Sinica Podcast

Latest Episodes:

New Podcast Series – "Studying China in the Absence of Access: Rediscovering a Lost Art" from Johns Hopkins SAIS Jan 23, 2025

Show notes

This week, I bring you the first in a series of podcasts in conjunction with the China Research Center at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). The series, titled "Studying China in the Absence of Access: Rediscovering a Lost Art," ran from September to November 2021, and featured four eminent "Pekingologists," or specialists in Chinese elite politics: Joseph Fewsmith, Thomas Fingar, Alice Miller, and Fred Teiwes. The talks were later published in a volume you can download here. The series is introduced by Andrew Mertha, George and Sadie Hyman, Professor of China Studies and director of the SAIS China Research Center, and each lecture includes a moderated discussion with Andy. After this series, I'll also be sharing with you a second series of lectures titled "Studying China from Elsewhere," which will include talks by Maria Repnikova, Mike Lampton, William Hurst, and Maggie Lewis — many of whom Sinica listeners will know from the show.

This week's talk is from FrederickTeiwes, truly a legend in the field. The American-born Australian sinologist is best known for his analysis of Chinese Communist Party elite politics. He served as a professor emeritus in Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney until his retirement in 2006. Teiwes has frequently collaborated with Warren Sun, producing seminal works such as The Tragedy of Lin Biao (1996) and China’s Road to Disaster: Mao, Central Politicians and Provincial Leaders in the Great Leap Forward, 1955-59 (1999). In this talk, he focuses on forthcoming work on the transition following Mao Zedong's death in 1976.

Great thanks to Andy and to Hasta Colman, who first suggested this collaboration when we met in Shanghai recently.

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Xiaohongshu's "TikTok Refugees," with Ivy Yang and David Fishman Jan 19, 2025

Show notes

I know I'd said last time there would be no show this week, but that was before this fascinating episode involving TikTok users signing up en masse to Xiaohongshu. Hilarity ensued, and my two guests — Ivy Yang, who runs Wavelet Strategy, an expert in cross-cultural communication, and David Fishman, Shanghai-based senior manager at Lantau Group who specializes in the Chinese energy sector and writes wonderfully about his excursions into the Chinese countryside. They've both been following this fascinating episode closely and have really smart things to say, so enjoy!

5:10 – How the migration of American Tiktokers to Xiaohongshu started

8:51 – A brief overview of Xiaohongshu: its users, typical content, and culture, including its “we’re all in this together” vibe

15:35 – The significance of Xiaohongshu as a Chinese app

19:48 – The scale of the American TikTok refugees phenomenon, and official reactions in the U.S.

24:52 – How Xiaohongshu has managed and reacted to the refugee phenomenon so far, and the PR opportunity presented for the PRC

29:33 – The Chinese government’s perspective

34:54 – Wholesome and interesting exchanges, and what American and Chinese users are finding surprising or amusing about each other’s cultures

38:50 – Why this new online encounter between Chinese and Americans is different from before

43:23 – The danger of irrational exuberance, and other risks the Xiaohongshu migration phenomenon presents

47:52 – The potential for a change in American thinking about China

Paying It Forward:

Ivy: Caiwei Chen

David: Robert Wu and Amber Zhang, especially their work on Baiguan, and Robert’s Substack China Translated, especially his essay, “The Great Divorce”

Recommendations:

Ivy: Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgenceby Dr. Anna Lembke

David: Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in Chinaby Peter Hessler

Kaiser: Other works by Peter Hessler (River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze; Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip; and Other Rivers: A Chinese Education), and Telecaster type electric guitars, especially the Sire Larry Carlton T7

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Lizzi Lee on China's Economy and the Trump Presidency Jan 16, 2025

Show notes

This week on Sinica, I'm joined by Lizzi Lee, fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute and by my lights one of the most astute, well-informed people writing on China in the English-speaking world today. She has fascinating perspectives on China's preparations for the Trump administration, on China's reluctance to roll out large-scale cash stimulus, and Xi Jinping's challenges. Don't miss this one! (I will update the show notes and publish the transcript early next week — thanks for your patience!)

