This week on Sinica, Kaiser welcomes back former National Security Council China director Ryan Hass, who offers his perspective on the likely direction that the incoming Biden administration will take when it comes to managing the American relationship with China — the most difficult and most consequential of bilateral relationships. Thoughtful and measured as always, Ryan makes a good case for why the Biden team is not, in fact, boxed in by Trump’s antagonism toward China, and will chart a path that will diverge substantially from the one taken during four years of Trump without retreading the path taken during the Obama presidency.

1:56: The structural issues at the heart of U.S.-China tensions

6:59: Can the American political center hold? 

12:10: What can be deduced from Biden’s personnel choices

28:34: How the Biden election has changed Beijing’s political calculus

38:36: Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and a Biden administration

Recommendations:

Ryan: Anything written by John le Carré. 

Kaiser: Ed Yong, a writer for The Atlantic, especially his recent piece How science beat the virus.

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