ChinaEconTalk

ChinaEconTalk

By SupChinaBusiness
Download on the App Store

ChinaEconTalk episodes

  • BalloonTalk: Alien Valentine Edition

    William 'Balloon Guy' Kim returns for a roundup of the past few days of news around the Chinese spy balloon and unidentified object shooting. We share our favorite theories of what on earth is going on and what this all means for US-China relations.

    Subscribe to the ChinaTalk newsletter! https://www.chinatalk.media/

    Outtro Music: Sammy Davis Jr's Up Up and Away https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hYNMZtxJoU

    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    38 min
  • Mechanical Keyboards in China （中文版）

    Hey ChinaTalk listeners, this year we’re going to do something new—occasional episodes in Mandarin!

    While getting mainland guests to talk about more conventional topics like US-China relations and export controls has been nearly impossible, I think doing more slice of life/business stories about odd corners of China in the pale imitation of Gushi FM is both fun and enriching to our coverage.

    In this episode, you’ll hear from the founder of mechanical keyboard manufacturer Meletrix, Simba Hua, about why people like to make their own keyboards, the challenges and wonders of working with the Chinese keyboard supply chain, and customer preferences between East Asian and western keyboard fans.

    Cohosting with me is Irene Zhang, one of ChinaTalk’s editors. You can find more of her writing, and more ChinaTalk in general, on our newsletter at https://www.chinatalk.media/. And if you can’t understand Chinese, not to worry, we’ll be running a translated transcript later this month on the newsletter!


    Outtro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hlp8XD0R5qo

    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    50 min
  • How YOU Can Change S&T Policy

    How does one organization turn expert knowledge into real policy change? Dan Correa, CEO of the Federation of American Scientists and Founder of the Day One Project, discusses the power of policy entrepreneurship and shares examples of the ideas his nonprofit helped turn into legislation. 

    We'll delve into the nitty-gritty of policymaking and explore topics such as:

    • How to make meetings with government officials more productive. 
    • The importance of pre-work in preparing good ideas and the role experts can play in shaping policy. 
    • Why it's sometimes better to focus on practical solutions rather than comprehensive strategies.
    •  Why think tanks always feel the need to create comprehensive, hundred-page strategies.


      • Article about the creation of the development finance corporation: https://www.cgdev.org/publication/how-might-think-tanks-make-real-things-happen-lessons-creation-dfc

      Check out the Substack at ChinaTalk.media.

      Cover art is midjourney taking a rothko that I then prompted with "innovation"

      Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

      42 min
    • Tech Policy Entrepreneurship + Chips Act + Talent Policy

      What do we talk about when we talk about tech policy? What are the weird corners of the chips and science bill? How is talent policy broken and what can anyone do about it? And broadly, if you want to change the world through better regulatory and executive action, how do you go about this?

      To discuss all that we have Divyansh Kaushik, a newly minted PhD from Carnegie Mellon currently at the Federation for American Scientists focusing on emerging tech policy. He was also closely involved with the chips and science bill negotiations. 

      We talk about

      - How to talk to lawmakers and share your thoughts on legislation

      - The complex visa system for foreign workers in the US

      - The thousands of green cards that never get used. 

      Outro music: When the Levee Breaks

       By Led Zepplin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwiTs60VoTM

      Midjourney art prompted with 'innovation' from this painting https://www.moma.org/collection/works/180114?sov_referrer=art_term&art_term_slug=painting

      Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

      49 min
    • BALLOONTALK: EMERGENCY EDITION

      Chinese balloons over Wyoming!! To discuss, we have on today William 'Balloon Guy' Kim of the Marathon Initiative, Eric Lofgren of AcquisitionTalk, and Gerard Dipippo of CSIS.

      Intro Music: Up Up and Away, The 5th Fifth Dimension https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5akEgsZSfhg

      Outro Music: NENA | 99 Luftballons [1983] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpu5a0Bl8eY

      Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

      40 min
    • AI Compute 101: The Geopolitics of Giant Models

      Love it or hate it, AI capabilities continue to advance. As futurists imagine how this technology may one day be used, how it develops and who will be able to access AI tools will also depend on who funds AI projects and what hardware will be needed to get it to work.

