ChinaTalk Jordan Schneider

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To discuss, Eric Breckenfeld of the Semiconductor Industry Association and Hassan Khan, who holds a PhD in engineering and public policy,
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This year marks ten years since Wang Lijun's fateful flight to the US Embassy in Chengdu, a decision which set in motion a chain of events that ultimately brought down one of China's most powerful politicians, Xi's most credible rival for power in 2012, Bo Xilai.
The former mayor of Chongqing remains in prison to this day for bribery, embezzlement and abuse of office, along with his wife Gu Kailai, who is serving life imprisonment for the murder of a British businessman. But a decade later, how much of an impact does Bo's story have in the halls of power?
New York Times reporter Chris Buckley joins the show this episode to discuss Bo's legacy and share anecdotes about his encounters with him prior to his arrest, along with formerly Chongqing-based author Xujun Eberlein. Former ChinaTalk producer Alex Boyd co-hosts.
We discuss

Bo's rise to power in Dalian and his move to Chongqing

How Chongqing's man-on-the-street viewed Bo during his tenure - and after

The similarities and differences between Bo and Xi Jinping

Where is Bo now?


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Joseph Torigian’s “Prestige, Manipulation and Coercion, Elite Power Struggles in The Soviet Union and China After Stalin and Mao” is in pole position for my best China book of 2022. Books that deeply engage with both Soviet and CCP primary sources around elite politics basically never come out nowadays. I for one am deeply grateful that Joe, one of the few folks on the planet with the training, language skills, and motivation to this sort of work, was able to produce this book.
Joe puts forward convincing revisionist interpretations of Khrushchev’s triumph after Stalin’s death, had me reconsider my conception of the Gang of 4 after Mao’s death, and made me feel for Hua Guofeng getting done dirty by Deng. His new model of how power transitions really work in authoritarian countries with weak institutions left me more scared than hopeful for whatever happens once Xi exits stage left.
Cohosting with me is Lizzi, a video journalist at Wall Street TV, a New York-based independent Chinese language media outlet focusing on Chinese politics and economics.
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When Churchill announced in 1946 that an iron curtain had descended over Europe, the US government only employed two dozen experts on the Soviet Union. Two years later, with the cold war well underway, the CIA only had 12 Russian speakers.
Over the following decades, philanthropists and the US government started an intellectual mobilization that had profound effects on the course of the cold war. To talk about this, David Engerman, author of Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America's Soviet Experts, joins the show along with cohosts Chris Miller, a professor at Tufts, and Sam George, who just finished a masters in East Asian studies at Stanford.

We discuss:

How America created a cadre of Sovietologists.

What their impact was on US policy.

Why the experiment ultimately failed.

What lessons the story has for contemporary area studies and China studies in particular.


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Check out David's book here: https://www.amazon.com/Know-Your-Enemy-Americas-Experts/dp/0199832471
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In light of Abe's assassination, I thought it would be worthwhile to reflect on the man and his legacy.
Last year I recorded an episode discussing Abe Shinzo, second only to Xi as the most consequential East Asian politician of the 21st century. Tobias Harris of the Center for American Progress joined to discuss his new biography of Abe, The Iconoclast.
Tobias and I discussed

His dramatic rise, fall, and rise again to power

How he reshaped governance in Japan through bureaucratic reform

How he managed relations with the US and China

How tasty his wife's Izakaya is

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I'm off getting married/honeymooning for the next couple of weeks so in my absence please enjoy this fine ChinaTalk vintage.
How does a bookish Beijing teenager, who found himself stuck for six years planting potatoes in the Gobi Desert, grow up to study with former chair of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen, teach at Wharton, and now lead one of Asia's most successful investment firms? In this episode, Weijian Shan, the chairman and CEO of investment firm PAG Group, and the author of Out of the Gobi: My Story of China and America, tells his personal story of exile during the Cultural Revolution and provides his view on China’s economic transformation.
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