Sinica Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Adam Tooze on the U.S., China, the Energy Transition — and Saying the Unsayable Jul 04, 2024

Show notes

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 trajectory of China’s economic development and why it’s hard for the West to reconcile with]

25:11 “Overcapacity” and the politics of renewable energy

31:00 Russo-Chinese relations and the war in Ukraine

37:12 The Global South and China since February 24th and October 7th and the importance of Africa with regards to global development

41:39 Green energy as a driver of high-quality development in China

47:49 The “Red New Deal” and the combination punch metaphor

51:57 Adam’s cognitive style (an interrelated thinker averse to analogizing), climate as a touchstone topic, and China’s importance in global climate politics

Recommendations:

Adam: The work of Lauri Myllyvirta, including his analysis on Carbon Brief

Kaiser: Rewatching The Wire TV series (2002-2008)

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An Ecological History of Modern China, with Stevan Harrell — Part 2 Jun 27, 2024

Show notes

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 fertilizers on agricultural production

21:03 – “The replumbing of China:” The South-North Water Transfer Project and the National Water Network

27:32 – Areas of progress: Air pollution and the energy mix

32:48 – Areas lacking appreciable improvement: Soil contamination, water pollution, and flood vulnerability

36:04 – Ecological civilization and breaking the binary between development and environmental protection

47:00 – Steve’s cognitive style: A fox of the two cultures

53:23 – nSteve’s views on authoritarian environmentalism

58:46 – The Environmental Kuznets curve

1:05:54 – A preview of Steve’s current book project about the Yangjuan Primary School in Liangshan

Recommendations:

Steve: Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories; Hampton Sides’ The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook; and the 2023 film The Taste of Things, starring Juliette Binoche

Kaiser: The Cold War: A World History by Odd Arne Westad

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An Ecological History of Modern China, with Stevan Harrell — Part 1 Jun 20, 2024

Show notes

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 more broadly, and about resilience in natural and social systems. In this first part, we focus on some of the core framing concepts of the book and how Steve demarcates China in both space and time. Part 2 is next week!

5:01 How Steve thinks about ecological history and resilience theory/ecology in relation to Chinese history

17:09 Social-ecological systems and the systems approach

24:46 The importance of etic and emic scale

30:15 How diversity contributes to resilience

36:18 The Malthus-Boserup Ratchet

42:43 The importance of buffers

51:24 The adaptive cycle

55:41 Ecological buffers and the threats they face] in the major regions of China: China Proper, Zomia, and Chinese Central Asia

1:06:28 Steve’s periodization of modern Chinese history from the perspective of ecological history

Recommendations at the end of Part 2 next week!

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Peter Hessler on his new book, "Other Rivers: A Chinese Education" Jun 13, 2024

Show notes

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 touching, deeply human stories.

3:47 – Why Pete couldn’t teach in Fuling again

6:56 – How Pete stayed in touch with his Fuling cohort

9:46 – Pete’s SCUPI [(Sichuan University-Pittsburgh Institute)] cohort

13:51 – Pete’s Fuling cohort

19:35 – Chinese rural values: pragmatism and modesty

23:08 – The physical and psychological differences between the Fuling and Chengdu cohorts

29:32 – “Educated acquiescence” in the Chinese education system

35:07 – The Hessler family’s experience with Chengdu Experimental Primary School

43:04 – The impending lack of “Country feel,” and Pete’s sense of humor

47:02 – Facing criticism over his reporting during the pandemic

52:13 – Pete’s experience being jǔbào’ed and teaching Orwell’s Animal Farm

59:01 – Pete’s take on the COVID origins debate

1:02:10 – Competition and authoritarianism in China, and the phenomenon of Chinese and Chinese American Trump supporters

1:06:57 – Serena’s investigation for Chángshì and why Pete’s contract was not renewed

1:15:28 What’s next for Pete

Recommendations:

Pete: Burma Sahib by Paul Theroux, a forthcoming novel about George Orwell’s time in Burma as a policeman; Burmese Days by George Orwell

Kaiser: the Meta Quest VR headset

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Taiwan, Ukraine, and the Sino-American Rivalry Jun 06, 2024

Show notes

This week on Sinica, a conversation that I moderated on May 30th called “Assessing the Impact of US-China Rivalry on Ukraine and Taiwan,” put on by the Ukrainian Platform for Contemporary China. The main organizer was my friend Vita Golod, who is the chair of the Ukrainian Association of Sinologists.

