watch the first part here. Adam: Flood of Fire, the third book in the Ibis Trilogy by Amitav Ghosh about the Opium War. It brings together characters from India, the U.S., and China, and tells their stories in a sweeping saga. Kaiser: The podcast Binge Mode, with Jason Concepcion and Mallory Rubin, a smart and funny look at every episode of Game of Thrones.   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 chat with Ali Wyne, a policy analyst at the Rand Corporation, about the big picture in U.S.-China relations. Are we already in a cold war? Wyne gives a spirited argument that we're not — and makes the case that the interconnectedness between China and the U.S. can still serve as effective ballast in the relationship. What to listen for on this week’s Sinica: 5:13: Ali begins the conversation by elaborating on his argument against the use of a “cold war” trope in the modern U.S.-China context, which he wrote about in a conversation he spearheaded on ChinaFile. 13:27: Jeremy suggests alternatives to the cold war framing: “The decoupling? The freeze? The small ice age?” U.S.-China relations have undoubtedly shifted dramatically over the past two years, but how should China-watchers go about characterizing the shift? Kaiser, Jeremy, and Ali discuss, among other things, the November 2018 Hoover Institute publication, Chinese Influence & American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance. 22:58: Ali describes what could happen if further deterioration in U.S.-China relations occurs: “Decoupling is not a fait accompli…but what I worry about is that trade interdependence has been one of the few phenomena that has introduced some stability in a relationship between two countries that organically have little, if anything, in common. One of the few similarities between the United States and China, which actually amplifies their differences, is that both countries are convinced of their exceptionalism.” 33:27: Jeremy observes: “A few years ago, shortly after Xi Jinping came to power, Kaiser started calling it the 'new truculence,' which was a word we used on the show for many years, but it just doesn't seem right anymore because it's no longer 'new,' it's more like China has gone full honey badger and just doesn't give a f*** what the West thinks.” Jeremy and Ali discuss Beijing’s newfound confidence, and its potential geopolitical ramifications. 40:50: Ali cites an article by Samuel Huntington from the Winter 1988/89 edition of Foreign Affairs, The U.S. - decline or renewal?, where he urges the U.S. away from trying to “out-China China,” and encourages using this moment to push the U.S. to become a “more dynamic version of our best self.” Recommendations: Jeremy: Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking, by Samin Nosrat. Particularly useful for returning expats from China who have forgotten how to cook. Kaiser: “What Donald Trump and Dick Cheney got wrong about America,” an article about American exceptionalism in The Atlantic. Ali: The November/December 2018 issue of Foreign Affairs, with essays focused on nuclear weapons, and Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony, by Kori Schake.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, while Kaiser is vacationing on the Carolina coast, we are running a March 2014 interview with Orville Schell and David Moser. Orville is the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society in New York and formerly served as dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. The discussion in this episode centers on the book co-authored by Schell and John Delury, Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-First Century, and the role of select members of the Chinese intelligentsia in the formation of modern China. What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast: 7:56: Orville opens the discussion describing how he and John Delury arrived at Wealth and Power as the title for their book: “For us, to try to sense what was the main current flowing through Chinese history — it was in fact, we concluded, this desire to see China great again. To become a country of consequence, and ‘wealth’ and ‘power’ really described it. And it was something that almost everybody in some form or [another] — whether nationalist, communist, dynastic, anarchist, Christian — they all understood that aspect, and I think that was a tremendously important, animating impulse that got us to the present.” 25:21: Orville recalls sitting in the front row at a summit held between Jiang Zemin and Bill Clinton, the dialogue of which is included in Wealth and Power: “I was sitting right there during [the summit], in the front row, watching Jiang Zemin with ‘Bubba,’ the master of repartee, and trying to imitate him. It was quite touching, he did quite well. And looking back on it, there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Hu Jintao or Xi Jinping would risk such a wager.” 41:56: Jeremy asks Orville about his placement of Liu Xiaobo at the end of his book, and what Liu’s question is for China and China’s future. He responds candidly: “I think the question that he poses for China, and indeed all of us, is: What’s the real goal? For him, the real goal is not to simply be wealthy and powerful…and I think also what’s lurking in the back of his critique is something that the leaders now sort of see but are quite surprised by. Namely that getting wealthy and getting powerful doesn’t, as everybody thought for these 170 years, create ipso facto respect. And that is what is really wanted. That’s why there’s such an incredible fixation on soft power.” Recommendations: Orville: Now I Know Who My Comrades Are: Voices From the Internet Underground, by Emily Parker, and Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, by Evan Osnos. David: Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China, by Anne-Marie Brady. Jeremy: The blog East by Southeast.  Kaiser: The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919, by Vera Schwarcz.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

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This week, our featured topic is Chinese students overseas. There are about 800,000 of them, and according to China’s Ministry of Education, nearly 80 percent choose to return to China soon after finishing their education. This group is referred to as “sea turtles” (海龟; a pun on 海归 hǎiguī, meaning “to return from overseas”) for their ambitious swim to and from faraway shores. Historically, overseas Chinese students were almost exclusively from the wealthiest and best-educated families in Chinese society, but nowadays, the group is dramatically more diverse. The new students abroad, however, face many of the same identity issues that the previous generations faced. Chinese students who are studying at American universities are, as Eric Fish put it in an article on SupChina recently, caught in a cross fire. Many of these 300,000-plus students find themselves grappling with their Chinese — or, as most Americans simply see it, “Asian” — identity for the first time, and are taken aback by the biased views that many Americans have about China. They feel forced to choose: to either defend their country against ignorant attacks, or take very Americanized worldviews to prove that they are not “brainwashed.” But if they go too far and adopt too liberal of a viewpoint, they may get accused back home of being a “white-left” (白左 báizuǒ; a derogatory term for white Western liberals). To discuss the ideology and identity issues at play, as well as more routine aspects of the Chinese student experience in America, we welcome Eric Fish — the author of China’s Millennials, who is now working on a second book about university students from China in the U.S. — and Siqi Tu — a graduate student in sociology at the City University of New York looking at Chinese high school students in America. The podcast was recorded live in New York at the China Institute on March 14. Recommendations: Jeremy: For anyone who (like him) is having trouble with the American bureaucracy regulating septic tanks as they try to build a house in a holler (what people in Tennessee call a hollow, or a small valley between two hills), Jeremy recommends the Sun-Mar Compact Composting Toilet and the EcoJohn Waterless Incinerating Toilet. No septic permit necessary! Siqi: Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It’s written by a Nigerian immigrant to America about her experience figuring out racial identity in the country, finding love, and then undergoing reverse culture shock upon returning to Nigeria.   Eric: Fortunate Sons: The 120 Chinese Boys Who Came to America, Went to School, and Revolutionized an Ancient Civilization, by Liel Leibovitz and Matthew Miller. It’s about the experience of what is considered the first group of Chinese students to come over to the U.S., way back in 1872. Kaiser: America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism, by Anatol Lieven, an incredibly prescient book written six years ago. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, Kaiser sits in the guest chair and tells us about his 20-plus years of living in China. He recounts being the front man for the heavy metal band Tang Dynasty and the group's tour stops in China's backwater towns, shares his feelings on moving back to the United States with his family, and discusses the future of the Sinica Podcast. The conversation with Jeremy, Ada Shen and David Moser is one of many 'exit interview' episodes with journalists who are departing China after a long stay. It took place in June 2016, shortly after Kaiser's reentry to the U.S. Recommendations: Kaiser: The films of Sam Dunn about heavy metal. Ada: The End of a Golden Age in China-Taiwan Relations? by Shelley Rigger. When We Were Kings, a documentary about Muhammad Ali. Ralph Stanley, bluegrass musician. David: Wish Lanterns by Alec Ash. Jeremy: Overcast app for podcast listening on iPhones. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jim Millward is one of the world’s leading scholars on Xinjiang and Central Asia, and the author of many books and articles, including Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity, and Empire in Qing Central Asia, 1759-1864, and The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction, published by Oxford. In this week’s Sinica Podcast, Kaiser and Jeremy talk to Jim about the myths and histories of the Silk Road and a continent’s worth of related subjects: Xi Jinping's signature effort to revive the Silk Road through the One Belt, One Road initiative; the mythological bird associated with Central Asia known as the Dapeng (大鹏), or Roc; the argument over the connection of extremism in Xinjiang to global jihadism; the Chinese policy on ethnic minorities; and academic debates over "New Qing History" and a number of other issues that are putting Central Asia back into its formerly central place in the story of the world's past. This episode also features a special outro tune played by Jim and Kaiser. Recommendations: Jeremy — books by Peter Fleming: One’s Company – A Journey to China News from Tartary: A Journey from Peking to Kashmir The Siege at Peking Jim: Rian Thum: The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History David Brophy: Uyghur Nation: Reform and Revolution on the Russia-China Frontier Justin Jacobs: Xinjiang and the Modern Chinese State Kwangmin Kim: Borderland Capitalism: Turkestan Produce, Qing Silver, and the Birth of an Eastern Market Judd Kinzley: Staking Claims to China’s Borderland: Oil, Ores, and State-building in Xinjiang Province, 1893-1964 (book forthcoming) and a review of the dissertation Music video: Silk Road Tour 11 – Urumqi – Abigail Washburn & The Village Kaiser: The Chinese immigrant hub of Flushing, Queens, in New York, as a subject of anthropological or cultural studies inquiry. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wu Fei is a classically trained composer and performer of the guzheng, or traditional Chinese 21-string zither. Abigail Washburn is a Grammy Award–winning American banjo player and fluent speaker of Chinese. They’ve been friends for a decade and are now recording an album together. They sat down with Jeremy and Kaiser to talk about their paths to becoming musicians, and how their new work is melding Chinese and American folk music. We’re excited to include in this podcast a number of songs by the duo that have not yet been released elsewhere. We hope you enjoy this special episode of Sinica. Please see the Sinica backgrounder for links to articles and videos about the two musicians. Recommendations Wu Fei: Gabriel Prokofiev Abigail: Lau, Juno by Béla Fleck Jeremy: Franco and TPOK Jazz, The Wu-Force Kaiser: Sleepytime Gorilla Museum  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It seems to be the consensus among long-time China watchers that the Chinese media has become more radicalized over the last five years, with both online and traditional channels now feeding the public conflicting stories of both reflexive scorn for the status quo or patriotic jingoism. But how radical are things getting? And what are the limits to how much further they can go, or will be allowed to go on either side? This week on Sinica we look at two of the extremes. First up is a discussion between Jeremy Goldkorn and Brook Larmer, whose recent essay on Chinese internet humor for The New York Times looked not only at what is being said online but who is saying it and why. Then we look the other way, talking with journalist Christina Larson and Sinica-stalwart David Moser about the Global Times, a commercial newspaper under the auspices of the People's Daily so untempered in its nationalism that many consider the paper a government mouthpiece, with Christina Larson even comparing the publication to Fox News. Recommendations: Brook's NYT article http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/magazine/the-dangerous-politics-of-internet-humor-in-china.html Stifled Laughter: How the Communist Party Killed Chinese Humor http://www.danwei.org/tv/stifled_laughter_how_the_commu.php Pi San's cartoons on NYT http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/30/magazine/26mag-chinese-animations.html?scp=2&sq=pi%20san%20china&st=cse ABC interview with Pi San and Jeremy http://www.danwei.org/featured_video/director_pi_san_on_his_his_yea.php Pi San's cartoons with English subtitles http://www.danwei.com/blowing-up-the-school/ http://www.danwei.com/kuang-kuang-and-the-38th-parallel/ Liu Xiaobo humor - The Lius I admire http://www.danwei.org/humor/the_lius_i_admire.php Lei Feng microblog http://www.danwei.org/humor/lei_feng_microblog.php Hoax dictionary entries (origin of the "Cao Ni Ma" slang) http://www.danwei.org/humor/baidu_baike_fake_entries.php Hu Ge spoof on group housing http://www.danwei.org/humor/ccav_on_group_housing.php China Digital Times Grass Mud Horse Lexicon https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2015/07/decoding-the-chinese-internet-ebook-2015-edition/ Christina's FP article http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/10/31/global_times_china_fox_news FP: Top 10 screeds in Global Times http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/10/31/the_top_10_screeds_in_chinas_global_times John Garnaut: Global Times - A cocktail of conspiracies delivered daily http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/a-cocktail-of-conspiracies-delivered-daily-20101217-190pb.html Hu Xijin's Weibo http://weibo.com/huxijin Peking Duck blogger on Global Times https://www.google.com/search?&q=site%3Apekingduck.org+%22global+times%22 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

