Sinica Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Biden's China policy needs to be more than "Trump lite:" A conversation with Jeff Bader Mar 03, 2022

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Jeff Bader, who served as senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council during the first years of the Obama presidency, until 2011. Now a senior fellow at the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institute, Jeff was deeply involved in U.S.-China affairs at the State Department from his first posting to Beijing back in 1981 continuously for the next 21 years, through 2002. He later served as U.S. ambassador to Namibia and was tapped to head Asian Affairs at the NSC after Obama took office. Jeff is the author of a fascinating book on Obama’s China policy, Obama and China’s Rise: An Insider’s Account of America’s Asia Strategy. In this conversation, he offers a candid critique of the Biden China policy to date.

Note that this conversation was taped in mid-February — before the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, and before the Department of Justice announced the end of the "China Initiative."

3:23 – How viewing China over 40 years of rapid development has shaped the way Jeff thinks about China

8:54 – Jeff Bader's critique of the Biden administration's China policy

19:40 – Is it important to have a China strategy?

24:55 – Right-sizing China's ambitions: Is Rush Doshi right?

31:17 – Defining China's legitimate interests

38:31 – Has China already concluded that the U.S., irrespective of who is in power, seeks to thwart China's rise?

43:16 – How can China participate in the rules-based international order?

47:52 – Is it still possible for Biden to change his tune on China?

52:57 – How much room does Biden have politically? Can he exploit to electorate's partisan divide on China?

59:54 – What is the "low-hanging fruit" that Biden could pluck to signal a lowering of temperature?

1:12:09 – Jeff Bader's precepts for better understanding of — and better policy toward — China

A transcript of this podcast is available at SupChina.com

Recommendations

Jeff: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom, a book by Stephen Platt about the Taiping Civil War focusing on Hong Rengan.

Kaiser: Re-recommending two previous guests' recommendations: Iaian McGilchrists's The Master and his Emissary recommended by Anthea Roberts; and Unfabling the East: The Enlightenment's Encounter with Asiaby Jurgen Osterhammel, recommended by Dan Wang.

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Veteran diplomat Bill Klein recalls the turbulent Trump years at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing Feb 24, 2022

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with William (Bill) Klein, who served as acting deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing from 2016 to mid-2021. In a wide-ranging conversation, he offers insights about his postings at AIT in Taiwan in the aftermath of the Sunflower Movement, the APEC meeting in Hangzhou, and the vicissitudes of Sino-American diplomacy during the turbulent Trump years — Taiwan issues, the trade war, Huawei and diplomatic hostage-taking, the COVID-19 outbreak, and much more. Bill offers a measured and balanced view, exhibiting the same thoughtfulness and empathy that made him a great diplomat.

2:56 – The aftermath of the global financial crisis as the inflection point in U.S.-China relations

4:14 – Taiwan and the Sunflower Movement: Bill's years at AIT

8:33 – The G20 meeting in Hangzhou, 2016

12:12 – Chinese perspectives on the U.S. presidential race of 2016

16:40 – The Tsai Ing-wen phone call

19:17 – Trump pulls out of Paris

21:09 – The onset of the Trade War

24:44 – Ambassador Terry Branstad, his relationship with Xi, and what he accomplished

27:48 – The conflict over Chinese technology: Huawei, Meng Wanzhou, and the Two Michaels.

35:20 – The Trump response to early reports of the Xinjiang camps

39:35 – The view from the U.S. Embassy as the SARS CoV-2 virus began to spread

47:26 – The emerging Chinese consensus on U.S. intentions toward China — and how the Houston Consulate closure was a turning point.

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

Recommendations:

Bill:Project Hail Mary, a science fiction novel by Andy Weir.

Kaiser: "The Modern Chinese Novel," an online course available free on YouTube by Christopher Rea.

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What China is reading and why it matters: A conversation with author Megan Walsh Feb 17, 2022

Show notes

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser chats with Megan Walsh, journalist, literary critic, and author of the brand-new book The Subplot: What China Is Reading and Why It Matters. The book offers an accessible overview of China's literary scene, from better-known writers like Mò Yán 莫言 and Yán Liánkē 阎连科 to writers working in fiction genres like crime and sci-fi, and from migrant worker poets to the largely anonymous legions of writers churning out vast amounts of internet fiction. Megan talks about the burden of politics in the life of writers, the wild popularity of dānměi耽美 (gay-male-themed web fiction), and the surprising streak of techno-optimism in Chinese science fiction.

7:09 – The long shadow of the May Fourth Movement

12:09 – Politics and the western gaze

17:51 – Why Yan Lianke is Megan's favorite Chinese writer

26:51 – The literary scene in Beijing in the 2000s

29:05 – China's ginormous and mostly terrible internet fiction industry

39:19 – What makes Chinese science fiction Chinese?

