Sinica Podcast

Latest Episodes:

The controversy over Fang Fang’s ‘Wuhan Diary’: A conversation with the translator, Michael Berry Jul 02, 2020

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser speaks with Michael Berry, the translator of the Wuhan-based writer Fang Fang’s controversial Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City. Michael discusses Fang Fang’s body of work and how her daily online posts on WeChat (which were compiled to become her book) drew the ire of critics who have denounced the diary as an act of national betrayal and have even leveled threats against both the author and the translator. Michael Berry is a professor of contemporary Chinese cultural studies and the director of the Center for Chinese Studies at UCLA.

5:21: Reflections on Fang Fang’s Soft Burial

10:42: Fang Fang’s diary, and its backlash

21:08: An excerpt from Wuhan Diary

31:07: COVID-19: The common enemy of humankind

Recommendations:

Michael: The album Free Spirit, by the band Chandresh Kudwa. For a taste, you can listen to the title track here.

Kaiser: The mockumentary TV show called What We Do in the Shadows.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Why doesn't the China bubble pop? A conversation with Bloomberg’s chief economist, Tom Orlik Jun 25, 2020

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Bloomberg’s chief economist, Tom Orlik, about his new book, China: The Bubble That Never Pops. A longtime resident of Beijing, Tom wrote for the Wall Street Journal before joining Bloomberg as chief Asia economist. His book argues that Beijing's leaders have learned valuable lessons from their own history and from the experiences of other countries, and applied them well to China's own economy.

5:33: The bears have it wrong on China

10:08: Debt obligations and local government finance

18:29: What the Chinese leadership has learned, and what it hasn’t

30:21: Shadow loans, and the shadow banking sector

47:42: The tools that China’s central banks have to deal with risk

Recommendations:

Tom: China’s Unfinished Economic Revolution, by Nicholas R. Lardy, and The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Vol. 1: The Golden Days, by Cáo Xuěqín 曹雪芹, translated by David Hawkes.

Kaiser: The 2010 Chinese television series Three Kingdoms.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Censored: Molly Roberts on how China uses deterrence, distraction, and dilution to control its internet Jun 18, 2020

Show notes

This week on Sinica, we continue with the ongoing California series of podcasts that Kaiser recorded last winter, and present a conversation taped in December, when he chatted with Margaret (Molly) Roberts, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. Molly also co-directs the China Data Lab at the 21st Century China Center, and her latest book,Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China’s Great Firewall, takes a deep, data-driven look at the way that internet censorship functions, and how it impacts Chinese internet users.

15:21: Dispelling two narratives about China’s internet censorship

25:24: Distracting online communities by digitally flooding forums

32:43: How censorship affects those who experience it

41:52: How the discussion around Chinese internet censorship has evolved

Recommendations:

Molly: Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor, by Virginia Eubanks.

Kaiser: The Syllabus, by Evgeny Morozov: A website offering curated syllabi featuring text, audio, and video on a range of topics, including technology, global affairs, arts and culture, and more.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

‘Superpower Interrupted’: A conversation with veteran China journalist Michael Schuman about his Chinese history of the world Jun 11, 2020

Show notes

This week, Kaiser and Jeremy speak with Michael Schuman, a reporter and writer who’s been covering China for 23 years, about his new book, Superpower Interrupted: The Chinese History of the World. The book sets out to present world history as China has understood it, and what that understanding of history tells us about what the China of today really wants.

11:12: Notable historical books on China that have withstood the test of time

17:48: What Chinese exceptionalism means

34:45: When historical context matters, and when it doesn’t

42:11: Michael Schuman’s insights on what China wants

Recommendations:

Jeremy: The work of SupChina’s very own society and culture editor, Jiayun Feng. Click here to explore more of her work.

Michael: The Analects, a work attributed to Confucius and his peers.

Kaiser: The “Frankenstein” That Wasn’t: A Realistic Appraisal of Today’s China, an essay by Damien Ma of MacroPolo.

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This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Max Fisher of the New York Times on media coverage of China, COVID-19, and Trump Jun 04, 2020

Show notes

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Max Fisher, one of The Interpreter columnists for the New York Times, on what U.S. media coverage got right — and wrong — about the outbreak of COVID-19 in China, and the concerning parallels between 2002 and 2020.

8:33: American media coverage of the outbreak

15:14: Dehumanizing the disease in China

22:17: The role of the media in American political discourse

39:11: Moving the American consensus point on China

Recommendations:

Max: The Farewell, by Lulu Wang.

