The Great Power Show

Manoj Kewalramani
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Politics
  • Updated Biweekly

The world is changing fast. Developing countries are on the rise, politics in the West is more turbulent than ever, technology is advancing at breakneck speed, people are moving across borders in new ways, and global institutions are struggling to keep up. In the middle of all this, a new world order is taking shape—but what does it really look like? On The Great Power Show, Manoj Kewalramani dives into these big shifts and what they mean for all of us. Join him for candid conversations and thought-provoking interviews with leading scholars, thinkers and practitioners.

  1. Jul 16

    The Actual Governance of China

    One of the enduring puzzles about China is how a country of its size is actually governed. We often talk about “Beijing” as though it were a single actor with a coherent strategy, but behind every policy announcement lies an immense bureaucracy, competing incentives, negotiations across different levels of government, and millions of officials whose decisions ultimately determine whether central directives succeed or fail. Understanding China’s political economy therefore requires us to understand the people and institutions that make it work: how officials are recruited, what incentives shape their careers, and how local governments negotiate, adapt, and sometimes reshape national priorities. These questions have become even more important under Xi Jinping, whose tenure has been marked by a drive toward greater Party discipline and centralisation, even as China's economic success continues to depend heavily on local initiative and experimentation. My guest for this conversation is Xiao Ma, Associate Professor of Political Science at Peking University, and a faculty associate at Peking University Research Center for Contemporary China. Xiao’s work challenges some of the conventional ways we think about the Chinese state. Rather than viewing bureaucratic promotion simply through the lens of meritocracy or patronage, he argues that officials compete for political attention. And instead of seeing central-local relations as a straightforward hierarchy in which Beijing issues orders and local governments implement them, he offers a framework of localised bargaining. In this conversation, we explore how China’s bureaucracy actually functions, what motivates officials, how local governments bargain with the center, and what these dynamics tell us about the strengths—and perhaps the limits—of China’s development model. As always, I hope you enjoy the discussion. Please like, share, subscribe and rate the episode. And if you’d like to support the show or the work that I do, please feel free to reach out to me.

  2. Jun 19

    The Unraveling of Order in West Asia

    West Asia today finds itself in a deeply uncertain moment. A conditional ceasefire has held for months, but the war isn’t truly over. The Strait of Hormuz remains severely disrupted, even without large-scale fighting at sea. The United States and Iran still trade periodic strikes. Israel is still operating beyond its borders. Iran has suffered unprecedented losses. The Gulf states are increasingly divided. And Gaza, once the focus of the world’s attention, has slipped from the headlines. In all this, much of the focus of the commentariat tends to be around present-day leaders and their decisions. Of course, those matter immensely. But it’s also true that how we got to this place today isn’t simply the product of recent events. It’s the culmination of structural tensions building for decades. These include unresolved questions about Iran’s place in the regional order, the limits of American power and changes in American interests, Israel’s security doctrine, competing Gulf visions of leadership, and the deepening involvement of powers like China. So in this episode of the Great Power Show, what’ll we do is first zoom out to trace the fault lines that produced this crisis; and then zoom in on the interests, fears, and calculations of each key actor. But we’ll also ask the larger question that if the old order is broken, what replaces it? To help us make sense of all this, I speak to Raja Karthikeya, who is an Adjunct Fellow with the Takshashila Institution, leading their work on West Asia there. Raja brings a tremendous mix of scholarly and practitioner’s perspective. His career has spanned the United Nations, leading think tanks, and frontline policy work across Asia and Africa. He has been part of UN peace mediation and crisis response efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and on the question of Palestine. This conversation is also the first special live-recording of the Great Power Show, which was held during the Academic Conference of Takshashila’s Graduate Certificate in Public Policy course. This is a 12-week course conducted online, bringing together dynamic individuals who wish to enter the growing professional sphere of public policy, public affairs, governance, and leadership. If you’d like to know more about Takshashila’s education offerings, log on to the Takshashila website. Raja is also going to be teaching a weekend course on West Asia, starting July.  As always, I hope you enjoy the discussion. Please like, share, subscribe and rate the episode. And if you’d like to support the show or the work that I do, please feel free to reach out to me.

