Tony Lin is a producer at Quartz for the web series Because China and an avid observer of Chinese online communities, such as Weibo. After the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, Tony noticed commentary being widely shared that, in other times, would have been censored immediately. In this episode, Jordan and Tony create a timeline of the coronavirus, analyze the strikingly candid nature of online discussion in the early days of the outbreak, and explore broader themes of censorship and ...
Feb 05, 2020•31 min
Gordon Orr is a senior adviser at McKinsey & Company and a non-executive board member at both Lenovo and Meituan-Dianping. In this week’s episode of China EconTalk, he and Jordan examine collateral economic damages as a result of the trade war, take a look at the role of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and how it could change in an era of increasing U.S.-China tensions, and forecast Tesla’s future in China, which could be tied to Huawei telecommunications infrastruct...
Jan 31, 2020•57 min
How does a bookish Beijing teenager, who found himself stuck for six years planting potatoes in the Gobi Desert, grow up to study with former chair of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen, teach at Wharton, and now lead one of Asia's most successful investment firms? In this episode, Shàn Wěijiàn 单伟建, the chairman and CEO of investment firm PAG Group, and the author of Out of the Gobi: My Story of China and America , tells his personal story of exile during the Cultural Revolution and provides his v...
Jan 15, 2020•52 min
Adam Segal, director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), joins Jordan to talk about technology competition between the United States and China. In this episode, they discuss a recent report by CFR titled Innovation and National Security: Keeping Our Edge , which examines the increasingly vexed technology ties between the two countries and the implications of tech nationalism worldwide. 11:44: Undue pressure on Chinese scientists 16:39: Does it ...
Jan 09, 2020•40 min
Jane Li, a Chongqing native and a technology reporter for Quartz, talks through some of the differences between Twitter and its Chinese equivalent, Weibo. She also discusses the website Douban, the lively and open discussion among its young users, and the threat that looming censorship poses to it. In addition, she provides details on why some Chinese internet users have turned their backs on Huawei in the wake of an extended jail term served by one of its employees. 4:10: Twitter vs. Weibo — wh...
Dec 11, 2019•37 min
Can one street tell China’s story? Jonathan Chatwin, author of Long Peace Street: A Walk in Modern China , takes listeners on a tour of Chang’an Avenue, a major artery for traffic in central Beijing, which was also the scene of several critical moments in China’s modern history. Jordan and Jonathan discuss the symbolism of national buildings and monuments along it, and the role of the street as a place of protest and a part of China’s revolutionary history. 11:05: Baobaoshan Revolutionary Cemete...
Nov 27, 2019•1 hr 8 min
Paul Triolo, practice head of geotechnology at the Eurasia Group, sat down with Jordan to address some of the questions at the center of the U.S.-China tech relationship: the future of 5G research and innovation, persecutions of researchers and scientists from China based in the U.S., security concerns surrounding Huawei and Chinese-funded communications infrastructure, and more. 6:38: Current blind spots in Chinese tech policy 18:30: What does a “good” tech policy look like? 32:09: Is change po...
Nov 20, 2019•57 min
Jeremiah Jenne, history teacher, writer, and the man behind Beijing by Foot , is in the guest seat this week. He speaks with Jordan about the changes — both tangible and intangible — that Beijing has undergone in the last few decades. They chat about how Chinese history is reinterpreted through the lenses of different regimes, the ways in which this new history is presented to the world, and Beijing’s modernizing cityscape and the varied reactions it is met with. 10:57: Out with the old, in with...
Nov 13, 2019•48 min
Puzzled by rising drug deaths at raves in the United States, author and investigative journalist Ben Westhoff set out to find answers. A Google search for “Buy fentanyl in China” took him down a rabbit hole that led to a face-to-face meeting with the CEO of a company selling fentanyl on Skype “all day long” and a drug lab in Shanghai. Ben tells Jordan the remarkable story. 5:06: The digital rabbit hole 9:20: Want to make fentanyl? Just Google it. 13:57: Between Heisenberg and Pfizer 22:17: How s...
Oct 23, 2019•51 min
Bloomberg technology reporter Lulu Chen gives the scoop on the tech world in China: what’s to come for Alibaba under newly minted CEO Daniel Zhang, the long-standing grudge Meituan CEO Wang Xing holds against Jack Ma, the Communist Party’s growing presence within technology companies, and her own views on reporting on tech in China. 2:07: Hong Kong protests 24:03: Daniel Zhang’s new venture 28:11: Meituan drama 36:22: International expansion of Chinese tech Get bonus content on Patreon See acast...
