Is the treatment of China in Western public discourse inevitable? Yale Law School postdoc, particle physicist and essayist Yangyang Cheng (@yangyang_cheng) joins me alongside undergrad Alex Liang to talk about understanding the other, how the personal can be lost in the noise of geopolitical tension and science across borders.

We also discuss

• Power hierarchies and identities
• The “new red scare” and scrutiny on Chinese scientists
• The Large Hadron Collider as a
• Language as an instrument of state power

"Brain drain" and other phrases Yangyang doesn't like

Links to Yangyang’s articles:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-china-US.html

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/05/west-china-threat-real-place-domestic-agendas

https://thebulletin.org/premium/2020-12/the-edge-of-our-existence-a-particle-physicist-examines-the-architecture-of-society/

Outro music: I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free by Nina Simone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inNBpizpZkE

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