Sinica Podcast

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Foreign Affairs Editor Daniel Kurtz-Phelan on Shifting Views of China Oct 30, 2025

Show notes

This week on Sinica, I chat with Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, editor of Foreign Affairs, about how the journal has both shaped and reflected American discourse on China during a period of dramatic shifts in the relationship. We discuss his deliberate editorial choices to include heterodox voices, the changing nature of the supposed "consensus" on China policy, and what I've called the "vibe shift" in how Americans across the political spectrum think about China. Daniel also reflects on his own intellectual formation, including his work on George Marshall's failed mission to mediate China's Civil War and the cautionary lessons that history holds for today's debates. We explore the challenges of bringing Chinese voices into Foreign Affairs, the balance between driving and reflecting policy debates, and whether we're witnessing a genuine opening of the Overton window on China discussions.

7:15 – Foreign Affairs in the era of Iraq and "China's peaceful rise"

12:09 – The Marshall mission and the "Who Lost China?" debate

17:17 – China's changing role and the journal's coverage density

19:43 – The Campbell-Ratner "China Reckoning" and subsequent debates

25:00 – The challenge of including authentic Chinese voices

29:42 – How Chinese leadership perceives and reads Foreign Affairs

32:12 – The "vibe shift" on China across the American political spectrum

35:56 – Cultivating contrarian voices: Van Jackson, Jonathan Czin, and David Kang

40:17 – Avoiding the trap of making everything about U.S.-China competition

43:12 – Diversifying perspectives beyond the Washington-Beijing binary

48:18 – The big questions: American exceptionalism and Chinese identity in a new era

51:42 – The dangers of cutting off U.S.-China scholarly conversations

56:26 – The uses and misuses of historical analogies

58:09 – Spain's Golden Age and late Qing memes as contemporary analogies

Paying it forward: The unsung editorial staff at Foreign Affairs

Recommendations:

Daniel: Equator.org; The Rise of the Meritocracy by Michael Young; Granta's new India issue; The Party's Interests Come First by Joseph Torigian; The Coming Storm by Odd Arne Westad

Kaiser: The Spoils of Time by C.V. Wedgwood

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The View from Behind Xi Jinping's Desk, with Jonathan Czin Oct 21, 2025

Show notes

This week on the Sinica Podcast, I speak with Jonathan Czin, the Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies and a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center. His new essay in Foreign Affairs, “China Against China: Xi Jinping Confronts the Downsides of Success,” challenges the dominant Western narrative of Xi Jinping as either Mao reincarnate or a brittle autocrat presiding over imminent collapse. Instead, Czin argues that Xi’s most illiberal reforms can be understood as attempts to cure the pathologies of China’s own success. We discuss his framing of Xi’s “Counterreformation,” how it helps explain China’s current political direction, and what it reveals about our own analytical blind spots in the West.

7:15 – Xi’s “reformation” and Carl Minzner’s “end of reform and opening”

12:18 – Corruption, decentralization, and the “lost decade” under Hu and Wen

20:12 – Defining “resilience” and what Xi means by “eating bitterness”

29:45 – The “downsides of success”: property, corruption, and governance contradictions

45:30 – Counter-reformation vs. counterrevolution: what Xi wants to preserve and discard

54:20 – The myth of yes-men: triangulation and feedback in Xi’s leadership style

1:07:07 – Cognitive empathy and why most U.S. analysis of Xi falls short

1:15:35 – Systems that can’t course-correct: comparing the U.S. and China

1:22:05 – Cognitive empathy, ideology, and the problem of American exceptionalism

Paying it forward:

Jonathan: Allie Mathias and Dinny McMahon

Recommendations:

Jonathan: The Thirty Years Warby C.V. Wedgewood; The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni

Kaiser: Transplants by Daniel Tam-Claiborne

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The Symbolism of the Flying Tigers: Peking University's Wang Dong on the American Volunteer Group and its Historical and Diplomatic Usages Sep 29, 2025

Show notes

This week on Sinica, I chat with Peking University's Professor Wang Dong (王栋), an international relations scholar at the School of International Studies at Peking University, where he also serves as Deputy Director and Executive Director of the Office for Humanities and Social Sciences and the Institute for Global Cooperation and Understanding. Professor Wang’s scholarship and public commentary focus on U.S.–China relations, Cold War history, and the uses of historical memory in diplomacy. He has been an especially thoughtful voice in connecting the Flying Tigers legacy with today’s efforts to stabilize and strengthen the people-to-people ties between our two countries.

