Jiayang Fan is a staff writer at the New Yorker who writes on many topics, but in the past year, has penned several one-of-a-kind pieces on Chinese society. She has been on Sinica before to discuss why so many Chinese people admire Donald Trump. Her most recent piece for the magazine is titled “China’s selfie obsession,” and is a fascinating look at a company called Meitu (美图 měitú; “beautiful picture”), an app and mobile phone producer that is now responsible, it is estimated, for the editing m...
Dec 28, 2017•1 hr 3 min
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...
Dec 21, 2017•1 hr 14 min
This week marks the 80th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking, which began with the fall of the capital of the Republic of China on December 13, 1937. Few events in modern Chinese history have a historical valence comparable with the Nanjing Massacre. The wholesale slaughter of Chinese soldiers and civilians, the notorious “killing contests,” and, of course, the horrific sexual violence visited on Chinese women during the six weeks that followed Nanjing’s fall i...
Dec 14, 2017•1 hr 4 min
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 expe...
Dec 07, 2017•1 hr 6 min
Leta Hong Fincher is the author of the book Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China and the upcoming book Betraying Big Brother: The Rise of China's Feminist Resistance, and a regular commentator on the state of feminism and gender discrimination in China today. She joins Jeremy and Kaiser to discuss sexism and sexual harassment in China and why, she says, the government is complicit. Explosive cases of sexual harassment and abuse have grabbed headlines for months in the U.S...
Nov 30, 2017•1 hr 2 min
Everyone knows, or at least recognizes, the image of the Flying Tigers (飞虎队 fēihǔduì). The shark-faced noses of these American airmen’s planes streaked across the skies of China, as they racked up an impressive string of successes in defending China from Japanese forces from 1941 to 1942. They are so recognizable, in fact, that their story has obscured the equally fascinating stories of other American pilots who landed in China — or, in the case of the two stories on this podcast, crash-landed. ...
Nov 22, 2017•1 hr 6 min
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 di...
Nov 16, 2017•50 min
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 l...
Nov 09, 2017•59 min
Today we welcome back to the show two regular Sinica guests, Bill Bishop and Jude Blanchette, to discuss the outcomes of the 19th Party Congress, which wrapped up on October 24 in Beijing. Bill Bishop authors the Sinocism newsletter, an essential resource for serious followers of China policy, and he is regularly quoted in a variety of major news outlets reporting on China. He has been on Sinica most recently to discuss how to understand media coverage of China. Jude Blanchette is the associate ...
Nov 02, 2017•1 hr 8 min
Lina Benabdallah is an assistant professor of political science at Wake Forest University in North Carolina who recently completed a Ph.D. focusing on South-South cooperation. Much of her research was on the ties between China and countries in Africa. She sat down with Kaiser and Jeremy for a live podcast at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, to discuss the state of China-Africa relations and how they have evolved over the past several years. At the 2006 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOC...
Oct 26, 2017•57 min
When American journalist Lenora Chu moved to Shanghai, she faced tough choices about where and how to educate her kindergarten-age son. She chose an elite state-run school down the street, but soon found that its authoritarian teaching style offended many of her sensibilities of how to nurture a child. At the same time, she found herself appreciating the discipline and mathematical ability that the system was instilling in Rainey. She embarked on an investigative mission to answer the question: ...
Oct 19, 2017•1 hr
In April 1992, China implemented a law that, for the first time, allowed families from other countries to adopt Chinese children. Since then, around 120,000 Chinese have been adopted abroad, with 80,000 finding a home in the United States. But when adoptions started in that first year, only 206 came to America. Rae Winborn is one of that first wave of adoptees, brought over at just nine months old to the U.S. to grow up with a white, middle-class American family in Durango, Colorado. Charlotte C...
Oct 12, 2017•51 min
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 Lett...
Oct 05, 2017•57 min
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 Kais...
Sep 28, 2017•1 hr 7 min
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 J...
Sep 21, 2017•44 min
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...
Sep 14, 2017•53 min
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...
Sep 07, 2017•43 min
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...
Aug 31, 2017•1 hr 9 min
Has the last half year of turbulent U.S.-China relations and Chinese politics passed you by? Confused you? Perhaps you’d like a clear recap in plain English? If yes, then this is the podcast episode for you. Susan Shirk is a professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego, where she’s also the chair of the 21st Century China Center. Susan served as deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia during the Clinton administration, and is the auth...
Aug 24, 2017•1 hr 4 min
Dirty words, politically incorrect phrases, the legal distinction between suspect and criminal, customs boundary versus national boundary, and better ways to refer to disabled people and minorities: All are discussed in the recent Xinhua style guide update, translated and explained on SupChina here. Jeremy and Kaiser discussed the style guide and took audience questions at a live podcast at the Definitive China Happy Hour in Washington, D.C., on August 10, 2017. The Happy Hour brings together Ch...
Aug 17, 2017•1 hr 7 min
Gillian Wong has been reporting from China since 2008 and is now the news director for Greater China at the Associated Press. High-profile stories Gillian has covered include the 2012 Tibetan self-immolations and the downfall of Bo Xilai 薄熙来. Her husband, Josh Chin, works as a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, where he has covered China since 2007. Prior to the Journal, Josh was a research fellow at the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations, where he helped produce the C...
Aug 10, 2017•53 min
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 notio...
Aug 03, 2017•1 hr 12 min
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 ...
Jul 27, 2017•51 min
Lyle Goldstein, an associate professor and strategic researcher at the U.S. Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute, is an expert on Chinese and Russian security strategies. He is also an insightful commentator on what is going on behind the scenes with North Korea. Soon after the North Korean test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on July 4, Kaiser and Jeremy sat down with him in New York City to discuss what strategic options remain for China and other players in the...
Jul 20, 2017•1 hr 10 min
Tom Miller, senior Asia analyst and managing editor at Gavekal Research, joins Jeremy and Kaiser to discuss his new book, China’s Asian Dream: Empire Building Along the New Silk Road. Miller combines policy analysis with his on-the-ground reporting from over a dozen countries to better understand China’s most ambitious foreign policy move since the “reform and opening up” that started in 1978: Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative. With its substantial financial backing and global reac...
Jul 13, 2017•1 hr 1 min
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...
Jul 06, 2017•1 hr 17 min
The life and times of Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui 郭文贵 reads much like an epic play, so it is fitting that we have included with this podcast a dramatis personæ to explain the many characters in Guo’s story. Scroll to the bottom, below the recommendations, to follow along with them in order of appearance. New York Times journalists Mike Forsythe and Alexandra Stevenson have spent over a dozen hours with the turbulent tycoon at the New York City penthouse overlooking Central Park where he resid...
Jun 29, 2017•56 min
David Rank became the leading diplomat for one of America’s most important embassies during the transition when Iowa governor Terry Branstad formally succeeded former Montana senator Max Baucus as U.S. ambassador to China on May 24, 2017. He soon found himself in a moral quandary: Carry out what he believed to be a deeply misguided order from the president of the United States to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change, or resign in protest. He chose the latter, becoming the highest-...
Jun 22, 2017•49 min
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, s...
Jun 15, 2017•1 hr 6 min
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 Sh...
Jun 08, 2017•45 min