  3. May 28

    The PLA's Theory of Total War

    When we talk about US-China competition, we often tend to focus on the obvious: trade, technology and Taiwan. But there’s a deeper question that doesn’t get enough attention. How does China actually think about fighting a war against a far more powerful adversary? PLA writings describe modern conflict not as something waged simply between militaries. Rather it is conceptualised as system against system—the whole national apparatus on one side against the whole national apparatus on the other. Financial infrastructure, space capabilities, information networks, industrial base, all of it is part of the fight. The PLA calls this systems confrontation. And it shapes everything about how Beijing is preparing. My guest for this episode of The Great Power Show is Howard Wang, a political scientist at RAND, whose recent work examines a concept emerging from this strand of Chinese strategic thinking, total war. Wang tells me that in 2021, China embedded total war into its national security strategy. He describes it as a mobilisational concept. The idea is that civilian capabilities need to be developed in peacetime so that Party leaders can translate them into war-fighting advantages during conflict. We also talk about escalation and coercion, what does the theory of victory look like, what lessons Beijing is drawing from conflicts in Ukraine and West Asia, and what the ongoing purges tell us about the gap between the PLA’s ambitions and reality. As always, I hope you enjoy the discussion. Please like, share, subscribe and rate the episode. And if you’d like to support the show or the work that I do, please feel free to reach out to me.

  4. May 28

    Japan's Shift From Pacifism to Power

    There’s a quiet but unmistakable change taking place in Japan. For decades, Japanese politics was defined by caution. The country has a pacifist constitution. There has been managed ambiguity in its international engagements. Economic power existed without strategic assertion. But something is shifting beneath the surface. A new generation of conservative leaders is emerging. Public attitudes toward security are hardening. And Tokyo is beginning to think of itself not merely as a status quo power, but as an active shaper of the international order. At the center of this transformation stands Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. Her rise reflects a deeper mood within Japanese society, one that is characterised by anxiety about China’s rise, uncertainty about America’s reliability, and a growing belief that Japan can no longer remain strategically passive. So what exactly is happening inside Japan today? Why are younger voters increasingly drawn toward a more assertive conservative politics? How does Tokyo view the China-Russia partnership? Why did tensions with Beijing escalate so sharply over Taiwan? And how is Japan trying to navigate a world where the United States remains indispensable, but no longer entirely predictable? To unpack all of this, in this episode of The Great Power Show, I speak to Kei Koga, Assistant Professor at the Public Policy and Global Affairs Programme at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. We discuss the transformation of Japanese politics, the evolving Japan-China relationship, the strategic consequences of Trump 2.0, and how Tokyo is adapting to an increasingly turbulent world. As always, I hope you enjoy the discussion. Please like, share, subscribe, and rate the episode. And if you’d like to support the show or the work I do, please feel free to reach out to me.

  5. May 3

    A New Nepal Navigating Great Power Competition

    In international relations, we obsess over great powers. What Washington thinks, what Beijing wants, what New Delhi will do next. We map their strategies, track their rivalries, debate their ambitions. And somewhere along the way, we forget that most of the world doesn’t get to play that game. For smaller states, great power competition isn’t theory. It is the quiet, constant reality that you must navigate a world that is being shaped by others. So how do these countries navigate that? How do you make decisions when the parameters are set by others? When geography limits your options, economics ties you down, and security concerns pull you in different directions, what does strategy even look like? In this episode of the Great Power Show, we’re looking at those questions through the lens of a country that sits right at the fault line of great power politics: Nepal. Sandwiched between India and China, courted by the United States, shaped by history and geography—and now by a restless younger generation that just threw out its entire political establishment—Nepal is a case study in what it means to survive and adapt in an age of competition. Joining me to unpack all of this is Professor S.D. Muni, former diplomat and Professor Emeritus at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Prof. Muni is one of the sharpest observers of politics in the Indian subcontinent. We talk about how smaller states think about power, how Nepal balances between competing giants, what the recent political upheaval tells us, and why the old play-books may no longer work. As always, I hope you enjoy the discussion. Please like, share, subscribe, and rate the episode. And if you’d like to support the show or the work I do, please feel free to reach out to me.

