Sinica Podcast

Latest Episodes:

The rise and fall of U.S.-China scientific collaboration, with Deborah Seligsohn May 12, 2022

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Deborah Seligsohn returns to the show to talk about the sad state of U.S.-China scientific collaboration. As the Science Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing from 2003 to 2007 — arguably the peak years for collaboration in science — she has ample firsthand experience with the relationship. Debbi, who is now an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University in Philadelphia, sees the U.S. decision to dismantle what was a diverse and fruitful regime of collaboration as a consequence of the basic American conception of the relationship: our tendency to see that relationship as one of teacher and student. She also argues that the American obsession with intellectual property protection is fundamentally misguided and inapplicable to scientific collaboration, which rarely deals with commercial IP.

3:15 – The rationale for prioritizing U.S.-China scientific collaboration in the 1970s

9:11 – A highlight reel of Sino-American scientific collaboration across four decades

31:03 – The stubborn American belief that freedom and democracy are necessary — or even sufficient — conditions for technological innovation

39:37 – The price we've paid and will continue to pay for the collapse of collaboration

44:00 – The end of collaboration and the DOJ's "China Initiative"

48:17 – How to rebuild the U.S.-China scientific partnership

A full transcript of this podcast is available on SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Deborah: A Buzzfeed story by Peter Aldous about the strange origins of the "lab-leak theory" in the right-wing of the animal rights activist community; and two podcasts — Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast and the Brookings podcast by David Dollar, Dollar and Sense.

Kaiser: The sci-fi thriller Severanceon AppleTV.

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Chinese public opinion on the Russo-Ukrainian War, with Yawei Liu and Danielle Goldfarb May 05, 2022

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined again by Yawei Liu, Senior Director for China at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia; and by Danielle Goldfarb, head of global research at RIWI Corp, an innovative web-based research outfit headquartered in Toronto. They discuss a survey commissioned by the Carter Center to look at Chinese attitudes toward the Russo-Ukrainian War: whether Chinese people believe supporting Russia to be in China's interest, what they believe China's best course of action to be, and whether they're aware of — and if so, whether they believe — disinformation pushed by Moscow about U.S.-run bio labs in Ukraine. Danielle also discusses other survey research that RIWI has conducted about China that relates to the war in Ukraine.

2:41 – Why public opinion still matters in authoritarian countries

5:35 – Has the debate over the Russian invasion of Ukraine been completely shut down in China?

12:17 – RIWI’s technology and survey methodology

18:47 – The Carter Center questionnaire and its results

28:05 – RIWI’s Military Conflict Risk Index, and the China-Taiwan results

35:26 – The puzzling correlation between education level and propensity to believe disinformation

42:00 – Popular attitudes about the relationships among Russia, China, and the U.S.

A transcript of this podcast is available on SupChina.com

Recommendations:

Yawei: How China Loses: The Pushback Against Chinese Global Ambitions, by Luke Patey.

Danielle: Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Menby Caroline Criado Perez.

Kaiser: Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japanby Jake Adelstein

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China and India share a contested border and an uncomfortable neutrality in the Ukraine War — but not much else Apr 28, 2022

Show notes

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser is joined by Manjari Chatterjee Miller, Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations and associate professor of political science at Boston University; and Manoj Kewalramani, chairperson of the Indo-Pacific Research Programme and a China studies fellow at the Takshashila Institution, a leading Indian public policy education center. They offer fascinating analysis and insight into the complex relationship between China and India in light of the Russo-Ukrainian War, as powerful and populous Asian nations caught between their commitments to Russia and their well-founded fear of alienating the West. Their predicaments, however, are about all they have in common: despite Chinese overtures, New Delhi and Beijing have too much historical baggage, too many open wounds, and visions for a post-war geopolitical map that are too divergent to allow them to make anything like common cause.

3:31 – Indian media positions, political elite takes, and popular opinion on the Russo-Ukrainian War

9:05 – Is there a partisan divide in India on the Ukraine War?

12:44 – Manoj's amazing potted history of Soviet/Russian relations with India, from 1947 to the eve of the war

29:38 – Manjari on how China figures into the Indo-Soviet/Indo-Russian relationship

35:33 – China as a factor in Indo-U.S. relations

43:17 – China's relative tone-deafness when it comes to India

55:56 – Sources of tension in the Russia-India relationship

A full transcript of this podcast is available at SupChina.com

Recommendations:

Manjari: Bridgerton on Netflix

Manoj: The 1995 Bollywood film Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge

Kaiser: The high school comedy Metal Lordson Netflix; and Matt Sheehan, "The Chinese Way Of Innovation: What Washington Can Learn From Beijing About Investing In Tech" in Foreign Affairs

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China, Europe, and the Russo-Ukrainian War, with Marina Rudyak Apr 21, 2022

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Marina Rudyak, assistant professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Heidelberg. She offers her unique perspective on the underlying tensions and potential conflicts between Russia and China, the "dialogue of the deaf" that was the China-European Union summit on April 1st, Beijing's failure to understand the European perspective on Ukraine, and China's diplomatic and developmental policies in the Global South.

