This week on Sinica, I welcome back Michael Cerny — formerly of the Carter Center and now a Ph.D. student at Harvard — and Rory Truex of Princeton University to discuss a new working paper they've co-authored. They undertook a large-scale survey of foreign policy professionals at U.S. think tanks to ascertain whether there is a "consensus" on China policy, as is often claimed, and whether people working in think tanks feel pressure to take on more "hawkish" positions on China policy. We also int...
Jan 02, 2025•1 hr 6 min
This week on Sinica I'm delighted to be joined by Amy King, Associate Professor in the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre at The Australian National University. She shares her ideas about how perceptions of insecurity can paradoxically motivate closer economic relations between two states, and she looks at not only the examples of China and Japan after the end of World War II, but Australia and China as well. We also discuss Sino-Australian relations over the last 15 years, and much else! 2:...
Dec 19, 2024•1 hr 22 min
China's rapid surge in electric vehicle manufacturing, adoption, and export has variously encouraged, delighted, impressed, frightened, and even enraged people around the world. What did China get right in facilitating the explosive development in this industry? Was is just subsidies, or were there other important policies that helped jumpstart it? How have other geographies responded? And what can they learn? Ilaria Mazzocco, deputy director and senior fellow with the Trustee Chair in Chinese B...
Dec 12, 2024•1 hr 14 min
This week on Sinica, I chat with Jane Hayward, lecturer at King's College London, about her excellent YouTube channel, Jane Hayward China , and her efforts to bring up-to-date scholarship on modern and contemporary China to audiences through internet video, slaying various bugbears along the way. 3:28 Why Jane started her YouTube channel, her intended versus actual audiences, and navigating the current toxic media environment 10:56 The benefits of an area studies approach, and why Jane chose a U...
Dec 05, 2024•51 min
This week on Sinica, I chat with Michael Swaine, Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for the last couple of years, prior to which he spent nearly two decades as a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he led extensive work on Chinese defense and foreign policy, U.S.-China relations, and East Asian international relations more broadly. He was also a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation, where he developed a reputation for rigorous research on A...
Nov 21, 2024•1 hr 17 min
The British literary quarterly Granta has published a new issue dedicated to Chinese writers, featuring familiar mainstays of contemporary literature and some fresh new voices. This week on Sinica, I chatted with Thomas Meaney, editor of Granta , about what's happening in the literary scene in China today and how this fantastically interesting issue came together. Tom is wonderfully thoughtful and articulate, and we really get into some of the individual stories and the larger trends they may or...
Nov 14, 2024•1 hr 9 min
This week on Sinica in a show taped live at China Crossroads, Shanghai's premier event series, I'm joined by my good friend Cameron Johnson, who is on the governing board of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, specializes professionally in supply chains in China, and teaches at NYU Shanghai. 4:20 – What makes up a supply chain ecosystem, and why it is difficult to build out 8:39 – A brief history of decoupling, the warning signs, and whether it matters “who shot first” 16:43 – Personal...
Nov 07, 2024•1 hr 2 min
This week, in a show taped in Beijing at the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University, I speak with Professor Da Wei about a new public opinion poll on China's perception of international security and review its important findings. We also discuss Chinese views on the Russo-Ukrainian War and the upcoming U.S. presidential election. 2:11 – Da Wei’s new podcast 4:05 – CISS’s “Public Opinion Poll: Chinese Outlook on International Security 2024” 7:46 – The poll’s finding...
Oct 31, 2024•59 min
This week on Sinica, in a show recorded in Beijing, I speak with Liu Yang and Jiang Jiang, the authors of two excellent newsletters — The Beijing Channel and Ginger River Review, respectively — and two of the guys behind the YouTube show "Got China." They're making a great effort to bridge Chinese journalism with Anglophone reporting on China with perspectives and insights from within the Chinese state media system. 4:24 – How Jiang Jiang and Liu Yang became journalists 11:42 – How Liu Yang and ...
Oct 24, 2024•55 min
This week on Sinica, in a show recorded at Syracuse University on September 30, I chat with my old pal Bryce Whitwam about the remarkable rise of live-streaming e-commerce — and how it's already making its way to the U.S. 4:28 – Why Bryce chose to leave Shanghai and pursue a doctorate in the States 8:08 – How big livestream e-commerce has gotten and its predicted trajectory 9:37 – E-commerce livestreaming and the pursuit of celebrity 14:08 – The different types of livestream commerce 17:30 – Xia...