  6. Apr 4

    The Making of China's Strategic Thinkers

    How does China think about the world? We spend a lot of time trying to decode Beijing’s behaviour—its strategy, its ambitions, its moves on the global stage. But we rarely ask a more basic question: where does that thinking come from? What does it actually mean to study international relations in China? In this episode, I speak with Yaqi Li, an MSc candidate in International Relations at RSIS in Singapore. Yaqi, who grew up in China’s Hubei province, is someone who studied political science and IR in China; he offers a first-hand view of what the classroom environment is like. On paper, much of it looks familiar. Students study realism, liberalism, international political economy. But the experience is also very different. There are limits to inquiry. Domestic politics is largely absent. And official ideology sits alongside political theory in ways that shape how students engage with the changing world around them. So this is a conversation about classrooms. But it’s also about power. How are ideas produced in China? How do they travel into the policy system? And what happens when a system tries to generate knowledge, but also constrain it? We explore the gap between theory and practice. The role of think tanks and state institutions. And the internal logic that shapes Chinese statecraft—its strengths, its blind spots, and its limits. Because if we want to understand what China does, we first need to understand how it thinks. As always, I hope you enjoy the discussion. Please like, share, subscribe, and rate the episode. And if you’d like to support the show or the work I do, please feel free to reach out to me. Do check out Yaqi’s Substack and podcast: New China Literacy

  7. Apr 3

    The Trump-Xi Summit: Chess, Checkers or Go?

    We are living through a moment of tremendous transformation. The post-Cold War order is over, and what replaces it is not yet clear. What is clear, however, is that the two countries with the most power to shape that answer are the United States and China. How they manage their competition— in fact, whether they can manage it at all—is a defining question of our era. That question was tested last year, as the two sides skirmished over trade and technology. It will be tested again this year, as their leaders prepare to meet. A summit between President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping is scheduled for April. This, however, is now being delayed by the war in West Asia. Nevertheless, after a year of tariff battles, technology frictions, and an uneasy truce struck in Busan, the two are set to soon meet again. Both sides want something from this encounter. But do they want the same things? And what does success even look like when the ideological distance between Washington and Beijing may be greater than either side publicly admits? To explore these questions, in this episode of The Great Power Show, I speak with Ryan Hass, Director of John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution, and former Director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia at the National Security Council under President Barack Obama. He is also the author of Stronger: Adapting America’s China Strategy in an Age of Competitive Interdependence. We discuss the Trump administration’s real objectives on China. Who is driving US policy within the administration? And what Xi Jinping has taken away from a year of dealing with Trump. We also dig into the deeper structural questions: why Beijing treats American decline as an ideological conviction, not just wishful thinking, and why, on both sides of the Pacific, competition has moved beyond politics into something more enduring. Because this isn’t just about a summit, or a trade truce, or even the bilateral relationship. It’s about whether two powers can build anything durable in the space between rivalry and rupture. As always, I hope you enjoy the discussion. Please like, share, subscribe, and rate the episode. And if you’d like to support the show or the work I do, please feel free to reach out to me.

  8. Apr 3

    Germany's China Strategy at a Crossroads

    Over the weekend, renewed conflict in the Middle East was a stark reminder of how fragile the international order has become, and what happens when major powers begin to bend the very rules they helped create. For countries caught in between, the space for strategic comfort is shrinking. Nowhere is this tension clearer than in Europe’s relationship with China. Beijing’s rise is no longer a projection; it is a structural reality. From advanced manufacturing and green technology to critical minerals and electric mobility, China is shaping the economic terrain on which Europe’s future competitiveness will be decided. For Germany in particular, the challenge is acute. Its trade imbalance with China has widened, its companies remain deeply embedded in the Chinese market, and yet Berlin is trying to “de-risk” without rupturing ties. So how does Germany see China today? And what, if anything, did Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s recent visit to Beijing reveal about the direction of that relationship? To unpack these questions, on this episode of The Great Power Show, I speak to Marina Rudyak, Assistant professor for Chinese Studies at Heidelberg University, and currently visiting scholar at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center. She’s also one of the founders of The Decoding China Project, a unique initiative to strengthen China literacy. We discuss Germany’s evolving China strategy, the tensions between business and security thinking, and what managing interdependence really looks like. Because this isn’t just about Germany and China. It’s about how major economies adapt to a world where competition with Beijing is structural, but disengagement is not an option. As always, I hope you enjoy the discussion. Please like, share, subscribe, and rate the episode. And if you’d like to support the show or the work I do, please feel free to reach out to me.

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About

The world is changing fast. Developing countries are on the rise, politics in the West is more turbulent than ever, technology is advancing at breakneck speed, people are moving across borders in new ways, and global institutions are struggling to keep up. In the middle of all this, a new world order is taking shape—but what does it really look like? On The Great Power Show, Manoj Kewalramani dives into these big shifts and what they mean for all of us. Join him for candid conversations and thought-provoking interviews with leading scholars, thinkers and practitioners.

Information

  • Creator
    Manoj Kewalramani
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    36
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Manoj Kewalramani
  • Show Website
    The Great Power Show