4:41 – Marina's personal background and its relevance to our topic

6:53 – China and Russia are simpatico in Central Asia? Not so fast.

17:14 – Europe, China, and the national security lens

22:30 – China's goals with respect to Europe

30:32 – What went wrong at the April 1st summit between Beijing and Brussels?

41:37 – European and American efforts to counter China's presence in the Global South

A transcript of this interview is available at SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Marina: Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges, by Otto Scharmer

Kaiser: Robert Draper, "This Was Trump Pulling a Putin," in the New York Times Magazine; Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing For You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-first Century; and Steven Johnson, "AI is Mastering Language. Should We Trust What it Says?" in the New York Times Magazine.

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Inside the Shanghai lockdown, with SupChina's own Chang Che Apr 14, 2022

Show notes

The COVID lockdown in China's biggest city, Shanghai, hasn't been going exactly according to plan. This week on Sinica, we speak with our business editor Chang Che, who flew back to Shanghai in early March and emerged from quarantine just in time for "dynamic clearing." He gives us a first-hand look at the scramble for basic food, and offers his take on China's vaunted state capacity, the role of neighborhood committees in implementing central government policy, what went so badly wrong in Shanghai, and what lessons might be learned for the next Chinese city that sees an Omicron outbreak.

2:38 – Chang's experience of the lockdown

7:46 – The current mood in Shanghai

11:02 – Neighborhood Committees: the foot soldiers of pandemic prediction

14:00 – Explaining the relatively low rate of vaccination among the elderly in Shanghai

18:47 – The case for locking down Shanghai, and how they might have done it better

31:01 – The reputational damage to China

33:31 – Schadenfreude

41:04 – Why a state that can test 26 million in a day can't keep people fed

A transcript of this podcast is available on SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Chang: Tokyo Vice on HBO Max

Kaiser: The National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia

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After the War: Scenarios China faces when the Russo-Ukrainian War eventually ends Apr 06, 2022

Show notes

This week on the Sinica Podcast, in a show taped on March 23, Chinese foreign policy expert Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, and former national intelligence officer for East Asia Paul Heer join Kaiser for a discussion of possible scenarios that China might face in the eventual aftermath of the Russo-Ukrainian War.

5:03 – The uncertain outcome of the war

10:06 – Russia as a pariah state

14:43 – Which is the junior partner, Russia or China?

17:17 – Can China impact the course of the war?

22:32 – The three levels of Chinese support for Russia

31:39 – What inducements could the U.S. offer China to move decisively away from Russia?

36:35 – Scenarios beyond the war: Pax Americana, the Extended Director's Cut; and the Law of the Jungle

40:43 – The West Divided, the Pivot Delayed

44:19 – Bandung II

51:01 – What about India?

A transcript of this podcast is available at SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Yun: The Great Game In The Eurasia Continent by Fang Jinying

Paul: Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate by Mary Sarotte; and Nazis of Copley Squareby Charles Gallagher

Kaiser: The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping's Chinaby Kevin Rudd

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Susan Thornton on the urgent need for diplomacy with China over the Russo-Ukraine War Mar 30, 2022

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Susan Thornton, former Acting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and a veteran diplomat. Susan makes a compelling case for the importance of diplomacy in the U.S.-China relationship — and the alarming absence of real diplomacy over the last several years. She helps interpret American and Chinese diplomatic engagements over the Russo-Ukrainian War and assesses the prospects for China actually playing a role in negotiating an end to the conflict.

3:42 – What diplomacy is really all about, and why it's so conspicuously absent

7:32 – Does it make sense for the U.S. to expect Beijing to outright condemn the invasion?

10:40 – What should the U.S. actually expect from China?

13:55 – Is China willing and able to play a meaningful role as a mediator?

17:06 – What's up with the leaks?

21:32 – Reading the readouts

28:20 – What is China's optimal endgame here?

32:06 – China's "southern strategy"

34:50 – Do upcoming U.S. midterm and presidential elections matter to Beijing?

41:29 – What are we missing when we talk about China's perspectives on the war?