Check back in a day or two for the full podcast page and the transcript!

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Jasmine Sun on Silicon Valley through a Chinese Mirror Sep 22, 2025

Show notes

This week on Sinica, co-host Tianyu Fang makes his debut on the show to join me in interviewing his Stanford classmate and talented writer Jasmine Sun, who studies the anthropology of disruption. This summer, she took a trip to China with a group of friends with different levels of China experience, from people raised in the country to total novices. She reflects on how it hit, and how a group of young people reckoned with the reality of Chinese hypermodernity, which she wrote about in a terrific essay titled "america against china against america: notes on shenzhen, shanghai, and more."

06:10 – Getting to know the new co-host: Tianyu Fang

07:17 – Meet the guest: Jasmine Sun

08:47 – Is there really an “American Vibe Shift” in how people see China?

13:56 – The stories nations tell: America vs. China

18:26 – Why that title for the essay?

21:05 – Surveillance, awe, and future shock: China vs. San Francisco

28:19 – Chinese tech’s power to surprise (and scare) + U.S.–China perceptions

34:34 – China vs. Silicon Valley: patriotism and motivation

39:51 – The involution phenomenon: China vs. U.S.

45:41 – China’s public services and the U.S. gap

52:33 – What U.S. cities could learn from China

56:13 – Guests’ tips for understanding China

Recommendations:

Jasmine: Yunnan food

Tianyu: Mad Men(Tv series)

Kaiser: The Origins of Political Order and Political Decayby Francis Fukuyama

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Yascha Mounk on China and Western Liberalism Sep 17, 2025

Show notes

This week on the Sinica Podcast, I chat with well-known author and public intellectual Yascha Mounk about his recent fascination with China, his approach to learning about the country and learning Chinese, and his thoughts on how China fits into the current crisis of Western liberal democracy.

7:15 – Yascha’s experience of living in China and learning Chinese

12:18 – Yascha’s perspective on China’s strengths and weaknesses

20:12 – China in a global comparative perspective: Generational aspirations and demographic decline

29:45 – China’s Soft Power vs. Japan, Korea, and the U.S.

45:30 – Media narratives on China: have they shifted?

54:20 – Western Liberalism confronts China

01:07:07 – Backlash & criticism

01:11:35 - Polarization and “China as enemy” narratives

Recommendations:

Yascha: The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (book), The Leopard (1963) (movie)

Kaiser: A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism by Adam Gopnik (book)

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What Did the September 3 Parade Mean? Sep 10, 2025

Show notes

This week on Sinica, I speak first with retired Senior Colonel Zhou Bo, a frequent commentator on Chinese military and security affairs and a prolific writer now at the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University, and with Rana Mitter of the Harvard Kennedy School and author of Forgotten Ally, a book about World War II in China.

4:08 – The primary objectives behind the September 3rd parade

10:03 – China’s position in the global arms market

14:45 – The strategic importance of the new weapons on display

21:10 – China, Russia, and North Korea: strategic dynamics

33:14 – Perspectives on the China–Russia relationship

44:13 – Avoiding security dilemma spirals

50:32 – Rana Mitter: Wartime memory, national narratives, and the 2025 shift

57:06 – Narratives of China’s role in World War II

01:19:01 – The significance and performative Dimension of the 2025 parade

01:26:26 – China’s postwar role and evolving global ambitions

Recommendations:

Rana: Face-Off (podcast), Enchanted Revolution by Xiaofei Kang

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What Does China Want? The Authors of a New Paper Challenge the DC Consensus Sep 02, 2025

Show notes

This week on Sinica, I chat with Dave Kang (USC), Zenobia Chan (Georgetown), and Jackie Wong (American University in Sharjah, UAE) about their new paper in International Security titled "What Does China Want?" The paper, which has generated quite a bit of controversy, takes a data-driven approach to examine the claim that China seeks global hegemony — that it wants to supplant the U.S. as a globe-spanning top power.

I'm traveling much of this week, so I'll update this podcast page when the transcript comes back!

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Trump's India Tariff Tirade: A Gift to Beijing? With Evan Feigenbaum Aug 27, 2025

Show notes

This week on the Sinica Podcast, I welcome back Evan Feigenbaum, Vice President for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Evan served for many years as a State Department official, was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia and Central Asia among his numerous positions in government, and was instrumental in building the U.S.-India relationship after 2000 — only to watch Trump round on India in recent months, slapping large punitive tariffs on the South Asian giant ostensibly over its purchases of Russian oil. What motivated Trump? And how does this look from New Delhi and from Beijing? Will China capitalize on the strains in the U.S.-Indian relationship? Listen and find out.