China-watching isn’t what it used to be. Not too long ago, the field of international China studies was dominated by a few male Westerners with an encyclopedic knowledge of China, but with surprisingly little experience living in the country and speaking Chinese. Today, China-watching is different: The old “China hands” are still around and remain authoritative, but an increased number of younger travelers in a much more open China, people with specialized academic backgrounds and advanced language skills, and women — see last week’s Sinica Podcast on female China expertise — are changing the face of this field. Bill Bishop is among the most recognizable China-watchers in the business. His long-running Sinocism newsletter is an essential resource for serious followers of China policy, and he is regularly quoted in a variety of major news outlets reporting on China. Kaiser and Bill sat down at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., on April 6 to record this podcast and discuss how China-watching has changed over the years. And in a reflection of Bill’s point that the media’s conventional wisdom on China is usually wrong, the summit between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago (occurring during the recording of this podcast) was exactly as Bill predicted: “Bland.” Recommendations: Bill: In the Name of the People (人民的名义 rénmín de míngyì), the big-budget anti-corruption propaganda thriller. And The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, by Ian Johnson. Kaiser: Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, a provocative and original book by Yuval Noah Harari.   See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

By day, Andrew Dougherty is a macroeconomist who manages a China research team for Capital Group, one of the world’s largest actively managed mutual funds. By night, he is Big Daddy Dough, creator of an album of parody hip-hop songs that explain various facets of the contemporary Chinese political and economic situation, from fixed-asset investment to leadership succession. On a recent trip to Beijing, Kaiser and Jeremy sat down with Big Daddy Dough to listen to some of his songs and talk about the serious issues he describes in a lighthearted way in his music. You can listen to Big Daddy Dough’s album and watch his music videos on his website: The Red Print Album. Recommendations: Jeremy: China Heritage website. Andrew: Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, by J. D. Vance. Kaiser: The Devil Made Me Do It, a hip-hop album by Paris.    See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

NOTE: If you haven’t read the book and are allergic to spoilers, please be aware that the interesting surprises of Scott’s story are discussed in this podcast.   Scott Tong is a reporter for American Public Media’s Marketplace, and from 2006 to 2010, he helped found and run the radio program’s Shanghai bureau. During that time, he also experienced a lot of culture shock — his Chinese-American upbringing in the U.S., Hong Kong, and Taiwan didn’t prepare him for mainland China as much as he had expected, and while in Shanghai, he uncovered some surprising truths about his family, which has roots in nearby Jiangsu Province. A Village With My Name: A Family History of China's Opening to the World is Scott’s deeply personal reporting and reflection on what he learned about his family, and China’s history, by visiting distant relatives in a forlorn part of Jiangsu Province. It is a highly engaging, eye-opening story that sheds light on how Chinese people engage with their past — and their present. Recommendations: Jeremy: McKay Books, a huge used books store in Nashville, Tennessee. And Congo Cables: The Cold War in Africa—From Eisenhower to Kennedy, by Madeleine Kalb. Scott: Resigned Activism: Living With Pollution in Rural China, by Anna Lora-Wainwright. And Rough Translation, an NPR podcast about how foreigners see America. Kaiser: Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History, by Kurt Andersen. 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, we are happy to share a live recording from the third annual SupChina Women’s Conference. Jeremy and Kaiser sat down with Ambassador Charlene Barshefsky, now a senior international partner at the law firm of WilmerHale, and a former United States Trade Representative under the Clinton administration. She came to New York for a candid discussion on her views regarding the recent deterioration of trade talks, her own experiences in the office of the United States Trade Representative, Huawei’s role in the dispute between the U.S. and China, and more possibilities in the trade war moving forward. What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast: 3:42: What caused the trade deal to go up in smoke? The tariff hikes? The executive order banning Huawei? Chinese negotiators reneging on previously agreed-upon wording? Charlene provides her opinion — noting a misjudgement on Trump’s negotiating style, among other factors: “First of all, a continued and persistent misapprehension on the part of Xi Jinping about Donald Trump…coupled with seeing a text in full. Which, when one sees constituent parts, might not seem too overbearing, but when one sees in full relief, looks exceptionally overbearing, making China look, perhaps, small. Coupled with a sense on the part of China that certain of the provisions, in total, either impinged on China’s sovereignty with respect to changes in laws, or were unrealistic with respect to the extent of purchases the U.S. wanted China to make, or were themselves not emblematic of the negotiations that took place.” 14:37: How can leaders preempt the common criticism of trade deals that the final agreement erodes the sovereignty of their country? Charlene suggests an interesting rhetorical strategy to take during the negotiating process: “Let’s suppose I say to you: I will never agree to a deal that puts in question the sovereignty of my country. Never. I will never do that. And then you do a deal. Which, actually, puts in question the sovereignty of your country. But because you’ve said, quite convincingly, you’d never do a deal that does that. Whatever it is you did over here, by definition, is not that. So, you’ve covered yourself.” 22:44: What is the Trump administration’s approach to macroeconomic policy, and how could this view affect the bilateral relationship with China and other U.S. trade partners? Charlene offers some perspective on the bigger picture: “I think the Trump administration is quite interested in managed trade. I think this is really the calling card — that is to say, ‘We want you to buy more from us. And if you don’t buy more from us in the following quantity over the following time frame, well, we’re just going to have to impose tariffs on you to even out the score.’ Whatever score is being kept in his mind.” She continues: “One of the difficulties with these kinds of solutions is that they’re often very costly to consumers. They’re intended to divert trade from the existing suppliers to your suppliers…it just takes the hunk that was Brazil’s, or Argentina’s, or Europe’s, or South Africa’s, and gives it to the United States. Those countries, most assuredly, will not stand still for it as their industries, who are trading fairly, suffer from the repercussions of what is a managed trade approach.” 30:07: Attacks on Huawei via public denunciation and executive orders seem to have hit China in a way that tariffs and other escalatory measures have not. Jeremy asks, “How does this sledgehammer approach to Huawei complicate China’s negotiating position?” Charlene acknowledges national security concerns regarding the company but also underlines the importance of interchange in the 21st-century tech ecosystem: “Huawei is just stuck in the middle. There’s a security aspect, and a highly positive, innovative, and economic aspect. So, could there be a better way to protect the security aspect, or mitigate that aspect, while not losing this other very important part of the Huawei equation? I don’t think the administration was interested in trying to thread that course, at least not at the present time. But at some point, it will be necessary to thread that course, or we will see not just Huawei disadvantaged, but most of our major tech companies highly disadvantaged as well.”

