Sinica Podcast

I thought Sinica listeners might be interested in listening to an audio narration of my latest essay. I hope you enjoy and that it gives you some food for thought! If you prefer to read, you can find the essay — free for everyone this week — right here.

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The Chinese game studio Game Science has a hit on its hands! The game Black Myth: Wukong, an action role-playing game (ARPG) based on the Monkey King from Journey to the West, has sold extraordinarily well in China and is breaking new ground in the U.S. market as well. This week, I speak with Rui Ma, who runs Tech Buzz China and is one of the most highly-regarded China tech commentators in the U.S., and with Robert Wynne, an industry veteran with many years in China currently serving as COO of a new game start-up that's still under wraps. They share their insights into the strengths and weaknesses of Black Myth: Wukong and the future of Chinese games.

6:44 – The scale of the phenomenon of Black Myth: Wukong 

12:01 – Rui and Rob’s thoughts about the game (so far)

17:23 – What Chinese players think of the game, and the difficulty in understanding its esoteric characters for Western players 

24:23 – The appeal of mobile games versus console games in China 

27:30 – The difficulty of attracting investment [or “How Game Science attracted investment”]

31:06 – Rob’s criticism of the game’s go-to-market strategy and its lost opportunities 

35:46 – The party-state's response so far, and the politics surrounding the game

40:57 – Feng Ji, the founding of Game Science, and his criticisms of the gaming industry 

46:01 – AAA Chinese games to look forward to

49:29 – The impressive success stats of Black Myth: Wukong

Recommendations:

Rui: Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

Rob: The Chinese TV series Escape from Trilateral Slopes (Biān shuǐ wǎngshì 边水往事) (2024)

Kaiser: Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

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This week on Sinica, I chat with Olivia Fu, who this spring completed her year at Schwarzman College and wrote her Capstone project — a research paper that is required of all Schwarzman Scholars — on the rise and fall of the Beijing hip-hop scene. We explore some of the parallels to Beijing's rock scene, and how many of the same factors that stifled rock in Beijing ultimately led to Beijing's relative decline as a hip-hop city.

3:16 – Olivia’s background and connection to China, and what drew her to the Schwarzman Program and studying hip-hop

6:13 – Olivia’s Schwarzman mentor, Paul Pickowicz 

7:47 – How Olivia dealt with censorship in her Capstone project 

10:24 – The parallels and differences between the hip-hop and rock scenes in China

12:27 – The dakou CDs and the origins of the hip-hop scene in China 

17:03 – The influences of Japanese and Korean rap and hip-hop and Black American culture

18:30 – The importance of studying Beijing hip-hop 

23:05 – The spirit of Beijing and societal commentary in Beijing hip-hop 

27:38 – The phenomenon of Rap of China 

29:50 – The divergence of PG One and GAI, and the regulatory influence of the State Administration on Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television

35:13 – Sinifying hip-hop 

37:21 – What the burgeoning hip-hop scene in China was like in the early 2000s

40:10 – Critiques of the Beijing dialect in rap and the Beijing rap style 

45:16 – Iron Mic rap battles and Shanghai, and Chinese hip-hop’s critique of the educational system 

48:34 – Why Beijing rap declined 

59:09 – What’s next for Olivia 

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Hey folks! I took some time off to drive the kids to college and then flew to California to celebrate my brother John’s birthday. The upshot is there’s no interview this week, so in place of that, here’s my essay from this week. Hope you enjoy it. If all goes as planned, I’m back next week with regular interview for Sinica!

You can find the text of the essay at sinicapodcast.com.

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I was looking for a good episode to pull from the archive to run this week as I'll be traveling and I asked my good friend Deb Seligsohn for a recommendation. She went immediately to this one, and by God if it's not an oldie-but-goodie. This is from December 2015 and features Jeremy Goldkorn — I miss him dearly! — and Terry Townshend, an absolute institution in China's birding community.

I'll likely have to run another re-run next week, and I welcome your suggestions!

All best,

Kaiser

Recommendations and Links:

Birding Beijing

Action for Swifts

British Trust for Ornithology

Jonathan Franzen, Purity: A Novel

Cement and Pig Consumption Reveal China's Huge Changes

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Here's a little bonus ep for you ahead of tomorrow's show, which will be a re-run of a really fun one from about 10 years ago! I'm driving the rest of this week to the Midwest to drop my kids off at their respective universities, and I've been thinking a lot about the education systems in China and the U.S. So here's my essay for this week.

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This week on Sinica, Paul Triolo rejoins the show for a deep, deep dive into China's response to American export controls on advanced semiconductors and related technologies. How much hurt has the policy put on Chinese firms — and how far along is China in finding its way toward technological autonomy? Kevin Xu, author of the fantastic "Interconnected" newsletter, joins to talk about some of the big ideas he's written about in recent months and to play co-host as we grill Paul on China's efforts to get out from under American controls.