Oct 17, 2024•58 min
This week, a show taped live at Syracuse University on September 30 with Associate Professor Dimitar Gueorguiev, author of the excellent Retrofitting Leninism: Participation Without Democracy in China. We discuss his book, his recent paper exploring hawkishness in Chinese public opinion, and his thoughts about the upcoming U.S. presidential election. 1:59 Syracuse University’s MAX 132 class ("the globalization class") 4:10 Dimitar’s background and how he became interested in China 7:44 How the g...
Oct 10, 2024•1 hr 12 min
This week on the Sinica Podcast, I chat with my dear friend David Moser, a longtime resident of Beijing, formerly an occasional co-host of Sinica and associate professor at Beijing Capital Normal University. We have a long history of exploring the underlying issues in our approach to China, and this week, we unpack some of those, focusing on the role of outsiders in Chinese society and their role in "changing China," drawing on David's response to an essay I recently published. 3:46 —David’s tho...
Oct 04, 2024•1 hr 21 min
This week on Sinica, I chat with Jessica Chen Weiss, until recently at Cornell University but now the David M. Lampton Professor of China Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, SAIS, in Washington D.C. Jessica, to those of you familiar with her work, has been at the forefront of the fight for a less strident, diplomacy-first approach to China, balancing threats with assurances to find a modus vivendi with China. She has challenged prevailing notions about China's ...
Sep 26, 2024•53 min
This week I continue my conversations with some of the outstanding Schwarzman Scholars who presented at the Capstone Showcase in late June. In this episode, I speak with Nainika Sudheendra about the problem of space debris and what can be done to reduce the creation of more of it or even begin removal of debris before it makes the launching of new satellites more costly or even impossible. 2:34 Nainika’s background and interest in the Schwarzman program 5:33 Why Nainika focused on space debris 7...
Sep 19, 2024•47 min
I thought Sinica listeners might be interested in listening to an audio narration of my latest essay. I hope you enjoy and that it gives you some food for thought! If you prefer to read, you can find the essay — free for everyone this week — right here . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info ....
Sep 16, 2024•39 min
The Chinese game studio Game Science has a hit on its hands! The game Black Myth: Wukong, an action role-playing game (ARPG) based on the Monkey King from Journey to the West, has sold extraordinarily well in China and is breaking new ground in the U.S. market as well. This week, I speak with Rui Ma, who runs Tech Buzz China and is one of the most highly-regarded China tech commentators in the U.S., and with Robert Wynne, an industry veteran with many years in China currently serving as COO of a...
Sep 12, 2024•59 min
This week on Sinica, I chat with Olivia Fu, who this spring completed her year at Schwarzman College and wrote her Capstone project — a research paper that is required of all Schwarzman Scholars — on the rise and fall of the Beijing hip-hop scene. We explore some of the parallels to Beijing's rock scene, and how many of the same factors that stifled rock in Beijing ultimately led to Beijing's relative decline as a hip-hop city. 3:16 – Olivia’s background and connection to China, and what drew he...
Sep 07, 2024•1 hr 3 min
Hey folks! I took some time off to drive the kids to college and then flew to California to celebrate my brother John’s birthday. The upshot is there’s no interview this week, so in place of that, here’s my essay from this week. Hope you enjoy it. If all goes as planned, I’m back next week with regular interview for Sinica! You can find the text of the essay at sinicapodcast.com. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sel...
Aug 28, 2024•16 min
I was looking for a good episode to pull from the archive to run this week as I'll be traveling and I asked my good friend Deb Seligsohn for a recommendation. She went immediately to this one, and by God if it's not an oldie-but-goodie. This is from December 2015 and features Jeremy Goldkorn — I miss him dearly! — and Terry Townshend, an absolute institution in China's birding community. I'll likely have to run another re-run next week, and I welcome your suggestions! All best, Kaiser Recommenda...
Aug 15, 2024•58 min
Here's a little bonus ep for you ahead of tomorrow's show, which will be a re-run of a really fun one from about 10 years ago! I'm driving the rest of this week to the Midwest to drop my kids off at their respective universities, and I've been thinking a lot about the education systems in China and the U.S. So here's my essay for this week. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info ....