3:39 – Lizzi’s argument from her op-ed, “Counting the Hawks in the Trump 2.0 Administration is Pointless”: the importance of which country will be able to get its act together

10:25 – U.S.-China competition as a long game, from China’s perspective

14:22 – How China views the current state of division in American politics

19:00 – The main risks and opportunities for China presented by Trump’s return, including opportunities in the geopolitical realm with the Europeans

28:09 – The state of China’s domestic economy

33:28 – Counterarguments to critiques of China’s cautious deployment of stimulus, and where Lizzi stands on the issue

43:46 – Lizzi’s thoughts on deflation in the Chinese economy

49:30 – The idea of accepting short-term pain for long-term gain in economic recovery

53:59 – Xi Jinping’s vision for China’s economy

58:46 – How Xi Jinping’s ideological language can be challenging for officials and markets

1:03:57 – How China’s political calendar has hindered execution of policy

1:06:42 – What Lizzi thinks the Chinese leadership should prioritize now

Paying it Forward: Lizzi recommends the work of Barclay Bram, especially his series on Chinese youth at the Asia Society here.

Recommendations:

Lizzi: Grazia Ting Deng’s book Chinese Espresso: Contested Race and Convivial Space in Contemporary Italy

Kaiser: More historical fiction by Robert Harris, including An Officer and a Spy and Munich.

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Inside Shen Yun and the Epoch Times, with NYT's Nicole Hong and Michael Rothfeld Jan 09, 2025

Show notes

This week on Sinica, I speak with Nicole Hong and Michael Rothfeld, both investigative reporters at the New York Times, about a series of stories they've done, stretching between August and December 2024, on the Falun Gong-run performance troupe Shen Yun, and the Falun Gong-affiliated newspaper The Epoch Times. Read the latest two articles in that series here and here. There will be links to the other stories on the transcript page.

4:33 – Nicole and Michael's collection of pieces on Falun Gong

6:26 – Background on [the?] Falun Gong: Li Hongzhi, the context out of which the movement emerged, its international spread, and the CCP’s crackdown in the '90s

12:00 – Shen Yun performances, and audience reactions

18:46 – Following the money: Falun Gong’s dramatic financial growth, gray areas, and where the money goes

29:03 – Spiritual project or big grift?

31:39 – What Nicole and Michael uncovered

36:23 – Memorable individuals: Chang Chun-ko, Kate the performer, and Josh the violinist

41:10 – The dynamics within [the?] Falun Gong, and what has been alleged

45:34 – The Epoch Times, and their editorial changes

53:02 – The appeal of Falun Gong, and the level of scrutiny it gets

Paying It Forward:

Nicole: Researchers/freelancers/translators Yi Liu and Peiyue Wu

Michael: New York Times colleague Susan Beachy

Recommendations:

Nicole: Connie: A Memoir by Connie Chung

Michael: Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel; One Hundred Years of Solitudeby Gabriel Garcia Marquez (and the new One Hundred Years of Solitude TV series (2024)); and the TV series Gomorrah(2014-2021)

Kaiser: TikTok accounts workplace_doodles (a former Shen Yun performer born into a Falun Gong family) and cocolarkincooks (a fantastic cooking resource)

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Under Pressure: Michael Cerny and Rory Truex on China Discourse in the U.S. Foreign Policy Community Jan 02, 2025

Show notes

This week on Sinica, I welcome back Michael Cerny — formerly of the Carter Center and now a Ph.D. student at Harvard — and Rory Truex of Princeton University to discuss a new working paper they've co-authored. They undertook a large-scale survey of foreign policy professionals at U.S. think tanks to ascertain whether there is a "consensus" on China policy, as is often claimed, and whether people working in think tanks feel pressure to take on more "hawkish" positions on China policy. We also introduce a new segment called "Paying it Forward."

5:04 – What motivated Michael and Rory to write their paper together

7:30 – Groupthink vs. consensus

10:08 – The methodology: combining surveys and interviews, and the sampling frame

14:35 – Trying to avoid leading questions

17:58 – Creating the “China Confrontation Index”

20:25 – Different levels of acceptance of the labels “hawk” and “dove”

23:33 – The issue of preference falsification

25:43 – Mechanisms behind disparities in perceived pressure

29:01 – Tying in Rory’s previous research on self-censorship

32:42 – How Michael and Rory decided on interviews

34:10 – What Michael believes were the most important and robust findings

36:09 – The distinction between the beliefs of think tankers vs. elected officials, and why people tend to believe there is a bipartisan consensus on China

40:34 – Pressure on hawks

42:35 – Specific policy questions

44:18 – Feedback on the paper so far, and what Michael and Rory may tweak in a subsequent draft

49:47 – The possible role of personality in hawkishness or dovishness

51:58 – Discussing Mike Mazarr’s concerns about the potential parallels between current Chinese discourse and the lead-up to the Iraq War