Oct 16, 2019•40 min
Jake Sullivan served in the Obama administration as National Security Advisor to Vice President Joe Biden and Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department. He currently teaches at Yale Law School. In this episode, Sullivan discusses his perspectives on the current U.S.-China relationship, his experiences working in the Obama administration and on the campaign trail with Hillary Clinton campaign, and the ways our relationships with other governments around the world are changing under...
Oct 09, 2019•50 min
Mira Rapp-Hooper, senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, provides an overview of the history of U.S. foreign policy from Washington’s farewell address to the modern day. She also discusses the implications of a rising China for the future of U.S. alliances. 3:20: The costs of going it alone 10:41: Cold War “Great Power” competition 36:32: The Taiwan Strait crisis 41:47: Trump and the future of U.S. alliances Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out i...
Oct 02, 2019•52 min
ChinaEconTalk is live from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C., with Martijn Rasser, a senior fellow in the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. Host Jordan Schneider sits down with Martijn to discuss a few of the more contentious topics surrounding the ongoing friction between the United States and China, including rare earths, the strategic implications of 5G, concerns about Huawei software and security, and global I...
Sep 25, 2019•52 min
Douglas Irwin is the John French Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College and the author of Clashing Over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy . On this episode, Irwin provides an overview to the history of U.S. trade policy from the 18th century to the modern day, highlighting significant legislation as well as the formation of important intergovernmental organizations that have sprung up along the way. 19:53: On the flawed logic behind the Tariff Act of 1930, and the parallels with simila...
Sep 12, 2019•1 hr 8 min
Douglas Fuller is an associate professor in the Department of Asian and International Studies at the City University of Hong Kong and the author of Paper Tiger, Hidden Dragons: Firms and the Political Economy of China’s Technological Development . In his book, Fuller explores a question that has hounded heads of state around the world for decades: How can a developing country get ahead in the tech sector? Drawing on the results of 499 interviews from experts over the course of 15 years, Fuller d...
Sep 04, 2019•55 min
Danit Gal is a former Yenching Scholar and coauthor of a recent paper, “ Perspectives and Approaches to AI Ethics: East Asia .” On this episode, Gal discusses how Japanese, South Korean, and Chinese experts are forging new paths in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), exploring societal applications — and the unexpected drawbacks of “female” virtual assistants. Gal also explains the tech connections between China and Israel, and the possible impact of the U.S.-China trade war on this relat...
Aug 28, 2019•51 min
On this episode of ChinaEconTalk, Jordan interviews Lauren Teixeira , a freelance reporter based in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. After what has been a jam-packed few months of China news, Lauren discusses a wide range of topics, from engaging with mainlanders about the anti-Extradition Bill protests in Hong Kong to the downsides of Chinese superblock urban planning. Lauren finishes the interview with a wide-ranging introduction to contemporary pop culture artists in China whose innovation and crea...
Aug 21, 2019•43 min
This week on ChinaEconTalk, Jordan interviews Chris Miller, associate professor of international history at Tufts University and a specialist on Russian politics, economics, and foreign policy. Drawing on some of his recent publications, Miller discusses topics ranging from Sino-Soviet collaboration and competition to their respective economic and political reform programs in the 1970s and 80s. Miller concludes by exploring the significance of the collapse of the USSR in terms of the impression ...
Aug 15, 2019•1 hr 3 min
This week on ChinaEconTalk, Jordan speaks with Dongwoo Kim, a postgraduate research fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada who specializes in AI. Dongwoo discusses his research on the progress of AI development in Japan, Korea, and China, including the challenges faced by Chinese AI researchers overseas, and the need for greater tech literacy in general. What to listen for on this week’s ChinaEconTalk: 4:49: Misconceptions abound when it comes to AI, as do references to “Skynet” from th...
Aug 09, 2019•37 min
This week, Jordan speaks with Graham Webster, a China digital economy fellow and coordinating editor of the DigiChina project at New America. He was previously a senior fellow and lecturer at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center. The two talked about Graham’s work at DigiChina, artificial intelligence in China and its complex legal infrastructure, the facts (and fiction) behind China’s controversial social credit system, and the potential for a new cold war between the U.S. and China. What t...
