Juliet, Erik, and guest Tim Ruhlig discuss technical standards, China’s growth in technical industries and its increasing influence in leading and setting standards, and the new geopolitics of technical standardization and interdependence.

Tim Ruhlig is a senior fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations, where he researches Europe-China relations, German-China relations, Hong Kong politics, and Chinese foreign industrial policy, He is the founder of the Digital Power China (DPC) Research Consortium, which brings together European engineers and Chinese scholars to carry out policy-relevant research on the PRC’s growing digital technology footprint and its implications for Europe.

Recommendations:

Tim:

•  The Emperor’s New Road: China and the Project of the Century, Jonathan Hillman (2020)
• U.S.-Taiwan Relations: Will China's Challenge Lead to a Crisis? Bonnie Glaser, Ryan Hass, Richard Bush (2023)
• Film: “To Life” Zhang Yi Mou (1994)
• Wildland: The Making of America's Fury, Evan Osnos (2021)

Erik: 

• "Barbie Heimer"—Barbie (2023) and Oppenheimer (2023) movies on the same day (recommendation is Barbie is the better movie)

Juliet:

• “Even China Isn’t Convinced It Can Replace the U.S.” Jessia Chen Weiss (2023)

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Before the shovels hit the dirt, before a developer gets construction permits, before an MOU is signed, there exists a huge process of project feasibility, planning, and pre-approval. That process is incredibly complex and costly, but a new Multilateral Cooperation Center for Development Finance (MCDF) has been established to help. Shuang Liu joins Juliet and Erik on this episode to discuss how this might help kick start and expand the pipeline of more sustainable projects, and her broader goals in working at the World Resources Institute.

Shuang Liu is the China Finance Director and Acting Director at the Sustainable Finance Center at the World Resources Institute. She leads the Center's work on China finance and the Belt and Road Initiative, and works with governments, private financial institutions, NGOs, and other partners to enhance the regulatory framework and provide enabling conditions to shift China's investment to sustainable finance. She holds a master's degree in environmental and resource economics from University College London and a bachelor's in economics from Peking University.

Her article on the Panda Paw Dragon Claw blog is entitled, "Can a Chinese-led multilateral initiative help unlock more sustainable infrastructure in the Global South?"

Recommendations:

Shuang:

• An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn (2018)

Juliet:

• Try to bike more in the summer, or pick up any activity that is good for both yourself and the planet!

Erik:

• Outsourcing Repression episode of the Pekingology podcast with Lynette H. Ong and host Jude Blanchette 
• Outsourcing Repression: Everyday State Power in Contemporary China by Lynette H. Ong (2022)

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Juliet chats with Laetitia Tran Ngoc about the state of China-Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) relations, the way people in the DRC view China and the U.S., outside interest in critical minerals mining in the DRC, and the domestic situation of the DRC that acts as a destabilizing factor to it all. 

Her article in South China Morning Post is here: "Mineral-rich central Africa become focal point in US-China tug of war"

Laetitia Tran Ngoc is a freelance journalist and consultant specializing in government communications, with extensive experience in advising diplomatic institutions in their strategic relationship with the European Union.  Her writing focuses on central and east Africa and China-Africa relations. She previously worked as a research officer at the Embassy of Ethiopia in Brussels and at the Taipei Representative Office to the EU and Belgium. She has master’s degrees in International Relations and Chinese Language and Culture from the Free University of Brussels. 

Recommendations:

Laetitia:

• Sur les ailes du dragon: Voyages entre l'Afrique et la Chine (On the Wings of the Dragon) by Lieve Joris (2014)

Juliet:

• The Conservation Revolution: Radical Ideas for Saving Nature Beyond the Anthropocene by Bram Büscher and Robert Fletcher (2020)
• Fighting Fire and Fascism in the American West in Dissent Magazine, by Patrick Bigger and Sara Nelson (2023)

Thanks as always for excellent editing by Taili Ni!

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Alessandro (Ale) Rippa joins Juliet and Erik on the podcast to talk about how he uses China's borderlands as a starting point to understand the Chinese state, global engagements like the Belt and Road Initiative, and Chinese development. They discuss Ale's experiences working in China's border regions in Xinjiang and Yunnan, how borders are zones of connection and disconnection, China's historical support for the Communist Party of Burma, and much more.

