Sinica Early Access

This week on Sinica, a live recording from New York on the eve of the 2023 NEXTChina Conference. Jeremy Goldkorn joins Kaiser as co-host, with guests Maria Repnikova of Georgia State University, who specializes in Chinese soft power in Africa and on Sino-Russian relations, and Eric Olander, co-founder of the China Global South Project and co-host of the excellent China Global South Podcast and China in Africa Podcast. This show is unedited to preserve the live feel!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, I'm re-running an interview with Jeffrey Bader from early last year. I learned on Monday morning that Jeff had died, and I dedicate this interview to his memory. ___This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Jeff Bader, who served as senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council during the first years of the Obama presidency, until 2011. Now a senior fellow at the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institute, Jeff was deeply involved in U.S.-China affairs at the State Department from his first posting to Beijing back in 1981 continuously for the next 21 years, through 2002. He later served as U.S. ambassador to Namibia and was tapped to head Asian Affairs at the NSC after Obama took office. Jeff is the author of a fascinating book on Obama’s China policy, Obama and China’s Rise: An Insider’s Account of America’s Asia Strategy. In this conversation, he offers a candid critique of the Biden China policy to date.Note that this conversation was taped in mid-February — before the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, and before the Department of Justice announced the end of the “China Initiative.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, a live recording from October 10 in Chicago, Kaiser asks Chang-Tai Hsieh of the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, Damien Ma of the Paulson Institute’s think tank MacroPolo, and our own Lizzi Lee, host of The Signal with Lizzi Lee, to right-size the peril that the Chinese economy now faces from slow consumer demand, high youth unemployment, a troubled real estate sector, and high levels of local government debt. This event was co-sponsored by the University of Chicago’s Becker-Friedman Institute, the Paulson Institute, and The China Project. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on the Sinica Podcast: a lecture by Robert Daly, director of the Wilson Center's Kissinger Institute, delivered last year to D.C.-based Faith & Law at their Friday Forum. The lecture, titled "Is Our Foreign Policy Good? American Moral Absolutism and the China Challenge," is a powerful and thought-provoking talk. Kaiser follows up with a long conversation with Robert about the themes raised in the talk, and then some. Enjoy.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Jason McLure, a correspondent for a new investigative reporting outfit called The Examination, and reporter Jude Chan, who writes for Initium Media. The two worked with two other reporters on a fascinating expose, funded by the Pulitzer Center, of China's tobacco monopoly, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (or China Tobacco), and how it has managed to be both the biggest seller of tobacco in the world — and also the effective regulator of tobacco laws in China.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the 1950 concert tour of China by the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1973, Kaiser chats with Matías Tarnopolsky, the orchestra’s president and chief executive; Alison Friedman, executive and creative director of Carolina Performing Arts; and virtuoso guzheng player and composer Wu Fei about the legacy of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s China tour, their continuing connection with China, and their concert performances in Chapel Hill, performed to the day on the two closing nights of that historic tour 50 years ago.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Pulitzer Prize-winning veteran journalist Ian Johnson, now a senior China fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, joins Kaiser to discuss his new book, Sparks" China's Underground HIstorians and their Battle for the Future. Profiling both prominent and lesser-known individuals working to expose dark truths about some of the grimmest periods of the PRC's history, including the Great Leap Forward famine and the violence of the Cultural Revolution, Johnson argues that the efforts of China's "counter-historians" have managed to survive the stepped-up efforts of Xi Jinping to control the historical narrative completely. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser speaks with Representative Rick Larsen of the Washington 2nd District, the co-founder and continuously serving Democratic co-chair of the bipartisan U.S.-China Working Group. Last month, he published a white paper outlining his recommendations for how the U.S. can more effectively compete. That paper and its recommendations are the focus of this week's show.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Karen Hao, a reporter recently with the Wall Street Journal whose previous work with the MIT Technology Review has been featured on Sinica; and by Deborah Seligsohn, assistant professor of political science at Villanova University, who has been on the show many times just in the last three years. Both Karen and Deborah have written persuasively about the importance of renewing the U.S.