Sinica Podcast

This week on Sinica, I welcome back Jeremy Goldkorn, co-founder of the show and my longtime co-host, to revisit the "vibe shift" we first discussed back in February. Seven months on, what we sensed then has fully borne out — there's been a measurable softening in American attitudes toward China, reflected not just in polling data but in media coverage, podcast discussions, and public discourse. We dig into what's driving this shift: the chaos of American politics making China look competent by comparison, the end of Wolf Warrior diplomacy, the gutting of China hawks in the Trump administration, Trump's own transactional G2 enthusiasm, and the generational divide in how younger Americans encounter China through TikTok rather than legacy media. We also discuss the limits of this shift, the dangers of overcorrection, and what it feels like to watch the fever break after years of panic and absolutism in U.S.-China discourse.

5:29 – The [beep] show in America as the biggest factor

8:38 – China hawks deflated: from Pompeo to Navarro's pivot to India

11:21 – Ben Smith's piece on the end of a decade of China hawkism

13:30 – Eric Schmidt and Selina Xu's Atlantic piece on tech decoupling

17:17 – Long-form China podcasts: Dwarkesh Patel with Arthur Kroeber, Lex Fridman with Keyu Jin

19:35 – Jeremy's personal vibe shift: distance from The China Project and renewed perspective

23:33 – The world turning to predictability and stability

26:05 – The Chicago Council poll: dramatic shift away from containment

29:09 – The generational shift: TikTok, infrastructure porn, and Gen Z's globalized worldview

31:15 – The end of Wolf Warrior diplomacy and why it mattered

37:03 – Kaiser's "Great Reckoning" essay and why it didn't get the usual hate

39:00 – The destruction of Twitter and the vicious China discourse culture

41:10 – The pendulum swinging too far: China fanboys and new hubris

43:20 – How the vibe shift looks from inside China

Paying it forward: Echo Tang (Berlin Independent Chinese Film Festival organizer) and Zhu Rikun (New York Chinese Independent Film Festival organizer)

Recommendations:

Jeremy: Ja No Man: Growing Up in Apartheid Era South Africa by Richard Poplak

Kaiser: Rhyming Chaos podcast with Jeremy Goldkorn and Maria Repnikova

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This week on Sinica, I chat with Lizzi Lee, a fellow on the Chinese economy at the Asia Society Policy Institute and one of the sharpest China analysts working today. We dig into the 4th Plenary Session of the 20th Party Congress and what it reveals about China's evolving growth model — particularly the much-discussed but often misunderstood push against "involution" in key sectors like EVs and solar. Lizzi walks us through the structural incentives driving overcompetition, from local government finance and VAT collection to the challenges of rebalancing supply and demand. We also discuss her recent Foreign Affairs piece on China's manufacturing model, why "overcapacity" is a misleading frame, the unexpected upsides of China's industrial strategy for the global green transition, and what happened at the Trump-Xi meeting in Busan. This is a conversation about getting beyond the binaries and understanding the actual mechanisms — and contradictions — shaping China's economic trajectory.

4:43 – What Western reporting missed in the 4th Plenum communique

6:34 – The "anti-involution" push and what it really means

9:57 – Is China's domestic demand abnormally low? Context and comparisons

12:41 – Why cash transfers and consumption subsidies are running out of steam

15:00 – The supply-side approach: creating better products to drive demand

18:33 – GDP vs. GNI: why China is focusing on global corporate footprints

20:13 – Service exports and China's ascent along the global supply chain 24:02 – The People's Daily editorial on price wars and profit margins

27:31 – Why addressing involution is harder now than in 2015

29:56 – How China's VAT system incentivizes local governments to build entire supply chains

33:20 – The difficulty of reforming fiscal structures and local government finance 35:12 – What got lost in the Foreign Affairs editing process

38:14 – Why "overcapacity" is a misleading and morally loaded term

40:02 – The underappreciated upside: China's model and the global green transition

43:14 – How politically potent deindustrialization fears are in Washington and Brussels 46:29 – Industry self-discipline vs. structural reform: can moral suasion work?

50:15 – BYD's negotiating power and the squeeze on suppliers

53:54 – The Trump-Xi meeting in Busan: genuine thaw or tactical pause?

57:23 – Pete Hegseth's "God bless both China and the USA" tweet

1:00:01 – How China's leadership views Trump: transactional or unpredictable?

1:03:32 – The pragmatic off-ramp and what Paul Triolo predicted

1:05:26 – China's AI strategy: labor-augmenting vs. labor-replacing technology

1:08:13 – What systemic changes could realistically fix involution?

