This week on Sinica, in a show taped in early June in Washington, Kaiser chats with Tong Zhao (赵通) of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a leading expert on Chinese nuclear doctrine, about why the PRC has, in recent years, significantly increased the size of its nuclear arsenal. Zhao offers a master class in the practice of strategic empathy. 03:12 – China’s nuclear doctrine: core principles 06:56 – Xi Jinping’s leadership and nuclear policy 12:33 – Symbolism vs. strategy: Defensive...
Jun 25, 2025•1 hr 10 min
In 2014, the writer Christopher Beam published a humorous, heartwarming story in The New Republic about an unlikely team of American football enthusiasts in Chongqing who went on to defeat their archrivals in Shanghai to win a championship. The piece was optioned by Sony Pictures, and had some big names attached, but was ultimately never made — not, at least, by an American studio. Eleven years later, Chris has written about a film that was made: Clash , produced by iQiyi, hit theaters in China ...
Jun 18, 2025•45 min
This week on Sinica, I chat with Stephen Platt, historian at UMass Amherst and author, most recently, of the book The Raider: The Untold Story of a Renegade Marine and the Birth of U.S. Special Forces in World War II . Like his previous works, Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom and Imperial Twilight , it offers a compelling narrative history of an overlooked chapter through a deeply empathetic and well-researched examination of individual lives. Please make sure to listen to the excerpt from the aud...
Jun 11, 2025•1 hr 22 min
This week on Sinica, I chat with Jostein Hauge, political economist and an Assistant Professor in Development Studies at the University of Cambridge, based at the Centre of Development Studies and the Department of Politics and International Studies, and author of the book The Future of the Factory: How Megatrends are Changing Industrialization . 3:09 – Self Introduction: Jostein Hauge 4:23 – Anti-China Sentiment in Western Discourse 7:40 – Misconceptions and Prevailing Narratives 10:08 – Techno...
Jun 10, 2025•1 hr 8 min
This week on Sinica, I speak with Kendra Schaefer, the partner at Trivium China who heads their tech practice. She recently published a f ascinating paper looking at the Cyberspace Administration of China's comprehensive database of generative AI tools released in China, and she shares the insights and big takeaways from her research on that database. It's a terrific window into what Chinese firms, both private and state-affiliated, are doing with generative AI. 03:51 – Mandatory registration of...
Jun 04, 2025•1 hr 4 min
Jeremy Goldkorn joins for this largely unedited throwback to the early, sweary days of the show. We talk about the announcement made on Wednesday, 28 May 2025, on the "aggressive" revocation of Chinese student visas for students with Party "connections" or who study "critical fields." You've been warned! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info ....
May 29, 2025•50 min
A bonus episode this week. On May 22, I moderated a panel organized by Vita Golod and the UNC Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies. The focus was on the U.S.-Ukraine Mineral Security Partnership, and it features Ivan Us, Chief Consultant at the Center for Foreign Policy at the National Institute for Strategic Studies; Jim Mullinax, a Senior Foreign Service Officer and former Consul General at the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu (closed in 2020); Grzegorz Stec, Senior Analyst and Head...
May 22, 2025•1 hr 29 min
This week on Sinica, I chat with Eva Dou, technology reporter for the Washington Post, about her terrific new book about Huawei. From its prehistory to its fight for its life under tremendous U.S. pressure, she tells its story in a way that's both deeply engaging and very evenhanded. 04:53 – Meng Wanzhou’s case and its impact on media interest in Huawei 07:13 – How did Ren Zhengfei’s experiences in the PLA shape the corporate culture of Huawei? 10:21 – The impact of his father on Ren Zhengfei 13...
May 21, 2025•1 hr 9 min
The Sinica Network proudly presents a new podcast: China Talking Points, featuring Kaiser Kuo (host of the Sinica Podcast), Eric Olander (host of the China-Global South Podcast and China In Africa Podcast) and Andrew Polk, co-founder of Trivium China and host of its podcast. We'll be joined regularly by Lizzi Lee, Fellow on Chinese Economy at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s (ASPI) Center for China Analysis. Tune in live every other week for unscripted thoughts on the major China-related news...
May 15, 2025•1 hr 5 min
I had scheduled a show to record while I was in Providence last week, but it fell through and had to be rescheduled, so please give this talk I delivered at Carnegie Mellon last month a listen! Hope you enjoy. Kaiser See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .
