Sinica Podcast Kaiser Kuo

This week, my narration of a longish essay about my recently-concluded four-week trip to Dalian and, more importantly, Beijing — my first time back in the city I called home for so long since the COVID pandemic. If you prefer to read rather than listen, you can find the essay — free for everyone this week — on the Substack. I hope you enjoy this!

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This week on Sinica, I'm in Beijing, where I spoke with my dear friend Anthony Tao, an English-language poet and a builder of community in the city where I lived for over 20 years. Anthony recently published a volume of his poetry called We Met in Beijing, and it captures the relationship that so many have with the city wherever they might come from. The episode features readings of some of his — and my — favorite poems.

3:28 Why Anthony chose poetry as a medium, and the poetry he has read [appreciated?]

9:13 A discussion of Anthony’s poem, “I Landed in Beijing,” and the feelings Beijing inspires

19:56 Anthony’s poem, “Self-censorship”

27:08 Anthony’s journalism in poetic form and processing the trauma of COVID 

31:38 Living as an “expat” and writing from an expat’s perspective: Anthony’s poem “Dancing like a Laowai 

40:46 Anthony’s bar — The Golden Weasel — and meeting interesting people in Beijing 

44:49 The themes of place and nostalgia, Anthony’s poem, “Postcard,” and the last stanza of his title poem, “We Met in Beijing”

Recommendations:

Anthony: The poetry of Stephen Dunn; the TV series Lucky Hank (2023) based on Straight Man by Richard Russo; Spittoon, an English-language literary collective in China; and his band, Poetry x Music 

Kaiser: The many international restaurants of Xiaoyun Lu in Beijing 

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I'm trying something different: totally unscripted and very, very lightly edited recordings grabbed on the go where I happen to be. For the inaugural episode, I've got Wang Zichen, the author of the amazing Pekingnology newsletter on Substack, as well as the man behind the Center for China and Globalization's newsletter "The East is Read." Hear Zichen's origin story, his approach to publishing Pekingnology, the skinny on his new Got China show with Liu Yang and Jiang Jiang, as well as his take on what we can expect from the Third Plenum.

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This week on Sinica, I chat with University of Melbourne transnational historian Pete Millwood about his outstanding book Improbable Diplomats: How Ping-Pong Players, Musicians, and Scientists Remade U.S.-China Relations. The road to normalization is told too often with a focus only on the Nixon-Kissinger opening and official diplomatic efforts culminating in the final recognition of the PRC in January 1979, but there's much more to the story than that, and Millwood tells it deftly, drawing on extensive archival research as well as interviews with many of those directly involved.

3:33 — Transnational history 

4:44 — The early, “pioneering” trips to China in the 1950s and ‘60s and China’s shift in invitations 

11:14 — The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (NCUSCR) in the 1960s  

16:27 — The role of the Committee of Concerned Asia Scholars (CCAS)

20:43 — Why Nixon’s opening to China was seen as so surprising, and the impact of the UN’s shift in recognition from the ROC to the PRC on American thinking 

24:57 — The Glenn Cowan and Zhuang Zedong ping-pong diplomacy story 

31:21 — Edgar Snow’s meeting with Mao

33:43 — The return leg of ping-pong diplomacy and the National Committee’s “baptism by fire”

36:33 — The significance of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s tour of China with Eugene Ormandy  

42:23 — Jiang Qing and the controversy around the cancelled performing arts tour in the U.S. in 1975 

46:03 — Kissinger’s thinking in the early 1970s after the first communiqué 

48:48 — The U.S.-China People’s Friendship Association 

50:42 — How scientific cooperation smoothed the process toward normalization under the Carter administration, the state of play in ’77, and how Frank Press CSCPRC argued for greater reciprocity 

1:02:25 — The politics in China in regards to the grander bargain and the decentralization of exchanges 

1:05:43 — The disbandment of the CSCPRC and the reinvention of the NCUSCR 

1:08:58 — Pete’s suggestion for continuing academic and cultural exchange 

1:12:51 — How Pete got interested in such an American and China-centric topic 

1:18:02 — Pete’s current projects 

 Recommendations:

Pete: Island X: Taiwanese Student Migrants, Campus Spies, and Cold War Activism by Wendy Cheng; Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong by Louisa Lim (also available as an audiobook read by the author) 

Kaiser: We Met in Beijing, a book of poems by Anthony Tao 




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This week on Sinica, in a show recorded on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting of the New Champions, historian Adam Tooze joins to chat about what the U.S. wants from China, China's vaulting green energy ambitions, and much more. Don't miss this episode: Tooze gets pretty darn spicy!

3:13 How Adam launched Chartbook in Chinese 

5:37 How Dalian and Beijing have changed since Adam’s last visit in 2019

9:01 What the West wants from China, the Thucydides Trap,

15:11 The trajectory of China’s economic development and why it’s hard for the West to reconcile with]

25:11 “Overcapacity” and the politics of renewable energy

31:00 Russo-Chinese relations and the war in Ukraine

37:12 The Global South and China since February 24th and October 7th and the importance of Africa with regards to global development 

41:39 Green energy as a driver of high-quality development in China 

47:49 The “Red New Deal” and the combination punch metaphor 

51:57 Adam’s cognitive style (an interrelated thinker averse to analogizing), climate as a touchstone topic, and China’s importance in global climate politics 

Recommendations:

Adam: The work of Lauri Myllyvirta, including his analysis on Carbon Brief

Kaiser: Rewatching The Wire TV series (2002-2008)




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This week on Sinica, Part 2 of the interview with anthropologist Stevan Harrell, professor emeritus at the University of Washington, about his magnum opus, An Ecological History of China. Be sure to listen to Part 1 first, as many important framing concepts are discussed in that episode!

1:44 “– The Four Horsemen of Ecopocalypse” and ecological disasters during the Mao period, and the story of the double-wheel, double-bladed plow

11:00 – The effect of the introduction of water systems and fertilizers on agricultural production 

21:03 – “The replumbing of China:” The South-North Water Transfer Project and the National Water Network

27:32 – Areas of progress: Air pollution and the energy mix 

32:48 – Areas lacking appreciable improvement: Soil contamination, water pollution, and flood vulnerability 

36:04 – Ecological civilization and breaking the binary between development and environmental protection

47:00 – Steve’s cognitive style: A fox of the two cultures

53:23 – nSteve’s views on authoritarian environmentalism 

58:46 – The Environmental Kuznets curve 

1:05:54 – A preview of Steve’s current book project about the Yangjuan Primary School in Liangshan 

Recommendations:

Steve: Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories; Hampton Sides’ The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook; and the 2023 film The Taste of Things, starring Juliette Binoche 

Kaiser: The Cold War: A World History by Odd Arne Westad 

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