Sinica Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Did tariffs make a difference in Trump’s trade war? Oct 21, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica: Did the Trump-era tariffs have their intended effects? In other words, did they prompt companies to pull up stakes in China and re-shore jobs to the United States? Kaiser chats with two political scientists, Samantha Vortherms of UC Irvine and Jack Zhang, director of the University of Kansas’s Trade War Lab, about the paper they recently published with the intention of answering that question. The paper is called “Political Risk and Firm Exit: Evidence from the US-China Trade War.” They share their findings and explore the paper’s policy implications.

4:16 – Sam and Jack offer their thoughts on U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Katherine Tai’s recent speech on U.S.-China trade

10:05 – Distinguishing between tariffs and other aspects of the trade war

13:46 – Previously, on the U.S.-China Trade War: A brief recap of the trade war to date

18:35 – The Foreign Invested Enterprises in China dataset

23:14 – A summary of the paper’s findings: Tariffs did not increase the likelihood of firms exiting

47:15 – What explains the relative reticence of affected firms when it comes to voicing opposition to tariffs?

55:36 – What would you tell Katherine Tai and Gina Raimondo if they were your captive audience?

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

Recommendations:

Sam: The podcast Invisibilia, and specifically, a recent episode called “International Friend of Mystery.”

Jack: The Masters of Chinese Economics and Political Affairs (MCEPA) degree program at UC San Diego's School of Global Policy and Strategy, and Amitav Ghosh’s River of Smoke (part of the Ibis series).

Kaiser: A Song for Arbonne, a semi-historical fantasy novel by Guy Gavriel Kay.

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How Taiwan propelled China’s economic rise, with Shelley Rigger Oct 14, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Shelley Rigger, Brown professor of political science at Davidson College and author of the new book The Tiger Leading the Dragon: How Taiwan Propelled China’s Economic Rise. Shelley recounts Taiwan’s rise as an export-led powerhouse and one of the Asian Tigers, and explains the wave of Taiwanese SMEs (small and medium enterprises) that transformed China into the factory to the world. She also opens a window on world-class Taiwanese companies like Foxconn, which employs some 15 million people in China and assembles some of Apple’s most iconic and consequential products, and TSMC, the world’s most valuable semiconductor company, and discusses how the island’s business relationship with China has complicated politics in Taiwan.

4:34 - The story of Chen Tian-fu, Umbrella King of Taiwan

9:27 - Explaining the psychological distance between Taiwanese and mainland Chinese

19:08 - The conditions that created the Taiwan manufacturing boom

33:42 - Why Taiwan manufacturing moved to the Mainland

48:36 - The vulnerability of Taishang on the Chinese mainland

53:03 - Moving up the value chain: Foxconn and TSMC

1:07:31 - Beyond business: the impact of Taiwan on Chinese cultural life

1:13:52 - Taiwan influence on Chinese institutions

A transcript of this interview is available on SupChina.com

Recommendations:

Shelley: Giri/Haji, a joint BBC-Japanese crime drama on Netflix.

Kaiser: Jonathan Franzen’s new novel, Crossroads

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Can China meet its ambitious emissions targets? Oct 07, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Michael Davidson, a leading scholar on China’s environmental policy, who holds joint appointments at UC San Diego as an assistant professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy and the Jacobs School of Engineering. Michael unpacks recent announcements out of Beijing, including Xí Jìnpíng’s 习近平 decision to cease all funding for coal-fired power plants outside of China, and explains the linkage between China’s push for non-fossil energy and the recent power shortages that have affected 20 provinces. He also explains China’s new emissions trading scheme, or ETS, and discusses what China still needs to do to meet the ambitious targets set by Xi Jinping last year: reaching peak carbon emissions by 2030, and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060.

3:26 – Xi Jinping’s announced end to funding for coal-fired generators outside China at UNGA

12:00 – China’s recent power outages and their relationship to emissions reduction

19:32 – The basics of China’s new emissions trading scheme

38:37 – Coercive environmentalism, command-and-control, and market instruments

47:15 – Can U.S.-China competition result in a “race to the top” in emissions reduction?

54:24 – GHG reduction and the Red New Deal

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

Recommendations:

Michael: The Chair, a Netflix show starring Sandra Oh.

Kaiser: Bewilderment, the new novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory, Richard Powers

Mentioned in the show: Valerie Karplus’s paper on China’s ETS; New York Times Magazine piece on The Many Saints of Newark, a Sopranos prequel.

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How the Chinese state handles labor unrest, with Manfred Elfstrom Sep 30, 2021

Show notes

This week, Kaiser chats with Manfred Elfstrom, an assistant professor in the Department of Economics, Philosophy, and Political Science at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. Manfred’s new book, Workers and Change in China: Resistance, Repression, Responsiveness, examines the state’s dynamic approach to handling labor actions — petitions, protests, strikes, and the like — and how it has blended compromise and coercion to address the demands of workers. The book makes an important contribution to a growing body of literature that seeks a deeper understanding of authoritarian governance in China and more generally among autocratic regimes.