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

Recommendations:

Megan: Yiyun Li's memoir, Dear Friend, from my Life I Write to You in Your Life; and the New Zealand singer-songwriter Aldous Harding

Kaiser: The Audible Original epistolary audio drama When You Finish Saving the World by Jesse Eisenberg

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China's ideological landscape, with Jason Wu Feb 10, 2022

Show notes

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser chats with Indiana University political scientist Jason Wu about his work on China's ideological landscape. With so many now framing the contest between the U.S. (or, more broadly, "the West") and China in terms of ideology, it makes sense to examine what "ideology" means to each party, to get a sense of what China's actual ideology consists of, and how Chinese people understand their own ideological positioning relative to concepts like "left" and "right" that are familiar in the West. Wu's research yields some very surprising results: In most countries that have been studied, the degree of ideological constraint — coherence or consistency among different issue positions — tends to be higher among people with greater knowledge of politics. But in China, as with so many other things, just the opposite appears to be true.

4:23 – What is the meaning of "ideology"?

15:37 – What is China's ideology?

20:17 – On "The Nature of Ideology in Urban China" and the odd inverse correlation between political knowledge and ideological consistency in China

40:18 – On "Categorical Confusion: Ideological Labels in China" and the meaning of "left" and "right" in China

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

Recommendations:

Jason: The campus novels Lucky Jimby Kingsley Amis and Straight Man by Richard Russo; and the two-person board game Twilight Struggle

Kaiser: The Magic Mountainby Thomas Mann

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Why the law matters in China, with Jeremy Daum of Yale's Paul Tsai China Law Center Feb 03, 2022

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Jeremy Daum, senior research scholar in law and senior fellow at Yale University's Paul Tsai China Center. Jeremy runs ChinaLawTranslate.com, a Wiki-style resource for translations of Chinese laws and regulations and an invaluable resource not just for legal scholars but for anyone interested in understanding China's policy direction. In a wide-ranging conversation, Jeremy talks about why the law remains important despite frequent assertions that there is no rule of law in China, critiques the "techno-authoritarian" narrative on China, and offers an informed take on the much-maligned "social credit system." Jeremy's work on the social credit system has earned him a reputation as a debunker, and in this episode, he makes clear what the system is and is not.

3:28 – The ChinaLawTranslate.com project and its origins

5:21 – Why does the law matter in China?

10:09 – The technology narrative in Xinjiang

13:12 – Can the U.S. learn anything from Chinese law?

17:59 – Juvenile law and the Chinese conception of the state's role in the family

24:13 – The paternalistic conception of law and the COVID-19 response in China

28:49 – Mythbusting and the social credit system

42:21 – China's Plea Leniency System and the case for engagement in jurisprudence

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

Recommendations:

Jeremy: The Fixer, a novel by Bernard Malamud

Kaiser: Going back to basics: Chinese stir-fry lessons on the YouTube channel "Chinese Cooking Demystified"

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Personality and political discontent in China, with Rory Truex Jan 27, 2022

Show notes

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser welcomes back Rory Truex, who teaches politics and international affairs at Princeton. In a fascinating as-yet-unpublished paper, Rory draws on extensive survey research that examines both political attitudes and personalities among Chinese participants and finds a strong correlation between political discontent and "isolating personality traits," like introversion, disagreeableness, and lack of close personal ties with others. Rory and Kaiser discuss the paper, the fascination with authoritarian resilience among Rory's cohort of China scholars, and the fertile intersection of psychology and politics.

4:03 – What's with the obsession among young China-focused political scientists with authoritarian resilience?

10:02 – The problem of "preference falsification" in social science research in China — and the solution!

16:29 – Rory describes the dataset and the approach behind his paper on personality and political discontent

33:14 – What do the personalities of Party members look like?

42:15 – Personality and politics in Russia vs. China

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

Recommendations:

Rory: The work of the Center for Security in Emerging Technology (CSET); and the Fan Brothers' oeuvre of children's books, including The Night Gardner and The Barnabus Project

Kaiser: The immensely popular daily word game Wordle

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Dan Wang on China in 2021: "Common prosperity," cultural stunting, and shortcomings of the "modal China story Jan 20, 2022

Show notes

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser welcomes back Dan Wang, technology analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics, to talk about this year's annual letter. Dan's letters have become something of an institution: wide-ranging, insightful, and always contentious, his missives are read by a great many observers of contemporary China and spark some lively conversations. This year's letter contrasts the major megacities that Dan has lived in (Beijing, Shanghai, and the "Greater Bay Area" of the Pearl River Delta), examines Xi Jinping's efforts to shift the energies of China's technologists and entrepreneurs away from the consumer internet and toward deep tech, ponders the causes of China's "cultural stunting" and the challenges that China faces, and has not yet overcome, in creating cultural products that the rest of the world wants, and warns of the dangers of focusing only on China's weaknesses and problems and ignoring its prodigious capabilities. Tune in for a fascinating conversation with one of the Sinosphere's more original thinkers.