-China Science and Technology Agreement, first signed in 1979 shortly after the normalization of U.S.-China relations under Jimmy Carter and renewed, for the most part, every five years without much fuss — until this year. Karen and Debbi make clear what has been accomplished under the agreement's auspices, and why GOP concerns are largely misplaced.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, MIT professor Yasheng Huang joins Kaiser to talk about his brand new book The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why they Might Lead to its Decline. This ambitious and thought-provoking book is bound to stir up quite a bit of controversy. It’s a long conversation — but worth the listen!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Something different this week on Sinica: A selection of "This Week in China's History" columns by James Carter, all narrated by Kaiser with a little interstitial music by Chunqiu (Spring & Autumn).The columns: Not just a metaphor: Dragons of imperial China show us how people lived (1517)The ‘Empress of China’ and the beginning of U.S.-China trade (1784)The rise of Empress Dowager Cixi (1861)In the 7th century, a Chinese coup of Shakespearean proportions Titanic’s six Chinese survivors tell a story that goes far beyond a shipwreck (1912)The problem with Mao’s ‘continuous’ revolutionThe Battle of Red Cliffs and the blurring of fact and fiction (208-209)The music: snippets fromThe HuntsmanThe Last Page (intro)The SubcelestialA Call from AfarBetween the Mountains and the SeaBorn of the StormBorn of the Storm (again)A New DayThe Last Page (outro)See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser welcomes back Lyle Goldstein, director for China engagement at the think tank Defense Priorities and previously a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, where he taught for 20 years. Lyle offers his perspectives on an extensive wargaming exercise focusing on a Chinese amphibious assault on Taiwan, conducted under the auspices of CSIS (the Center for Strategic and International Studies) and published in January of this year — the first such exercise whose findings were made public. He offers insight into the real value of the exercise, as well as some of its shortcomings.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Paul Triolo returns to the show to give us a rundown on what's happening in the exciting arena of generative AI in China. Just back from a trip to China during which he spoke with numerous companies working in the space, he offers a great overview of what various companies are doing, and how they're responding to U.S. restrictions on the export of key hardware needed for large AI training and modeling. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, with Kaiser on holiday we're running a terrific Twitter Spaces conversation convened by Neysun Mahboubi of UPenn's Center for the Study of Contemporary China. He's gathered a great group including Yawei Liu, whose U.S.-China Perception Monitor under the Carter Center is the co-sponsor for Neysun's series, as well as Anna Ashton of the Eurasia Group, Robert Daly of the Kissinger Institute, Rorry Daniels of the Asia Society Policy Institute, and Ian Johnson of the Council on Foreign Relations. Enjoy this in-depth exploration of the state of U.S.-China relations — as well as the opening segment on the fate of ex-PRC Foreign Minister Qin Gang.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Maggie Lewis, professor of law at Seton Hall University and veteran Taiwan observer, and Paul Heer, former national intelligence officer for East Asia in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) under the Obama administration. Both were members of the Council on Foreign Relations’s task force on U.S.-Taiwan policy, which produced a report titled “U.S.-Taiwan Relations in a New Era: Responding to a More Assertive China.” Both also wrote dissents, included in the report, about some of its findings and recommendations. They discuss what they think the report got right — and what it got wrong.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser welcomes back Jeremy Daum, senior research scholar in law and senior fellow at the Paul Tsai China Law Center. Jeremy, who has a well-deserved reputation as a debunker of myths and misperceptions about China. This time, he takes on the much-discussed “overseas police stations,” and examines how they are — and aren’t — related to China’s transnational repression.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, UPenn legal scholar Neysun Mahboubi talks about his recently-concluded trip back to China — his first time back since the outbreak of the pandemic. Neysun talks about the importance of in-person, face-to-face scholarly exchange, and despite concerns over the more restrictive political space in China, sounds a hopeful note about what the restoration of in-person exchange might mean for the future of U.S.-China relationsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Elsa Kania, a Ph.D. candidate in Harvard University's Department of Government and adjunct fellow at the Center for a New American Security who researches China's military strategy, defense innovation, and emerging technologies. Elsa joins the show to talk about China’s push for Military-Civil Fusion, debunking some of the myths about the program that U.S. pundits and policymakers have imbibed.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