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

John Pomfret was 14 years old when Henry Kissinger began interacting with China in secret. He took his fascination to Stanford University’s East Asian Studies program, where he was among a select group of exchange students invited to spend a year at Nanjing University in 1980, shortly after Nixon established diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China. John went back to China as a reporter for the AP in 1988, nine months before the Tiananmen demonstrations, and was expelled from the country after covering the protests’ violent turn. He returned to China again in 1998 to head up the Washington Post’s Beijing bureau. John has also reported from Bosnia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey and Iran. In this week’s episode, Kaiser and Jeremy talk to John about his new book, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom, which charts the history of America’s relationship with China. John explains that the countries have been intertwined long before the ping-pong diplomacy often credited for ushering in U.S.-China relations in the early 1970s. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

John Pomfret first went to China as a student in 1980 and covered the Tiananmen demonstrations in 1989 for the Associated Press. He was expelled for his efforts, but returned to Beijing a decade later to head up the Washington Post’s Beijing bureau. For more on his experience and some compelling and little-known stories, listen to the first half of this two-part Sinica Podcast and read our accompanying Sinica backgrounder. In this week’s episode, Kaiser and Jeremy continue to talk with John about his new book, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom, which charts the history of America’s relationship with China. John explains that the countries have been intertwined long before the ping-pong diplomacy often credited for ushering in U.S.-China relations in the early 1970s. You can read the short prologue to John’s book, republished with permission here. Recommendations: John: The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen, and The Boat Rocker, by Ha Jin. Kaiser: The albums Tarkus and Welcome Back, My Friends, to the Show That Never Ends ~ Ladies and Gentlemen, by Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Jeremy: A VICE video on ginseng in the Appalachian Mountains, and The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, translated by Jack Zipes. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Antony Dapiran is a seasoned corporate lawyer who has worked in Hong Kong and Beijing for the last two decades. In that time, he’s become a historian of protests in Hong Kong and the author of City of Protest: A Recent History of Dissent in Hong Kong (2017), which explores the idea of protest as an integral part of Hong Kong’s identity. In a conversation with Kaiser and Jeremy, Antony brings a historical perspective to his analysis of the current demonstrations over the highly unpopular extradition bill, the shelving of which has not slaked the anger of demonstrators. What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast: 7:46: Reports emerged last week that suggested that the extradition bill, met with fierce opposition in Hong Kong, originated from the office of Chief Executive Carrie Lam, rather than in Beijing. Antony provides his take on this development: “People felt it could only be the hand of Beijing behind this, directing the Hong Kong administration to do it. Otherwise, why would it be done in such a roughshod fashion on such an issue that was clearly going to be of great sensitivity in Hong Kong and potentially against the interest of the Hong Kong community? Notwithstanding how surprising it is, it really does raise questions about the competence of Carrie Lam and her administration.” 12:10: Given the stark pushback against the bill, did Lam and her team see this coming? As a career civil servant, she has never had to undergo a general election, so this fumble could be a result of “cluelessness,” according to Antony. “There are a number of jokes going around Hong Kong that she doesn’t know how to catch the MTR, or that when she first moved into the Chief Executive’s residence, she didn’t know where to buy toilet paper.” 13:57: Is the comparison to the Umbrella Movement of 2015 an apt one? Antony gives us his opinion: “They organized and mobilized themselves rather by way of online chat forums, private messaging groups on Telegram and WhatsApp — it’s even being said that they’re using AirDrop to communicate instructions and messages on the ground. And that is a really strong contrast to the Umbrella Movement of five years ago, which, even as a student movement, had very clear leadership and was very much centrally organized.” He continues, “I think part of the reason why the protesters, this time around, are avoiding that model is precisely a direct response to the Hong Kong government’s aggressive prosecution and jailing of the Umbrella Movement leaders.” 24:46: What has happened since the Umbrella Movement in 2015? “The Umbrella Movement was regarded as a failure — it didn’t achieve its aims,” Antony states. “And then, in the five years since then, the Hong Kong government has steadily tightened the screws on dissent in the city… Using the cover of the legal system and Hong Kong’s rule of law has resulted in what I call a campaign of ‘lawfare’ for that reason.” 35:57: What of the leadership in Beijing and its take on the protests, and the handling of the protests by the Hong Kong government? Antony explains: “The vacuum that’s likely to be left by the much diminished authority of Carrie Lam in itself presents either an opportunity or a threat.” The opportunity being that, while the Legislative Council has “almost been reduced to rubber stamp function,” this may reinvigorate legislators in Hong Kong — whereas the threat may be that Beijing sees the vacuum as Hong Kong’s inability to govern itself, and “decides that it needs to intervene.” Recommendations: Jeremy: A Twitter account, @finnegansreader, which is a bot reading James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake line by line. There is a sister account for the author’s Ulysses, @ulyssesreader. Antony: The author Dung Kai-cheung, and his masterpiece, Atlas: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City. Kaiser: Total War: Three Kingdoms, a turn-based strategy game by Creative Assembly, and John Zhu’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms podcast.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Christopher Rea and Bruce Rusk, both professors at the University of British Columbia, about their translation of Book of Swindles: Selections from a Late Ming Collection (骗经 piànjīng), by Zhang Yingyu 张应俞. Anyone who has lived in China in recent decades will understand intuitively why a podcast ostensibly about current affairs in China would want to talk about a 16th-century book. However, for anyone who doubts the relevance for today's China, we believe it all will become painfully clear as you listen. Recommendations: Bruce Rusk: The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man. Written by David Maurer, a professor of linguistics who spent the 1930s hanging out with a legion of con artists to learn their languages and tricks, the book is one of the most colorful, well researched, and entertaining works of criminology that has ever existed. Christopher Rea: Slapping the Table in Amazement: A Ming Dynasty Story Collection. Originally written by Ling Mengchu 凌濛初 (1580–1644) and translated by Shuhui Yang and Yunqin Yang, the book is full of fantastic tales that collectively present a broad picture of traditional Chinese society during that period of time. Kaiser: The Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset that blew Kaiser away. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A top diplomat during the Clinton administration, author of the influential book China: Fragile Superpower: How China’s Internal Politics Could Derail Its Peaceful Rise, research professor and chair of the 21st Century China Center at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego, and co-author of a new high-level task force report on U.S.-China policy, Susan Shirk is one of the most sought-after voices on Chinese politics and U.S.-China relations. Today’s Sinica Podcast features an interview with Susan recorded live on January 30 during the Chinese New Year celebrations at the Long US-China Institute at UC Irvine. Susan talks about how China and its role in the world have dramatically changed in the last decade; how the country’s leaders have grown increasingly fragile and fearful of disloyalty even as their power has grown; and how those leaders likely share her trepidation that the Trump administration may recklessly “trash the entire relationship” between the two countries. Recommendations: Jeremy: His new hometown of Nashville, Tennessee, a wonderful place to visit, contrary to the misconceptions that many coastal Americans have about the South. Also Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where Kaiser lives. Susan: The School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego, which has a special focus on Asia and a strong group of China scholars. The China Focus blog, written by students at UC San Diego. The China 21 Podcast, produced by the 21st Century China Center. Kaiser: The Sellout, a satire novel by Paul Beatty, the first American author to win the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

China's most famous Canadian, Mark Rowswell, became famous — or at least "feimerse" — after appearing in the Spring Festival Gala on CCTV in 1990. In recent years, he's pioneered a hybrid between the xiangsheng (相声 xiàngsheng; crosstalk) for which he's known and Western-style stand-up comedy. Mark joined Anthony Tao and David Moser at the storied Bookworm on the final night of the Bookworm Literary Festival on March 30 to talk about the Chinese language, comedy, and the difficulties of Chinese soft power. What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast: 11:51: Learning Chinese is difficult — however, the specific types of difficulties that individuals are presented with often vary widely. Ethnically Chinese people are often held to a higher linguistic standard than their Caucasian counterparts, whereas foreigners who speak Chinese have become less of a rarity — and consequently less professionally valuable — in recent years. Mark explains: “I’ve had friends say, ‘You know the Chinese respect the ugly American. They don’t respect the sensitive, understanding Chinese-speaking foreigner. They like foreigners to be foreign.’” 29:22: Dīng Guǎngquán 丁广泉, a late titan of the Chinese comedy world, was one of Mark and David’s mentors. Non-judgmental and highly attentive to his disciples’ strong and weak points (he once wrote a scene describing David as muddle-headed and forgetful), he created a platform for many foreigners to enter the world of performance in Chinese. Mark states: “For us, it was very much a partnership, because he wasn’t all that well known in China, either. I had the name, the image, the fame that brought these opportunities to perform, but he was the guy who knew how to do it. I wouldn’t know how to do this by myself. That had a huge impact on me.” 32:43: “Your Chinese is so good!” A woman had overheard Mark telling Anthony the name of a restaurant in Chinese and promptly complimented him. According to Mark, the reactions he gets when speaking Chinese with shopkeepers or taxi drivers hasn’t changed much in 20 years, pushing back on the idea that the novelty of foreigners speaking Chinese has faded. David quips, “What does that tell you? That Chinese is very hard to learn.” “Well,” Mark contests, “we still do a bad job of it.” 44:04: Is the difficulty of the Chinese language a hindrance on China’s ability to export soft power? Mark explains: “First of all, the Chinese state sort of organizes everything so it has to be an official program. And secondly, Chinese people, I think, just tend to tense up when they sense that they’re dealing with foreigners — they have to be careful about what they say, and they’re a ‘representative of China,’ you know, they have this huge emotional burden that they bring to it. I think that’s the main problem China has with soft power: They don’t let their people express that power.” Recommendations: David: Recommends investigating books by Earnshaw Books, a Hong Kong–based publishing house, founded by Graham Earnshaw. Graham’s music can also be found online on his Bandcamp page. Mark: Thirteen Invitations (十三邀 shísān yāo), by Xǔ Zhīyuǎn 许知远, a video series that can be found on Tencent Video here. Anthony: The website What’s on Weibo, the Beijing Invitational Craft Beer Festival, hosted by Great Leap, and The Last Tribe on Earth, by Liane Halton and Anthony Tao.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

