Sinica Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Ryan Hass on his new book, ‘Stronger’ Mar 25, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser welcomes back Ryan Hass, the Michael H. Armacost Chair at the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institute, a senior adviser at the Scowcroft Group and McLarty Associates, and the China Director at the National Security Council during the second Obama administration. Ryan’s new book, Stronger: Adapting America's China Strategy in an Age of Competitive Interdependence, lays out a great approach to right-sizing the challenges that China poses in the decades ahead and identifies a set of sensible U.S. responses: running faster instead of trying to trip the other guy, regaining confidence and avoiding declinism and defeatism, and not turning China into an enemy.

4:42: Differences in Biden and Trump administrations

25:37: How interdependence with China raises American interests

29:31: A firm and steady approach to America’s foremost competitor

43:54: Risk reduction and crisis management vis-à-vis China

Recommendations:

Ryan: Any publication by William J. Burns, the current director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Kaiser: Works by Susan B. Glasser, particularly those narrated by Julia Whelan.

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The parallel world of Chinese tech, with Lillian Li Mar 18, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with ex-venture capitalist Lillian Li, who moved to China from the U.K. last year and has been looking at China’s tech ecosystem from a unique perspective — combining an investor’s eye, an academic background studying development, a grounding in Chinese language and culture, and a comparative instinct. Lillian shares her views on how technology platforms have become institutions, how the U.S. and China have responded to this development in starkly different ways, and the major features that distinguish the technology ecosystems of the West and China.

10:19: Waiting on the next era of technology

25:06: The challenges faced by institutions

34:48: The future of the tech-government relationship

39:44: Two parallel worlds, China and the U.S.

47:10: Scale is no longer guaranteed

Recommendations:

Lillian: But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past, by Chuck Klosterman.

Kaiser: Middlemarch by George Eliot, and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

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Cheng Lei: The detention and arrest of an Australian CGTN reporter Mar 11, 2021

Show notes

In August 2020, the CGTN anchorwoman Chéng Lěi 成蕾, an Australian citizen, was detained in Beijing. Six months later, she was formally arrested and charged with violations of China’s expansive state secrets law. This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with ABC reporter Bill Birtles (whose involuntary departure from China was linked to Cheng Lei’s case), longtime Beijing-based Financial Times correspondent Lucy Hornby, and Chinese law specialist Donald Clarke, a professor of law at George Washington University, about the case and its relation to the deterioration of ties between Beijing and Canberra.

12:19: What we know about Cheng Lei’s time in detention

21:18: Reciprocal hostage taking, or something else?

25:00: Dawn raids on Chinese journalists in Australia

34:42: The public response to Cheng Lei’s arrest

Recommendations:

Lucy: Revolutions, a history podcast exploring political revolutions, hosted by Mike Duncan.

Don: The Construction of Guilt in China: An Empirical Account of Routine Chinese Injustice, by Yu Mou, The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy and the Life of John Maynard Keynes,by Zachary D. Carter, and the search software X1.

Bill: The politics of being Chinese in Australia, a comprehensive survey of attitudes and experiences of the Chinese-Australian community, by Jennifer Hsu.

Kaiser: The British History Podcast, hosted by Jamie Jeffers.

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Getting Chinese politics wrong, with Jude Blanchette Mar 04, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy chat with Jude Blanchette, the Freeman Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, to talk about the faulty assumptions that American analysts and policymakers continue to make about politics in China — and the flawed policy built on those problematic assumptions. Despite much recent academic research into the behavior of authoritarian states that offer better models for understanding China’s politics, several older and less accurate heuristics persist. Jude deftly skewers these and offers useful approaches to thinking about Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 and the CCP leadership.

4:57: “Collapsism” and China’s political system

10:45: The shortcomings of engagement with China

24:21: “Xi besieged”

34:26: The “hidden reformer” fallacy

Recommendations:

Jeremy: The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease, by Charles Kenny, and The War on the Uyghurs: China's Internal Campaign Against a Muslim Minority, by Sean R. Roberts.

Jude: Cabin Porn: Inspiration for Your Quiet Place Somewhere, by Steven Leckart and Zach Klein.

Kaiser: Two essays by Thomas Meaney: The canonization of Richard Holbrooke and The limits of Barack Obama’s idealism.

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Julie Klinger on China's rare earth frontiers Feb 25, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Julie Klinger, an assistant professor at the University of Delaware’s Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences, about rare earths — a family of 17 elements that are essential to the function of modern industry and are indispensable in everyday technology. Julie debunks many of the myths surrounding China and rare earths, and lays out her ideas about why, despite the relative ubiquity of mineable rare earth deposits, China has dominated production of these vitally important minerals for decades.

3:00: Debunking conventional wisdom on China and rare earths

9:55: What are rare earths and how important are they

21:30: How China’s near-monopoly on rare earths came to be

32:49: Mining and environmental degradation

45:32: China’s decision to slow down rare earth production and its consequences

Recommendations:

Julie: Going outside for the sake of going outside, and The Probiotic Planet: Using Life to Manage Life, by Jamie Lorimer.

Kaiser: “The chip choke point,” by Tim De Chant, in The Wire China (listen to the article on China Stories).