With Secretary of State Antony Blinken's two days of meetings in Beijing just concluded, Kaiser spoke with Dennis Wilder, managing director for the Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues at Georgetown University, where he also serves as an assistant professor of practice in Asian Studies in the School of Foreign Service. Dennis was the National Security Council's director for China from 2004-2005, and then served as the NSC special assistant to the president and senior director for East Asian affairs from 2005 to 2009. From 2009 to 2015 Dennis served as the senior editor of the President’s Daily Brief, the worldwide intelligence update produced under the auspices of the director of national intelligence. He also served from 2015 to 2016 as the CIA’s deputy assistant director for East Asia and the Pacific. Who better to give an informed take on Secretary Blinken's diplomatic mission?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Keyu Jin, associate professor of economics at LSE, who talks about her new book The New China Playbook: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism, a wide-ranging, ambitious, and accessible book that explains the unique Chinese political economy, emphasizing both its successes to date and how it must change to meet the challenges to come. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with David Ownby, the University of Montreal historian who runs the excellent ReadingTheChinaDream.com website — a trove of translations of writings by mainstream Chinese intellectuals. David talks about the website’s mission and about tells about his recent three-week trip to Beijing and Shanghai, in which he met with many of the people he translates on his site. Many of them are profoundly disillusioned with the leadership’s handling of the end of Zero-COVID, he found.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

With the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue kicking off in Singapore on Friday, June 2, Kaiser chats with the organizer’s managing director for Asia, James Crabtree, about the history, structure, and significance of this Asian answer to the Munich Security Conference, James, who joined the Institute for International Strategic Studies in 2018, offers a great sneak-peek and a curtain raiser on the three-day event, which will bring ministers and secretaries of defense together from all over the region and beyond.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Harvard’s eminent sinologist William Kirby joins Kaiser to talk about his book Empires of Ideas: Creating the Modern University from Germany to America to China, and to share his views on the state of higher education in China and the U.S，See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser is joined by The China Project's CEO Bob Guterma, who just so happens to have served at Chief Compliance Officer (and later Managing Director for Europe and the U.S.) for the expert network Capvision. Capvision, as listeners may well be aware, was the Shanghai-based company whose offices in China were raided by Chinese law enforcement, resulting in the detention of two experts for allegedly passing on military secrets to foreign companies. Does this signal a major crackdown on consultancies? And what are the implications for foreign businesses in China? Bob shares his insights — and things are more complicated than you might think.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kendra Schaefer, a partner at Trivium, and Jeremy Daum of the Yale China Law Center discuss the new draft regulations published in April that will govern generative AI. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Andrew Stokols, a Ph.D. researcher at MIT who has been studying the “techno-natural utopia” that the Chinese government is now building a hundred kilometers southwest of Beijing: Xiong’an. Andrew breaks down why he sees it as an urban manifestation of the fundamental ideas embodied in Xi Jinping’s ideological vision for China.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, an Earth Day special: Kaiser chats with Marilyn Waite, managing director of the Climate Finance Fund; Alex Wang, a UCLA law professor who specializes in China climate and environmental law; and Deborah Seligsohn, a political scientist at Villanova University who served as the Environment, Science, Technology and Health Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. This episode was taped live on Thursday, April 20, as a webinar from The China Project.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Jeremy and I chat with Mike Chinoy, the legendary award-winning TV newsman who helmed CNN in Beijing for many critical years. Mike talks about the video documentary series and accompanying book Assignment China: An Oral History of American Journalists in the People’s Republic, for which he interviewed about 130 journalists whose careers spanned an 80-year period, from the 1940s to the present.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kishore Mahbubani, who served as Singapore's UN Ambassador and has written extensively on ASEAN and the U.S.