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This week’s show was recorded in Prague, where major developments in the continuing saga of a mysterious Chinese company called CEFC, with deep ties to the Czech president, Milos Zeman, unfolded during a recent visit by Kaiser. He spoke with Martin Hála of Charles University in Prague about the rise and fall of CEFC, and what this means not only for China’s efforts to expand its presence in Central and Eastern Europe, but also for China’s Belt and Road Initiative more broadly. Recommendations: Martin: An investigative journalistic piece on CEFC by Andrew Chubb. Kaiser: An Atlantic article on the class divide in America by Matthew Stewart, titled “The birth of the new American aristocracy,” and one in The American Interest by Damir Marusic, titled “The dangers of democratic determinism.” See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, the Sinica Podcast network adds another show: ChinaEconTalk, hosted by Jordan Schneider. In this crossover on Sinica, Jordan discusses "China's Grand AI Ambitions" with Rhodes scholar Jeff Ding. Jeff Ding breaks down how China stacks up to the rest of the world in the race to develop AI. He delves into the connections between Chinese tech companies and government AI targets, AI’s military implications, as well as the ethical considerations of AI applications in China’s police state. Jeff also discusses his recent paper “Deciphering China’s AI Dream,” as well as recent articles on AI he has translated from Chinese media on his ChinAI newsletter. Subscribe to ChinaEconTalk on iTunes, Overcast, Stitcher, or by plugging the RSS feed straight into your podcast reader.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy speak with Christian Sorace, assistant professor of political science at Colorado College. The three discuss his book, Shaken Authority: China’s Communist Party and the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake, which analyzes the ways the Communist Party uses rhetoric to serve its interests, the consequences of this endeavor for the region and survivors of the quake, and the urbanization of China’s rural areas. Christian spent a year and a half in the region starting in 2012, conducting fieldwork in affected areas via open-ended interviews, ethnographic observations, meetings with leaders of non-governmental organizations and scholars, and analysis of hundreds of pages of internal Party reports. What to listen for this week on the Sinica Podcast: 13:10: Sorace explains why, for a short time in the aftermath of the quake, some perceived the seeds of civil society to be growing: “This activity was limited to a short window of the rescue period in which lives were at stake and time was of the essence. And after this short window of rescue, the reconstruction phase begins, and then the picture changes entirely and top-down control was reasserted.” 18:03: Sorace elaborates on the role of gratitude education (感恩教育活动 gǎn ēn jiàoyù huódong) in shaping perceptions of post-earthquake reconstruction: “Officials would talk about gratitude education as a way of ‘removing psychological obstacles, and returning overly emotional people to a reasonable and rational state,’ so there’s also a kind of control element here.” He then elaborates on the haunting similarities between what happened in the aftermath of the earthquake and the horrors that are occurring now in Xinjiang. 26:32: “Over 7.7 million square meters of urban space was built in the reconstruction. Fifty percent of their entire rural population were moved into cities, so this is a massive expansion of urban space.” Christian reflects on the concept of “utopian urbanization” and his time living in these newly built apartments that housed disaster victims. 39:11: Superfluous slogans, turgid language... Can anything of value truly be gleaned from official language coming from the Chinese state? Sorace explains the significance of rhetoric in understanding the Communist Party: “…to dismiss everything that the Communist Party says, as this empty propaganda actually makes everything that’s going on in China actually much harder to understand. And if we pay close attention and train [our] sensitivity to listening to this ‘Party-speak,’ it actually can tell us quite a bit about what’s going on.” Recommendations: Jeremy: The Epic of Gilgamesh, by father and son duo Kevin and Kent Dixon, a graphic novel version of the original epic. Kaiser: The Vietnam War, by Ken Burns. Christian: Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, by Peter Godfrey Smith, a look at the nature and evolution of consciousness.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

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Associated Press (AP) reporter Gerry Shih was hard at work in 2017 writing a remarkable series of articles on China’s Uyghur Muslim minority. By traveling not just to China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where 10 to 15 million Uyghurs live, but also to Syria, where some have fled and taken up arms with militant groups, he sought to answer the most politicized and consequential questions about the ethnic group. These include: How long and to what extent have authorities in Xinjiang forced Uyghurs into indoctrination camps? How long and to what extent have they compelled residents to give DNA samples to the state? What role has Chen Quanguo 陈全国 had in building Xinjiang’s new digital police state, and will he succeed in subjugating separatist thought? Are China’s Uyghurs involved in global jihadi terrorism? Where and how do they get recruited, and how does China try to influence Uyghurs overseas? His four articles released in December were as follows: December 17: In western China, thought police instill fear December 23: Uighurs fighting in Syria take aim at China December 28: China's crackdown on Uighurs spreads to even mild critics December 29: China's Uighurs work to fend off pull of jihad They are part of a larger AP series titled “China's Uighurs on edge,” comprising 12 stories that seek “to flesh out the profile of a people whose voices have largely been silenced or gone unheard under the blanket of security in the region.” They also were published around the same time that the Wall Street Journal (paywall) and BuzzFeed published similarly alarming stories about the police state in Xinjiang. For more on Muslims in China, check out a previous Sinica Podcast titled “Islamophobia in China, explained by Alice Su and Ma Tianjie,” and an article on SupChina that seeks to answer the question “Where does Chinese Islamophobia come from?” Recommendations: Jeremy: A re-recommendation for Birding Beijing, a great site if you’re interested in birds in China. It is now in the second year of tracking cuckoos who fly all the way from Africa to China to migrate. (Also listen to a Sinica Podcast and read a SupChina Q&A with the website’s founder, Terry Townshend.) Gerry: The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia's New Geopolitics, by Andrew Small of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. With Belt and Road’s rising importance, it is a must-read, Gerry says. Kaiser: Kialo.com, a place for online debate that’s supposed to help people bridge contentious issues. It enforces ground rules, limits the number of words you can use, and crowdsources the most compelling arguments on both sides for each claim.   See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

China, as we say at the beginning of each Sinica Podcast episode, is a nation that is reshaping the world. But what does that reshaping really look like, and how does — and should — the world react to China’s role in globalization? Few are better placed to answer these questions than Kishore Mahbubani, a veteran former diplomat from Singapore who recently ended a stint as dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. He remains on the faculty there but is taking a sabbatical, in part to write a book for Penguin UK titled Has the West Lost It? His most recent book was titled The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace. In this podcast, Kishore, as he often does, brings up a number of provocative ideas (read here a piece in the World Post last year in which he raises many of the same ideas), particularly for Americans. Among them: The most important event of 2001 was not the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. The U.S. and China are perfectly positioned for an infrastructure cooperation deal, but China’s communist identity, more than anything, makes such cooperation unthinkable. To address this psychological block, Americans — and all Westerners — should think of China’s government as led by the Chinese Civilization Party, not the Chinese Communist Party, because its goal is to revive Chinese civilization, not to export communism. If Americans don’t start preparing for a world in which they are the number two power, the political shock when it happens could very well lead to a president even more misguided than Trump. (Both the International Monetary Fund moving its headquarters to China and Chinese currency becoming the primary international reserve currency in the coming decades are inevitable, for example, Kishore argues.) Recommendations: Jeremy: A field guide to the wild birds of Beijing (北京野鸟图鉴 běijīng yěniǎo tújiàn), available only in Chinese. Kishore: A recommendation to visit Indonesia, what Kishore calls “one of the most underrated and underappreciated countries in the world.” A decade ago, it was hit hard by the financial crisis and many Westerners thought it would fracture as a country — but now, it is the most successful democracy in the Islamic world. Kaiser: A typically tongue-in-cheek tweet from New York Times reporter Chris Buckley, which purports to show how the Warring States–era political philosopher Han Feizi explained the selection process for the Politburo Standing Committee at the 19th Party Congress last fall.   See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The South China Morning Post has been up to big things recently — and faced big doubts from those who worry about its editorial independence as Hong Kong’s paper of record. In late 2015, it was announced that the paper would be acquired by Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba, bringing the paper both a huge infusion of cash and a wave of questions about whether the new owners would maintain the SCMP’s editorial independence from Beijing. Gary Liu, formerly CEO at content aggregator Digg and head of labs at streaming music service Spotify, was appointed CEO of the SCMP a year after the Alibaba acquisition. He aims to adapt the 114-year-old newspaper for an age of technology disruptions, and talked to Jeremy and Kaiser about the paper’s editorial independence, its plans to evolve and build out digitally, and how it plans to contribute to the global conversation on China’s rise. This podcast was recorded in front of a live audience at the China Institute in New York on October 9. Recommendations: Jeremy: The WeChat app of China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), a good way to get real news about China because spitting out propaganda is not a priority of the NDRC. Just search “国家发改委” (guójiā fāgǎiwěi) on WeChat. Gary: The Party, a book by Richard McGregor that gives a fascinating exploration of how the Communist Party of China wants the world to perceive it, how it plans to stay in power, and how it manages to affect everyone’s life in China. Also, Destined for War, by Harvard professor Graham Allison, which discusses the Thucydides Trap, China’s rise, and the history of great power rivalries. Kaiser: A research paper from the Mercator Institute for China Studies titled “Ideas and ideologies competing for China’s political future,” which identifies really interesting clusters of people in China who have diverse ideological alignments. A Sinica podcast on a similar subject can be found here. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Few living figures of U.S.-China relations are as legendary as Charles W. "Chas" Freeman, Jr., the chief interpreter for Richard Nixon’s world-changing 1972 visit to China, and a former top American diplomat in countries such as China and Saudi Arabia. On this, the first of a two-part Sinica interview, Chas Freeman discusses grand strategy — and the current “strategy deficit” — in U.S.-China relations, as well as technological innovation, nationalism, xenophobia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and many other topics. Recommendations: While waiting for the next part of the interview, check out Ambassador Freeman’s book, Interesting Times: China, America, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige, and also this extensive 1995 interview with Ambassador Freeman done by Charles Stewart Kennedy for The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

