Sinica Podcast

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Susan Shirk, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Pacific and Research Professor and Chair of the 21st Century China Center at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UCSD, about how the deliberately collective leadership of the Hu Jintao years set the stage for the over-concentration of power under Xi Jinping and created conditions for overreach. She argues that Chinese overreach was met with American overreaction — not just in the Trump years, but continuing into the Biden administration.

11:35 – The thesis of Overreach and misconceptions based on the title

15:50 – The decline of collective leadership  

19:57 – Selection process of politburo members

27:48 – The advantages of China’s former collective leadership system

31:40 – How collective leadership often lead to overreach

39:40 – How personalistic, overly centralized rule can also result in overreach

43:02 – Increased paranoia, insecurity, and “permanent purge” culture under Xi

49:59 – American overreaction to China’s ambitions

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

Recommendations:

Susan – Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World by Howard French 

Kaiser – His hobby of Asian archery and finding a community/activity you’re passionate about outside your professional line of work

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy are joined by Sue-Lin Wong, who until recently covered China for The Economist and hosted an eight-part podcast series all about Xi Jinping called The Prince. The podcast features interviews with a wide range of China-watchers, peers of Xi, dissidents, and many others who offer insights into what makes Xi tick.

3:38 – Reason behind naming the podcast “the Prince”

5:53 – Differences between traditional journalism and podcasting

9:52 – The role of Sue-Lin’s mother in the podcast

13:37 – How corruption influenced Xi’s leadership style

19:29 – Identifying Xi’s greatest anxieties: party in-fighting, the collapse of the USSR

22:48 – Early signs of Xi’s ideological underpinnings most China watchers missed  

29:33 – Did the CCP’s internal crisis make Xi’s rise inevitable?

32:57 – Is Xi Jinping the most powerful man in the world?

37:12 – Reframing the engagement debate after Xi’s administration

41:51 – David Rennie’s view on China: “a giant utilitarian experiment”

46:45 – Key insights on Xi that listeners of the Prince should walk away with

52:16 – How Sue-Lin would brief an American policymaker on Xi Jinping’s main motivations

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

Recommendations:

Jeremy – A Matter of Perspective: Parsing Insider Accounts of Xi Jinping Ahead of the 20th Party Congress, an article on The China Story written by Neil Thomas 

Sue-Lin – Race to the Galaxy, a two-player board game 

Kaiser – Interview with the Vampire, a new AMC TV series

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy were live in London with a very special guest: Carrie Gracie, whose career with the BBC spanned three decades as a China-based correspondent, news presenter, and China editor. She talks about her podcast series on the Bo Xilai scandal, her longitudinal documentary series on White Horse Village, and her struggle with the BBC to win equal pay for women.

6:02 – Murder in the Lucky Holiday Hotel and Carrie’s coverage of the Bo Xilai scandal and Chinese elite politics in 2012

11:38 – Overview of the main characters: Bo Xilai, Gu Kuilai, Neil Heywood, and Wang Lijun 

35:18 – How the 2012 power struggle shaped Xi Jinping’s leadership style

41:42 – Carrie’s key takeaways from following the Bo Xilai case

44:33 – White Horse Village: documenting life of farmers across a decade in rural China

50:56 – Changing conditions for foreign journalists in China

56:52 – Advice to reporters starting in China

1:01:05 – Assessing media organizations’ progress on dismantling the gender pay gap

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

Recommendations: 

Jeremy: Yellowstone, a drama series about a family-owned ranch in Montana 

Carrie: Everything Everywhere All at Once; the Disney animated film Mulan

Kaiser: the UK progressive rock band Porcupine Tree's current Continuation/Closure tour — Europe dates

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Minister Xu Xueyuan, Deputy Chief of Mission at the PRC Embassy in Washington, D.C.

A few words about the process, in the interest of transparency:

Minister Xu’s team did request questions in advance, and they were all accepted without alteration except to suggest that two questions, both related to public diplomacy efforts, be combined. Questions on subjects like Taiwan, Xinjiang, and China’s Zero-COVID policy were all accepted without even any suggestions on changes of wording. Kaiser was also able to follow up on questions without any objection at all.

Where Minister Xu cited numbers and made factual claims, we made a good faith effort to check them — for example, on the number of acres in the recent offshore oil lease approvals made by the Biden administration. 

Doubtless, there will be listeners who will wish that Kaiser had been more forceful, and there may be some who believe I was perhaps too forceful. Sinica is not a “gotcha” show and never has been, and we believe there is value in hearing the perspectives of a ranking Chinese diplomat, and we hope you agree that the interview is very much worth listening to.

The interview has only been edited only for clarity and concision — taking out filler or hesitation words and pick-ups. 

2:56 – Does the Biden administration’s China policy diverge from Trump's? 