      Lennart Heim is a researcher at the Center for the Governance of AI and the author of a fantastic AI compute syllabus primer, which I have just spent the past few weeks obsessed with. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DF31DIkwS9GONzmy1W3nuI9HRAwSKy8JcIbzKYXg-ic/edit?usp=sharing

      Joining as co-host is Chris Miller, author of the FT business book of the year Chip War - The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology.

      We discuss:

      • How much does it cost to develop an AI system?
      • The competition for access to specialized AI chips.
      • Whether investing heavily in large AI models is financially viable.
      • Chip smuggling versus cocaine smuggling.


        • Outro music: 年度专辑 by AR刘夫阳 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifkVhOQYnO0

        Check out the Substack at chinatalk.media

        Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

        1 hr 13 min
      • War in Taiwan: Who Would Win?

        China v Taiwan: who would win? Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow and director of research at Brookings. He specializes in U.S. defense strategy, the use of military force, and American national security policy.

        We discuss

        • The limits of scenarios that predict the outcome of a China-Taiwan conflict.
        • What are intercontinental rail guns?
        • How sports teams that play each other in the same year can have different outcomes - and what this says about predictability.
        • Given all this, what’s the point of modelling exercises?


          • Mike's paper: https://www.brookings.edu/research/can-china-take-taiwan-why-no-one-really-knows/

          My paper: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/E2BghQq9pwPgtHgiH/war-between-the-us-and-china-a-case-study-for-epistemic

          Outro music: Battle Cry of Freedom by George Root https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW4ZwyYJYbQ

          Check out the Substack at ChinaTalk.media!

          Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

          1 hr 9 min
        • China's Data Policy Future

          This episode is sponsored by Policyware. Check out Samm's class at https://www.policyware.org/chinatalk

          How do Chinese cyber laws and regulations affect multinational companies, and US-China relations? Samm Sacks of Yale Law School walks us through the latest developments in this arena — we discuss:

          • Why Chinese data policy has been on front-page news in the past few years;
          • What China is hoping to gain from its new laws and regulations;
          • The status of TikTok negotiations, and the prospects of a deal given today’s political climate;
          • How the US and China can — yet sometimes don’t — leverage their data policy infrastructure against one another.


            • Outtro music: 回答 - YOUNG 建坤 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5Obr1iXFCs

            Midjourney is me prompting a Duchamp painting "data privacy"

            Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

            19 min
          • War for Taiwan: What Happens If China Wins?

            Say China wins a war for Taiwan. What happens next?

            To discuss the political and economic consequences of a PRC takeover of Taiwan, I have on today Jude Blanchette and Gerard Dipippo, both fellows at CSIS. Our conversation builds off their paper https://www.chinatalk.media/p/war-for-taiwan-what-happens-after.

            We recorded this episode in mid-December.

            Outtro Music: 水哥 ft. 蛋堡 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHU9kEYiAQw&list=PLegPxPQebljkJOhscK3tLUXfZ9n1lgkwC&index=31

            Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

            1 hr 4 min
          • Rep. Ro Khanna on AI, the China Committee, and Industrial Policy

            In 2023, ChinaTalk is going to Congress! First up in our series is Rep. Ro Khanna, Democrat who represents Silicon Valley.

            We get into:

            • What he hopes the China Committee can accomplish
            • Why ChatGPT let him down
            • What an effective industrial policy looks like


              • Also, I'm hosting a ChinaTalk meetup in DC next week! RSVP here: https://partiful.com/e/Zni1rBY3PFhy6WYFm2VK?

              Outtro music: Bruce Springsteen, My Hometown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77gKSp8WoRg

              Cover Art: I gave midjourney a Miro and told it "US capitol supply chain"

              Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

              33 min

            About ChinaEconTalk

            From the publisher's feed

            A weekly conversation exploring China's economy and tech scene. Guests include a wide range of policy analysts, business professionals, journalists, and academics. A SupChina production, hosted by…