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Great Leap Brewery is an institution. As one of the earliest American-style microbreweries in China, not only has the company rescued us from endless nights of Snow and Yanjing, but it's also given us something uniquely Chinese with its assortment of peppercorn, honey, and tea-flavored beers. So as much as we love the other microbreweries in Beijing and throw our money at them, too, it's no accident the Great Leap taproom is our most frequent destination most evenings after recording a show.  Today on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo sits down with Great Leap founder Carl Setzer to talk about his story in China: why Great Leap got started, how the company fits into the beer industry in China, and what it's like to run a food and beverage startup as a foreigner. This is a surprisingly intimate look at one of the places we've grown to take for granted, filled with details on their touch-and-go early years and the bureaucratic run-in that almost crippled the business. We hope you enjoy hearing their story as much as we did.  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week’s Sinica was recorded at UPenn’s Center for Study on Contemporary China. Jeremy and Kaiser speak with three prominent scholars on China: Sheena Greitens, associate professor of political science at the University of Missouri, Rory Truex, assistant professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University, and Neysun Mahboubi, research scholar at the Center for the Study of Contemporary China at the University of Pennsylvania. The group tackles a topic that has long beleaguered China-watching circles: self-censorship. In addition, it focuses on a paper that Sheena and Rory published last summer, Repressive Experiences among China Scholars: New Evidence from Survey Data. What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast: 22:41: Sheena describes the categories in which she and Rory organized “repressive experiences” in China, the center of their research, comprising 13 types of repression divided into three buckets: “The three broad categories that we looked at were restrictions on access to China itself, restriction on access to materials once you’re in China doing research, and monitoring and surveillance of that research by authorities in China.” According to their research, 20-25 percent of those interviewed had difficulty accessing archived materials, and 10 percent of visiting China scholars had been “invited” by authorities to speak with them and explain their research. When Chinese colleagues and interlocutors at host institutions are included in the sample, the figure jumps to 15 percent. 29:45: Rory’s hypothesis going into this project was that there would be a spike in repressive experiences and research after Xi Jinping’s ascent to power in 2012. Perceptions certainly trend in that direction. However, data from their research didn’t reveal major temporal trends related to these repressive experiences, with one caveat: “I talk to people who do a lot of fieldwork, and they say it’s actually much harder even to have interviews at all anymore. The one thing where there was a temporal trend was access to archives. If you talk to historians, they’ll talk a lot about how the archives are being sanitized, and projects, books, and dissertations that were feasible 10 or 15 years ago are no longer feasible today.” 48:05: What exactly is self-censorship? Neysun, Sheena, and Rory all take slightly differing views on what characterizes it. Rory discusses the calculus behind self-censorship, and identifies external stimuli that may have an impact on research and published materials in the United States: “We might be at the opposite [point of the problem], where the professional incentives [of researching contentious topics], plus the political environment in the United States are such that saying anything positive, or even neutral about the Communist Party is difficult to do, and difficult to publish.” 1:08:59: What role do China-watchers play in the larger conversation that, in the modern era, seems to be undergoing constant recalibration? What of the dichotomy among China-watchers, à la hawks versus doves? Here, Neysun, Sheena, and Rory all offer insight into these questions and suggestions on the way forward. Recommendations: Jeremy: Two jazz albums, Live at the Pershing, by Ahmad Jamal, a live recording from 1958, and Money Jungle, a studio album by Duke Ellington. Neysun: Evening Chats in Beijing: Probing China’s Predicament, by Perry Link. Sheena: Educated: A Memoir, by Tara Westwood, and Harry and the Terrible Whatzit, by Dick Gackenbach. Rory: The website www.chinachange.org, a website that provides reports, commentary, and analysis on human rights in China. Kaiser: Haunted by Chaos: China’s Grand Strategy from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping, by Sulmaan Wasif Khan.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

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This week on Sinica, we bring you a special preview of a new podcast called 996 Podcast with GGV Capital, which we are very excited to co-produce. Subscribe to the 996 Podcast here on iTunes, and here on Stitcher.  GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Jerry Yang, the founder and former CEO of Yahoo, who orchestrated arguably the best deal in tech history: In 2005, he arranged for Yahoo to invest $1 billion for a 40 percent stake in fledgling Chinese ecommerce site Alibaba at a post-money valuation of $5 billion. Today, Alibaba is worth almost half a trillion dollars. During the interview, Jerry conducts a postmortem for Yahoo’s China strategy, and offers advice for U.S. tech companies looking to expand into China. We’d love to hear your feedback! Please send comments and suggestions to 996@ggvc.com.  GGV Capital also produces a weekly email newsletter in English, also called “996," which has a roundup of the week's most important happenings in tech in China. Subscribe at 996.ggvc.com. The 996 podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital and co-produced by the Sinica Podcast. On this show, we interview movers and shakers of China's tech industry, as well as tech leaders who have a U.S.-China cross-border perspective. GGV Capital is a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. It has been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs since 2000 from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, ecommerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 200 companies, including Airbnb, Alibaba, Ctrip, Didi, Domo, HashiCorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Slack, Square, Toutiao, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others, with 29 IPOs and 22 unicorns to date. Find out more at ggvc.com. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode, Jeremy and Kaiser head to the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, to speak with Professor Lyle Goldstein, the author of Meeting China Halfway: How to Defuse the Emerging US-China Rivalry. Lyle discusses how the United States could accommodate China’s rise without sacrificing American interests by using “cooperation spirals,” the opposite of an escalation spiral. His ideas are sure to surprise those who believe everyone connected to the U.S. military is a hawk. Please take a listen and send feedback to sinica@supchina.com, or leave a review on iTunes. Recommendations: Jeremy: America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History by Andrew J. Bacevich China vs. USA: Empires at War (2007) directed by Anthony Dufour, on Youtube and Amazon Prime Lyle: The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna Kaiser: The Three Body Trilogy by Liu Cixin: The Three-Body Problem translated by Ken Liu The Dark Forest translated by Joel Martinsen Death’s End translated by Ken Liu 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 speak again with Antony Dapiran, a corporate lawyer in Hong Kong and the author of City of Protest: A Recent History of Dissent in Hong Kong, to catch up on the fast-moving events in the former British colony. Antony talks about the occupation of the Legislative Council (LegCo) building by protesters, the curious decision by Hong Kong authorities to allow the occupation of that building — which has usually been a red line, to be defended at all costs — and the support that this seems to have within the broader movement. We also discuss reactions of mainland Chinese to events in Hong Kong and ponder what could come next. Listen to Antony’s earlier interview on Sinica: Umbrella Revolution 2.0 – or something else? Antony Dapiran on the Hong Kong demonstrations. What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast: 4:51: July 1 is a public holiday in Hong Kong that celebrates the creation of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. This year, members of the Legislative Council, including Chief Executive Carrie Lam, celebrated a bit differently, as Antony recounts: “Traditionally, the morning of that day has been marked by a flag-raising ceremony at [Golden] Bauhinia Square at the convention center, which was the site of the ceremony itself…This year, protestors had indicated that they were planning to protest that flag-raising ceremony. And, as a result, the whole area was sealed off by police. Carrie Lam and all the dignitaries were forced to watch the flag-raising ceremony from inside [the LegCo building].” 8:19: Antony describes the scene around the LegCo building on the afternoon of July 1. After “a good six or seven hours” of the protestors “battering away” at tempered-glass windows, protestors breached and briefly occupied the building. The passivity of the police puzzled onlookers. After protestors broke through, the police withdrew. Antony has doubts about the explanation given by the Hong Kong Police: “The police themselves said there were ‘operational challenges’ using things like tear gas and pepper spray, but again, I’ve seen them using those very tools in that same space before, so I don’t quite buy that.” Another theory Antony has heard suggests that the Hong Kong government made a deliberate choice to “allow the protestors to do this, possibly as something of a calculated gamble that in doing this, they would do themselves a disservice or do some harm to their own image and cause the protests themselves to lose support across the broader community.” 13:57: Antony explains that the protestors vandalized the LegCo building in a “very targeted and highly symbolic fashion,” with a focus on “symbols of the Hong Kong government’s undemocratic control of Hong Kong and symbols of Beijing state power.” Books in the library were left untouched, and cash was left for drinks taken from refrigerators. However, in the main legislative chamber, individuals spray-painted over the portion of Hong Kong’s official emblem that says “The People’s Republic of China.” Antony: “Certainly, I think there was a sense that the way in which [the protestors] went about it was not a wanton act of destruction, but a carefully considered symbolic act.” 21:53: Antony forecasts what he thinks will ensue as a result of the continued dissatisfaction among the Hong Kong populace. More protests are to come, “in all of the 18 districts in Hong Kong over the coming weeks and months,” which could signal a call to action to the broader population outside of the central business district. “This movement is, in interesting ways, unlike past protest movements in Hong Kong, really spreading out among the people,” he states. “That combined with the desire to keep up the pressure from the protestors’ side is going to create a really interesting dynamic if the government can’t find its way to doing something to defuse the situation and start giving people something that they want.” Recommendations: Jeremy: A thread on Twitter by novelist Jeannette Ng on the topic of Mulan, which contains this Foreign Policy article that describes the many different versions of the story. Antony: The Mekong Review, a quarterly literary journal focused on Southeast Asia. Kaiser: Peter Hessler’s new book, The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