May 14, 2025•31 min
This week on Sinica, I chat with veteran Wall Street Journal reporter Bob Davis, who has covered the U.S.-China relationship for decades. He recently published a new book called Broken Engagement , which consists of interviews with U.S. policymakers who were instrumental in shaping American policy toward China from the George H.W. Bush administration through the Biden administration. It's an eye-opening look at the individuals who fought for — and against — engagement with China. 2:58 – Bob’s th...
May 07, 2025•1 hr 16 min
This week on Sinica, I chat with SCMP Senior Europe Correspondent Finbarr Bermingham, who joins from Brussels where he's been covering the EU-China relationship in fantastic depth and with great insight. 3:17 – EU-China relations in early 2025: the effect of the 2021 sanctions, who advocated for engagement versus confrontation with China, and the importance of the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) 13:49 – How Brussels initially reacted to the rupture in the transatlantic alliance 17:14...
Apr 29, 2025•1 hr 7 min
This week on Sinica, in a show recorded at the University of Pittsburgh, I speak with Benno Weiner, Associate Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University, about how China's policy toward its minority nationalities (or minzu ) have shifted from their older, Soviet-inspired form to the policies of assimilation we now see. 2:29 – How the so-called second-generation minzu policy evolved, and its shift away from the first-generation policy 17:15 – China’s language policy, comparisons to other ...
Apr 23, 2025•52 min
This week on the Sinica Podcast, I chat with Yawei Liu, Senior Advisor for China at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia, and Yukon Huang, former China country head of the World Bank and now Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The show was taped live at the 2025 Columbia China Summit at Columbia University, put on by the Columbia University Greater China Society, on April 13,. Special thanks to them for inviting us to attend! 3:53 – Columbia University’s history wit...
Apr 17, 2025•58 min
This week on Sinica, I chat with Hazza Harding, a young Australian who began learning Chinese and made his way to China where he became a pop singer with hits on Chinese pop charts and a state media newscaster — and also lost his husband tragically, suffered through the COVID lockdowns while grieving for his loss. Yet he remains committed to furthering understanding and engagement, and has shown admirable resilience. Read his remarkable essay on his experiences here . 6:51 – How Hazza started in...
Apr 03, 2025•1 hr 19 min
This week on Sinica, I chat with Jeffrey Ding, author of Technology and the Rise of Great Powers , a book that argues that a nation's ability to invent foundational technologies matters ultimately less in its overall national power than its ability to diffuse those "general purpose technologies," like electricity, digital technology, the internet, and — in the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution — Artificial Intelligence. I ask Jeff whether he thinks that China, with its powerful tech compan...
Mar 27, 2025•46 min
This week on the Sinica Podcast, I chat with Jeremy Garlick, Director of the Jan Masaryk Centre for International Studies, Prague University, and a scholar of China’s international relations. Jeremy is the author of the book Advantage China: Agent of Change in an Era of Global Disruption , but the book we're talking about this week is his new Cambridge Element titled Evolution in International Relations . It's a fascinating attempt to apply ideas from evolutionary biology, evolutionary psycholog...
Mar 21, 2025•1 hr 26 min
This week, a special episode taped live at the University of California, Berkeley — my alma mater — on March 6 and featuring Jessica Chen Weiss of Johns Hopkins SAIS and Ryan Hass of the Brookings Institution, both well-known to people who follow U.S.-China relations. This episode was made possible by the Center for Chinese Studies at UC Berkeley's Institute for Asian Studies, and will be available on video as well — I'll update with the link. 5:32 – Looking back on the Biden administration’s ap...
Mar 12, 2025•1 hr 2 min
This week, I'm proud to announce a new collaboration with Trivium , a China-focused strategic advisory firm you've probably heard of. They've got offices in DC, London, Shanghai, and Beijing, and they focus on analyzing and forecasting Chinese policy developments for multinational companies and institutional investors across a range of verticals -- including macroeconomics, technology, automotive, resources, renewable energy, critical minerals, and green technology. They put out a terrific podca...
Mar 06, 2025•1 hr 18 min
This week: Part 2 in a series of podcasts in conjunction with the China Research Center at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). The series, titled "Studying China in the Absence of Access: Rediscovering a Lost Art," ran from September to November 2021, and featured four eminent "Pekingologists," or specialists in Chinese elite politics: Joseph Fewsmith, Thomas Fingar, Alice Miller, and Fred Teiwes. The talks were later published in a volume you can download here . T...
