Sinica Podcast

This week on Sinica, I speak with Kendra Schaefer, the partner at Trivium China who heads their tech practice. She recently published a fascinating paper looking at the Cyberspace Administration of China's comprehensive database of generative AI tools released in China, and she shares the insights and big takeaways from her research on that database. It's a terrific window into what Chinese firms, both private and state-affiliated, are doing with generative AI.

03:51 – Mandatory registration of generative AI Tools in China

10:28 – How does the CAC categorize AI Tools?

14:25 – State-affiliated vs. non-state-affiliated AI Tools

18:55 – Capability and competition of China's AI Industry

22:57 – Significance of Generative Algorithmic Tools (GAT) registration counts

26:06 – The application of GATs in the education sector

29:50 – The application of GATs in the healthcare Sector

31:00 – Underrepresentation of AI tools in other sectors

32:56 – Regional breakdown of AI innovation in China

36:07 – AI adoption across sectors: how companies integrate AI

40:21 – Standout projects by the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS)

42:42 – How multinationals navigate China's tech regulations

47:50 – Role of foreign players in China's AI strategy

49:38 – Key takeaways from the AI development journey

53:41 -– Blind spots in AI data

57:25 – Kendra's future research direction

Paying it Forward: Kenton Thibaut.

Recommendations:

Kendra: The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age by Thomas Mullaney.

Kaiser: the Rhyming Chaos Podcast by Jeremy Goldkorn and Maria Repnikova

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Jeremy Goldkorn joins for this largely unedited throwback to the early, sweary days of the show. We talk about the announcement made on Wednesday, 28 May 2025, on the "aggressive" revocation of Chinese student visas for students with Party "connections" or who study "critical fields." You've been warned!

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A bonus episode this week. On May 22, I moderated a panel organized by Vita Golod and the UNC Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies. The focus was on the U.S.-Ukraine Mineral Security Partnership, and it features Ivan Us, Chief Consultant at the Center for Foreign Policy at the National Institute for Strategic Studies; Jim Mullinax, a Senior Foreign Service Officer and former Consul General at the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu (closed in 2020); Grzegorz Stec, Senior Analyst and Head of the Brussels Office at MERICS; and Xu Qinduo, journalist at CGTN and Senior Fellow at the Pangoal Institution. The panel explores the background and the implications of the minerals deal, signed on May 1, 2025, for the ongoing war in Ukraine, and prospects for post-war reconstruction. I hope you enjoy what I thought was a fascinating conversation.

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This week on Sinica, I chat with Eva Dou, technology reporter for the Washington Post, about her terrific new book about Huawei. From its prehistory to its fight for its life under tremendous U.S. pressure, she tells its story in a way that's both deeply engaging and very evenhanded.

04:53 – Meng Wanzhou’s case and its impact on media interest in Huawei

07:13 – How did Ren Zhengfei’s experiences in the PLA shape the corporate culture of Huawei?

10:21 – The impact of his father on Ren Zhengfei 

13:42 – Women in Huawei’s leadership and Sun Yafang as a chairwoman 

18:41 – Is Huawei a tool of the state?

23:21 – Edward Snowden’s revelations and how they influenced the perception of Huawei 

26:34 – The Cisco lawsuit influence on the company’s approach to foreign markets

28:07 – Reasons for Huawei working with embargoed or sanctioned states

30:46 – Huawei’s international expansion 

33:04 – Huawei’s management style and internal competition 

36:33 – Meng Wenzhou’s detainment as a turning point for Huawei and China-U.S. relations

38:09 – Ren Zhengfei’s media campaign and narrative shift after the Meng affair

40:44 – Huawei’s involvement in Xinjiang’s surveillance 

43:09 – Huawei’s success in shaping 5G standards despite global pushback

46:27 – The “Huawei index”: tracking Chinese investment abroad through Huawei’s market presence

48:35 – Huawei’s push into chip development amid sanctions: real progress or just hype?

52:23 – Huawei: a proxy, a leading or lagging indicator, or just a bellwether?