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Yukon Huang thinks that China’s economy is extremely unconventional. Unsurprisingly, then, that nearly all the conventional economic wisdom we hear about this economy — particularly the two hugely popular poles of opinion that treat it as either an unstoppable force or a crisis-in-waiting — is wrong. So goes the contrarian take of the former World Bank Director for China and Russia, who is now Senior Fellow in the Asia Program at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Huang detailed his thoughts on China’s economy is his most recent book, Cracking the China Conundrum: Why Conventional Economic Wisdom Is Wrong. http://supchina.com/2017/10/24/cracking-the-china-conundrum-makes-bold-claims/ He sat down with Jeremy and Kaiser at SupChina’s NEXT CHINA Conference on January 17, and in this live podcast, answered provocative questions and defended surprising statements:  "Why is it that people think China's unbalanced growth is a risk, when it actually is a positive development?" "Why do people think [China] has a debt problem, when actually it's a sign of financial deepening?" "Why is it that corruption is seen as an impediment to growth, when in China actually it's been a booster to growth?" "We assume that the more innovative you are as a country, the faster you grow, when actually it's the opposite." Recommendations: Jeremy: The China Questions: Critical Insights into a Rising Power, a fantastic collection of essays by scholars at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, edited by Jennifer Rudolph and Michael Szonyi. And radiooooo.com, a site you should definitely check out if you are a music lover. Yukon: The recent movie Hidden Figures, about black women mathematicians who worked for NASA in the 1960s. Kaiser: A two-part documentary on Channel NewsAsia called China on Film, a collection of the earliest footage ever shot in China, dating back to the last years of the Qing Dynasty.   See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Li Xin 李昕 is the managing director of Caixin Global, the English-language arm of China’s most authoritative financial news source, Caixin. For over 10 years, she has worked closely with the editor-in-chief of Caixin, Hu Shuli 胡舒立, whose famously fearless pursuit of investigative reporting has shaped the business landscape and pushed the boundaries of business reporting in a country known for its tight control of media. Kaiser sat down with Xin on March 22, at the 2017 CoreNet Global Summit in Shanghai, and asked for her insights into how investigative reporting happens in China, what makes Caixin different from other publications, and how and why China-based media is different than foreign media. They also discussed what one might call the “new normal” of issues keeping China’s leaders up at night, including risk in the real estate market, corporate debt, environmental contamination, and, of course, Trump. Originally from the megacity of Chongqing, Xin graduated from the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing, and received a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. Outside of her work at Caixin, she is known for a recent stint as managing editor of the Wall Street Journal’s Chinese edition. Disclosure: SupChina partners with Caixin on the Caixin-Sinica Business Brief podcast. Recommendations: Xin: The work of Haizi 海子, a famous poet of the 1980s who tragically committed suicide at the age of 25. Kaiser: Murder in the Lucky Holiday Hotel, a brief series about the murder of Neil Heywood by the wife of jailed politician Bo Xilai, written by BBC reporter Carrie Gracie. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Professor Jerome A. Cohen began studying the law of what was then called “Red China” in the early 1960s, at a time when the country was closed off, little understood, and much maligned in the West. Legal institutions were just developing in that time and, under the rule of Mao Zedong, were liable to dramatically change every three to seven years, Jerry says. After 12 years of persistence, he was finally able to visit the elusive country, and quickly became a pioneering Western scholar of China’s legal system. To read more about Jerry’s highly unusual decision to study Chinese law way back in 1960, see the first chapter of his memoir here. He later practiced law for 20 years, representing companies and individuals that had disputes to settle or contracts to negotiate in China, and retired from a partnership of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP in 2000. Jerry is now a professor of law at New York University, where he teaches courses on Chinese law, society, Confucianism, and international business contracts. Jerry sat down with Jeremy and Kaiser at the China Institute in New York on May 17, 2017, to discuss his long and distinguished career, to comment on China’s legal development and the state of rule of law in China, and to talk about his relationship with Chen Guangcheng, the blind self-taught lawyer who left China in 2012 with Jerry’s help — only to find himself used by conservative ideologues in the U.S. Recommendations: Jeremy: Jerry’s video memoirs, posted as a wonderful collection of YouTube videos on his website. Specifically, the clip titled “The Soup Is Not Too Clear.” Jerry: A recommendation that we have an administration in Washington that would do more to endorse the rule of law. One of the least-noticed sins of the current administration is its refusal to do this, specifically in relation to China. Kaiser: The South China Morning Post’s excellent explainer on five projects of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

China makes an about-face on Libya, we discuss a recent controversy in Beijing's arts community over independent filmmaker Zhao Liang. We also get an on-the-ground update on the state of China's South-North Water Diversion Project: a little-publicized infrastructure effort that already dwarfs the Three Gorges Dam in both its human and environmental impact. We're lucky to have an incredible lineup of guests. Joining Kaiser Kuo in our studio this week is Edward Wong from The New York Times, whose recent profile of independent filmmaker Zhao Liang sets the stage for our discussion today. Kathleen McLaughlin from the GlobalPost is also here, fresh back in Beijing from a trip to Shaanxi to investigate the state of China's plans to redirect southern water to the country's parched north. We are also lucky to be joined by Sinica-stalwart Will Moss of Imagethief fame. Recommendations: Edward Wong Crime and Punishment (Zuì Yǔ Fá), Petition (Shàng Fǎng): https://www.amazon.com/Liang-Collection-Petition-Punishment-Airplane/dp/B006Z1H4M0 Still Life (Sǎn Xiá Hǎo Rén): https://www.amazon.com/Still-Life-%C3%82-Zhou-Sanming-Zhao/dp/B001CD6GL6 Will Moss When A Billion Chinese Jump, by Jonathan Watts: https://www.amazon.com/When-Billion-Chinese-Jump-Mankind/dp/141658076X Kaiser Kuo Décadence Mandchoue, by Edmund Trelawney Backhouse: https://www.amazon.com/Decadence-Mandchoue-Memoirs-Trelawny-Backhouse/dp/9881944511 The Hermit of Peking, by Hugh Trevor-Roper: https://www.amazon.com/Hermit-Peking-Hidden-Edmund-Backhouse/dp/190601101X/ref=dp_ob_title_bk> 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 launch the Middle Earth podcast, which discusses China’s culture industry. In this debut episode on the Sinica Network, host Aladin Farré chats with three individuals who have all hit the big time and become internet celebrities in China: Erman, whose musings on love and relationships turned into a viral success and a full-time job; Ben Johnson, an Australian English teacher, whose short videos on cultural differences have attracted millions of views and 3 million followers; and Tang Yiqing, who started Juzi Video and has a venture-backed company with 30 million young fans. Learn their secrets for how to become a wanghong (网红 wǎnghóng; internet celebrity)! Subscribe to Middle Earth on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, or Stitcher, or plug the RSS feed into your favorite podcast app.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

China’s legal system is much derided and poorly understood, but its development has, in many ways, been one of the defining features of the reform and opening-up era. Rachel Stern, a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Berkeley, has researched the contradictions, successes and failures of China’s changing approach to governance and legal oversight of society. She has also written a book, Environmental Litigation in China: A Study in Political Ambivalence, which examines the intersection of Chinese authoritarianism, pollution and the nation's laws. In this podcast, Rachel talks with Kaiser and Jeremy about her recent research, the Chinese bar exam and its politicization, the ways in which environmental litigation works (or doesn't), and the anxious uncertainty behind much of the self-censorship in media. You can find background reading for this podcast here, which includes a curated reading list on China's legal system. You can also learn more about Rachel in her supplementary Q&A with Jeremy Goldkorn in which they discuss comparisons between the U.S. and Chinese legal systems, the phrase "rule of law" and the Chinese citizens who are filing lawsuits. Recommendations: Jeremy: Chinese politics from the provinces blog. Rachel: The Chinese Mayor, a documentary film by Zhou Hao. Kaiser: Moonglow, a novel by Michael Chabon. 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 the Honorable Kevin Rudd, the 26th prime minister of Australia and the inaugural president of the Asia Society Policy Institute. He is also a doctoral student at Jesus College, University of Oxford, who, through his studies, hopes to provide an explanation as to how Xi Jinping constructs his worldview. Mr. Rudd elaborates on the extent to which the Chinese government’s worldview has changed, the current direction of that worldview, and how much of that can be owed to Xi Jinping and domestic political maneuvering. The two take a deep dive into the state of ongoing flux in the U.S.-China relationship; the now-strategic competition between the U.S. and China; what the new rules for engagement are; Chinese foreign policy transitioning to a more active approach; the most significant changes in the bilateral relationship over the past 12 months; and the current state of Australia-China relations. What to listen for this week on the Sinica Podcast: 2:39: Rudd describes the transition of Chinese foreign policy from the reserved “conceal one’s strengths and bide one’s time” (韬光养晦 tāoguāng yǎnghuì) to a more active or energetic approach of “be energetic and show promise” (奋发有为 fènfā yǒuwéi), which reflects Beijing’s growing global ambitions. 13:40: Rudd in response to Kaiser’s request for an explanation of the basic tenets of Xi’s worldview in the modern era: “I think the one thing I probably got right about Xi Jinping was an estimation of his character and personality: that he would not be content with being primus inter pares.” 34:48: Rudd elaborates on several events over the past 12 months that he believes to be significant developments in the U.S.-China relationship, particularly Vice President Mike Pence’s speech at the Hudson Institute earlier this month: “In terms of the harshness of the language, I think, again, it will cause Beijing to sit up and take notice, and it will confirm in the minds of many that the impending unfolding period of U.S. ‘containment’ of China is now entrenched.” 45:20: In response to Kaiser’s question on the future of coexistence with an increasingly authoritarian China, Rudd offers a direct response: “If liberal internationalism, as espoused post-’45, is to have a future, then how do you coexist with China? I think the other member states of the international community, if they want the current rules-based order based on its established pillars to survive, they’re going to have to argue for it and argue strongly for it… Otherwise, it will disappear beneath the waves of an economically dominant China over the long term.” Recommendations: Kevin Rudd: The film Crazy Rich Asians. Kaiser: Emperor of China: Self-Portrait of K’ang-Hsi, by Jonathan D. Spence, a historical account written from the perspective of the Kangxi Emperor himself.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