The panelists are:

Dmytro Burtsev, a Junior Fellow at A. Krymskyi Institute of Oriental Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
Da Wei, Director of the Center for International Security and Strategy and Professor at the School of Social Sciences at Tsinghua University.
Emilian Kavalski, Professor at the Centre for International Studies and Development at Jagiellonian University in Krakow.
I Yuan, Adjunct Research Fellow at the Institute of International Relations, National Chengchi University, Taiwan.

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Jonathan Chatwin on Deng Xiaoping's 1992 Southern Tour May 30, 2024

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Jonathan Chatwin, author of a new book about Deng Xiaoping's "Southern Tour" of early 1992 — a pivotal event that renewed a commitment to economic reforms after they'd stalled following 1989, and seized the initiative from conservatives in the Chinese leadership. The book is called The Southern Tour: Deng Xiaoping and the Fight for China's Future.

2:10 – Why Jonathan focused on the Southern Tour, and the narratives surrounding it in China

7:19 – How the events of ’89 influenced Deng’s thinking

11:08 – How the political fates of Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang affected Deng’s planning

14:31 – The reformers’ path to victory from the second half of ’89 to January of ’92

20:32 – Deng’s vision of opportunity in the face of communism’s apparent global retreat

24:53 – How Deng’s personal experiences shaped his policy decisions

27:07 – The strategic signaling and risky timing of the Southern Tour

34:07 – The influence of the Chinese horoscope, and “The Story of Spring”

37:33 – Shenzhen speed

40:57 – What Jonathan learned about Deng Xiaoping

45:00 – Jonathan’s recommendations for learning more about Deng Xiaoping and the post-Mao era

46:18 – Xi Jinping, the “end” [not sure how to phrase] of Deng’s reform and opening era, and the [parallels with the?] Chinese economic situation today

Recommendations

Jonathan: China’s Hidden Century, edited by Jessica Harrison-Hall and Julia Lovell, produced to accompany the British Museum’s exhibition by that name; and the app Voice Dream, a text-to-speech reader

Kaiser: Andrea Wulf’s Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self, a book about the group of German Romantics gathered in Jena, Germany

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Ed Lanfranco: from Hoarder to Historian May 23, 2024

Show notes

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser is joined by old friend Ed Lanfranco, who lived in Beijing from 1988 to 2009. An inveterate packrat, Ed managed to accumulate an incredible trove of documents, maps, photos, and ephemera from his years there and from the decades and even centuries before his arrival. Ed talks about his collection, and invites scholars interested in his material to get in touch!

2:46 – Ed’s time in China and saving ephemera

11:47 – Ed’s favorite old Chinese brands

14:41 – Ed’s map collection

19:34 – The Tiananmen incident of 1976, Ed’s collection of unpublished photographs from the Panjiayuan Antique Market, and a leaflet from April 7th, 1976

30:40 – Ed’s patriotic music record collection

33:28 – Ed’s U.S.-China collection

38:00 – The story behind Ed’s U.S.-China panda button from 2002

43:18 – Ed’s Tiananmen ’89 story and collection of leaflets and files

50:56 – The Underground City of Beijing tour

53:50 – Ed’s SARS 2003 epidemic experience and artifacts

Recommendations:

Ed: Roger Garside’s Coming Alive: China After Mao; Lin Yutang’s works, especially My Country and My People and The Importance of Living

Kaiser: The Rochester-based progressive metal trio Haishen’s new album, Awaken the Endless Deep

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Jay Kuo on Beijing's Gay 90s May 16, 2024

Show notes

This week on Sinica, I'm delighted to welcome — my brother! Jay Kuo is a Broadway writer & producer, and the man behind the terrific U.S. politics-focused Substack newsletter The Status Kuo. In a previous life, from 1996 to 2000, he was also really active in Beijing's gay community, just at the time when homosexuality was being decriminalized and was stepping out of the shadows. We talk about how it all took off. Jay also puts on his other hat to talk about how China figures into American politics with the election less than five months away, and about the legal standing of the TikTok divest-or-ban law.