Kaiser: Eternal Life: A Novel, by Dara Horn.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Has China won? Part 2 of our conversation with Singapore’s Kishore Mahbubani May 28, 2020

Show notes

In this second half of our interview with Kishore Mahbubani, a former UN ambassador of Singapore, he talks to Kaiser about the perils of American exceptionalism, the poverty of strategic thinking in Washington, and the view of U.S.-China competition from the rest of the world. His latest book, Has China Won? The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy, is a bracing read, unsparing in its criticisms of Chinese and American strategic blunders, and its tough-love approach is sure to rankle.

8:52: Comparing Chinese realities to American ideals

15:31: How the outcome of the U.S.-China geopolitical contest will be decided

24:49: Strategic thinking regarding the South China Sea

37:57: America’s relationships with its allies

Recommendations:

Kishore: Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938, by Stephen E. Ambrose and Douglas G. Brinkley.

Kaiser: A new podcast series by Patrick Radden Keefe, called Wind of Change.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Has China won? A conversation with Singapore’s Kishore Mahbubani May 21, 2020

Show notes

In the first part of this two-part conversation, Kishore Mahbubani, a former UN ambassador of Singapore, returns to Sinica to chat with Kaiser about his latest book, Has China Won? The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy. It’s a bracing read, unsparing in its criticisms of Chinese and American strategic blunders, and its tough-love approach is sure to rankle. Part 2 will run next week.

12:46: Contrasting the geopolitical challenges posed by China and Russia

23:03: The core pillars of American strength

31:23: A financial “nuclear option” for China

45:12: The fusion of civilizations

Recommendations to follow in next week’s episode.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Kaiser interviews Gordon Chang! May 14, 2020

Show notes

No, not that Gordon Chang. The other one: the good one. Gordon H. Chang is a professor of American history at Stanford University, where he is also the Olive H. Palmer Professor in Humanities and the senior associate vice provost for undergraduate education. In this prelapsarian podcast, taped on December 19, Gordon chats with Kaiser about the rising tide of Sinophobia — presaging things to come once Trump really started fanning the flames during the present pandemic.

12:15: American perceptions of China and Chinese people

20:54: A legacy of discrimination against Chinese scientists in the U.S.

31:43: The role of universities in pushing back against xenophobia

35:47: Espionage fears and restrictions against Chinese researchers

Recommendations:

Gordon: The Transpacific Experiment: How China and California Collaborate and Compete for Our Future, by Matt Sheehan.

Kaiser: The Scientist and the Spy: A True Story of China, the FBI, and Industrial Espionage, by Mara Hvistendahl.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Grounding China's drones: Leading drone maker DJI's Brendan Schulman on U.S. regulatory challenges May 07, 2020

Show notes

A congressional bill and a draft executive order threaten to prevent U.S. government agencies from using drones made in China or that contain Chinese components. Concerns over security issues may end successful programs by the Department of the Interior and other agencies using Chinese-made drones for a huge range of purposes. Brendan Schulman, vice president for public policy and legal affairs of leading Chinese drone maker DJI, joins Kaiser and Jeremy to discuss.

3:16: A history of DJI

16:04: Shenzhen and the consumer electronic supply chain

18:24: DJI under legal scrutiny in the U.S. and abroad

29:01: The role of the U.S. Congress in pushing back against Chinese tech

39:18: Drone applications in the fight against COVID-19

Recommendations:

Jeremy: Fine Music Radio, a Cape Town–based radio station that plays jazz and classical music, and New Frame, a media company that covers news in Africa.

Brendan: The book Eternal Life, by Dara Horn.

Kaiser: Two pieces from The New Yorker: How does the coronavirus behave inside a patient?, by Siddhartha Mukherjee, and The contrarian coronavirus theory that informed the Trump administration, by Isaac Chotiner.

Like the podcasts at SupChina? Help us out by taking our brief survey.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The pathogen and the prejudice: Jiwei Xiao on COVID-19 in China and in America Apr 30, 2020

Show notes

Literature professor and cineaste Jiwei Xiao, who grew up in Wuhan and whose mother still lives there, published a piece in the New York Review of Books about watching the coronavirus pandemic unfold — first at a distance in Wuhan, then up close in the U.S., where she now resides. In this episode, Jiwei joins Kaiser and Jeremy to discuss her experiences.

11:56: China’s initial response to the outbreak

16:18: Fang Fang’s comments on China’s response to COVID-19

25:09: Emerging literature on the pandemic

35:10: Occupying a space between nations and cultures

Recommendations:

Jiwei: A work of “China noir”: The Wild Goose Lake, by Diao Yinan.

Jeremy: Keep Cool, by Zhang Yimou.

Kaiser: A long-form piece in the New York Times Magazine, I’m an E.R. doctor in New York. None of us will ever be the same, by Helen Ouyang.

This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.