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This week, we feature the second half of an extensive interview (first part here) with Shelley Rigger, a political scientist at Davidson College and the leading U.S. expert on the politics of Taiwan. This second half of the interview, which covers the history of Taiwan from the 1990s to the present, was conducted by Neysun Mahboubi of the UPenn Center for the Study of Contemporary China Podcast (one of our favorite China podcasts), and is republished here with the Center’s permission. What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast: 3:39: Shelley and Neysun discuss the nature of the relationship between Taiwan and China in the early 1990s, with identify the opponents and proponents of unification with the mainland. Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國 Jiǎng Jīng-guó, the son of Chiang Kai-shek, who succeeded his father as premier) allowed for veterans of the Chinese civil war to return to the mainland on humanitarian visits. These veterans were accompanied by their children, who saw economic opportunities on the other side of the Taiwan Strait. Shelley: “They get off the plane, and what Dad sees is, ‘I don’t recognize my hometown.’ What the son or son-in-law sees is, ‘This is perfect for my business.’” 17:55: What is it about Taiwanese independence that makes it such a contentious topic for officials in Beijing? What has been the result of the social, economic, and cultural interactions between Taiwan and the mainland since the 1990s? What role did Taiwanese investment in China play in the ’90s, and what about Chinese investment in Taiwan in the 21st century? Shelley and Neysun, Taiwan and China scholars respectively, talk through these questions. 33:49: Are there red lines in Beijing on the topic of Taiwanese independence? What are the primary points of inflection and contention in the relationship? What effect does a U.S. presence in Taiwan have on the Taiwan-P.R.C. relationship? Shelley explains: “Are we going to remind Beijing that we are in it in that way, and that in some sense the inability to solve this problem [of independence] that they have chosen for themselves is our fault? Are we going to put that right up in their faces, or are we going to say, ‘Taiwan is okay. We’re okay. We don’t need to, as my dad says, kick the skunk.’” 38:51: What about the U.S.-Taiwan relationship under the current U.S. administration? The phone call between Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文 Cài Yīng-wén) and then president-elect Trump, which was intended to be private, certainly strained the relationship after being picked up by international media and tweets by Trump blaming Taiwan for the ensuing debacle that unfolded. Shelley: “The other thing about this administration that’s especially worrisome from the Taiwan perspective is that it’s very unpredictable, as you said, and so the possibility that Taiwan could be a bargaining chip or introduced into some transaction is ever-present…” 51:58: Taiwanese identity, and its role in the world, has undergone seismic changes throughout its history. Shelley points out that the discussion within the island nation has somewhat settled, but not without certain reservations: “The debate over identity that was raging in Taiwan in the 1990s and 2000s is pretty settled on the idea that, with the exception of the indigenous peoples and the ever-growing number of immigrants to Taiwan, our roots are in China…but that does not need to define us politically, and our community, the community of shared fate or common destiny that we belong to as Taiwanese, is specific to this island…”

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Chris Buckley is a highly regarded and very resourceful correspondent for The New York Times, who is based in Beijing. He has worked as a researcher and journalist in China since 1998, including a stint at Reuters, and is one of the few working China correspondents with a Ph.D. in China studies. Chris’s coverage has included politics, foreign policy, rural issues, human rights, the environment, and climate change. He also has an informative and sometimes very amusing Twitter account. In this podcast, recorded with a live audience in Beijing, Kaiser and Jeremy ask Chris about his tradecraft and sourcing of stories about elite Chinese politics, his views on Xi Jinping and the anti-corruption campaign, and what we can expect from the 19th Party Congress this fall. Chris also talks about the joys of journalism in a country that makes it very difficult to do. Recommendations: Jeremy: Interactive infographic about the Party’s “Leading Small Groups” produced by the Mercator Institute for China Studies, Great Wall Fresh - restaurant and wild Great Wall hiking. Chris: Intentions: Examining my peers in the Republic 心路-透视共和国同龄人 by Mi Hedu 米鹤都 (on Chinese Amazon store), All Sages Bookstore (in Chinese)万圣书屋 in Beijing Kaiser: Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie   See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Despite efforts to downplay the story in the face of the Shanghai Expo, news of a recent wave of copycat killings has spread quickly through China, driven in part by the surprising revelation that many of the killers have been middle-aged and apparently well-educated men. Online, some netizens have blamed the government, which in turn blames social contradictions. Writing for The Telegraph, Malcolm Moore summarizes these attacks as a “turning point” created by alienation engendered over the last twenty years of China’s industrialization. Where does the truth lie?  With Kaiser Kuo out of the country, Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei takes up hosting duties this week, joined by Sinica regular Gady Epstein, Beijing bureau chief for Forbes magazine, and China public relations expert Will Moss, whom you may know as author of the popular blog Imagethief. Qin Liwen, a Chinese author and bookstore owner in Beijing who has written about these killings in the domestic media, also joins Jeremy as a guest in the studio. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

North Korea is a mystery to nearly everyone — even those who have dedicated their lives to studying the country — including Korean experts based in Seoul, national security experts in Washington or Beijing, and a variety of foreigners who have spent extended periods studying in or reporting from the North. There is great uncertainty about what the country’s leaders really think of China, how self-sufficient the North’s economy actually is, and even the background of the “respected” leader, Kim Jong-un, beyond a few seemingly random details (he studied in Switzerland and likes basketball and Whitney Houston, for example). Evan Osnos — former Beijing correspondent for the New Yorker and now the magazine’s correspondent in the currently far more unpredictable capital of the U.S. — recently travelled to the Hermit Kingdom and reported an extensive cover piece for that magazine: “The risk of nuclear war with North Korea.” What are the prospects for war and peace in northeast Asia? Evan talked with Jeremy and Kaiser about his conversations with North Korean, Chinese, and U.S. government officials and people involved in the complicated regional powerplay. Recommendations: Jeremy: Jeeves & Wooster, a comedy TV series adapted from the P.G. Wodehouse books about a gormless English aristocrat and his very bright butler, played by Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, respectively. It’s “really a wonderful escapist pleasure [for] when you don’t feel like thinking about Donald Trump and North Korea,” Jeremy adds. Evan: The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot, a book by Blaine Harden that explains how North Koreans think about the Korean war — an essential piece of the current conundrum we all face. Kaiser: China in Disintegration, by James Sheridan, a narrative history of the Republican Era (1912-1949) in China. Events during the period such as the Republican Revolution and the May Fourth Movement are key to understanding modern China. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, Kaiser and Jeremy continue their conversation with Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (see part 1 here), and focus on how he got interested in China, his fascination with the Chinese language, his early diplomatic career, his extraordinary experience as chief interpreter during Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972, and his prescient predictions of how China would evolve after the normalization of relations with the U.S. Stay tuned for the third part of this interview, coming next week!

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

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 chat with Jude Blanchette, the Senior Advisor and China Practice Lead at Crumpton Group's China Practice. We pick his brain on the rumors swirling around Beijing this summer, about public criticisms of Xi’s leadership, about the lack of any real succession plan in the eventuality that Xi is somehow incapacitated or steps down, and an emerging political science literature on authoritarianism. Jude has also discussed Chinese politics on Sinica on three other occasions in the past two years: Neo-Maoists: Everything old is new again; Nationalism in Russia and China; Takeaways from China’s 19th Party Congress. Recommendations: Jeremy: War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence, by Ronan Farrow. Jude: The Youtube channel “Epic rap battles of history,” particularly their 2013 video on “Rasputin vs Stalin” — Jude calls it “a great way to learn about how closed political systems work through OK rap.” Kaiser: Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of Sinica, we present an in-depth interview with Arthur Kroeber, the founding partner and head of research for Gavekal Dragonomics, an independent global economic research firm, and the editor-in-chief of its journal, China Economic Quarterly.  Arthur's new book, China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know, superbly explores China's astonishing expansion during the "reform and opening up" period and the challenges the country now faces as growth slows. He provides a clear-eyed take on a huge range of subjects, from the internationalization of the renminbi to local debt to the way China's state-owned enterprises function (or don't). The book is a refreshing antidote to much of the commentary in the media, where "The Conventional Wisdom" we discuss in the podcast consists of doomsayers predicting China's imminent collapse and Pollyannas who see the country as an unstoppable economic juggernaut. We love feedback: Please write to sinica@supchina.com. Recommendations: Jeremy: The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction by James A. Millward Arthur: The Ibis Trilogy by Amitav Ghosh Kaiser: Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 by Philip A. Kuhn — Kaiser and Jeremy See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Members of the Politburo are rarely praised for their dancing skills, but consider Xi Jinping's almost flawless execution of a political two-step: first casting himself as the voice of liberal moderation in the face of Bo Xilai's mass propaganda, and then draping himself in the mantle of Maoist China and the Communist Revolution once his position was secure. The changes are enough to prompt anyone to ask: How exactly did this happen and does it even make sense? Today on Sinica we take a look at the political movement that some academics are calling neo-Maoism, a group composed of the traditionally conservative politicians and Communist Party members whose influence began eroding with market reforms in the 1980s but who have arguably witnessed a comeback in the last two years. In a conversation with Jude Blanchette, the former assistant director of the 21st Century China Program at the University of California San Diego and currently the associate engagement director at The Conference Board’s China Center for Economics and Business in Beijing, Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn take a look at the history of the movement, its major players and how it is treated in the Chinese media. 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 Lucy Hornby, the deputy bureau chief of the Financial Times in Beijing and a veteran guest on the show. She has appeared on Sinica before to discuss professional representation for women in China, the last surviving comfort women in the country, and domestic environmental challenges. The two discuss shadow banking in China and its history; the cat-and-mouse relationship between regulators and shadow financiers; the advent of fintech and the proliferation of peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms; and Lucy’s reporting on a pyramid scheme involving selenium-infused wheat in Hebei. What to listen for this week on the Sinica Podcast: 11:15: Lucy responding to Kaiser’s question on perceptions of shadow lending in China: “You see repeated attempts by the Chinese state to shut this down. And also the words that they use around it: shadow banking, private banking, private financiers, capitalists… They’re very much painted in a negative light. But at the same time, some of China’s biggest entrepreneurs have said they would never have gotten started or been able to make it through a downturn [without a shadow loan].” 13:02: Lucy points out that in the lead-up to the financial crisis of 2008, the state took control of building housing from private investors: “This cutoff in loans [to private entities] happened roughly around the time you had the global financial crisis and the Chinese government putting out a massive stimulus plan…and suddenly if you can make a 30 percent profit on something, you can take out a 20 percent loan… That's when you really had this explosion of shadow banking that reached into every sector of the economy.” 30:35: “The other thing I think a lot of people don’t realize is that Chinese shadow financing has flowed into peripheral countries… A lot of Mongolian entrepreneurs turn to that shadow financing, and you even had some who then took that and repackaged it at higher rates to Mongolian retail customers. So, that means that basically the nation of Mongolia is now completely exposed to the Chinese shadow banking sector.” 42:15: To conclude the discussion, Lucy provides a bird’s-eye view: “I think your point about China’s need for flexible financing is a real one, and that’s going to continue. But I think what we’re also seeing is a massive deleveraging and default of all these boom years into the pockets of the average Chinese person.” Recommendations: Lucy: Den of Thieves, by James B. Stewart, the tome-like account of the junk bond trading craze of the 1980s, and The China Dream, by Joe Studwell. Kaiser: Two books by Stephen R. Platt: Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age and Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