1:10:26 – Capital market reform and the challenge of decelerating slowly 1:12:36 – The "health first" strategy and investing in people

Paying it forward: Paul Triolo

Recommendations:

Lizzi: Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare by Edward Fishman

Kaiser: Morning Coffee guitar practice book by Alex Rockwell

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This week on Sinica, I chat with Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, editor of Foreign Affairs, about how the journal has both shaped and reflected American discourse on China during a period of dramatic shifts in the relationship. We discuss his deliberate editorial choices to include heterodox voices, the changing nature of the supposed "consensus" on China policy, and what I've called the "vibe shift" in how Americans across the political spectrum think about China. Daniel also reflects on his own intellectual formation, including his work on George Marshall's failed mission to mediate China's Civil War and the cautionary lessons that history holds for today's debates. We explore the challenges of bringing Chinese voices into Foreign Affairs, the balance between driving and reflecting policy debates, and whether we're witnessing a genuine opening of the Overton window on China discussions.

7:15 – Foreign Affairs in the era of Iraq and "China's peaceful rise"

12:09 – The Marshall mission and the "Who Lost China?" debate

17:17 – China's changing role and the journal's coverage density

19:43 – The Campbell-Ratner "China Reckoning" and subsequent debates

25:00 – The challenge of including authentic Chinese voices

29:42 – How Chinese leadership perceives and reads Foreign Affairs

32:12 – The "vibe shift" on China across the American political spectrum

35:56 – Cultivating contrarian voices: Van Jackson, Jonathan Czin, and David Kang

40:17 – Avoiding the trap of making everything about U.S.-China competition

43:12 – Diversifying perspectives beyond the Washington-Beijing binary

48:18 – The big questions: American exceptionalism and Chinese identity in a new era

51:42 – The dangers of cutting off U.S.-China scholarly conversations

56:26 – The uses and misuses of historical analogies

58:09 – Spain's Golden Age and late Qing memes as contemporary analogies

Paying it forward: The unsung editorial staff at Foreign Affairs

Recommendations:

Daniel: Equator.org; The Rise of the Meritocracy by Michael Young; Granta's new India issue; The Party's Interests Come First by Joseph Torigian; The Coming Storm by Odd Arne Westad

Kaiser: The Spoils of Time by C.V. Wedgwood

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This week on the Sinica Podcast, I speak with Jonathan Czin, the Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies and a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center. His new essay in Foreign Affairs, “China Against China: Xi Jinping Confronts the Downsides of Success,” challenges the dominant Western narrative of Xi Jinping as either Mao reincarnate or a brittle autocrat presiding over imminent collapse. Instead, Czin argues that Xi’s most illiberal reforms can be understood as attempts to cure the pathologies of China’s own success. We discuss his framing of Xi’s “Counterreformation,” how it helps explain China’s current political direction, and what it reveals about our own analytical blind spots in the West.

7:15 – Xi’s “reformation” and Carl Minzner’s “end of reform and opening”

12:18 – Corruption, decentralization, and the “lost decade” under Hu and Wen

20:12 – Defining “resilience” and what Xi means by “eating bitterness”

29:45 – The “downsides of success”: property, corruption, and governance contradictions

45:30 – Counter-reformation vs. counterrevolution: what Xi wants to preserve and discard

54:20 – The myth of yes-men: triangulation and feedback in Xi’s leadership style

1:07:07 – Cognitive empathy and why most U.S. analysis of Xi falls short

1:15:35 – Systems that can’t course-correct: comparing the U.S. and China

1:22:05 – Cognitive empathy, ideology, and the problem of American exceptionalism

Paying it forward:

Jonathan: Allie Mathias and Dinny McMahon

Recommendations:

Jonathan: The Thirty Years War by C.V. Wedgewood; The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni

Kaiser: Transplants by Daniel Tam-Claiborne

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This week on Sinica, I chat with Peking University's Professor Wang Dong (王栋), an international relations scholar at the School of International Studies at Peking University, where he also serves as Deputy Director and Executive Director of the Office for Humanities and Social Sciences and the Institute for Global Cooperation and Understanding. Professor Wang’s scholarship and public commentary focus on U.S.–China relations, Cold War history, and the uses of historical memory in diplomacy. He has been an especially thoughtful voice in connecting the Flying Tigers legacy with today’s efforts to stabilize and strengthen the people-to-people ties between our two countries.

Check back in a day or two for the full podcast page and the transcript!