4:54 – The gay community in Beijing in the ‘90s, and the Half-and-Half bar in Sanlitun

16:06 – How the gay community in Beijing changed after two major rulings

27:33 – The end of the “golden era” for the gay community in China

36:26 – Progress and its drivers and obstacles

42:28 – Jay’s “China priors”

50:41 – The issue of China in the upcoming U.S. presidential election

57:08 – The TikTok ban bill

Recommendations:

Jay: The TV series Manhunt (2024), available on Apple TV

Kaiser: The TV series The Sympathizer (2024), available on HBO; the audiobook of The Sympathizerby Viet Thanh Nguyen, narrated by François Chau

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The Struggle for Taiwan: Sulmaan Wasif Khan of Tufts University on his new book May 09, 2024

Show notes

This week on Sinica, I chat with Sulmaan Wasif Khan, professor of history and international relations at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, about his book The Struggle for Taiwan: A History of America, China, and the Island Caught Between, which comes on May 14.

4:28 — The Cairo Agreement

6:59 — General George Marshall, George Kennan, and the change in the idea of American trusteeship of Taiwan?

17:08 — The debate over the offshore islands of Kinmen and Matsu

23:55 — Mao’s evolving interest in Taiwan

27:49 — The averted crisis of 1962

32:06 — Peng Ming-min and the Taiwan independence movement

37:14 — What changed in 1971?

42:51 — The legacy of Chiang Ching-kuo

45:14 — The story of Lee Teng-hui

52:37 — The change within the Kuomintang

1:00:11 — Why Taiwan has become “sacred” for China

1:10:26 — Sulmaan’s own narrative shift

1:13:26 — Chen Shui-bian and the threat of independence referendums

1:17:53 — The Sunflower Movement

1:25:21 — The causal direction of Taiwan’s importance in the U.S.-China relationship

1:28:32 — Why the status quo shifted

1:30:51 — Drawing parallels between Taiwan and Ukraine

1:33:26 — Sulmaan’s sources for his book

1:35:38 — Agency versus structure

1:39:29 — Feedback (so far) on the new book and what’s next for Sulmaan

Recommendations:

Sulmaan: Emily Wilson’s translation of The Iliad

Kaiser: The “My China Priors” series (and other essays), available on the Sinica Substack; Angus Stewart’s essay, “Alien Bless You: A Review of Netflix’s 3 Body Problem”

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Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jane Perlez on her new podcast series, Face-Off May 02, 2024

Show notes

This week on Sinica, veteran reporter Jane Perlez, who served as bureau chief for the New York Times in Beijing until 2019, joins to discuss her new podcast series Face-Off, which explores different facets of the U.S.-China relationship. We also talk about the state of Western journalism in China in the wake of tit-for-tat expulsions of reporters from the U.S. and China that took place during the Trump administration, and the challenges of covering China well without people on the ground in country.

5:16 – How Jane Perlez got into podcasting

7:59 – The challenge of understanding Xi Jinping

12:44 – The Face-Off podcast and appealing to a general audience

19:00 – Face-Off’s interview with Zhao Tong on the nuclear issue; the importance of quality diplomacy; and debating the efficacy of the S&ED

30:48 – The pleasure of meeting Yo-Yo Ma

36:52 – The state of Western journalists in China, and how the situation may eventually play out

48:44 – The difficulty of covering China from the outside

53:52 – What’s next for Jane Perlez and the Face-Off podcast

Recommendations:

Jane: Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asiaby Gary Bass

Kaiser: The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of Historyby Serhii Plokhy

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