55:06 – Advice to younger professionals entering the foreign policy/China field

New segment: Paying It Forward:

Rory: Michael Cerny and Edi Obiakpani-Reid

Recommendations:

Rory: Edi Obiakpani-Reid’s Sinobabblepodcast about Chinese history

Michael: Jeffrey Ding’s Technology and the Rise of Great Powers: How Diffusion Shapes Economic Competition

Kaiser: Imperiumby Robert Harris

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Australia, China, and the Economics-Security Nexus with Amy King of ANU Dec 19, 2024

Show notes

This week on Sinica I'm delighted to be joined by Amy King, Associate Professor in the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre at The Australian National University. She shares her ideas about how perceptions of insecurity can paradoxically motivate closer economic relations between two states, and she looks at not only the examples of China and Japan after the end of World War II, but Australia and China as well. We also discuss Sino-Australian relations over the last 15 years, and much else!

2:48 – Key phases of Australia-China relations over the past 15 years and the security and economic nexus

9:05 – Amy’s research into the Sino-Japanese relationship and how perceptions of insecurity can motivate closer economic ties, and how Australia is responding to China now

21:22 – How Amy would argue the case for economic engagement with China to folks in Washington

26:31 – Securitization in Australia and the important differences between Australia and the U.S.

30:20 – The shift in the Australia-China relationship under the Albanese government

33:12 – What the U.S. can learn from Australia

35:14 – Why people tend to conflate Australia’s experience with America’s

39:04 – Amy’s essay, “The Collective Logic of Chinese Hegemonic Order,” and how we can understand China’s role in the emerging post-unipolar world

42:47 – Three mechanisms employed by China to amplify its voice post-war (amplifying, grafting, and resistance by appropriation) and how modern “middle powers” can influence the international order now

52:31 – The state of discourse on China in Australia and what Amy believes China wants

58:54 – Amy’s thoughts on pluralism and international order

1:03:22 – What lessons about de-risking and navigating multi-alignment Australia should be learning from other nations in the region

Recommendations:

Amy: Fintan O’Toole’s We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland

Kaiser: The Paul Reed Smith (PRS) SE Hollowbody II Piezo electric guitar

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China's EV Explosion, with Ilaria Mazzocco of CSIS Dec 12, 2024

Show notes

China's rapid surge in electric vehicle manufacturing, adoption, and export has variously encouraged, delighted, impressed, frightened, and even enraged people around the world. What did China get right in facilitating the explosive development in this industry? Was is just subsidies, or were there other important policies that helped jumpstart it? How have other geographies responded? And what can they learn? Ilaria Mazzocco, deputy director and senior fellow with the Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) joins me to share her rich insights into the Chinese EV industry.

3:49 – How Ilaria became interested in green industrial policy

5:59 – The reality of progress in EVs in China

11:21 – The role of state subsidies and other things that tend to get missed in trying to understand EVs in China

16:51 – How other countries are trying to adopt China’s approach

19:21 – The differences between the EU and U.S. approaches

24:17 – The outlook for competition in the Chinese market

26:08 – Business models in the Chinese EV sector and the example of BYD

30:53 – Chinese firms’ push for internationalization and how the rapidity of becoming multinationals [multinational companies?] may pose challenges

35:54 – Alignment between host countries and Chinese companies

39:58 – What the U.S. is doing and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)

42:27 – How U.S. protectionist measures may affect third markets, and whether restrictions may backfire

48:57 – The coming shift to next-generation batteries, and the potential for international collaboration in advancing more circular practices

55:43 – How Ilaria’s fieldwork shifted her perspective on the EV industry

59:38 – How we can improve industrial policy

Recommendations:

Ilaria: My Antoniaby Willa Cather; the Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel; The Army of Sleepwalkersby Wu Ming (an Italian novelist collective) about the French Revolution

Kaiser: The Wolf Hall audiobooks read by Ben Miles; the HBO series Rome(2005-2007)

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

Jane Hayward of King's College on Teaching China through YouTube Dec 05, 2024

Show notes

This week on Sinica, I chat with Jane Hayward, lecturer at King's College London, about her excellent YouTube channel, Jane Hayward China, and her efforts to bring up-to-date scholarship on modern and contemporary China to audiences through internet video, slaying various bugbears along the way.

