Sinica Podcast

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Rebecca Kuang (who writes under the name R.F. Kuang), the author of the best-selling historical fantasy novel Babel. Set in the 1830s in England, the novel’s Chinese-born protagonist sets out to prevent a war with China over the opium trade. It’s a novel about the industrial revolution, labor activism, revolution, and — surprisingly — language, etymology, and translation.

2:28 – On Rebecca's own connections to China and her anxieties about losing the Chinese language

8:27 – What historical insights Rebecca hoped her readers would take away from Babel

14:37 – Parallels between the U.K. of the early 19th century and the U.S. of the early 21st

20:26 – Refections on revolution and revolutionaries

25:48 – Silver working: the magic system in Babel and its relation to language

30:37 – Issues with translation theory presented in the book

38:04 – How Rebecca’s background in debate influenced her writing style

45:03 – Rebecca's forthcoming novel Yellowface

A transcript of this podcast will be available soon at TheChinaProject.com.

Recommendations:

Rebecca: The film Banshees of Inisherin and other works by its director, Martin McDonagh, including the dark comedy In Bruges (2008).

Kaiser: The new novel by Cormac McCarthy The Passenger, and a review of it by James Wood in The New Yorker.

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This week on Sinica, Jude Blanchette (Freeman Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies) and Ryan Hass (Armacost Chair at the John L. Thornton Center at the Brookings Institute) join Kaiser to discuss their new essay in Foreign Affairs, "The Taiwan Long Game: Why the Best Solution Is No Solution.”

3:05 – Reconceptualizing Taiwan as “a strategic problem with a defense component” 

6:00 – Why expanding the scope of the Taiwan issue beyond the military dimension should not be conflated with capitulation

13:34 – Has current U.S. policy abandoned preserving status quo cross-strait relations?

17:27 – Why has China refrained from the use of force thus far?

27:05 – China, U.S., and Taiwan’s heightened sense of urgency

31:22 – How Ukraine alters China’s decision calculus on Taiwan

36:44 – What pertinent challenges should the US be planning for rather than exclusively focusing on the threat of invasion?

43:58 – The issue with democracy vs authoritarianism framing

46:01 – The importance of considering Taiwanese agency when crafting US policy

48:40 – How the U.S. should define its one-China policy

53:19 – Opportunities for a detente between Washington and Beijing

A transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com.

Recommendations:

Ryan: "How We Would Know When China Is Preparing to Invade Taiwan," by John Culver; the film White Christmas 

Jude: The podcast In the Dark from American Public Media

Kaiser: "A Professor Who Challenges the Washington Consensus on China," Ian Johnson’s piece in The New Yorker about Jessica Chen Weiss

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy welcome Diana Choyleva and Dinny McMahon, who recently published a report for the Wilson Center on China's efforts to internationalize the Renminbi, its currency. Diana Choyleva is chief economist and founder of Enodo Economics, an independent macroeconomic forecasting consultancy she set up in 2016. Dinny McMahon is a former Wall Street Journal reporter and author of the book China's Great Wall of Debt. Their report is called “China’s Quest for Financial Self-Reliance: How Beijing Plans to Decouple from the Dollar-Based Global Trading and Financial System.”

2:38 – The advantages the U.S. enjoys through the dollar’s global primacy

4:40 – How Beijing sees the dollar’s dominance as a strategic vulnerability

7:11 – Other countries who actively pursued internationalization of their currency

10:07 – International trust deficit regarding China’s currency

13:37 – Right-sizing China’s currency ambitions

15:13 – How China incentives increased demand for the RMB

24:19 – Are we currently at a critical turning point of currency displacement?

36:42 – The role of digital currency in China’s monetary strategy  

43:42 – The BRI as a mechanism for expanding the circulation of the RMB 

A transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com.

Recommendations:

Jeremy: This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay; Kay's Anatomy by Adam Kay 

Diana: Picking up dancing as a pastime; China: The Gathering Threat by Constantine Menges

Dinny: Lombard Street by Walter Bagehot

Kaiser: The Amazon miniseries The English

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Michael J. Mazarr, author of the book Leap of Faith: Hubris, Negligence, and America's Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy, which examines the decision to invade Iraq in March 2003. Mike is a senior political scientist at the Rand Corporation and a former professor at the National War College, and he warns of certain parallels between what happened 20 years ago and the growing sense of urgency and moral imperative to confront China that he now senses in Washington.

3:40 – Patterns that lead to poor decision-making in the realm of foreign policy and warfare

8:30 – Parallels between American discourse on Iraq and China

13:54 – American exceptionalism and the missionary mindset  

15:51 – Much like the US experience after 9/11, could an equivalent “deeply felt imperative” trigger catastrophic conflict with China?

