Sinica Podcast Kaiser Kuo

This week on Sinica, I'm delighted to welcome — my brother! Jay Kuo is a Broadway writer & producer, and the man behind the terrific U.S. politics-focused Substack newsletter The Status Kuo. In a previous life, from 1996 to 2000, he was also really active in Beijing's gay community, just at the time when homosexuality was being decriminalized and was stepping out of the shadows. We talk about how it all took off. Jay also puts on his other hat to talk about how China figures into American politics with the election less than five months away, and about the legal standing of the TikTok divest-or-ban law.

4:54 – The gay community in Beijing in the ‘90s, and the Half-and-Half bar in Sanlitun 

16:06 – How the gay community in Beijing changed after two major rulings 

27:33 – The end of the “golden era” for the gay community in China

36:26 – Progress and its drivers and obstacles

42:28 – Jay’s “China priors”

50:41 – The issue of China in the upcoming U.S. presidential election 

 57:08 – The TikTok ban bill 

Recommendations: 

Jay: The TV series Manhunt (2024), available on Apple TV

Kaiser: The TV series The Sympathizer (2024), available on HBO; the audiobook of The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, narrated by François Chau 

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This week on Sinica, I chat with Sulmaan Wasif Khan, professor of history and international relations at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, about his book The Struggle for Taiwan: A History of America, China, and the Island Caught Between, which comes on May 14.

4:28 — The Cairo Agreement

6:59 — General George Marshall, George Kennan, and the change in the idea of American trusteeship of Taiwan?

17:08 — The debate over the offshore islands of Kinmen and Matsu

23:55 — Mao’s evolving interest in Taiwan

27:49 — The averted crisis of 1962

32:06 — Peng Ming-min and the Taiwan independence movement

37:14 — What changed in 1971?

42:51 — The legacy of Chiang Ching-kuo

45:14 — The story of Lee Teng-hui

52:37 — The change within the Kuomintang

1:00:11 — Why Taiwan has become “sacred” for China

1:10:26 — Sulmaan’s own narrative shift

1:13:26 — Chen Shui-bian and the threat of independence referendums

1:17:53 — The Sunflower Movement

1:25:21 — The causal direction of Taiwan’s importance in the U.S.-China relationship

1:28:32 — Why the status quo shifted

1:30:51 — Drawing parallels between Taiwan and Ukraine

1:33:26 — Sulmaan’s sources for his book

1:35:38 — Agency versus structure

1:39:29 — Feedback (so far) on the new book and what’s next for Sulmaan




Recommendations:

Sulmaan: Emily Wilson’s translation of The Iliad 

Kaiser: The “My China Priors” series (and other essays), available on the Sinica Substack; Angus Stewart’s essay, “Alien Bless You: A Review of Netflix’s 3 Body Problem” 




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This week on Sinica, veteran reporter Jane Perlez, who served as bureau chief for the New York Times in Beijing until 2019, joins to discuss her new podcast series Face-Off, which explores different facets of the U.S.-China relationship. We also talk about the state of Western journalism in China in the wake of tit-for-tat expulsions of reporters from the U.S. and China that took place during the Trump administration, and the challenges of covering China well without people on the ground in country.

5:16 – How Jane Perlez got into podcasting

7:59 – The challenge of understanding Xi Jinping

12:44 – The Face-Off podcast and appealing to a general audience

19:00 – Face-Off’s interview with Zhao Tong on the nuclear issue; the importance of quality diplomacy; and debating the efficacy of the S&ED

30:48 – The pleasure of meeting Yo-Yo Ma 

36:52 – The state of Western journalists in China, and how the situation may eventually play out 

48:44 – The difficulty of covering China from the outside 

53:52 – What’s next for Jane Perlez and the Face-Off podcast

Recommendations:

Jane: Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia by Gary Bass

Kaiser: The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History by Serhii Plokhy 

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This week on Sinica, Iza Ding, associate professor of political science at Northwestern University and author of The Performative State: Public Scrutiny and Environmental Governance in China, joins to share her ideas on how American academia has framed and problematized authoritarianism, especially when it comes to China. A deep and subtle thinker, she offers thought-provoking critiques of some of the assumptions that have become nearly axiomatic in political science and other social sciences in their approach to understanding politics in China.