While Western countries prepare for tougher sanctions at the UN against Iran regarding its nuclear development, China is reluctant to impose any further sanctions, intensifying the tension between Beijing and Washington. However, increasing signs, including Hu Jintao’s upcoming visit to Washington to attend the nuclear summit, have shown that China may be preparing for an about-turn on Iranian sanctions. Indeed, China is in a tough spot in this situation as Iran has always been its important strategic partner and oil provider. Through delicate maneuvering in the Middle East, China is undoubtedly maximizing concessions from both Iran and the West.  Scandal broke out last month involving a number of deaths in Shanxi and Jiangsu among infants and toddlers that appear to be related to bad vaccinations. The crisis was eventually attributed to the private companies that take over the vaccines through local health administrations. How the government will manage this situation, coming after the melamine crisis, is still waiting to be seen. In this week’s installment, host Kaiser Kuo discusses these two issues with Bill Bishop, a tech entrepreneur and blogger at DigiCha.com and Sinocism.com, and William Moss, who writes the blog imagethief.com. How should we interpret China’s signs of willingness to support sanctions on Iran over nuclear weapons development? Will the vaccination scandal become another melamine crisis, or does evidence point to this blowing over quickly? References: The Iran Nuclear Issue: The View from Beijing, by Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt The Race for Iran blog The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower, by Robert Baer 山西疫苗乱象调查：近百名儿童注射后或死或残, by王克勤 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Stephen Roach is a senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and a senior lecturer at the Yale School of Management. He was formerly the chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and the firm’s chief economist, positions of immense influence on Wall Street. His longtime study of globalization has led to many books, most recently Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China in 2014. He also writes for Project Syndicate. Stephen joins Kaiser and Jeremy on Sinica to discuss many of the findings of his book, and what has changed since it was published. The topics include: The unhealthy codependency between the economies of China and America, and the inverse nature of their savings rates, investment rates, labor, and consumption. How much of the West has relied on economic policies that promise “false prosperity,” and how China may fall into the same trap. Where the U.S. trade deficit with China actually comes from. Whether savings rates in China are changing dramatically, or will change soon. Why Xi Jinping has formed leading small groups on economic policy, and what that means for the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and China’s economic direction. The path toward rebalancing, for both the U.S. and China. Recommendations: Jeremy: The literary website The Bitter Southerner, which covers the American South from a broad-minded perspective that Yankees often overlook. Stephen: The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization, by Richard Baldwin. It forced the former chief economist of Morgan Stanley to rethink many of the ideas he had about globalization. Kaiser: An app called Audm, which has audiobook narrators read aloud long-form articles from outlets such as the Atlantic and 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 the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser Kuo and David Moser are joined by Deborah Seligsohn, former science counselor for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and currently a doctoral candidate at the University of California, San Diego, where she studies environmental governance in China. With more than 20 years of China experience, Deborah is one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on the question of China's policy response to issues of air pollution and climate change. Recommendations: "How China, the ‘world’s largest polluter,’ is taking on climate change," by Deborah Seligsohn (Non-pay walled version is on SCMP attached below) http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1891794/how-china-worlds-largest-polluter-taking-climate-change https://www.chinafile.com/contributors/deborah-seligsohn http://www.chinafaqs.org/expert/deborah-seligsohn David Moser The Last Dalai Lama http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/magazine/the-last-dalai-lama.html?_r=0 The Age of Irreverence http://www.amazon.com/The-Age-Irreverence-History-Laughter/dp/0520283848 Deborah Seligsohn Hey, China, this is why democracies beat autocracies in a fight. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/12/15/hey-china-this-is-why-democracies-beat-autocracies-in-a-fight-so-back-off-the-south-china-sea/ Kaiser Kuo ISIS is a revolution https://aeon.co/essays/why-isis-has-the-potential-to-be-a-world-altering-revolution   See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Islamophobia isn’t a phenomenon limited to Trump’s America or the Europe of Brexit and Marine Le Pen. It has taken root in China, too — in a form that bears a striking resemblance to what we’ve seen in recent years in the West. The Chinese Party-state now faces a vexing conundrum: how to balance, on the one hand, its idea of China as a multiethnic state and prevent overt anti-Islamicism with, on the other hand, its commitment to atheism — all the while combating the “three evils” of terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism. Kaiser and co-host Ada Shen spoke with the Amman, Jordan-based reporter Alice Su, who has written a series of pieces about Islam in China, and Ma Tianjie, the wise interpreter of Chinese public opinion and founder of the indispensable Chublic Opinion blog, to unpack the phenomenon of Chinese Islamophobia, and to explore the other difficulties that Muslims face in China on a daily basis. Be sure to also check out Alice’s five articles on “Islam with Chinese characteristics,” which she wrote with a reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Every one of them is worth a good read. Recommendations: Ada: Lab Girl, by Hope Jahren, an autobiography of a woman who is a renowned geobiologist. “You will never look at a tree the same way again,” Ada assures us. Tianjie: The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, by Oxford historian Peter Frankopan. It rewrites world history while focusing on what we now call Central Asia and the Middle East, arguing that this area has truly been the center of world history for millennia. It also explores how religion affected trade routes and vice versa, a theme that Kaiser points out is also explored in Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane, by S. Frederick Starr. Alice: The Icelandair Stopover program. If you book international flights with a layover in Iceland, Icelandair will allow you to extend your layover for up to a week for free. In addition, it will pair you up with a buddy to explore the food, culture, and sights of Iceland — also for free. Kaiser: The Orphan Master’s Son, by Adam Johnson. A fascinating novel set in the North Korea of Kim Jong Il that won a series of literary prizes after it was released in 2012, including the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Emily Feng is one of the rising stars among China reporters. She’s about to take up her post in Beijing as National Public Radio’s correspondent after an illustrious run with the Financial Times. In a show taped a few months ago, Emily speaks with Kaiser and Jeremy about her most recent reporting for the FT, covering important topics related to Xinjiang and technology. She also reflects on why, as a Chinese American, she feels like she’s under added pressure to present accurate and balanced reporting on China. What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast: 14:02: Emily discusses the changing scope of topics that have garnered media coverage recently: “This year, rather than having conversations about #MeToo or Black Lives Matter, which, I think, really dominated discussions in the past two years, it's been about Chinese students [and] Chinese identity.” She also discusses a scandal at Duke University — Emily’s alma mater — in which an assistant professor at Duke University urged Chinese students via email to “commit to speaking English 100 percent of the time.” “Chinese Americans have always been very politically quiet. And I come from a Chinese-American family, [so] this is what has been taught to me: Don’t stick your head up. But I think that with what’s happening in the U.S.-China relationship, Chinese Americans are going to have to figure out what their stance is to partake more in political discussions happening on campuses [and] at the local government level.” 18:49: Emily, who has reported extensively on Xinjiang, reflects on her trips there in 2017 and 2018, and the rapidly deteriorating conditions for Uyghur Muslims in the region. “It was very, very evident that things were different. People [in 2017] could still talk freely about what was happening. You would talk to people in taxis, in restaurants — I met up with a number of Uyghur friends and they talked quite comfortably, but fearfully, about how their phones were being hacked and people were going to jail because of content they had shared that was vaguely Muslim from four or five years ago.” Outside of the capital of Urumqi, things were different, she explains. “I went to Hotan and Kashgar in October 2017, and Hotan was just another level. It was a police state. There were tanks and cars on the streets. There were checkpoints maybe every three or four blocks within the city. It was incredibly segregated.” 38:34: Emily wrote a deep-dive story on Hikvision, a Chinese CCTV company, which touches on the moral entanglement that U.S. companies face in supplying authoritarian governments with the nuts and bolts needed to monitor and sometimes oppress or imprison individuals abroad: “There are only a handful of companies out there that can make the type of commercially competitive semiconductors, components, [and] memory hard drives that go into the electronics we use every day — including the type of surveillance technology that China uses. So, that gives American companies a huge amount of power in saying, ‘This is whom we will sell to and this is whom we will not.’ But they’re understandably reluctant in making that distinction and making what they see as political decisions because their focus is the bottom line.” Recommendations: Jeremy: Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast, by Joshua Weilerstein. Emily: The show Schitt’s Creek, available with a Netflix subscription. Kaiser: Another Netflix show, Russian Doll.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The immense popularity of social media has afforded China watchers a terrific window onto public opinion in China. In recent years, a slew of English-language websites have emerged to interpret the various trends, phenomena, discourse and debates on the Chinese internet for non-Chinese audiences, but for our money, the very best of the bunch is Chublic Opinion — public opinion with Chinese characteristics. Written by Ma Tianjie, a graduate of Peking University who now works for China Dialogue, the blog offers penetrating insight and analysis with great flare. He joins Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn and Ada Shen in the studio for a wide-ranging discussion that reveals the mysterious origins of "diaosi" culture and looks at some of the controversies and conversations that have dominated Weibo and WeChat in recent months. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.