21:15 – The danger of moralistic thinking overriding rational cost-benefit analysis

27:37 – What does Washington hope to gain from the imputation of CCP illegitimacy?  

31:47 – Debunking the claim that Washington exaggerates threats for the sake of increasing the defense budget

35:49 – The role of media and Congress in the lead-up to the Iraq war

40:49 – The difference between effective policymaking and policy negligence: assessing the Bush and Biden administrations  

47:29 – Adapting the liberal “rules-based international order” to reflect contemporary realities  

52:27 – The shortcomings of a reductionist “democracy vs. authoritarianism” foreign policy

A full transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com.

Recommendations:

Mike: Mr. X and the Pacific by Paul Heer; The Guardians: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment by Geoffrey Kabaservice

Kaiser: Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R.F. Kuang

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We've got a special bonus episode this week on the protests over the weekend of November 26th-27th in multiple cities around China. Joining Kaiser and Jeremy are old friends David Moser and Jeremiah Jenne, co-hosts of the Barbarians at the Gate podcast, who have 50 years in Beijing between them. David Moser is a linguist, academic administrator, and accomplished jazz pianist and composer. Jeremiah Jenne is a writer and historian. Both David and Jeremiah are still in Beijing, and they offer an on-the-ground account of what happened and what it all means.

A transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com.

Recommendations – 

Jeremy: The Twitter account 李老师不是你老师 (Lǐ lǎoshī bùshì nǐ lǎoshī), with the handle @whyyoutouzhele; Cindy Yu’s Twitter account @CindyXiaodanYu

Jeremiah: Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China by Ruth Rogaski

David: The Globe and Mail article “In rare show of weakness, China's censors struggle to keep up with zero COVID protests” by James Griffith; Speak Not: Empire, Identity and the Politics of Language by James Griffith

Kaiser: Happiness is 4 Million Pounds, a New York Times documentary by Hao Wu

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser & Jeremy welcome Yuan Yang, a reporter for the Financial Times who was until recently covering technology in Beijing. Now based in London, her beat is China-Europe relations, and on this episode she discusses German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's recent trip to China, and how Europe and European countries are navigating the fraught U.S.-China relationship.

6:09 – Providing a balanced account of China’s tech ecosystem    

9:38 – German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's recent trip to Beijing

16:00 – The strategic autonomy of European foreign policy

18:41 – European countries’ fractured response to US tech restrictions on China

21:58 – EU policies towards Xinjiang 

24:31 – The impact of tech restrictions on European supply chains

27:39 – The efficacy of sanctions

30:12 – How China’s position on Russia damaged its reputation in Europe

33:48 – European reaction to Biden-Xi meeting

35:57 – How a change in the American presidency could disrupt the Transatlantic alliance system

40:55 – The formulation of Sunak’s China policy  

43:50 – Yuan’s new forthcoming book Private Revolutions  

A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com

Jeremy: Jewish comedian Ari Shaffir

Yuan: The Emily Wells album Regards to the End; The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin

Kaiser: mongulai.com, an e-commerce website specializing in Mongolian artisanal crafts; the Netflix show Barbarians

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This week on Sinica, in lieu of the regular show we present a keynote address given by Evan Feigenbaum, VP for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, at the recent East Asia Strategy Forum, held on November 1-2 in Ottawa, Canada. The forum is put on annually by the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada — APF Canada — and by the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy. The Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada is a not-for-profit organization focused on Canada’s relations with Asia. Its mission is to be Canada’s catalyst for engagement with Asia and Asia’s bridge to Canada. The Institute for Peace & Diplomacy (IPD) is non-profit and non-partisan international affairs think tank operating in the United States and Canada dedicated to promoting dialogue, diplomacy, prudent realism, and military restraint. The event's moderator was Jeff Nankivell, CEO of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada or APF Canada. Jeff was the Consul General to HK before taking his post at APF Canada.

Kaiser also offers his quick take on the three-hour meeting between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden in Bali, Indonesia.

3:23 – Kaiser’s analysis of the recent Biden and Xi Meeting 

10:19 – Start of Evan Feigenbaum's speech 

13:26 – The tension between economic and security interests in the Indo-Pacific 

20:06 – The tension between coalition-building and fragmentation in the Indo-Pacific  

24:02 – The American approach to strategic competition with China in the region 

32:34 – Question 1: What role can American allies play in setting a positive agenda?

37:54 – Question 2: Do American national security issues have a tendency to get distorted by domestic political and economic considerations?

51:34 – Question 3: Given domestic political constraints, is there any chance of diminishing the bipartisan consensus against China?