8:29 – China’s role in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization

15:09 – China’s position on the Ukraine war 

19:21 – How the Ukraine conflict factors into Beijing’s decision-making on Taiwan 

23:11 – The diminishing appeal of “one country, two systems”

29:56 – Beijing’s suspension of climate talks after the Pelosi visit

38:20 – U.S.-China coordination on alleviating global economic issues

46:37 – The possibility of diplomatic concessions to improve relations

52:29 –The decline in people-to-people exchange between China and the U.S.

1:00:27 – China’s Dynamic Zero-COVID policy

1:08:16 – The 20th Party Congress’ impact on U.S.-China relations

1:10:51 – Considering the Xinjiang issue from the American perspective

1:20:10 – The unintended consequences of wolf-warrior diplomacy

1:24:45 – Differing views on China in the Global South vs. Global North

A full transcript of this interview is available at thechinaproject.com.

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This week on Sinica, we kick off the new network show, the China-Global South Podcast, with a conversation with the show's hosts and co-founders of the China-Global South Project (formerly the China Africa Project), Eric Olander and Cobus van Staden. Kaiser chats with them about where the show is going, and common misconceptions about China's role in the Global South.

1:45 – Reasons for launching the new China-Global South Podcast

13:50 – What Washington’s framing of China’s activity in the Global South gets wrong

19:24 – Explaining the lack of China expertise in Africa and the Global North

25:27 – The unresolved history of Western colonialism in Africa

28:44 – How Chinese statecraft navigates Africa’s colonial legacy

36:00 – The infantilization of African agency

45:03 – The limited development options of African stakeholders

47:33 – China’s environmental impact on the Global South

57:13 – How small states can effectively navigate great power politics

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

Recommendations:

Eric: Following Gyude Moore, Senior Policy Fellow at the Center for Global Development: @gyude_moore; Hannah Ryder; CEO of Development Reimagined: @hmryder; Ovigue Eguegu; Policy Analyst at Development Reimagined: @ovigweeguegu; and Christian-Geraud Neema; and Francophone Editor at the China-Global South Project: @christiangeraud

Cobus: The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa by Ching Kwan Lee

Kaiser: Chinese traditional bow maker AF Archery; The Way of Archery by Gao Ying, translated by Jie Tian and Justin Ma

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This week on Sinica, Wall Street Journal reporters Josh Chin and Liza Lin join the program to discuss their new book Surveillance State: Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control. From Urumqi to Uganda and from Hangzhou to the Bronx, the book explores every facet of technological surveillance from the technocratic mindset that birthed it to its spread, with Beijing's help, to many countries of the developing world. But it also examines the role that U.S. tech companies played in giving rise to it.

6:05 – The story of Tahir Hamut: a Uyghur poet living under Xinjiang’s surveillance state 

12:50 – Will the Xinjiang model for surveillance be expanded to other parts of China?

 16:37 – Is China actively pushing other countries to adopt its surveillance state practices?

 23:26 – The case of Hangzhou: the benefits of the “smart city” model 

 27:17 – Is there a fundamental difference between the concept of “privacy” in China and the West?

 30:55 – How Xu Bing’s film uses surveillance footage

35:39 – What accounts for Chinese society’s changing views on privacy?

40:12 – China’s tendency to apply an “engineering” mindset to fixing social problems

47:57 – Assessing US companies’ role in enabling Chinese surveillance 

52:27 – Devising a policy that effectively bans hardware used for Xinjiang surveillance

1:01:03 – China’s new laws on digital data protection

1:05:05 – What the social credit system’s popular narrative gets wrong

 1:10:40 – An example of Chinese propaganda fabricating the surveillance system’s success 

 1:14:29 – The future of privacy protection in China and the West

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

Recommendations:

Liza: The Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy

Josh: The Backstreets: A Novel from Xinjiang by Perhat Tursun (translated by Darren Byler), a short novel about life for Uyghurs in modern China; The Wok: Recipes and Techniques: by Kenji Lopez

Kaiser: After the Ivory Tower Falls: How College Broke the American Dream and Blew Up Our Politics and How to Fix It by Will Bunch

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser welcomes back University of Michigan political scientist Yuen Yuen Ang, who discusses a recent piece in the Journal of Democracy titled "How Resilient is the CCP?" The essay examines how China's bureaucracy remains surprisingly competent and even relatively autonomous despite Xi Jinping's highly personalistic style of rule.