Aug 14, 2024•13 min
This week on Sinica, Paul Triolo rejoins the show for a deep, deep dive into China's response to American export controls on advanced semiconductors and related technologies. How much hurt has the policy put on Chinese firms — and how far along is China in finding its way toward technological autonomy? Kevin Xu, author of the fantastic "Interconnected" newsletter, joins to talk about some of the big ideas he's written about in recent months and to play co-host as we grill Paul on China's efforts...
Aug 08, 2024•1 hr 35 min
This week on Sinica, I'm joined by Eric Olander, host of the outstanding China in Africa Podcast and the indispensable China-Global South Podcast, and creator of the China-Global South Project. Eric's detailed and very current knowledge of China's relations across the developing world is on display in this whirlwind tour that takes us from the troubled waters of the South China Sea to China's diplomatic efforts in the Middle East, on to Subsaharan Africa and how Washington has struggled to creat...
Aug 01, 2024•1 hr 4 min
This week, my narration of a longish essay about my recently-concluded four-week trip to Dalian and, more importantly, Beijing — my first time back in the city I called home for so long since the COVID pandemic. If you prefer to read rather than listen, you can find the essay — free for everyone this week — on the Substack. I hope you enjoy this! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info ....
Jul 25, 2024•34 min
This week on Sinica, I'm in Beijing, where I spoke with my dear friend Anthony Tao, an English-language poet and a builder of community in the city where I lived for over 20 years. Anthony recently published a volume of his poetry called We Met in Beijing , and it captures the relationship that so many have with the city wherever they might come from. The episode features readings of some of his — and my — favorite poems. 3:28 Why Anthony chose poetry as a medium, and the poetry he has read [app...
Jul 18, 2024•1 hr 2 min
I'm trying something different: totally unscripted and very, very lightly edited recordings grabbed on the go where I happen to be. For the inaugural episode, I've got Wang Zichen, the author of the amazing Pekingnology newsletter on Substack, as well as the man behind the Center for China and Globalization's newsletter "The East is Read." Hear Zichen's origin story, his approach to publishing Pekingnology, the skinny on his new Got China show with Liu Yang and Jiang Jiang, as well as his take o...
Jul 12, 2024•57 min
This week on Sinica, I chat with University of Melbourne transnational historian Pete Millwood about his outstanding book Improbable Diplomats: How Ping-Pong Players, Musicians, and Scientists Remade U.S.-China Relations . The road to normalization is told too often with a focus only on the Nixon-Kissinger opening and official diplomatic efforts culminating in the final recognition of the PRC in January 1979, but there's much more to the story than that, and Millwood tells it deftly, drawing on ...
Jul 11, 2024•1 hr 20 min
This week on Sinica, in a show recorded on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting of the New Champions, historian Adam Tooze joins to chat about what the U.S. wants from China, China's vaulting green energy ambitions, and much more. Don't miss this episode: Tooze gets pretty darn spicy! 3:13 How Adam launched Chartbook in Chinese 5:37 How Dalian and Beijing have changed since Adam’s last visit in 2019 9:01 What the West wants from China, the Thucydides Trap, 15:11 The traject...
Jul 04, 2024•1 hr 6 min
This week on Sinica, Part 2 of the interview with anthropologist Stevan Harrell, professor emeritus at the University of Washington, about his magnum opus, An Ecological History of China . Be sure to listen to Part 1 first, as many important framing concepts are discussed in that episode! 1:44 “– The Four Horsemen of Ecopocalypse” and ecological disasters during the Mao period, and the story of the double-wheel, double-bladed plow 11:00 – The effect of the introduction of water systems and ferti...
Jun 27, 2024•1 hr 15 min
This week on Sinica, Part 1 of a two-part podcast with Stevan Harrell, Professor Emeritus in Anthropology at the University of Washington. Steve's groundbreaking book An Ecological History of Modern China represents the culmination of a professional lifetime of work in disparate fields. It synthesizes ideas from geography, earth science, biology, anthropology, sociology, political science, and more. It's a book that will make you change the way you think not just about China, but about history m...
Jun 20, 2024•1 hr 14 min
This week on Sinica, the highly-regarded writer Peter Hessler joins to talk about his new book, out July 9: Other Rivers: A Chinese Education . Over 20 years after teaching with the Peace Corps in Fuling (the subject of his first book, Rivertown , Pete returns to China to teach at Sichuan University in Chengdu. He writes about the two cohorts of students, with whom he has maintained extensive contacts, to offer fascinating insights into how China has changed across this momentous period with tou...
Jun 13, 2024•1 hr 26 min