4:15 – Dan appraises Beijing, Shanghai, and the PRD Greater Bay Area

20:48 – How to think about the "common prosperity" agenda (a.k.a. the Red New Deal)

39:21 – The tradeoff between efficiency and resilience: China as an inefficient but anti-fragile economy

45:34 – Should the United States be learning from China? The case for reform of American institutions

50:38 – A technocratic resurgence in China? The rise of a "Beihang Clique"

58:17 – The causes of "cultural stunting" in China

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

Recommendations:

Dan: Charles Dickens, Bleak House, and Jurgen Osterhammel, Unfabling the East: The Enlightenment's Encounter with Asia

Kaiser: Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680 to 1790

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Mental models for understanding complexity, with Anthea Roberts and Nicolas Lamp Jan 13, 2022

Show notes

What we think about China depends in large measure on how we think about China. As a nation of 1.4 billion people in the throes of world-historic change, it's more important than ever to examine our own mental models when it comes to our understanding of China. This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser kicks off an informal series on "thinking about thinking about China" with a conversation with Anthea Roberts and Nicolas Lamp, co-authors of the book Six Faces of Globalization: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why it Matters. While the book focuses on globalization, in which China has been a central actor, it's really a book about ways to approach all complex issues — and will equip you with immensely useful ways to conceptualize any number of problems related to China. Kaiser calls the book "an upgrade to [his] mental operating system." Please enjoy this fascinating discussion with two brilliant scholars.

5:36 – What are the building blocks of a "narrative?"

8:08 – The six main narratives on globalization laid out

26:23 – The challenge of articulating problematic or objectionable narratives in good faith

53:54 – How China fits into the six "Western" narratives on globalization

56:55 – Chinese perspectives on globalization

1:11:58 – Different metaphors for integrative complexity

1:21:01 – Disciplines and training that prepare or predispose people toward complexity

1:24:33 – Name-checking the influences

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

Recommendations:

Anthea: The Master and His Emissary, by Ian McGilchrist

Nicolas: The Once and Future Worker, by Oren Cass; and the China Trade Monitor website, run by Simon Lester and Huan Zhu.

Kaiser: "China's Reform Generation Adapts to Life in the Middle Class," by Peter Hessler

Other Links: This episode mentions a great many books and authors. Here's a partial list!

Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Slow and Fast

Howard Gardner, Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice; and his memoir, A Synthesizing Mind

Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion

Paul Blustein, Schism: China, America, and the Fracturing of the Global Trading System

Julia Galef, The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't

David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

C.P. Snow, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution

Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

George Lakoff, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think

Gareth Morgan, Images of Organization

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The sociologist watching the China-watchers: A conversation with David McCourt Jan 06, 2022

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with David McCourt, associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis. For the last several years, David — who is not himself a China specialist — has undertaken a sociological study of "China-watchers," and has presented his findings to date in a series of papers as he prepares to publish a book. Focusing on China-watchers as a community, he offers fascinating insights into how they interact to shape the major narratives of "engagement" and "strategic competition.

5:24 – Who counts as a “China-watcher”?

13:53 – A taxonomy of China-watchers

21:43 – Small e engagement and capital E Engagement

28:35 – The sociological sources of China policy

37:54 – What China policy positions tell us about America

45:14 – Habitus and China policy orientation

55:19 – The China-watching community and American presidential administrations, Obama to Biden

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

Recommendations:

David: Gregoire Chamayou, The Ungovernable Society: A Genealogy of Authoritarian Liberalism

Kaiser: The works of the great American political scientist Robert Jervis, who died on December 9, especially Perception and Misperception in International Politics and System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life

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Damien Ma of MacroPolo on China's economic and political outlook Dec 30, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Damien Ma, managing director and co-founder of the Paulson Institute’s think-tank, MacroPolo. Damien discusses MacroPolo's new forecast of the property market in China and the likely impact of the predicted contraction of that market. Damien also offers advice on what smart China-watchers will be keeping their eyes on in the coming, highly political year in China in the leadup to the 20th Party Congress. And he shares the amusing story of what happened the evening after he last appeared on Sinica way back when.

2:58 – Damien recalls how he nearly led Sinica's interns to their doom one fateful night in 2014

7:23 – MacroPolo's forecast of the property market through 2025

16:28 – How will local governments fund themselves without land sales?

20:11 – Damien's take on Xi Jinping's "common prosperity" agenda

28:53 – Understanding China today through the lens of scarcity

30:49 – Tips for watching developments in China in this political year

40:00 – Cool stuff from MacroPolo

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

Recommendations:

Damien: Derek Thompson, "America is Running on Fumes," in The Atlantic.

Kaiser: Peter Jackson's epic Beatles documentary Get Back on Disney+

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