3:28 Why Jane started her YouTube channel, her intended versus actual audiences, and navigating the current toxic media environment

10:56 The benefits of an area studies approach, and why Jane chose a U.S. PhD program

14:46 Defining the complicated public discourse in the West

19:35 Jane’s videos: the surprising popularity of “Xi Jinping is NOT like an Emperor;” and more controversial videos

26:28 New Qing History and different critiques of it

34:50 Jane's series on types of communism, and her video on reporting on China in British media

42:31 What may be coming next on Jane’s channel

Recommendations

Jane: David Priestland’s The Red Flag: A History of Communism

Kaiser: The YouTube channel Chinese Cooking Demystified, and specifically their video “63 Chinese Cuisines: the Complete Guide”

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

U.S.-China Crisis Management and Crisis Prevention, with Michael Swaine Nov 21, 2024

Show notes

This week on Sinica, I chat with Michael Swaine, Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for the last couple of years, prior to which he spent nearly two decades as a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he led extensive work on Chinese defense and foreign policy, U.S.-China relations, and East Asian international relations more broadly. He was also a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation, where he developed a reputation for rigorous research on Asian security and crisis management. We focus on his recent report, “Avoiding the Abyss: An Urgent Need for Sino-U.S. Crisis Management,” which offers both a framework for understanding the forces driving U.S.-China crises and a roadmap to prevent or manage these crises effectively. He drew on his many decades of experience working on the security dimension of the bilateral relationship, including his participation in many Track II dialogues and simulations of crisis scenarios over the years.

4:51 – Defining "crisis" and "crisis prevention"

10:13 – The possibility of a crisis in the South China Sea

12:31 – Lessons from past crises

20:08 – The problematic moralistic stances and tit-for-tat escalation produced by yǒulǐ, yǒulì, yǒu jié 有理, 有利, 有节

27:37 – U.S. concern over the credibility of its alliance commitments

34:50 – The problem of perception

38:16 – Examples of how each side is sometimes unable to see how its own actions are perceived by the other

41:20 – The dangers of failing to understand and making assumptions about the China’s historical memory

45:42 – Problems of signaling and how best to solve them

51:17 – Mike’s suggestions for a crisis toolkit and his proposal of a civilian-led two-tier dialogue structure

58:41 – Track II dialogues

1:02:47 – The importance of educating leaders up and down the system on crisis management

1:06:08 – The structural issues of the decision-making systems in China and the U.S.

Recommendations:

Michael: Art critic Brian Sewell’s The Reviews That Caused the Rumpus; Robert Suettinger’s The Conscience of the Party: Hu Yaobang, China’s Communist Reformer

Kaiser: The Great Transformation: China’s Road from Revolution to Reformby Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian

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Granta's Chinese Literature Issue: A Chat with Editor Thomas Meaney Nov 14, 2024

Show notes

The British literary quarterly Granta has published a new issue dedicated to Chinese writers, featuring familiar mainstays of contemporary literature and some fresh new voices. This week on Sinica, I chatted with Thomas Meaney, editor of Granta, about what's happening in the literary scene in China today and how this fantastically interesting issue came together. Tom is wonderfully thoughtful and articulate, and we really get into some of the individual stories and the larger trends they may or may not represent.

3:17 – Tom’s familiarity with Chinese literature and China

4:40 – Why Granta dedicated this issue to Chinese literature, how the issue came together, and how Granta found its translators

10:54 – Balancing political considerations with artistic merits in curating this issue

17:20 – The Chinese literary obsession with losers and the role of losers in Xiao Hai’s “Adrift in the South”

25:11 – The so-called Dongbei Renaissance, and Wu Qi’s interview and why he pushes back on the idea of the Dongbei Renaissance genre

33:02 – Granta staff favorites

35:18 – The phenomenon of gratuitous name-dropping and borrowing stylistically from other writers

38:05 – The issue’s three photo essays by Feng Li, Li Jie and Zhan Jungang, and Haohui Liu

44:36 – Yu Hua’s “Tomorrow I’ll Get Past It”

50:09 – Mo Yan’s “The Leftie Sickle”

53:10 – Yan Lianke’s “Black Pig Hair, White Pig Hair”

57:56 – The "filmability" of some of the short stories and the connection between the film world and literary writers in China

1:00:08 – Where you can get Granta and pick up this issue

Recommendations:

Tom: The Egalitarian Moment: Asia and Africa, 1950-1980by Anthony Low, a comparative history of land reform

Kaiser: The ever-expanding library of guitarless backing tracks on YouTube to play along to

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

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