Alessandro Rippa is associate professor at the University of Oslo's Department of Social Anthropology. His research centers on China's borderlands as lenses for studying infrastructure, global circulations, and the environment. He is PI of a new ERC Starting Grant project entitled, "Amber Worlds: A Geological Anthropology for the Anthropocene". 

Featured work: 

• "Imagined borderlands: Terrain, technology and trade in the making and managing of the China-Myanmar border." 2022. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography .
• "Borderland Infrastructures: Trade, Development, and Control in Western China." 

Recommendations:

Ale:

• Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia edited by Max Hirsh and Till Mostowlansky (2023)
• Keep an eye out for the upcoming special issue of The China Quarterly on Chinese infrastructure

Erik:

• Scribd.com for eBooks and audiobooks
• Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language by Amanda Montell (2020)
• Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell (2021)

Juliet:

• Fractured China: How State Transformation is Shaping China's Rise by Lee Jones and Shahar Hameiri (2021)
• Sinica Podcast: Sinica at the Association for Asian Studies Conference, Boston 2023: Capsule interviews

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May Farid and Hui Li drop by the podcast to talk about INGOs, or international non-governmental organizations, and specifically how their relationship with China is shifting as China goes global.  The conversation focuses on their article "International NGOs as intermediaries in China's 'going out' strategy."  

May Farid is a political scientist studying civil society, policy and development in contemporary China and beyond. She is a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Center on China's Economy and Institutions and a Lecturer at the University of Hong Kong. She holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford and has worked extensively in the NGO sector in China, as well as a researcher with China's leading policy think tank.

Hui Li is an Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong. Her research focuses on public and nonprofit management, organization theory, and civic engagement. In collaboration with a team of researchers, she studies NGOs and environmental governance in authoritarian China. In addition, she works closely with colleagues from the Civic Engagement Initiative at USC and studies neighborhood councils and civic engagement in Los Angeles.

Recommendations:

Hui: 

• Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics by Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink 

May:

• Principled instrumentalism: a theory of transnational NGO behaviour by George E. Mitchell and Hans Peter Schmitz
• Beyond the Boomerang: From Transnational Advocacy Networks to Transcalar Advocacy in International Politics edited by Christopher L. Pallas and Elizabeth A. Bloodgood 
• Leutert, Wendy, Elizabeth Plantan and Austin Strange. "Puzzling Partnerships: Overseas Infrastructure Development by Chinese State-Owned Enterprises and Humanitarian Organizations". 2022.

Erik:

• Two albums by Lingua Ignota
  • Sinner Get Ready 
  • Caligula
• RRR film 

Juliet:

• Follow Yige Dong, assistant professor of global gender and sexuality studies at the University at Buffalo
• Dong, Yige. The Dilemma of Foxconn Moms: Social Reproduction and the Rise of 'Gig Manufacturing' in China. 2022.

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Juliet is joined by friends and fellow researchers Jesse Rodenbiker and Tyler Harlan to discuss their recent experiences at the COP15 of the Conference on Biological Diversity, China's growing environmental leadership, and China's domestic environmental policies and their impact on BRI initiatives and overseas engagements. Jesse starts off the conversation with some background on China's approach to environmental governance - based on his articles "Making Ecology Developmental: China's Environmental Sciences and Green Modernization in Global Context,"  "Green silk roads, partner state development, and environmental governance," and his upcoming book "Ecological States: Politics of Science and Nature in Urbanizing China."

Jesse Rodenbiker is an Associate Research Scholar at Princeton University with the Center on Contemporary China and an Assistant Teaching Professor of Geography at Rutgers University. He is also currently a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, and a China Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is a human-environment geographer and interdisciplinary social scientist focusing on environmental governance, urbanization, and social inequality in China and globally.

Tyler Harlan is an Assistant Professor of Urban and Environmental Studies at Loyola Marymount University. His research focuses on the political economy and uneven socio-environmental impacts of China's green development transformation and the implications of this transformation for other industrializing countries.

Juliet Lu is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in the Department of Forest Resources Management and the School of Public Policy & Global Affairs. 
 