-China rift, returns to the show to discuss his recent essay in Foreign Affairs, and to advocate for the pragmatic approach that's held ASEAN together for over five decades of continuous peace and growing prosperity. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week for Sinica Early Access listeners, a talk delivered last week on April 4 in Madison, Wisconsin at the invitation of the University of Wisconsin Madison's Center for East Asian Studies. Kaiser talks about the five attributes or habits of mind that he thinks distinguish a good China specialist: humility, sensitivity to bias, holism, historical acuity, and cognitive empathy.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, something different: Kaiser asks over a dozen scholars of various facets of China studies to talk about their work and make some recommendations! You'll hear from a variety of scholars, from MA students to tenured professors, talking about a bewildering range of fascinating work they're doing. Enjoy!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Chris Marquis, a professor at Cambridge University’s Judge Business School, and formerly at Cornell’s business school, about the book he co-authored with Kunyuan Qiao, Mao and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise. In it, they examine how even in China's private sector, socialization into the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party among some entrepreneurs has left an enduring legacy that is visible in some of the ways Chinese private enterprises conduct business. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, a bonus episode to keep you caught up on the week's biggest China story: Xi Jinping's two days of meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Maria Repnikova, a native Russian speaker who is also fluent in Chinese and who teaches Chinese politics and communications at Georgia State University, joins the show again to talk about what each side hoped for, what each side got, and the asymmetries of power on conspicuous display in Moscow.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser welcomes Tuvia Gering of Israel's Institute of National Security Studies, where he focuses on China's relations with Israel and other countries of the Middle East. Tuvia breaks down the agreement to normalize relations between Riyadh and Tehran, which Beijing brokered during secret talks that were only revealed, along with the fruit they bore, on March 10.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser welcomes Taisu Zhang, professor of law at Yale University, who discusses his recent work on the expansion of the administrative state down to the subdistrict and neighborhood level — changes that are far-reaching, and likely permanent. They also discuss a recent essay in Foreign Affairs in which Taisu argued that Beijing is shifting away from "performance legitimacy" as the foundation of political rule, and more toward legality — not to be confused with the rule of law.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A second full episode this week for you Sinica listeners! Jude Blanchette joins to talk about the House Select Committee on United States Competition with the Chinese Communist Party, and all that is wrong with it, from its framing of the CCP as an "existential threat" to its focus on the CCP, and how all of this adds up to an embarrassing moral panic that distracts from the serious issues the U.S. confronts when it comes to China.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Lulu Chen, who has reported on tech in China for over a decade and is the author of the book Influence Empire: The Inside Story of Tencent and China's Tech Ambition. It's a fascinating look at not only Tencent but at the overall internet sector in China, focusing on the travails and the triumphs of some of the most consequential Chinese internet entrepreneurs. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy speak with Henry Sanderson, a former AP and Bloomberg reporter who was based in China for many years, about his book Volt Rush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green — a book that reminds us of the very ugly fact that the metals that are needed to make electric vehicle batteries need to be dug out of the earth, and processed in ways that are anything but environmentally friendly. Henry talks about China's outsize role in lithium, cobalt, and nickel processing, as well as some promising chemistries that allow for EV batteries without some of the the problematic metals.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It's been one year now since Vladimir Putin launched his assault on Ukraine, and China has sought to maintain the same difficult, awkward straddle across a difficult year. Did Beijing's efforts to project the impression that it had distanced itself from Russia in the wake of the Party Congress mean anything? And how should the U.S. manage its expectations of what China can or will do? Evan Feigenbaum, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, joins us again as he did a year ago. We're also joined by his colleague Alexander (Sasha) Gabuev, who is a senior fellow at Carnegie, who headed the Carnegie Moscow Center until recently.