Feb 27, 2025•1 hr 23 min
This week on Sinica: February 24 marks the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and as I’ve done for the last two years, I moderated a panel organized by Vita Golod, a Ukrainian China scholar who happens to be here in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, at UNC as a visiting scholar. She’s worked tirelessly to promote awareness of the war, and I’m honored again to have been asked to moderate this panel. The guests you'll hear from are: Dr. Una Aleksandra Bērziņa-Čerenkova, Direc...
Feb 24, 2025•1 hr 10 min
This week on Sinica, I chat with David Zweig, a veteran China scholar who is Professor Emeritus from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. We discuss Davis'd latest book, The War for Chinese Talent in America , which looks at Chinese efforts to harness the intellectual firepower of Chinese scientists and engineers who studied abroad, especially in the United States, and bring them — or at least their knowledge —back to China. David's book takes a balanced look at both the very real...
Feb 23, 2025•1 hr 14 min
I’m delighted to bring you today the first in a series of conversations from a remarkable day-long session put on by the Institute for America, China, and the Future of Global Affairs, or ACF, at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). The session was held on Monday, February 3, and was called “Getting China Right.” On today’s show, we’ve got U.S. Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey, one of the best-informed and sensible legislators focused on China today. He’ll be in conversat...
Feb 14, 2025•1 hr 10 min
This week on Sinica, I chat with economic historian Andrew B. Liu of Villanova University about how to understand Trump's thinking on China and tariffs. Andy wrote about this in an excellent piece on N+1 called " Back to the 80s? Trump, Xi Jinping, and Tariffs ." Check it out and then listen to the show! 3:59 – How the U.S.’s current trade anxieties echo those of the ‘80s 9:34 – How Cold War geopolitics shaped U.S.-Japan trade relations 18:23 – The lessons China learned from Japan’s experience a...
Feb 13, 2025•1 hr 5 min
This week as we enter the Year of the Snake, Sinica co-founder Jeremy Goldkorn makes a re-appearance on the show. It's been a year since his last, and much has changed — and indeed, if Jeremy is right, we may be at an inflection point in American attitudes toward China. With the "TikTok Refugees" on Xiaohongshu or "RedNote" taking in a view of China that contrasts starkly with the image presented by the U.S. Government and by many American media outlets, and with DeepSeek now having upended some...
Feb 03, 2025•1 hr 2 min
Happy Chinese New Year! This week, while I'm decompressing from 10 days in the Alps, my friends at the Asia Society of Switzerland have graciously offered to let me share a podcast recorded just after the U.S. presidential election in November at their annual State of Asia event. "The State of China" features three terrific guests: Wang Qing (王卿), the host of the popular Chinese podcast "The Weirdo" (不合时宜), Zichen Wang of the Center for China and Globalization, and Adam Tooze, one of the truly g...
Jan 30, 2025•49 min
This week, I bring you the first in a series of podcasts in conjunction with the China Research Center at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). The series, titled "Studying China in the Absence of Access: Rediscovering a Lost Art," ran from September to November 2021, and featured four eminent "Pekingologists," or specialists in Chinese elite politics: Joseph Fewsmith, Thomas Fingar, Alice Miller, and Fred Teiwes. The talks were later published in a volume you can do...
Jan 23, 2025•1 hr 15 min
I know I'd said last time there would be no show this week, but that was before this fascinating episode involving TikTok users signing up en masse to Xiaohongshu. Hilarity ensued, and my two guests — Ivy Yang, who runs Wavelet Strategy, an expert in cross-cultural communication, and David Fishman, Shanghai-based senior manager at Lantau Group who specializes in the Chinese energy sector and writes wonderfully about his excursions into the Chinese countryside. They've both been following this fa...
Jan 19, 2025•1 hr 4 min
This week on Sinica, I'm joined by Lizzi Lee, fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute and by my lights one of the most astute, well-informed people writing on China in the English-speaking world today. She has fascinating perspectives on China's preparations for the Trump administration, on China's reluctance to roll out large-scale cash stimulus, and Xi Jinping's challenges. Don't miss this one! (I will update the show notes and publish the transcript early next week — thanks for your patie...
Jan 16, 2025•1 hr 21 min
This week on Sinica, I speak with Nicole Hong and Michael Rothfeld, both investigative reporters at the New York Times , about a series of stories they've done, stretching between August and December 2024, on the Falun Gong-run performance troupe Shen Yun, and the Falun Gong-affiliated newspaper The Epoch Times. Read the latest two articles in that series here and here. There will be links to the other stories on the transcript page. 4:33 – Nicole and Michael's collection of pieces on Falun Gong...
Jan 09, 2025•1 hr 8 min
