Sinica Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Decoupling, De-risking, and the Great U.S.-China Disconnect, with Supply Chain Expert Cameron Johnson Nov 07, 2024

Show notes

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 protective equipment (PPE) manufacturing in America, the lessons we (should have) learned, and Washington’s response

25:13 – EVs and batteries: manufacturing in America, and what it looks like on the ground in China

30:46 – The semiconductor industry

34:24 – “China Week” in Congress, and the different responses of GOP versus Democratic congressmen

38:36 – De-risking as globalization 2.0

42:21 – Cameron’s predictions on the effects of the [upcoming] U.S. elections

44:10 – Inside Chinese factories

47:44 – American shortfalls in manufacturing

50:21 – The importance of seeing China’s competitive markets and ecosystem clusters for oneself

53:09 – Cameron’s advice for the next U.S. administration

Recommendations:

Cameron: Gōngyìng liàn gōngfáng zhàn 《供应链攻防战》(Supply Chain Offensive and Defense War) by Lin Xueping; No Trade is Free: Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America’s Workersby Robert Lighthizer

Kaiser: The Praise of Follyby Desiderius Erasmus

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

Tsinghua's Da Wei: New Survey Research on Chinese Perceptions of Security Oct 31, 2024

Show notes

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 findings on pessimism about global security and the global influence of the U.S. and China

11:56 – China’s growing national confidence and growing pessimism about the U.S.-China relationship

18:26 – Paradoxical poll findings: proactive foreign policy stance vs. prioritizing domestic affairs, and involvement in global scientific cooperation vs. withdrawing in other areas of international agreement

24:30 – Why older respondents tended to be more pessimistic about China’s international security situation

25:58 – Understanding negative attitude toward the United States and the effectiveness of diplomacy

30:17 – The belief that the U.S. goal is containment of China’s development and the shift in view of America from a values-based country to a power-based country

36:12 – Chinese viewpoints on the Russo-Ukrainian war

39:22 – Da Wei’s travels in the U.S. and the changes he has perceived

45:04 – The U.S. agenda to dissuade China from deepening its involvement with Russia

49:02 – How Chinese views on the upcoming U.S. election have changed since Kamala Harris’ nomination

Recommendations:

Da Wei: Chen Jian’s Zhou Enlai: A Life; for Chinese to travel to the U.S. more

Kaiser: Chen Jian and Odd Arne Westad’s The Great Transformation: China’s Road from Revolution to Reform; for Americans to travel to China (and Beijing)

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

Xinhua's Liu Yang and Jiang Jiang of "Got China" Get Western Journalism Oct 24, 2024

Show notes

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 Jiang Jiang decided to launch their newsletters, and the advantages of being tǐzhì nèi 体制内

20:29 – Jiang Jiang and Liu Yang’s Got China show

25:46 – Liu Yang’s and Jiang Jiang’s empathy for American perspectives

29:53 – The negative American discourse on the Chinese economy and “China collapse theory”

37:21 The recent press conferences on monetary and policies, and the response in the realty market in Beijing

46:17 What’s next for Got China

Recommendations:

Liu Yang: Modern Chinese Government and Politics 《当代中国政府与政治?》, a Chinese-language textbook

Jiang Jiang: The Chinese podcast Bié de diànbō 别的电波; and Shan Weijian’s Out of the Gobi: My Story of China and America

Kaiser: The album The Last Will and Testament by Swedish metal band Opeth; and the Provincial Cuisine Club in Beijing, for trying food from different parts of China

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

Veteran China Ad Man Bryce Whitwam on China's Livestreaming e-Commerce Market Oct 17, 2024

Show notes

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 – Xiaohongshu

20:45 – Why Taobao has lost its dominance

22:07 – The value-add of an influencer’s pitch

27:00 – The demographics of Chinese livestream e-commerce consumers

29:09 – Insights from Bryce’s 25 interviews

36:36 – Buying food on livestream e-commerce and how agribusinesses are getting involved in the trend

41:21 – Livestream commerce in the United States

44:34 – How livestream e-commerce has changed the retail experience in China

46:43 – Potential future disruptions in the industry

Recommendations:

Bryce: Jeffree Star on TikTok as an American livestream commerce example and Omar Nok’s “Egypt to Japan Without Flying” TikTok stream

Kaiser: The album True by Jon Anderson and The Band Geeks

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

Retrofitting Leninism and Re-examining Hawkishness in China with Dimitar Gueorguiev Oct 10, 2024

Show notes

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 genre of authoritarian resilience took off

14:26 China’s understanding of democracy (whole-process democracy)

17:40 Features of Leninism that have allowed the Chinese Communist Party to survive

21:21 Why China in the 1980s and '90s admired Singaporea's authoritarian PAP

23:37 The idea of the mass line

27:16 China’s sentiment analysis through technology, and using bottom-up information as performance evaluation

34:03 The COVID-19 pandemic and the confirmation bias of the regime-type explanation

37:37 The National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC)

40:14 Dimitar’s research on hawkishness in China: how he got the data, what drives Chinese hawkishness, and the national security vs. economic lens

51:08 Why those who are dissatisfied with the government lean more hawkish and those who are satisfied with the government lean more dovish

56:30 The upcoming U.S. election: how things may play out under the two different administrations, and understanding Chinese preferences

Recommendations:

Dimitar: The TV series The Expanse(2015-2022)

