Sinica Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Peter Martin on ‘China's Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy’ Aug 12, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy chat with Peter Martin, a correspondent for Bloomberg based in Washington, D.C., about his book, China’s Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy. This highly readable and informative book tells the story of China’s diplomatic corps from its creation ex nihilo under the guidance of Zhōu Ēnlái 周恩来 during the Communist Party’s years in Yan’an in the 1930s and 1940s through the foundation of the P.R.C., the vicissitudes of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and the period of reform and opening up to the current, more assertive, and often pugilistic present under Xí Jìnpíng 习近平. Peter also offers his take on last week’s interview on Sinica with Ambassador Huáng Píng 黄屏, the consul general of China’s New York consulate.

7:48: The centrality of the national humiliation narrative to the institutional foundations of China’s Foreign Ministry

15:02: The contributions and diplomatic styles of prominent contemporaries such as Qián Qíchēn 钱其琛, Dài Bǐngguó 戴秉国, Yáng Jiéchí 杨洁篪, and Wáng Yì 王毅

24:46: The rise of Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhào Lìjiān 赵立坚

47:28: Understanding Chinese diplomacy’s hard turn amidst a culture of discipline

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

Recommendations:

Jeremy: Hummingbird feeders with homemade sugar water nectar.

Peter: The podcast series Dolly Parton's America.

Kaiser: The movie The Green Knight,based on the Arthurian legend, by David Lowery.

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A conversation with Ambassador Huang Ping, consul general of the P.R.C.'s New York Consulate Aug 05, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica, we’re pleased to present a conversation with Ambassador Huáng Píng 黄屏, a veteran Chinese diplomat who has been consul general of China’s New York Consulate since November 2018. He formerly served as China’s ambassador to Zimbabwe, and as consul general of China’s Chicago Consulate. The interview, recorded on July 22, covers a range of topics in U.S.-China relations from human rights to Taiwan, and from COVID-19 to China’s so-called “wolf warrior diplomacy.”

13:22: What Americans should understand about the Communist Party of China

38:15: Evaluating the Biden administration’s position on China

41:25: The American perspective on Taiwan

46:20: The impact of the pandemic on Chinese people

50:54: Beijing’s policies on Xinjiang

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

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Reflecting on China's poverty reduction with Bill Bikales Jul 29, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Bill Bikales, who recently returned to the U.S. after 15 years in China as a developmental economist with the United Nations. In June, Bill published a paper titled “Reflections on Poverty Reduction in China” for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), raising important questions about China’s claims about poverty reduction but giving due credit for its impressive successes. In the paper, Bill situates the Chinese leadership’s bold push for the eradication of extreme poverty in a historical context, questions Beijing’s use of 1978 as a benchmark for measuring progress in poverty reduction, and offers suggestions for what Beijing must do to make poverty reduction sustainable.

5:38: How the significance of poverty relief in China’s history has shaped the CCP’s priorities

22:15: The detriments of the hukou (户口 hùkǒu) system on reducing poverty sustainably

46:00: Addressing the next set of poverty challenges and gaps in the current social protection system

51:30: Deducing lessons from China’s poverty reduction achievements

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

Recommendations:

Bill: Destiny of the Republic,by Candice Millard, and the car-sharing company Turo.

Kaiser: The audiobook version of The Ill-Made Knight,by Christian Cameron, and the 9/11 Memorial & Museum.

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A data-driven dive into Chinese politics, with Stanford's Yiqing Xu Jul 22, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Yiqing Xu, an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University, about his work in applying modern methods in political science to the politics of contemporary China. In a wide-ranging conversation, they discuss qualitative vs. quantitative approaches and how the debate parallels the debate between the area studies approach to China and the discipline-centered approach, as well as the pitfalls of the current data obsession in the social sciences. They also look at some of Yiqing’s recent scholarship on China’s ideological landscape, and preview a longitudinal comparative study looking at Chinese students at elite universities in China and their compatriots studying in the United States.

7:44: The role of social scientists and the quantitative vs. qualitative methods debate in the political science field

19:18: Mapping ideology in China with the “Chinese Political Compass” data set

31:21: Why policy preferences in authoritarian states matter

40:33: How discrimination in the United States impacts Chinese students’ attitudes toward the political system in China

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

Recommendations:

Yiqing: The iconic Japanese rock band X Japan.

Kaiser: The album Discipline (1981) by the progressive rock band King Crimson.

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Avoiding ideological conflict with Beijing: Thomas Pepinsky and Jessica Chen Weiss Jul 18, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Thomas Pepinsky and Jessica Chen Weiss, both professors of government at Cornell University, about their recent essay in Foreign Affairs, “The Clash of Systems? Washington Should Avoid Ideological Competition With Beijing.” In that essay, they argue that, despite all the talk of Chinese authoritarianism as an existential threat to American democracy, Beijing is mostly on the defensive, and does not seek to export its political system. This is not to say that American democracy is not under threat: It very much is — but not from China. Tom, a specialist on Southeast Asia, looks at the ASEAN countries and their relations with Beijing to show that ideological affinity is not a predictor of close ties to China. And Jessica offers an update to her influential 2019 essay on China’s effort to “make the world safe for autocracy.”

8:08: Defining ideology and ideological competition

19:57: Beijing’s transactional conduct with nations in Southeast Asia and the geostrategic implications

25:20: How the current rhetoric in the United States fuels Sinophobia and anti-Asian racism

36:01: China as the disgruntled stakeholder

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

Recommendations:

Tom: The French television shows Lupin and The Bureau.