A full transcript of this interview is available on SupChina.com

Recommendations:

Susan: Butter Lamp, a short film directed by Hu Wei, nominated for Best Live Action Short at the 87th Academy Awards

Kaiser: Birria Tacos. Here's a good recipe! (These should come with a doctor's warning)

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Chinese international relations scholar Dingding Chen on Beijing's position in the Russo-Ukrainian War Mar 23, 2022

Show notes

This week on Sinica: Chén Dìngdìng 陈定定, professor of international relations at Jinan University in Guangzhou, offers his perspective on how Beijing views the war in Ukraine that began on February 24 with the Russian invasion. He concludes that while Beijing's short-term alignment with Russia is fairly locked in and unlikely to shift soon, the long-term prospects for the partnership are far less certain. Kaiser and Dingding discuss where Russian and Chinese worldviews are congruent, the unlikelihood that China will put itself forward as some kind of mediator in the war, and China's domestic considerations in the Russo-Ukrainian War.

4:37 – China's assessment of Russia's comprehensive national power

8:09 – Has the course of the war and Russian underperformance caused Beijing to recalibrate?

10:37 – When did the Sino-Russian convergence really happen?

24:47 – India and Vietnam as complicating factors in the Russo-Chinese relationship

27:26 – Does Xi's personal relationship with Putin matter?

29:16 – The leaks of alleged intel showing Russia asked for Chinese military assistance

38:23 – The significance of the Hu Wei essay calling for Beijing to break with Moscow over the war

46:38 – Domestic considerations

A transcript of this interview is available on SupChina.com.

Recommendations

Dingding: The late Ezra Vogel's Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

Kaiser: Kingdom of Characters: the Language Revolution That Made China Modernby Jing Tsu

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China's soft power collides with the hard realities of the Russo-Ukrainian War: A conversation with Maria Repnikova Mar 16, 2022

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Maria Repnikova, assistant professor of global communications at Georgia State University, who recently published a short book under the Cambridge Elements series called Chinese Soft Power. A native Russian speaker who also reads and speaks Chinese, Maria has been a keen observer of China's response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and offers her perspectives on Chinese media coverage of the war and the impact of China's pro-Russian tilt on Beijing's soft power ambitions. She recently co-authored a piece in The Atlanticarguing that China's apparent pro-Russian position is about one thing only: the United States and China's opposition to American unipolar hegemony.

4:25 – Definitions of soft power: Joseph Nye's and China's

8:49 – The Chinese discourse on soft power: three major schools

14:09 – How talking about soft power allows the airing of hard truths

23:24 – Chinese soft power in the global South

37:49 – How badly has the Russo-Ukraine War eroded Chinese soft power?

41:44 – How Russian media has been talking about China since the invasion of Ukraine began

44:50 – Why China's pro-Russia lean is really all about America

54:40 – Is Russia's media style the future of Chinese media? On the "RTification" of Chinese media

A full transcript of this podcast is available on SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Maria: Prototype Nation by Silvia Lindtner; and an anti-recommendation for the show Inventing Anna, which is streaming on Netflix

Kaiser: Season 5 of the show The Last Kingdom; and the sequel to Vikings, called Vikings: Valhalla. Both are on Netflix.

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China’s Ukraine conundrum, with Evan Feigenbaum Mar 09, 2022

Show notes

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser chats with Evan Feigenbaum, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, former vice-chairman of the Paulson Institute, and (during the second George W. Bush administration), Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs under Condoleeza Rice. Evan offers a very compelling analysis of the difficult position that Beijing now finds itself in after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine — caught on the horns of a dilemma and unable to resolve conflicting commitments to, on the one hand, territorial sovereignty and, on the other, opposition to American unipolar hegemony. Meanwhile, Beijing is fearful of the repercussions of siding with Russia, fearing that sanctions may have a real bite. Evan also shares his thoughts on how China and Russia differ significantly in their posture toward the “rules-based international order,” on misguided thinking about Taiwan and the “strategic triangle,” and on the reshaping of the geopolitical and geoeconomic order that the Russian invasion of Ukraine will usher in.

4:48 – The basic contradictions in China's competing objectives

25:58 – Did Xi know about Putin's intention to invade?

31:34 – Are the U.S. and NATO pushing China into the Russian embrace?

35:15 – The economic impact of the war: China and sanctions

40:30 – Taiwan takes and why straight-line thinking doesn't cut it

48:53 – Does Beijing have an accurate sense of its ability to affect outcomes here?

50:26 – China and Russia: the differences in their international behavior

57:44 – The geopolitical and geoeconomic impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine

A transcript of this interview is available at SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Evan: Summer Kitchens, a Ukrainian cookbook by Olia Hercules

Kaiser: Fareed Zakaria on the Ezra Klein Showfrom March 4, 2022; and the new Steven Spielberg remake of West Side Story