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This week on Sinica, co-host Tianyu Fang makes his debut on the show to join me in interviewing his Stanford classmate and talented writer Jasmine Sun, who studies the anthropology of disruption. This summer, she took a trip to China with a group of friends with different levels of China experience, from people raised in the country to total novices. She reflects on how it hit, and how a group of young people reckoned with the reality of Chinese hypermodernity, which she wrote about in a terrific essay titled "america against china against america: notes on shenzhen, shanghai, and more."

06:10 – Getting to know the new co-host: Tianyu Fang

07:17 – Meet the guest: Jasmine Sun

08:47 – Is there really an “American Vibe Shift” in how people see China?

13:56 – The stories nations tell: America vs. China

18:26 – Why that title for the essay?

21:05 – Surveillance, awe, and future shock: China vs. San Francisco

28:19 – Chinese tech’s power to surprise (and scare) + U.S.–China perceptions

34:34 – China vs. Silicon Valley: patriotism and motivation

39:51 – The involution phenomenon: China vs. U.S.

45:41 – China’s public services and the U.S. gap

52:33 – What U.S. cities could learn from China

56:13 – Guests’ tips for understanding China

Recommendations:

Jasmine: Yunnan food

Tianyu: Mad Men (Tv series)

Kaiser: The Origins of Political Order and Political Decay by Francis Fukuyama

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This week on the Sinica Podcast, I chat with well-known author and public intellectual Yascha Mounk about his recent fascination with China, his approach to learning about the country and learning Chinese, and his thoughts on how China fits into the current crisis of Western liberal democracy.

7:15 – Yascha’s experience of living in China and learning Chinese

12:18 – Yascha’s perspective on China’s strengths and weaknesses

20:12 – China in a global comparative perspective: Generational aspirations and demographic decline

29:45 – China’s Soft Power vs. Japan, Korea, and the U.S.

45:30 – Media narratives on China: have they shifted?

54:20 – Western Liberalism confronts China

01:07:07 – Backlash & criticism

01:11:35 - Polarization and “China as enemy” narratives

Recommendations:

Yascha: The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (book), The Leopard (1963) (movie)

Kaiser: A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism by Adam Gopnik (book)

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This week on Sinica, I speak first with retired Senior Colonel Zhou Bo, a frequent commentator on Chinese military and security affairs and a prolific writer now at the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University, and with Rana Mitter of the Harvard Kennedy School and author of Forgotten Ally, a book about World War II in China.

4:08 – The primary objectives behind the September 3rd parade

10:03 – China’s position in the global arms market

14:45 – The strategic importance of the new weapons on display

21:10 – China, Russia, and North Korea: strategic dynamics

33:14 – Perspectives on the China–Russia relationship

44:13 – Avoiding security dilemma spirals

50:32 – Rana Mitter: Wartime memory, national narratives, and the 2025 shift

57:06 – Narratives of China’s role in World War II

01:19:01 – The significance and performative Dimension of the 2025 parade

01:26:26 – China’s postwar role and evolving global ambitions

Recommendations:

Rana: Face-Off (podcast), Enchanted Revolution by Xiaofei Kang

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This week on Sinica, I chat with Dave Kang (USC), Zenobia Chan (Georgetown), and Jackie Wong (American University in Sharjah, UAE) about their new paper in International Security titled "What Does China Want?" The paper, which has generated quite a bit of controversy, takes a data-driven approach to examine the claim that China seeks global hegemony — that it wants to supplant the U.S. as a globe-spanning top power.

I'm traveling much of this week, so I'll update this podcast page when the transcript comes back!

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This week on the Sinica Podcast, I welcome back Evan Feigenbaum, Vice President for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Evan served for many years as a State Department official, was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia and Central Asia among his numerous positions in government, and was instrumental in building the U.S.-India relationship after 2000 — only to watch Trump round on India in recent months, slapping large punitive tariffs on the South Asian giant ostensibly over its purchases of Russian oil. What motivated Trump? And how does this look from New Delhi and from Beijing? Will China capitalize on the strains in the U.S.-Indian relationship? Listen and find out.

04:12 – Building "trust" in politics

10:22 – Changes in U.S. policy

15:11 – Did India take advantage of Russia?

20:07 – How U.S. rules shape India

25:21 – "Rebuilding" the U.S.–India relationship

29:56 – Beijing on Trump vs. India

42:48 – India, Quad, and Indo-Pacific strategy

49:55 – Managing U.S.–India tensions

Paying it Forward: Kenji Kushida

Recommendations: 

Evan: How China Is Reshaping International Security Cooperation by Sheena Greitens and Isaac Kardon

Kaiser: How Sino-centrism and U.S.-centrism warp(ed?) Beijing’s foreign policy thinking by Tang Shiping and Qi Dapeng

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