Jul 31, 2019•53 min
This week, in part 2 of a special two-part edition of ChinaEconTalk, Jordan interviews Professor Julia Lovell, author of the recently published book on Mao’s international legacy entitled Maoism: A Global History. In this episode, Lovell recounts the ways in which Maoism truly started going global in the 1950s and 1960s. With some prompting courtesy of the Chinese government’s propaganda machine, self-described Maoist groups sprang up in Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Western...
Jul 23, 2019•1 hr 5 min
This week, in part 1 of a special two-part edition of ChinaEconTalk, Jordan interviews Professor Julia Lovell, author of the recently published book on Mao’s international legacy entitled Maoism: A Global History. In this episode, Lovell introduces the core tenets of Maoist thought and its complex impact on both the Chinese Communist Party and other, offshoot devotees around the world. She outlines the key events in Mao’s life, the events that helped shaped his ideology, his idea of “violent, tu...
Jul 17, 2019•1 hr
While it may be a pipe dream for ChinaEconTalk to ever merit a billion-dollar price tag, in China, podcast “unicorns” are everywhere. Companies like Ximalaya and Yudao have multibillion-dollar valuations, but feature startlingly different content from what consumers expect in the West. What drives these differences, and what does the future hold for spoken audio in China? To answer these questions, Yi Yang, a young podcast host and founder of the Mandarin-language podcast startup JustPod 播客一下, j...
Jul 10, 2019•49 min
This week on ChinaEconTalk, Jordan speaks with Donald Clarke, a specialist in Chinese law and the David Weaver Research Professor at George Washington University. Following a thorough introduction to the structure of the Chinese legal system starting from the Qing dynasty, Clarke discusses a provocative article he recently co-authored, Who owns Huawei?, which discusses in detail the legal ownership of Huawei Technology Co., Ltd. Clarke also deconstructs Huawei’s own legal arguments regarding whe...
Jun 21, 2019•56 min
This week, in the second installment of the series “The Future of U.S.-China Relations” on ChinaEconTalk, Jordan speaks with Professor Hal Brands of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Zack Cooper, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. In addition to offering some prescriptions for relieving some of the tension points in the U.S.-China relationship more generally, the pair discuss the major takeaways from their co-published paper in the Texas National...
Jun 14, 2019•52 min
This week on ChinaEconTalk, Jordan speaks with veteran journalist Peter Hessler. Peter spent seven years in China as a correspondent for The New Yorker, followed by five years in Egypt. In this episode, Peter discusses his long and prolific career reporting on the society, politics, and culture of these two dynamic nations; he also considers the similarities and differences in the ways the Chinese and Egyptian people make sense of their respective places in the world based on their rich historic...
Jun 07, 2019•1 hr 18 min
Why did Shenzhen, a backwater fishing village, spawn the likes of industry leaders ZTE, Huawei, and Lenovo, while Suzhou, which previously scored massive investments from top “dragon head” foreign firms like Samsung and Philips, failed to spawn domestic innovation? What role did FDI and the local bureaucrats in charge of economic development play? And what lessons does this story hold for today's Chinese industrial policy as well as development and innovation economics more broadly? For answers,...
May 30, 2019•1 hr 4 min
This week, ChinaEconTalk launches its “Future of U.S.-China Economic Relations” miniseries with an interview featuring Melanie Hart, a senior fellow and the director of China Policy at the Center for American Progress. At the Center, Melanie specializes in U.S.-China foreign policy and explores new opportunities for bilateral cooperation on topics such as energy, climate change, and cross-border investment. In this episode, she discusses the central arguments in two of her recent articles, "Mapp...
May 22, 2019•54 min
Over 100 million Chinese adults have used the Liulishuo (流利说 liúlì shuō) app to learn English through AI-powered tutoring. This week on ChinaEconTalk, host Jordan Schneider interviews Liulishuo co-founder and CTO Ben Hu about the company’s journey from its early days to its recent listing on NASDAQ. Along the way, they discuss the current state of development of Liulishuo’s speech-recognition capabilities, general strategies for Chinese companies seeking to succeed abroad, and the motivational s...
May 17, 2019•27 min
Is Huawei unfairly maligned or rightly feared? Are the tech supply chains running through China a marvel of 21st-century globalization, or dangerous oversight on the part of U.S. tech firms and the federal government? Today’s guest on ChinaEconTalk — Nick Weaver, a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute and a lecturer at UC Berkeley — provides some clarity. Huawei and other Chinese tech titans have found themselves on the defensive, pushing back against allegations of system ...
May 08, 2019•46 min