04:12 – Building "trust" in politics

10:22 – Changes in U.S. policy

15:11 – Did India take advantage of Russia?

20:07 – How U.S. rules shape India

25:21 – "Rebuilding" the U.S.–India relationship

29:56 – Beijing on Trump vs. India

42:48 – India, Quad, and Indo-Pacific strategy

49:55 – Managing U.S.–India tensions

Paying it Forward: Kenji Kushida

Recommendations:

Evan: How China Is Reshaping International Security Cooperationby Sheena Greitens and Isaac Kardon

Kaiser:How Sino-centrism and U.S.-centrism warp(ed?) Beijing’s foreign policy thinking by Tang Shiping and Qi Dapeng

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The Engineering State and the Lawyerly Society: Dan Wang on his new book "Breakneck" Aug 21, 2025

Show notes

This week on Sinica, I'm delighted to be joined by Dan Wang, formerly of Gavekal Dragonomics and the Paul Tsai Law Center at Yale University, now with the Hoover Institute's History Lab. Dan's new book is Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future, and it's already one of the year's most talked-about books. In this conversation, we go beyond what's actually in the book to discuss the origins and implications of the Chinese "engineering state" — the world's biggest technocratic polity — and what the United States should and should not learn from China. We discuss how Dan's ideas sit with Abundance by Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein, and much more. Don't miss this episode!

03:51 – Guitar industry in Guizhou

09:49 – Engineering state vs. lawyerly society

23:13 – Downsides of the engineering state

34:24 – Process knowledge: U.S. vs. China

43:01 – Attitudes toward technology: U.S. vs China

52:32 – Historical roots of the engineering state in China

59:48 – Building institutions that bind outcomes to rights

01:04:15 – What can be learned from the COVID lockdowns

01:07:51 – The tradeoff between resilience and efficiency

01:10:52 – Dan's view on Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein's "Abundance" argument

01:13:41 – Legitimacy in China and the U.S.

01:21:13 – Building toward cultural pluralism

Paying it Forward: Afra Wang, He Liu.

Recommendations:

Dan: Mozart's Italian operas, written with Lorenzo Da Ponte; The Red and the Black by Stendhal;In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust; Moby Dick by Herman Melville; Bleak House by Charles Dickens.

Kaiser: China is enjoying Trump 2.0 by Yun Sun (article), books: Revolutionary Spring, The Sleepwalkersby Christopher Clark

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Chinese and U.S. AI Applications in Public Administration: Lessons and Implications for Ukraine Aug 14, 2025

Show notes

Artificial intelligence has been a frequent topic on Sinica in recent years — but usually through the lens of the two countries that have produced the leading models and companies: the United States and China. We’ve covered generative AI, national strategies, governance frameworks, and the geopolitical implications of AI leadership.

This webinar, broadcast on the morning of August 14, broadens that lens to explore how other countries — and especially Ukraine — are approaching AI in the public sector. Around the world, governments are experimenting with AI well beyond chatbots and text generation: China’s “City Brain” optimizes traffic, energy use, and public safety; U.S. agencies are streamlining services and automating benefits processing; and elsewhere, smart grids, predictive infrastructure planning, and AI-enabled e-governance are reshaping public administration. These projects reveal both the promise and the complexity of bringing AI into government — along with valid concerns over privacy, fairness, and inclusiveness.

We’ll look at what lessons Ukraine might draw from U.S. and Chinese experiences, the opportunities and challenges of adapting these practices, and the strategic risks of sourcing AI solutions from different providers — especially in the context of Ukraine’s eventual postwar reconstruction.

Joining us are three distinguished guests:

Dmytro Yefremov, Board Member of the Ukrainian Association of Sinologists, with deep expertise in China’s political and technological strategies and Ukraine’s policy landscape.
Wang Guan, Chairman of Learnable.ai in China, bringing extensive experience in AI applications for public administration and education.
Karman Lucero, Associate Research Scholar and Senior Fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, whose work focuses on Chinese law, governance, and the regulation of emerging technologies.

Thanks to the Ukrainian Platform for Contemporary China, the Ukrainian Association of Sinologists, and the Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill for organizing and sponsoring today’s event. Special thanks to Vita Golod for putting together the panel and inviting me to moderate.

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