Sinica Podcast

Kaiser Kuo
  • 5.0 (11)
  • POLITICS
  • EVERY TWO WEEKS
Sinica Podcast

A weekly discussion of current affairs in China with journalists, writers, academics, policymakers, business people and anyone with something compelling to say about the country that's reshaping the world. Hosted by Kaiser Kuo.

  1. 2 DAYS AGO

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

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

    1h 22m

  2. 12 DEC

    China's EV Explosion, with Ilaria Mazzocco of CSIS

    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 Antonia by Willa Cather; the Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel; The Army of Sleepwalkers by 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.

    1h 14m

  3. 5 DEC

    Jane Hayward of King's College on Teaching China through YouTube

    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.

    51 min

  4. 21 NOV

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

    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 Reform by Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

    1h 17m

  5. 14 NOV

    Granta's Chinese Literature Issue: A Chat with Editor Thomas Meaney

    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, 1950-1980 by 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.

    1h 9m

  6. 7 NOV

    Decoupling, De-risking, and the Great U.S.-China Disconnect, with Supply Chain Expert Cameron Johnson

    This week on Sinica in a show taped live at China Crossroads, Shanghai's premier event series, I'm joined by my good friend Cameron Johnson, who is on the governing board of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, specializes professionally in supply chains in China, and teaches at NYU Shanghai. 4:20 – What makes up a supply chain ecosystem, and why it is difficult to build out  8:39 – A brief history of decoupling, the warning signs, and whether it matters “who shot first”  16:43 – Personal protective equipment (PPE) manufacturing in America, the lessons we (should have) learned, and Washington’s response 25:13 – EVs and batteries: manufacturing in America, and what it looks like on the ground in China  30:46 – The semiconductor industry  34:24 – “China Week” in Congress, and the different responses of GOP versus Democratic congressmen  38:36 – De-risking as globalization 2.0 42:21 – Cameron’s predictions on the effects of the [upcoming] U.S. elections  44:10 – Inside Chinese factories  47:44 – American shortfalls in manufacturing  50:21 – The importance of seeing China’s competitive markets and ecosystem clusters for oneself  53:09 – Cameron’s advice for the next U.S. administration  Recommendations:  Cameron: Gōngyìng liàn gōngfáng zhàn 《供应链攻防战》 (Supply Chain Offensive and Defense War) by Lin Xueping; No Trade is Free: Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America’s Workers by Robert Lighthizer  Kaiser: The Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

    1h 2m

  7. 31 OCT

    Tsinghua's Da Wei: New Survey Research on Chinese Perceptions of Security

    This week, in a show taped in Beijing at the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University, I speak with Professor Da Wei about a new public opinion poll on China's perception of international security and review its important findings. We also discuss Chinese views on the Russo-Ukrainian War and the upcoming U.S. presidential election. 2:11 – Da Wei’s new podcast  4:05 – CISS’s “Public Opinion Poll: Chinese Outlook on International Security 2024” 7:46 – The poll’s findings on pessimism about global security and the global influence of the U.S. and China 11:56 – China’s growing national confidence and growing pessimism about the U.S.-China relationship  18:26 – Paradoxical poll findings: proactive foreign policy stance vs. prioritizing domestic affairs, and involvement in global scientific cooperation vs. withdrawing in other areas of international agreement  24:30 – Why older respondents tended to be more pessimistic about China’s international security situation  25:58 – Understanding negative attitude toward the United States and the effectiveness of diplomacy  30:17 – The belief that the U.S. goal is containment of China’s development and the shift in view of America from a values-based country to a power-based country  36:12 – Chinese viewpoints on the Russo-Ukrainian war  39:22 – Da Wei’s travels in the U.S. and the changes he has perceived  45:04 – The U.S. agenda to dissuade China from deepening its involvement with Russia  49:02 – How Chinese views on the upcoming U.S. election have changed since Kamala Harris’ nomination Recommendations: Da Wei: Chen Jian’s Zhou Enlai: A Life; for Chinese to travel to the U.S. more Kaiser: Chen Jian and Odd Arne Westad’s The Great Transformation: China’s Road from Revolution to Reform; for Americans to travel to China (and Beijing)  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

    59 min

  8. 24 OCT

    Xinhua's Liu Yang and Jiang Jiang of "Got China" Get Western Journalism

    This week on Sinica, in a show recorded in Beijing, I speak with Liu Yang and Jiang Jiang, the authors of two excellent newsletters — The Beijing Channel and Ginger River Review, respectively — and two of the guys behind the YouTube show "Got China." They're making a great effort to bridge Chinese journalism with Anglophone reporting on China with perspectives and insights from within the Chinese state media system. 4:24 – How Jiang Jiang and Liu Yang became journalists  11:42 – How Liu Yang and Jiang Jiang decided to launch their newsletters, and the advantages of being tǐzhì nèi 体制内 20:29 – Jiang Jiang and Liu Yang’s Got China show  25:46 – Liu Yang’s and Jiang Jiang’s empathy for American perspectives  29:53 – The negative American discourse on the Chinese economy and “China collapse theory”  37:21 The recent press conferences on monetary and policies, and the response in the realty market in Beijing  46:17 What’s next for Got China  Recommendations: Liu Yang: Modern Chinese Government and Politics 《当代中国政府与政治?》, a Chinese-language textbook Jiang Jiang: The Chinese podcast Bié de diànbō 别的电波; and Shan Weijian’s Out of the Gobi: My Story of China and America Kaiser: The album The Last Will and Testament by Swedish metal band Opeth; and the Provincial Cuisine Club in Beijing, for trying food from different parts of China See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

    55 min
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Hosts & Guests

5
out of 5
11 Ratings

About

A weekly discussion of current affairs in China with journalists, writers, academics, policymakers, business people and anyone with something compelling to say about the country that's reshaping the world. Hosted by Kaiser Kuo.

Information

  • Creator
    Kaiser Kuo
  • Years Active
    2016 - 2024
  • Episodes
    476
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    Sinica Podcast

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