3:51 – Summarizing debates on Chinese governance in the current China watcher field 

8:43 – Defining the concept of institutionalization and contextualizing it to China

13:39 – Explaining Xi’s bureaucratic objectives: maintaining competence but limiting autonomy

18:57 – Remaining areas of autonomy for China’s state bureaucracy

22:11 – Key areas where Xi weakened bureaucracy

26:08 – Institutionalization prior to the Xi era 

29:00 – Main sources of resilience and threat under Xi’s new model for authoritarianism 

31:45 – Fundamental difference between Mao and Xi

34:52 – The revival of state bureaucracy and technocrats after Mao’s death

40:13 – How do we understand the tension between expertise and ideology in Xi’s governance agenda?  

46:15 – Historical roots of technocracy in the Chinese government

49:09 – The CCP’s technocratic bureaucracy as an integral source of resilience

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

Recommendations: 

Yuen Yuen: Chinese drama series Zǒuxiàng gònghé 走向共和 (Towards the Republic); and Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick

Kaiser: Children of Earth and Sky, A Brightness Long Ago, and All the Seas of the World — a historical fantasy novel trilogy by Guy Gavriel Kay 

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser welcomes back the Cornell political scientist Jessica Chen Weiss, who is back in Ithaca after a year spent as a CFR International Affairs Fellow working in the State Department's Office of Policy Planning. She talks about an important essay published in the latest edition of Foreign Affairs, titled "The China Trap: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Perilous Logic of Zero-Sum Competition,” which calls on the U.S. to formulate an affirmative vision for the relationship with China instead of pursuing an ad-hoc policy predicated simply on countering what China does.

7:17 – Moving away from the current zero-sum framing of U.S.-China competition and adopting an “affirmative vision”

12:29 – Shortcomings of the U.S. response to China’s strategy in the developing world

15:11 – How competition with China framing has adverse consequences for domestic American politics  

18:37 – Can the U.S. benefit from adopting certain aspects of the Chinese approach? 

20:49 – The steps needed to return to normalized U.S.-China diplomacy

25:00 – How can the US properly calibrate its China threat assessment? 

34:05 – The relationship between China’s domestic challenges and its foreign policy

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

Recommendations:

Jessica: Stephen Walt and Dani Rodrik’s essay on a establishing a new global order in Foreign Affairs [forthcoming]; and After Engagement: Dilemmas in U.S.-China Security Relations by Jacques deLisle and Avery Goldstein

Kaiser: The Lord of the Rings trilogy audiobooks narrated by Andy Serkis

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This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser and Jeremy welcome back Tom Orlik, Bloomberg's chief economist and author of the book China: The Bubble that Never Pops. Ahead of the release of the new, updated edition of his book, we ask him about all that has changed in the two-and-a-half years since the publication of the first edition — and whether the real estate crisis, the Common Prosperity agenda, China's fraying foreign relations, or the COVID lockdowns are finally going to bring about the crash long predicted by the "China bears."

4:40 – Tom offers a succinct summary of the chief arguments in the first edition of China: The Bubble that Never Pops

8:05 – Is China looking quite as clever as it was four months ago?

11:08 – The Chinese economy’s great COVID shutdown stress test

13:53 – China’s stimulus response

20:22 – The future of the Common Prosperity agenda

25:49 – China’s push for tech self-sufficiency

33:00 – China’s present real estate crisis

38:15 – Xi Jinping’s priorities: triage for the ailing Chinese economy

44:00 – How bad will the damage be from China’s 2022 lockdowns?

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

Recommendations:

Jeremy: The Parker series,: crime fiction by Richard Stark, pen name of Donald E. Westlake

Tom: Surveillance State by Josh Chin and Liza Lin; and Coalitions of the Weak by Victor Shih

Kaiser: The TV drama from Hulu, The Bear

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy welcome Leroy Chiao, a NASA astronaut who flew three shuttle missions and served as commander of the International Space Station for over six months. Leroy is also very knowledgeable about China's space program and was the first American astronaut to visit the Astronaut Center of China outside of Beijing. He discusses the abortive history of Sino-American space collaboration, attitudes toward China's space program in the U.S., and China's impressive accomplishments and its grand ambitions for space.

4:27 – How Leroy became an astronaut

9:09 – The effects of long-term weightlessness

15:10 – Leroy’s access to the Astronaut Center of China

18:16 – The peak years of Sino-U.S. collaboration in space exploration

23:11 – The Wolf Amendment and the end of Sino-American space collaboration

26:36 – Leroy on the most impressive accomplishments of the Chinese space program

37:53 – U.S.-China competition as a driver of advances in space technologies

48:04 – Sino-Russian space cooperation?

49:12 – The weaponization of outer space

52: 58 – Recommendations

A complete transcript of this podcast is available on SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Jeremy:  Nuremberg Diary by G.M. Gilbert.

Leroy: Old Henry, a micro-Western film

Kaiser: Putin by Philip Short; and a preview of a forthcoming paper about the Cyberspace Administration of China, CAC, written by Jamie Horsley

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