54:11 – Huawei’s “too big to fail” status: benefits and risks amid U.S. government pressure

56:29 – Huawei’s perspective on the backlash from sanctions

58:19 – Concluding question: about Huawei’s ownership and governance

Paying it forward: Raffaele Huang at The Wall Street Journal

Recommendations: 

Eva: The Party's Interests Come First by Joseph Torigian; Yang Jie at The Wall Street Journal; Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Kaiser: Adolescence on Netflix; Kyle Chan's high-capacity.com 

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The Sinica Network proudly presents a new podcast: China Talking Points, featuring Kaiser Kuo (host of the Sinica Podcast), Eric Olander (host of the China-Global South Podcast and China In Africa Podcast) and Andrew Polk, co-founder of Trivium China and host of its podcast. We'll be joined regularly by Lizzi Lee, Fellow on Chinese Economy at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s (ASPI) Center for China Analysis. Tune in live every other week for unscripted thoughts on the major China-related news of the week.

This week, we focused on the truce in the trade war that Donald Trump launched with the so-called "Liberation Day" tariffs of April 9. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer met with top Chinese trade negotiator He Lifeng and his team in Geneva over the weekend, and we look at what came out of those meetings and what we can expect to happen next. We also discussed the dogfight that took place between India and Pakistan last week, in which the Pakistani air force claims to have downed as many as five Indian planes, significant for China because the Pakistani planes were Chinese-made J10-C fighters. Eric, who wrote about the Chinese reaction to this and offered his take on the reasons for their success, managed to incur a lot of online Indian wrath — an occupational hazard — but presents a compelling case for why the fully integrated Chinese military systems gave Pakistan the edge.

Watch us live on YouTube starting May 28th. Check out the new Sinica Network YouTube channel here!

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I had scheduled a show to record while I was in Providence last week, but it fell through and had to be rescheduled, so please give this talk I delivered at Carnegie Mellon last month a listen!

Hope you enjoy.

Kaiser

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This week on Sinica, I chat with veteran Wall Street Journal reporter Bob Davis, who has covered the U.S.-China relationship for decades. He recently published a new book called Broken Engagement, which consists of interviews with U.S. policymakers who were instrumental in shaping American policy toward China from the George H.W. Bush administration through the Biden administration. It's an eye-opening look at the individuals who fought for — and against — engagement with China.

2:58 – Bob’s thoughts on engagement: whether it was doomed from the start, when and why there was a shift, people’s different aspirations for it and retrospective positioning, and whether it could have a transformative effect  

13:28 – The Nancy Pelosi interview: her approach, her Taiwan visit, and her critique of capitulation to business interests

17:18 – Bob’s interviews with Charlene Barshefsky, Lawrence Summers, and Bob Zoellick: the WTO accession, the China shock, Zoellick’s “responsible stakeholder” concept, and diplomacy as an ongoing process 

27:24 – The Robert Gates interview: security-focused engagement, and his shift to realism 

31:14 – Misreading Xi Jinping

34:42 – Bob’s interviews with Stephen Hadley and Ash Carter regarding the South China Sea 

39:19 – The Matt Pottinger interview: his view on China and how COVID changed everything 

46:14 – Michael Rogers’ interview: cyber espionage and cyber policy 

51:25 – Robert O’Brien’s interview: the “reverse Kissinger” and Taiwan 

54:14 – Bob’s interview with Kurt Campbell: his famous Foreign Affairs essay, differentiating between decoupling and de-risking, and technology export restrictions and trade deals 

59:28 – The Rahm Emanuel interview: his response to wolf warrior diplomacy

1:01:57 – Bob’s takeaways: the long-term vision of engagement, introspective interviewees, and his own increased pessimism 

Paying It Forward: Lingling Wei at The Wall Street Journal; Eva Dou at The Washington Post and her book House of Huawei: The Secret History of China’s Most Powerful Company; and Katrina Northrop at The Washington Post 

Recommendations: 

Bob: The TV series Derry Girls (2018-2022) and Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000-2024); and Margaret O’Farrell’s novels, including Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait 

Kaiser: The BBC and Masterpiece series Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light 

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This week on Sinica, I chat with SCMP Senior Europe Correspondent Finbarr Bermingham, who joins from Brussels where he's been covering the EU-China relationship in fantastic depth and with great insight.

