From his studio in Boston, Yo-Yo Ma tells us how music eases tensions between American and Chinese people, even as Washington and Beijing are at each other’s throats. 
Guests: Yo Yo Ma; Hai Ye Ni, principal cellist, Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra
﻿Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions.
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Cultural Threads

FACE-OFF is an eight-episode podcast about how China and the United States, once friends, are now foes. 
FACE-OFF is hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jane Perlez, former New York Times Beijing bureau chief and current fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. In each episode Professor Rana Mitter, recently of the University of Oxford and now professor of modern China at the Harvard Kennedy School, chats with Jane on what’s at stake.

News

Will the United States and China go to war over an island of 24 million people nearly 6,500 miles from California? Why is this a possibility? What is the history and significance of Taiwan to America and China?

Guest: Lyle Goldstein, former professor US Naval College, now at Brown University. Taiwanese expert, Syaru Shirley Lin, founder of the think tank, Capri.

An essay by Lyle Goldstein on how Taiwan features in US foreign policy. In the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.  
https://home.watson.brown.edu/research/research-briefs/trouble-taiwan

 About Shirley Lin’s CAPRI, a foundation that studies the Asia Pacific region. 
https://caprifoundation.org/syaru-shirley-lin/

A controversial essay on how nuclear weapons could be used in a war over Taiwan by Matthew Kroenig, a professor at Georgetown University and senior director at The Atlantic Council. Mr. Kroenig’s article is considered an outlier on the subject https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/deliberate-nuclear-use-in-a-war-over-taiwan-scenarios-and-considerations-for-the-united-states/
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Taiwan

How the Chinese economic downturn is affecting all kinds of people. How real estate meltdown, with enough unfinished empty apartments to fill the population of Germany, is at the center of it all. How tech entrepreneurs are mysteriously disappearing, and how college graduates don’t want to work. 
Guests: Keyu Jin, London School of Economics, author of New China Playbook; Elsie Chen, a member of China’s “lying down” generation, now a Nieman Fellow at Harvard. 
Elsie Chen’s New York Times article about lying flat. She interviews Luo Huazhong, the factory worker, who quit his job, went back to his rural village. His post about his lifestyle decision went viral, and inspired a movement dedicated to opting out. 
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/03/world/asia/china-slackers-tangping.html
A roundtable discussion with Keyu Jin at the Fairbank Center at Harvard. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=357QIFs9FXc
Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions.
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China’s Fortunes

Two young CIA agents were flown to northern China in 1952, part of a bizarre Cold War operation to overthrow Mao Zedong. The plane crashed. The two Americans were arrested, and jailed for 20 years. We fast forward to today and turn the tables: How does China spy on the US now? Who is ahead in the fight over the new technologies?
Guests: John DeLury, author, Agents of Subversion; Nigel Inkster, former director operations, MI6; former agent in Beijing. 

Details about John Delury’s compelling book that tells the story of how two CIA operatives were captured in China and how they endured 20 years in jail. 
https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501765971/agents-of-subversion/

Nigel Inkster’s book about the US and China, the two big tech competitors.   
https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Great_Decoupling/K4xfzQEACAAJ?hl=en

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions.
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Espionage

Xi Jinping and Joe Biden met on a basketball court in China in 2011 when they were vice presidents. They later toasted each other in Washington. They’ve spent many hours together. Much has changed. Can they hold the center together? 

Guest: Minxin Pei, Chinese born professor of government Claremont McKenna College; author of Surveillance State and other books on China.

 Jane’s first podcast about how Washington got it all wrong on Xi Jinping. 
https://shorensteincenter.org/podcast-on-the-trail-of-xi-jinping/

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions.
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Cultural Threads

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