Jessica: “The Ezra Klein Show” podcast interview with Jamila Michener, and anything written by Yangyang Cheng.

Kaiser: Music to read by:The Goldberg Variations (particularly the 1982 version performed by Glenn Gould and the version performed by Lang Lang), The Well-Tempered Clavier, and The French Suites, by Johann Sebastian Bach, and the YouTube series “What Makes This Song Great?,” by Rick Beato.

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How China escaped shock therapy: Isabella Weber unpacks the debates of the 1980s Jul 08, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Isabella Weber, assistant professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, about her new book, How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate. Meticulously researched and persuasively argued, her book makes important contributions to our understanding of a critical period in China’s recent history: the decade of the 1980s, when a fierce debate between “package reformers” supporting sweeping price liberalization and gradualists who argued that state participation in the market was critical to dampen inflation and maintain social stability. And it sheds light on the run-up to the student-led demonstrations of 1989.

12:20: Debunking a conventional wisdom on China’s economy

22:05: The relationship between states and markets

40:01: A universal need for reform in the early 1980s

1:10:47: Student intellectuals in 1988 and the “full steam ahead” camp

Recommendations:

Isabella: The movie Rashomon, directed by Akira Kurosawa and Cold War, directed by Paweł Aleksander Pawlikowski.

Kaiser: Assigned reading from Kaiser: The Chinese Communist Party: A Chinese Century in Ten Lives, edited by Timothy Cheek,Klaus Mühlhahn, and Hans van de Wen.

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The Chinese Communist Party at 100 Jul 01, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by historian Timothy Cheek of the University of British Columbia, political scientist Elizabeth Perry of Harvard, and our very own Jeremy Goldkorn, editor-in-chief of SupChina, in a wide-ranging discussion of the Chinese Communist Party on the occasion of its 100th birthday. The three each contributed chapters to a new volume called The Chinese Communist Party: A Century in 10 Lives, edited by Timothy Cheek, Klaus Mülhahn, and Hans van de Ven. Don’t miss this one!

8:59: Cosmopolitan traditions within the CCP

13:10: Continuity and change within the Party

20:19: The oscillations between flexibility and rigidity

34:25: Intellectuals and their relationship with the Party

50:37: Wang Guangmei and the Peach Garden Experience

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

Recommendations:

Jeremy: The Dairy Restaurant, by Ben Katchor.

Elizabeth: Middle Class Shanghai: Reshaping U.S.-China Engagement, by Cheng Li, and The Wuhan Lockdown, by Yang Guobin.

Timothy: The Internationale, performed by heavy metal band Tang Dynasty.

Kaiser: The July/August edition of Foreign Affairs, especially the pieces by Wang Jisi and Yan Xuetong.

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China's population conundrum, with UNC demographer Yong Cai Jun 24, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Yong Cai, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This episode — the first in-person interview since February 2020 — looks at the results of China’s 2020 census, the announcement of the much-maligned “three-child policy” that the Chinese government proclaimed shortly after the results of the census were released, and other measures the Chinese leadership is considering to avoid the demographic crisis it now faces.

6:55: China’s top-heavy demographic structure

20:38: Techno-optimism and its impact on the declining workforce

30:18: Implications for women in family planning

38:53: An alternative approach to inclusive population studies

Recommendations:

Yong Cai: A Village With My Name: A Family History of China's Opening to the World, by Scott Tong.

Kaiser: The Kominsky Method, available on Netflix, and All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel, by Anthony Doerr.

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COVID-19 origins revisited, with Deborah Seligsohn Jun 17, 2021

Show notes

Shortly after Deborah Seligsohn was last on Sinica, in April, the lab leak hypothesis seemed suddenly to gain traction — at least in American media. This week, Kaiser invites Deborah back to the show to talk about why the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a notion long regarded by virologists as less probable than zoonotic transmission, has burst back into the conversation. Deborah served as the State Department’s Environment, Science, Technology and Health Counselor in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing from 2003 to 2007. She is an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University in Philadelphia.

3:00: The persistence of the lab leak theory

11:40: Navigating the political and institutional landscape within China

25:36: A view from Beijing’s perspective

31:02: Eliciting cooperation from Beijing, and what should our priorities be

Recommendations:

Deborah: The podcast This Week in Virology, particularly episodes 760 and 762, which touch on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kaiser: Richard L. Watkins, a candidate running for the U.S. Senate in North Carolina.

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Journalist Andrew Jones on China's space program Jun 10, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Andrew Jones, a Helsinki-based reporter who over the last several years has secured a place as the go-to English-language journalist covering China’s space program. With the successful arrival of the Tianwen spacecraft in Martian orbit and the deployment of the Zhurong Mars rover, China is catching up quickly with NASA in space exploration milestones. But China’s space program also comes in for criticism for its opacity and for potentially dangerous practices — like the uncontrolled reentry of a large Long March 5B rocket in early May. Andrew gives the latest on China’s outer-space ambitions, including planned missions to Jupiter’s outermost Galilean moon, Callisto, and beyond the edge of our solar system.

7:09: A look at the China National Space Administration

13:02: Major missions done by China’s space program

24:31: U.S. hesitance toward space collaboration with China

48:39: China’s private space companies

52:53: Potential future Chinese space missions

Recommendations:

Andrew: The TV series The Expanse, available on Amazon Prime Video, the FIRST UP daily newsletter from Space News, the Axios Space newsletter, and the podcast Moonrise by the Washington Post.

Kaiser: The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien.

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