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Journalist Te-Ping Chen on her short fiction collection, Land of Big Numbers Feb 18, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Wall Street Journalcorrespondent Te-Ping Chen to talk about her just-released collection of short fiction, Land of Big Numbers: Stories. Featuring 10 short stories all set in China or featuring Chinese characters, it showcases both the author’s keen eye for detailed observation and her imaginative powers and offers an unfailingly empathetic look at China from a wide range of disparate angles. Te-Ping even reads a passage from one short story, “Lulu,” which was previously published in The New Yorker.

10:51: A real-life inspiration for her fiction

28:30: A reading from “Lulu”

37:10: The cultural disconnect between China and the U.S.

43:16: Te-Ping’s writing and publishing process

Recommendations:

Te-Ping: A short story collection titled What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky, by Lesley Nneka Arimah, and My Country and My People, from a collection of essays from the 1930s by Lín Yǔtáng 林语堂.

Kaiser: The Index of Self-Destructive Acts, by Christopher Beha.

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The Xinjiang camps on Clubhouse Feb 11, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy chat with three of the guests in a remarkable room on the drop-in voice chat app Clubhouse, which ran for 14 hours on Saturday, February 6. The room, called “Is there a concentration camp in Xinjiang?,” brought thousands of listeners from China and around the world to talk about the ongoing extralegal internment of Uyghurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang. We spoke with the Han Chinese filmmaker who started the room (and wishes to remain anonymous); one of the main moderators, the journalist Muyi Xiao of the New York Times; and Rayhan Asat, a Uyghur attorney in the U.S. whose brother, a successful tech entrepreneur, has been put in the camps and has been incommunicado for three years.

Recommendations:

Jeremy: The Ministry for the Future: A Novel, by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Rayhan: The Queen’s Gambit, available on Netflix.

Muyi: A type of Wuhan hot dry noodle: 想念武汉热干面 (xiǎngniàn wǔhàn règānmiàn), available for purchase on Yamibuy.

L: The 2012 film No, directed by Pablo Larraín.

Kaiser: The book Land of Big Numbers: Stories, by Te-Ping Chen.

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China’s struggle for tech ascendancy, with Dan Wang of Gavekal Dragonomics Feb 04, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser talks with Dan Wang, a Shanghai-based analyst at research firm Gavekal Dragonomics, who also contributes a regular opinion column to Bloomberg. Combining firsthand knowledge of China’s tech sector with broad erudition and a humanist’s perspective, Dan offers a unique take on China’s innovation ecosystem, the country’s efforts to achieve self-sufficiency in technology, and the role of economic growth, fundamental optimism, and inspiration in China’s rise as a tech power.

13:53: The outsize importance of economic growth

25:02: An overemphasis on digital technology

33:55: Reciprocity and technological codependence

49:12: Technology is more than just tools and patents

Recommendations:

Dan: The works of Marcel Proust, and the ham and mushrooms of Yunnan Province.

Kaiser: The Netflix series Flavorful Origins and Great State: China and the World, by Timothy Brook.

Read Dan's 2020 annual letter: http://danwang.co/2020-letter/

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Talking Taiwan with former national intelligence officer Paul Heer Jan 28, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Paul Heer about the conundrum of Taiwan — one of the thorniest and most fraught issues confronting the new Biden foreign policy team as it navigates the U.S.-China relationship. Paul is a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for the National Interest and studies Chinese and East Asian issues. He served as the national intelligence officer for East Asia from 2007 to 2015, and was previously a senior analyst at the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence in its China Issue Group. In December 2020, Paul published two articles about Taiwan policy in The National Interest: “The Strategic Dilemma of Taiwan’s Democracy” and “The Inconvenient Truth About Taiwan’s Place in the World.” This episode’s conversation centers on the diagnosis and recommendations made in those two pieces.

6:48: The democratic David versus the authoritarian Goliath

17:47: Taiwan reunification in the Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 era

36:55: The U.S. position on Taiwan

40:22: The future of one country, two systems

Recommendations:

Paul: The works of Charles Dickens.

Kaiser: Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, by Rebecca Wragg Sykes.

Subscribe to China Stories here, the newest podcast in the Sinica Podcast Network.

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A new U.S. strategy in East Asia, from the Quincy Institute Jan 21, 2021

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with the three authors of a new policy paper from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a relatively new D.C.-based think tank that advocates restraint in U.S. foreign policy. Michael D. Swaine, Jessica J. Lee, and Rachel Esplin Odell authored the report Toward an Inclusive & Balanced Regional Order: A New U.S. Strategy in East Asia, which was published by the Quincy Institute on January 11. In this longer-than-usual episode, they detail their recommendations for how they believe the Biden-Harris administration should approach the region, especially China.

12:17: Sinophobia and Cold War mentalities

23:33: The most pressing issues in East Asia

42:59: Limited disentanglement in U.S.-China technology

52:07: The role of U.S. forces in Japan and South Korea

1:05:30: Taiwan’s “porcupine strategy”

Recommendations:

Rachel: Women in Color, an album by Raye Zaragoza, and The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Jessica: Lengthy puzzles as a way to provide some respite from laptops and cell phones.

Michael: Continuing the trend of non-screen-related activities, Michael recommends taking up oil painting.

Kaiser: Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State, by Barton Gellman.

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