3:17 – EU-China relations in early 2025: the effect of the 2021 sanctions, who advocated for engagement versus confrontation with China, and the importance of the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI)

13:49 – How Brussels initially reacted to the rupture in the transatlantic alliance 

17:14 – China’s so-called charm offensive 

21:03 – The idea of de-risking from Washington 

23:10 – The impact of the Oval Office meeting with Zelensky 

24:55 – Europe’s dual-track approach with China and shift toward pragmatism 

29:35 – National interests versus EU unity regarding Chinese investment, and whether Brussels could extract concessions 

35:20 – Brussels’ worry over Trump cutting a deal with China 

38:06 – Possible signs of China’s flexibility on different issues

40:25 – The lifting of the sanctions on European parliamentarians 

42:21 – The decrease in calls for values-based diplomacy, and whether securitization is happening in Europe

47:05 – How the EU might address tensions over China’s industrial overcapacity 

50:17 – The possible future of EU-China relations, and whether the transatlantic relationship could go back to normal

55:50 – The knee-jerk element of looking past Europe

Paying It Forward: Ji Siqi at SCMP, Cissy Zhou at Nikkei, and Kinling Lo and Viola Zhou at Rest of World

Recommendations:

Finbarr: The Stakeknife podcast series; Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe; and the 20th anniversary edition of Wilco’s album, A Ghost Is Born 

Kaiser: The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs by Marc David Baer 

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This week on Sinica, in a show recorded at the University of Pittsburgh, I speak with Benno Weiner, Associate Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University, about how China's policy toward its minority nationalities (or minzu) have shifted from their older, Soviet-inspired form to the policies of assimilation we now see.

2:29 – How the so-called second-generation minzu policy evolved, and its shift away from the first-generation policy

17:15 – China’s language policy, comparisons to other historical cases, and the difficulty in striking a balance between language autonomy and the state interest of economic equality

25:26 – Debating the assumption of Uyghur forced labor 

28:20 – How the minzu policy shift is driven by economic and political stability concerns 

30:07 – The limited ability of minzus to make themselves heard

32:01 – The difficulty of advocacy in the face of accusations of U.S. hypocrisy 

37:30 – Han guilt as a galvanizing idea 

40:21 – Whether the shift in minzu policy is reversible, and the effect of external pressure 

43:46 – Why Xinjiang has received greater global attention than other places 

45:50 – How future historians may view minzu policy under Xi Jinping

Paying It Forward: Guldana Salimjan, at the University of Toronto 

Recommendations:

Benno: The Red Wind Howls by Tsering Döndrup, translated by Christopher Peacock

Kaiser: The Six: The Untold Story of the Titanic’s Chinese Survivors by Steven Schwankert

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This week on the Sinica Podcast, I chat with Yawei Liu, Senior Advisor for China at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia, and Yukon Huang, former China country head of the World Bank and now Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The show was taped live at the 2025 Columbia China Summit at Columbia University, put on by the Columbia University Greater China Society, on April 13,. Special thanks to them for inviting us to attend!

3:53 – Columbia University’s history with China 

7:52 – How Beijing views the current trade war 

11:32 – Yawei’s idea of “the clash of misperceptions”

18:18 – The actual origins of America’s trade deficits and China’s trade surpluses 

23:14 – How the inevitable talk between Trump and Xi Jinping may play out

32:04 – Sinophobia versus changing attitudes toward China 

35:43 – How the current trade war is related to innovation in China 

45:31 – How we can wage peace 

Paying It Forward: Nicholas Zeller and his Substack newsletter, The U.S.-China Perception Monitor

Recommendations:

Yawei: Americans in China: Encounters with the People’s Republic ed. by Terry Lautz, and Chinese Encounters with America: Journeys That Shaped the Future of China ed. by Terry Lautz and Deborah Davis

Yukon: David Brooks’ April 2022 article, “The End of Globalization: The Dominance of Global Cultural Wars” 

Kaiser: The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918-1933 by Frank McDonough 

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