3:27 – How the book’s argument fits into the broader literature on authoritarian governance

9:32 – The book’s geographic focus: The Pearl River Delta and the Yangzi River Delta

22:12 – Repression and responsiveness

32:39 – Why repression and responsiveness undercut one another

43:58 – The bureaucratic incentive to handle labor unrest well

50:28 – Labor issues, common prosperity, and the “Red New Deal”

55:58 – The Jasic protests and the crackdown on the Peking University Marxist study group

A transcript of this interview is available on SupChina.com

Recommendations:

Manfred: Elizabeth Perry’s book Anyuan: Mining China’s Revolutionary Tradition; and James Green’s The Devil Is Here in These Hills: West Virginia’s Coal Miners and their Battle for Freedom.

Kaiser: The Ezra Klein Show, and particularly the episode featuring Adam Tooze, “Economics Needs to Reckon with What it Doesn’t Know.”

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The benefits of engagement with China, defined: An audit of the S&ED Sep 23, 2021

Show notes

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser welcomes former Acting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Susan Thornton to discuss a recently published audit of the Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED), the annual set of high-level meetings with Chinese officials that were convened during the Obama administration by the U.S. Departments of State and the Treasury. The audit’s two lead authors, representing the two organizations behind the audit, the National Committee on U.S. Foreign Policy and the American Friends Service Committee, also join the conversation. Rorry Daniels is the Deputy Project Director at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy’s Forum on Asia-Pacific Security, where she organizes research and Track II discussions on security issues and conflict mediation in the Asia-Pacific. Daniel Jasper is the Public Education and Advocacy Coordinator, Asia, for the American Friends Service Committee, where his work focuses on China and North Korea. Susan, Rorry, and Dan make a strong case that, contrary to an emerging bipartisan consensus in Washington that engagement with China was a failure, the policy of engagement actually bore substantial fruit.

6:12 – The SED and the S&ED — why the ampersand matters

10:37 – The rationale behind the S&ED

16:15 – In the room at the S&ED meetings

30:12 – Critiques of the S&ED process

36:47 – The mechanics of the S&ED audit

44:13 – Five major accomplishments of the S&ED

1:01:38 – Other surprising U.S. gains from the S&ED

1:10:51 – How could the process be improved?

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

Recommendations:

Rorry: The Good Place(a TV show by Michael Schur) and the eponymous podcast hosted by Tara Brach.

Dan: Silence: The Power of Quiet in a World Full of Noise, by Thich Nhat Hanh, and The China Hustle, a documentary on China-focused short sellers, by Jed Rothstein.

Susan: The Incredible Dr. Pol,a reality show about a veterinarian on National Geographic; Hidden Forces, a podcast hosted by Demetri Kofinas; and China and Japan: Facing History, the last book by the great scholar Ezra Vogel.

Kaiser: Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury, by Evan Osnos, especially in audiobook form, read by the author, and Grand Tamasha, a podcast about current affairs in India, hosted by Milan Vaishnav.

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What's the deal with the Red New Deal? Sep 16, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy welcome Lizzi Lee (李其 Lǐ Qi), SupChina contributor and host of the excellent Chinese-language YouTube channel Wall Street Today, and Jude Blanchette, Freeman Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), to talk about the spate of regulatory actions, new rules, and Party-led initiatives that, taken together, we at SupChina have started calling the “Red New Deal.” Can these be understood as different facets of a larger, overarching program to remake China’s economy and society? Or are they better understood as distinct moves by different bureaucracies within the Party-state that happen to coincide in time? Listen in as we try to sort through what it all means.

11:42 - Lizzi’s contrarian take on whether the new regulation adds up to something bigger

15:00 - The logic of the political calendar in China

22:56 - What did the response to the Li Guangman viral post mean?

33:14 - Kevin Rudd’s take on what it all means – the “red thread”

43:32 - No, this isn’t the Cultural Revolution

53:00 - Is this a return to true communism?

57:34 - Is Xi Jinping China’s biggest tiger mom?

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

Recommendations

Jeremy: NüVoices Podcast: Barabara Demick on Eat the Buddha, the final NüVoices episode on SupChina; and the Vice video on YouTube, How China's Queer Youth Built An Underground Ballroom Scene.

Lizzi: Desmond Shum’s book Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China.

Jude: The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System by Milovan Djilas.

Kaiser: Shutdown: How COVID Shook the World Economyby Adam Tooze; Reservation Dogs (TV show from FX).

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The state of the field: U.S. China programs, with Rosie Levine and Jan Berris of the NCUSCR Sep 09, 2021

Show notes

Last month, the National Committee on United States-China Relations (NCUSCR) published a report for the Carnegie Corporation of New York titled “American International Relations and Security Programs Focused on China: A Survey of the Field.” This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with the report’s lead author, Rosie Levine, and with Jan Berris, long-serving vice president of the NCUSCR, who celebrates her 50th year with the National Committee this month. The report surveyed academic institutions, NGOs, and think tanks about the state of the field of American China studies at a time when relations between the U.S. and China are at their lowest in the five decades since the opening to China began under Nixon. Rosie and Jan review their findings and reflect on the challenges that the NCUSCR faces in these difficult days.