3:13 – Iza Ding’s concept of “authoritarian teleology”

15:31 – The concept of authoritarian resilience 

19:58 – The question of regime legitimacy 

24:09 – The question of whether authoritarianism is an ideology 

26:24 – The China model? 

30:58 – Finding a balance between generalizability and the sui generis, and striving toward cognitive empathy and “Verstehen” 

42:04 – The state of area studies and avoiding essentialism 

49:32 – Iza Ding’s advice on how to become a better writer 

Recommendations:

Iza: The Wife of Bath: A Biography by Marion Turner — the story of Alison, the Wife of Bath in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales 

Kaiser: the guitarist Kent Nishimura, especially his recordings of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears, “Sir Duke” by Stevie Wonder, “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” by The Police, and “Hey Nineteen” by Steely Dan 




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This week on Sinica, I'm delighted to welcome Dá Wēi (达巍), one of China’s foremost scholars of China’s foreign relations and especially relations with the U.S. Da Wei is the director of the Center for International Security and Strategy (CISS) at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and is a professor in the department of International Relations at the School of Social Science at Tsinghua. Before September 2017, Professor Da served as the Director of the Institute of American Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), a leading think tank in Beijing. He was at CICIR for more than two decades and directed the Institute of American Studies from 2013 to 2017.

We discuss the state of Chinese understanding of the United States: how China’s strategic class assesses the state of the relationship, what brought it to this point, and what the future might hold.




2:52 – American attitudes toward the U.S.-China relationship

5:32 – The focus of academic think tanks and strategic communities in the U.S. versus China 

11:13 – The Chinese strategic community’s understanding of American domestic politics with respect to the upcoming U.S. presidential election  

15:08 – The Chinese strategic community’s understanding of why and how the current state of relations developed, and why China changed its trajectory  

23:12 – The Chinese strategic community’s perspectives on American policy: Do they see a difference between the parties?

27:02 – Da Wei’s concept of “Sullivanism” 

33:41 – The question of mutual misunderstanding 

38:37 – The role and influence of China’s think tanks in the policymaking process

43:29 – The idea of cognitive empathy — aka strageic empathy, or intellectual empathy — and how it could aid mutual understanding and the policymaking process

52:30 – The Chinese perspective on Russia and the war in Ukraine 

57:37 – The Chinese perspective on China’s other international relations and the global context of the U.S.-China relationship 

1:04:19 The issue of Taiwan and the question of the “status quo” 

1:13:52 The importance of building people-to-people ties 

1:16:51 – Da Wei's personal anecdote about an experience that influenced his understanding the U.S.-China relationship




Recommendations:

Da Wei:  Lust for Life by Irving Stone — a biography of Vincent van Gogh; Pablo Casals’s recording of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cello Suites; the films Cinema Paradiso (1988) and Forrest Gump (1994).  

Kaiser: The Sopranos (1999-2007) TV series and The Sopranos Family Cookbook: As Compiled by Artie Bucco, written by Allen Rucker with recipes by Michele Scicolone. 







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This week on Sinica, a discussion of Netflix's adaptation of Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem (or more accurately, Remembrance of Earth's Past). Joining me to chat about the big-budget show is Cindy Yu, host of The Spectator’s “Chinese Whispers” podcast, one of the very best China-focused podcasts; and Christopher T. Fan, who teaches English, Asian American Studies, and East Asian Studies at U.C. Irvine and is a co-founder of Hyphen magazine. Cindy and Chris both wrote reviews of the show and a bunch of other folks answered the call and contributed their thoughts as well.

6:46 – 3 Body Problem as Chinese IP and audience reception 

14:44 – The pros and cons of a more faithful adaptation, comparisons with Tencent’s adaptation, [and the Netflix production (process) (? Or keep it separate, 20:17)]

23:44 – How the show portrays its Chinese characters and China and audience responses

38:14 – Allegorical interpretations and real-world (political?) connections 

48:11 – What to look forward to in (possible?) future seasons 

51:14 – Chenchen Zhang’s humanity/autocracy binary and the 工业党 gōngyè dǎng 

57:02 A win for Chinese soft power? 

Recommendations:

Cindy: The Overstory by Richard Powers 

Chris: Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park

Kaiser: Kaiser: Run and Hide by Pankaj Mishra; other novels by Pankaj Mishra, including Age of Anger: A History of the Present and From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia; and other novels by Richard Powers, including Galatea 2.2, Operation Wandering Soul, and The Gold Bug Variations 







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