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Raffaello Pantucci, co-author of the 2022 book Sinostan: China's Inadvertent Empire, which examines China's presence in Central Asia. Based on extensive travel and interviews undertaken both before and after the tragic murder of his co-author, Alexandros Petersen, in 2014, the book is a highly readable if difficult to categorize melange of analysis and anecdote, history and travelogue, and it paints a complex portrait of China's extensive efforts to build out a network of commercial and cultural ties throughout the pivotal region.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, we've got a short show focused on the Chinese balloon that became the obsessive focus of American attention from Thursday through Sunday, February 5, when an F-22 shot it out of the sky off of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Gerard DiPippo, a senior fellow with the Economics Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, CSIS, joins to discuss the incident and its potential fallout.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, our live recording from the Rizzoli Bookstore in the Flatiron district of Manhattan with the legendary Ian Johnson, who has covered China for a host of publications spanning 35 years. Ian, who is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, offers his analysis of media coverage, shares some pet peeves in the way China is reported, and offers a sneak peek at some of the themes of his forthcoming book.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When the National Bureau of Statistics recently revealed that China's population had shrunk in 2022 for the first time in 60 years, conventional wisdom predicted that China was headed for catastrophe, as its workforce shrank, its pension coffers dried up, and its healthcare system grew overtaxed. Not so fast, says Bert Hofman, who spent 22 years in Asia with the World Bank, focused chiefly on China. Now a professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Government at the National University of Singapore, Bert offers a deeply-informed take on the challenges China does face — and how it might address them without suffering economic stagnation.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, we welcome back Deborah Seligsohn, assistant professor of political science at Villanova University. Debbi spent October 2022 through early January 2023 in Shanghai and Beijing, experiencing quarantine, testing, and lockdown at firsthand — and witnessing the protests and the sudden reopening. As a close observer of public health issues, she lends valuable perspective to what happened in these critical months.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, we're proud to introduce you to Susan St. Denis, who joined The China Project full-time recently after running the China Vibe Official TikTok channel for The China Project for the last several months. Kaiser and Susan talk about what people are getting wrong about TikTok, the challenges of presenting complex issues in this medium, and much more!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We proudly present Episode 1 of the new season of Strangers in China, part of the Sinica Network from The China Project. In this season, host Clay Baldo provides an intimate look at the lockdown in Shanghai, from the foreboding that preceded it through the harrowing days of the lockdown itself. In this episode, we get to know thexiaoqu or neighborhood where Clay and his girlfriend spend their lockdown — and meet many of the neighbors who would become an intimate part of their lives in the coming months.Be sure to subscribe to the show when it drops later this week!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Clay Baldo, creator and host of the Strangers in China podcast, the third season of which focuses on the Shanghai lockdown of 2022. The first episode drops this week, so watch for it in your Sinica feed and subscribe to the podcast!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Rebecca Kuang, the author of the best-selling historical fantasy novel Babel. Set in the 1830s in England, the novel’s Chinese-born protagonist sets out to prevent a war with China over the opium trade. It’s a novel about the industrial revolution, labor activism, revolution, and — surprisingly — language, etymology, and translation.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Jude Blanchette (Freeman Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies) and Ryan Hass (Armacost Chair at the John L. Thornton Center at the Brookings Institute) join Kaiser to discuss their new essay in Foreign Affairs, "The Taiwan Long Game: Why the Best Solution Is No Solution.” See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy welcome Diana Choyleva and Dinny McMahon, who recently published a report for the Wilson Center on China's efforts to internationalize the Renminbi, its currency. Diana Choyleva is chief economist and founder of Enodo Economics, an independent macroeconomic forecasting consultancy she set up in 2016. Dinny McMahon is a former Wall Street Journal reporter and author of the book China's Great Wall of Debt. Their report is called “China’s Quest for Financial Self-Reliance: How Beijing Plans to Decouple from the Dollar-Based Global Trading and Financial System.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.