1:53: The mysterious and tragic disappearance of Rye and Caraway Triscuits

13:30: Growing demand for China-related content

18:35: Choked-off information flows out of China, fears over detention and the Two Michaels

27:35: The impact of the U.S. political environment on China discourse and scholarship

34:22: The singular focus on national security in U.S. discourse on China

48:22: How the National Committee is weathering the storm

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

Recommendations

Jan: Going back to summer camp, going off the grid, and re-reading Hemingway

Rosie: "Why does it cost so much to build thins in America?" from Vox; a Freakomics interview with Pete Buttigieg and Elaine Chao, the current and former Secretaries of Transportation.

Kaiser: Ezra Klein's recent interview with Robert Wright on Afghanistan, China, and U.S. foreign policy; and the 1975 Steven Spielberg film Jaws, which is the favorite film of Jude Blanchette, interviewed recently in The Wire China.

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The paradox of vast corruption and fast growth in China's "Gilded Age" Sep 02, 2021

Show notes

If corruption is a drag on economic growth, why does China appear to have undergone some of its fastest growth during its periods of deepest corruption? This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Yuen Yuen Ang, an associate professor of political science at the University of Michigan, about her book China’s Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption, which sets out to explain this apparent contradiction. The author highlights the inadequacies of existing measures of corruption, suggests her own alternative means of measuring it, and explains how the prevalence of one particular form of corruption — what she calls “access money” — is something China has in common with the United States in the age of robber barons.

5:00: A typology of corruption, and how drugs are a useful analogy

10:05: Why all corruption is ultimately bad for a country

20:25: Is the “revolving door” in the U.S. equivalent to access money corruption?

27:44: The relationship between corruption and regime type

41:45: Profit-sharing with Chinese characteristics

59:37: Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive: are officials spared because of performance, or patronage?

Recommendations

Yuen Yuen: The documentary film Generation Wealth

Kaiser: The Netflix miniseries The Chair and the podcast Chinese Whispersby Cindy Yu

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Harvard’s William Overholt on Esquel, cotton sanctions, and forced Uyghur labor Aug 26, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with William (Bill) Overholt, senior research fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a veteran China-watcher whose career has run the gamut from investment banking to academia to the leading think tanks. Bill recently weighed in on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s decision to place Esquel, a leading textile manufacturer headquartered in Hong Kong, on its entity list of companies alleged to be using forced labor from Xinjiang, lamenting that “it’s quite possible that the U.S. government has imposed sanctions on the world’s most socially responsible company and one that has been particularly beneficial to the Uyghurs.” Bill also discusses recent essays on other problems in American China policy.

7:17: First impressions of Esquel, its technology, and its working conditions for Uyghurs

21:47: Targeted sanctions vs. blanket sanctions

35:06: Lack of China expertise in the highest ranks of the Biden administration’s foreign policy team

44:43: Why the United States should return to an economic strategy

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

Recommendations:

Bill: Newsletters and podcasts from SupChina; articles from The Wire China; and the article “The Chinese Debt Trap is a Myth” published in The Atlantic, by Deborah Brautigam and Meg Rithmire.

Kaiser: The novel The Lions of al-Rassan, by Guy Gavriel Kay.

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Historian Adam Tooze on why China’s modern history should matter to Americans Aug 19, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with the Columbia historian Adam Tooze, who returns to the program a year after his first appearance. A prolific writer and wide-ranging public intellectual, Adam was trained as a Germanist and has focused, in his writings, largely on economic history. His books include The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916–1931, and Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crisis Changed the World. In July, Adam published an ambitious essay titled “Why there is no solution to our age of crisis without China” in The New Statesman, in which he lays out a brief history of China from the crisis of the Qing Empire in the 19th century through China’s “Century of Humiliation” up to the project of national rejuvenation, which has been the focus of Xí Jìnpíng’s 习近平 time in office. Adam talks about why he feels it’s important to occasionally venture outside one’s own field of specialization, as he did in writing on China as a non-specialist; the folly of two oft-cited historical analogies, comparing China with both Wilhelmine and Hitlerian Germany; the importance of comparative history in making sense of contemporary international relations; and America’s difficulty, when it comes to China, in accepting pluralism from anything but a position of dominance.

16:02: What we get wrong about the Thucydides Trap and other historical analogies about China

21:17: Why the modern P.R.C. is not a mature fascist state

28:58: The iterative nature of China’s economic modernization

46:59: China as a civilization vs. China as a nation state

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

Recommendations:

Adam: Stalingrad,by Vasily Grossman.

Kaiser: The Spanish-language television series The Legend of El Cid.

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