Kaiser: Anthea Roberts’ Six Faces of Globalization: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why It Matters; and the documentary Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos (2024)

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

Criticism and Conscience: A Conversation with David Moser Oct 04, 2024

Show notes

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 thoughts on Kaiser’s essay (“Priority Pluralism: Rethinking Universal Values in U.S.-China Relations”)

5:18 —How David thinks about going on state media and the reasons he does so

10:37 —How David’s engagement with state media has changed over time

15:04 —Conscience, moral intuition, drawing lines, and whataboutism

26:35 —The outsider urge to change China: the differences between the U.S. and Chinese governments and COVID as a test of the two systems; the role of American policy in working toward positive change and the importance of continuing engagement; and so-called Enlightenment values and priority pluralism

50:46 —The debate over cultural differences

57:09 —China’s notion of whole-process democracy versus American democracy

1:05:55 — “Give them time:” Anticipating when we will see big changes in China’s political culture

Recommendations:

David: Richard Nisbett’s The Geography of Thought; and his own article, “A Fearful Asymmetry: COVID-19 and America’s Information Deficit with China”

Kaiser: The “Open Database for China Studies Resource Guide” published by ACLS

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

The Case Against the China Consensus, with Jessica Chen Weiss of SAIS Sep 26, 2024

Show notes

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 intentions, and has called for the U.S. to advance an affirmative vision of how it wants to live in the world with China. We focus in this conversation about a recent piece in Foreign Affairsin which she challenges both the solidity and the logic of the "bipartisan consensus" on China, and holds out hope that a next administration might approach the relationship differently.

3:45 – How Jessica has settled into D.C.; her professorial namesake; and how she has become a leading voice for a less confrontational approach to China

9:30 – Where Jessica sees diverging views on China in the Republican and Democratic Parties

12:41 – What a more durable basis for coexistence should look like

14:46 – Credible deterrence and strategic ambiguity in the context of Taiwan

16:03 – Acknowledgements to limits on American power and the importance of being realistic

18:09 – Assurances on Taiwan and what threatens their credibility

21:13 – The question of engagement and the deterrent effect of economic integration

25:30 – How the U.S. can combat legitimate national security threats from China without undermining its own values, and the importance of not treating the Chinese in diaspora as a fifth column

31:31 – Electoral politics: the importance of welcoming and inclusive policies and creating space for debate and discernment

35:07 – The importance of testing our assumptions

38:30 – What another Trump presidency might look like

40:30 – How a Harris administration might differ from the Biden administration

44:13 – The U.S. and China-Russia relations

Recommendations:

Jessica: Valarie Kaur’s Sage Warrior: Wake to Oneness, Practice Pleasure, Choose Courage, Become Victory

Kaiser: BeaGo, an AI-powered search tool (download from your app store!)

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

Space Debris: How Can the U.S. and China Avoid the Tragedy of the Commons, with Nainika Sudheendra Sep 19, 2024

Show notes

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

7:23 Nainika’s prior knowledge about the Chinese space program and what she learned through the Schwarzman program

10:30 How space debris is measured, the Kessler syndrome, and the hazards that space debris poses

14:33 The obstacles Nainika encountered in her research

16:35 How political leaders in China and the U.S. are thinking about the space debris problem

20:02 How debris mitigation might [ought to?] be incentivized, who is working on the problem now, and the role of private insurers

24:03 The Wolf Amendment and Chinese private sector space companies

27:22 Technologies for mitigating and remediating debris

31:00 Lessons from another tragedy of the commons (the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer), and how the EU could take a leading role

34:59 The importance of data standardization and opportunities to negotiate fair use and safety precautions

38:17 How redundancy prevents public perception — the difficulty in going from “outage” to “outrage”

40:27 What Nainika has been doing since finishing at Schwarzman

Recommendations:

Nainika: From Streets to Stalls: The History and Evolution of Hawking and Hawker Centres in Singaporeby Ryan Kueh (another Schwarzman alum)

Kaiser: Journalist Andrew Jones on Twitter; the South Indian restaurant Viks Chaat in Berkeley, California

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

Priority Pluralism: Rethinking Universal Values in U.S.-China Relations Sep 16, 2024

Show notes

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.

The Chinese Game Industry’s Journey to the West — Rui Ma and Rob Wynne on the Success of Black Myth: Wukong Sep 12, 2024

Show notes

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 new game start-up that's still under wraps. They share their insights into the strengths and weaknesses of Black Myth: Wukong and the future of Chinese games.

6:44 – The scale of the phenomenon of Black Myth: Wukong

12:01 – Rui and Rob’s thoughts about the game (so far)

17:23 – What Chinese players think of the game, and the difficulty in understanding its esoteric characters for Western players

24:23 – The appeal of mobile games versus console games in China

27:30 – The difficulty of attracting investment [or “How Game Science attracted investment”]

31:06 – Rob’s criticism of the game’s go-to-market strategy and its lost opportunities

35:46 – The party-state's response so far, and the politics surrounding the game

40:57 – Feng Ji, the founding of Game Science, and his criticisms of the gaming industry

46:01 – AAA Chinese games to look forward to

49:29 – The impressive success stats of Black Myth: Wukong

Recommendations:

Rui: Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

Rob: The Chinese TV series Escape from Trilateral Slopes(Biān shuǐ wǎngshì 边水往事) (2024)

Kaiser: Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

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

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