54:29 – Question 4: Is there a conflict between the ‘rules-based international order’ and implementing targeted restrictions towards China?

57:17 – Question 5: How sustainable is China’s position on the Russia-Ukraine war?

A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com.

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Anne-Marie Slaughter, a leading American public intellectual who serves as president of New America and was Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department during the first Obama administration. Anne-Marie talks about how collaboration on issues of global concern — pandemics, global warming, and more — requires the U.S. to deprioritize some aspects of its competition with China.

1:59 – Contradictions of the Biden doctrine

5:18 – Reconciling Biden’s China policy and the possibility of climate cooperation

13:43 – Deemphasizing national security on the American foreign policy agenda   

20:23 – Potential for “positive competition”

21:50 – The concept of networked governance

36:04 – The dynamics of groupthink in US decision-making

43:05 – Hope for the younger generation’s prospective policy shift  

47:38 – Does race factor into our hostility towards China?

50:19 – Potential for an affirmative vision on Biden’s China policy

54:52 – How revisionist are China’s ambitions?

59:49 – American tolerance for a diminished global role

A transcript of this interview is available at TheChinaProject.com.

Recommendations:

Anne-Marie: To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara; A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara; The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson; What It Feels Like to Be a Bird by David Sibley

Kaiser: Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century by Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman 

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This week on Sinica, our friends at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs invited us for a live show taping before a small group. Kaiser is joined by Lizzi Lee, MIT-trained economist-turned-reporter who hosts the Chinese-language show "Wall Street Today" as well as The China Project's "Live with Lizzi Lee," both on Youtube; and by Damien Ma, who heads the Paulson Institute's in-house think tank MacroPolo. These two top-shelf analysts of Chinese politics break down what was important — and what was just a sideshow — at the 20th Party Congress, and offer their knowledgeable perspectives on the individuals named to key posts and what this likely means for China's direction. Don't miss this one!

2:40 – Findings from MacroPolo’s “fantasy PBSC” experiment   

8:18 – Did China watchers overemphasize Xi Jinping’s political constraints?  

12:31 – Support for Li Qiang across different political factions

17:23 – The changing factional composition of Chinese elite politics

20:20 – Return of the technocrats

23:27 – “Generation-skipping” in China’s recent political promotions

28:26 – The selection of Cai Qi

32:46 – Li Shulei as a successor to Wang Huning 

37:07 – The future of China’s economic leadership

39:52 – Selection of the vice premiers 

41:18 – The future of China’s diplomatic core

45:28 – The Hu Jintao episode

49:22 – Revising the “Zero-COVID” policy

51:17 – Reassessing China’s intentions vis-à-vis Taiwan 

A transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com.

Recommendations: 

Lizzi: Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao by Joseph Torigian

Damien: Slouching Towards Utopia by Brad DeLong

Kaiser: "Taiwan, the World-Class Puzzle," a Radio Open Source podcast hosted by Christopher Lydon

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This week on Sinica, Evan Osnos, staff writer for The New Yorker, joins hosts Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn to talk about his new piece on one of the most puzzling figures to come out of China: Guo Wengui, a.k.a. Miles Kwok, who took what he learned about dealing with power and money in China and applied those lessons to the U.S., insinuating himself with leading figures of the American right. Who is this mysterious man, and what is he really after? In an unscripted episode that will bring some listeners back to the grotty apartment in Beijing where Sinica recorded in its very early days, Evan, Kaiser, and Jeremy parse the mysteries of the strange phenomenon of Guo Wengui.

03:37 – Who is Guo Wengui?

10:07 – Orville Schell’s experience with Guo Wengui

14:48 – Steve Bannon’s comparison between Guo and Trump

17:40 – The process of fact-checking this piece  

23:03 – Guo’s potential ties to the pro-Xi Jinping clique

26:02 – VOA’s interview with Guo

30:06 – Guo’s campaign against Teng Biao and other Chinese dissidents

33:57 – Guo’s role as an interlocutor on behalf of the MSS

39:00 – Steve Wynn’s efforts to extradite Guo

42:10 – Guo’s impact on the Chinese diaspora community

45:11 – Guo’s influence on US-China relations

A transcript of this interview is available at TheChinaProject.com.

Recommendations:

Jeremy: "President Trump's First Term," by Evan Osnos, a New Yorker article written in 2016 predicting what would happen to the U.S. if Donald Trump won in 2016. (Spoiler: he did. And Evan was right).

Evan: An audio tribute to legendary New Yorker editor John Bennet:  https://www.cjr.org/special_report/johnbennet.php  

Kaiser: The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet, a forgivably melodramatic historical fiction novel with an emphasis on architecture

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