9:10 – The downplaying of generative AI in the Third Plenum’s decision document 

18:25 – Why the Middle East is an appealing and important region for major AI players 

26:20 – Why chip wars have evolved into to cloud wars 

29:36 – How China has fared in trying to achieve its goal of indigenous advanced semiconductor manufacture

31:50 – Semiconductors: What lies within the “small yard” versus what products are unaffected under U.S. export controls

35:42 – The quality and reliability caveat to China’s goal of self-sufficiency in semiconductor manufacture 

38:35 – The success of the Biden administration’s export controls and whether the controls have really put the hurt on anyone 

46:00 – The Harmony operating system 

47:47 – The importance of packaging 

50:45 – Paul explains what he calls “China Semiconductor Industry Policy 3.0” and its predecessors

57:03 – China’s EUV lithography challenge

1:03:14 – DUV lithography and multi-patterning, and the importance of collaboration across the ecosystemin the process of making semiconductors at scale 

1:11:50 – Huawei’s progress so far and remaining major hurdles and bottlenecks 

1:18:42 – Paul and Kevin’s thoughts on whether the American strategic class will regret its approach to export controls and whether there is an off-ramp 

Recommendations:

Paul: Ed Conway’s Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization 

Kevin: Thurston Clarke’s The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America 

Kaiser: The House of the Dragon (2022- ) TV series 

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This week on Sinica, I'm joined by Eric Olander, host of the outstanding China in Africa Podcast and the indispensable China-Global South Podcast, and creator of the China-Global South Project. Eric's detailed and very current knowledge of China's relations across the developing world is on display in this whirlwind tour that takes us from the troubled waters of the South China Sea to China's diplomatic efforts in the Middle East, on to Subsaharan Africa and how Washington has struggled to create policies that can match what China offers, and to Latin America. He then zooms out and talks about what it all means in aggregate. Don't miss this show!

Don't forget to subscribe to the newsletter! Go to sinicapodcast.com to sign up! And if you want to support my work and access premium content, please be sure to become a paying subscriber.

2:39 The situation with the Philippines and the Second Thomas Shoal, and the U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty — the potential challenges in activating it on the U.S. side and President Marcos’ changing standards for invoking it 

15:50 ASEAN’s difficulty in reaching consensus, and Myanmar as another ASEAN priority  

18:53 China’s role as convener in brokering a “unity deal” for Palestine

23:02 The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) 

30:20 Why Africa is so hard to fit onto the U.S. foreign policy agenda and the lack of a forward-looking American vision for Africa 

37:56 Geraud Neema’s disappointment with Washington’s talk about battery metals and critical minerals

42:22 The pushback from Mexico’s finance minister and Mexico’s concern over the growing number of imports from China

46:48 The trade surplus number and long-term concerns for China’s exports 

49:35 Brazilian President Lula hints at willingness to join the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) 

51:51 How it all fits together, and how China has leveraged the Global South’s frustration over the U.S.-European-led international order 

Recommendations:

Eric: Matt Pottinger’s The Boiling Moat: Urgent Steps to Defend Taiwan, and Anne Stevenson-Yang’s Wild Ride: A Short History of the Opening and Closing of the Chinese Economy

Kaiser: Will Durant’s books from The Story of Civilization, especially The Age of Faith and The Reformation, as well as the audiobook versions read by Stefan Rudnicki 

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This week, my narration of a longish essay about my recently-concluded four-week trip to Dalian and, more importantly, Beijing — my first time back in the city I called home for so long since the COVID pandemic. If you prefer to read rather than listen, you can find the essay — free for everyone this week — on the Substack. I hope you enjoy this!

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This week on Sinica, I'm in Beijing, where I spoke with my dear friend Anthony Tao, an English-language poet and a builder of community in the city where I lived for over 20 years. Anthony recently published a volume of his poetry called We Met in Beijing, and it captures the relationship that so many have with the city wherever they might come from. The episode features readings of some of his — and my — favorite poems.

3:28 Why Anthony chose poetry as a medium, and the poetry he has read [appreciated?]

9:13 A discussion of Anthony’s poem, “I Landed in Beijing,” and the feelings Beijing inspires

19:56 Anthony’s poem, “Self-censorship”

27:08 Anthony’s journalism in poetic form and processing the trauma of COVID 

31:38 Living as an “expat” and writing from an expat’s perspective: Anthony’s poem “Dancing like a Laowai 

40:46 Anthony’s bar — The Golden Weasel — and meeting interesting people in Beijing 

44:49 The themes of place and nostalgia, Anthony’s poem, “Postcard,” and the last stanza of his title poem, “We Met in Beijing”

Recommendations:

Anthony: The poetry of Stephen Dunn; the TV series Lucky Hank (2023) based on Straight Man by Richard Russo; Spittoon, an English-language literary collective in China; and his band, Poetry x Music 

Kaiser: The many international restaurants of Xiaoyun Lu in Beijing 

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