Recommendations:

Jesse:

• Maoism: A Global History by Julia Lovell
• Rosewood by Annah Lake Zhu 

Tyler:

• Certifying China by Yixian Sun
• China and the global politics of nature-based solutions in Environmental Science & Policy  (2022) by Jeffrey Qi (former BRI Pod episode!) and Peter Dauvergne
• China's rising influence on climate governance: Forging a path for the global South in Global Environmental Change (2022) by Jeffrey Qi and Peter Dauvergne

Juliet:

• Check out the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) (where Jeffrey Qi incidentally works ;) for interesting analysis on the Convention on Biological Diversity and China. 

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Kyle Chan visits the Belt and Road Podcast to talk about state capacity in railway bureaucracies in China and India, his research collected while riding trains through the two countries, the incredibly mundane naming of Chinese companies, and much more. This episode discusses Kyle's research published in two articles:  Inside China's state-owned enterprises: Managed competition through a multi-level structure (2022) and The organizational roots of state capacity: Comparing railway bureaucracies in China and India (2022).

Kyle Chan is a PhD student in sociology at Princeton University, where his research focuses on bureaucracy and infrastructure development in China and India. He spent two years doing fieldwork in both countries looking at railway development, including that of China's high-speed rail system.

Recommendations:

Kyle:

• The Chinese Mayor (2015 documentary)
• Powerless (2014 documentary)

Erik:

• Rühlig, Tim. Chinese Influence through technical standardization power (2022).
• Tár (2022 film)

Juliet:

• High Stakes: China's Leadership in Global Biodiversity Governance by Jesse Rodenbiker in the New Security Beat.
• Coverage of the Convention on Biological Diversity in China Dialogue

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Juliet and Erik are joined by Maria Repnikova to talk about her book, "Chinese soft power," Confucius Institutes, China's love for spectacle, and of course, how all this and more applies to the Belt and Road. What is soft power? How is China doing when it comes to soft power projection around the world? Listen to find out!

Maria Repnikova is the Director of the Center for Global Information Studies and an Assistant Professor in Global Communication at Georgia State University. She is a scholar of global communication, with a comparative focus on China and Russia. Her research examines the processes of political resistance and persuasion in illiberal political contexts, drawing on ethnographic research in the field. Dr. Repnikova holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She speaks fluent Mandarin, Russian and Spanish. Her book, Media Politics in China: Improvising Power under Authoritarianism examines participatory communications channels under an authoritarian regime through the relationship between China's critical journalists and the one-party state in the past decade. 

Recommendations:
Maria:

• Baykurt, Burcu and Victoria de Grazia (ed.) Soft-Power Internationalism: Competing for Cultural Influence in the 21st-Century Global Order (2021).

Erik:

• Pekingology Podcast from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) with Jude Blanchette, specifically these two episodes:
  • Terror Capitalism with Darren Byler 
  • Localized Bargaining with Xiao Ma
• The Rehearsal, Nathan Fielder's new docu-comedy series on HBO

Juliet:

• Qi, Jeffrey and Peter Dauvergne. China and the global politics of nature-based solutions. Environmental Science and Policy (2022).

*Bonus: The Belt and Road Sing Along Music Video*

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Keren Zhu talked with us about her research on the socioeconomic impacts of the Belt and Road, specifically with regard to Kenya's Standard Gauge Railway (SGR). She provides background and analysis on the SGR,  she and Eric discuss their personal experiences riding the railway, and more! Much of the conversation centers around Keren's recent work with co-authors Ben Mwangi and Lynn Hu, published in the article Socioeconomic impact of China's infrastructure-led growth model in Africa: A case study of the Kenyan Standard Gauge Railway (2022). We also draw on her piece, "Addressing the Impact Evaluation Gaps in Belt and Road Initiative Projects in Africa."

Keren Zhu is a Global China Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Boston University Global Development Policy Center. She holds a Ph.D. in Policy Analysis from the Pardee RAND Graduate School, and an M.Sc. in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on the BRI, global infrastructure, international development, and program evaluation. 

Recommendations:

Erik:

• Chess.com
• Heathcliff comics by George Gately

Keren:

• Modernizing America's Electricity Infrastructure by Mason Willrich (2017)
• Pairing Shakespeare with contemporary issues and authors (Keren's current pairing: Shakespeare's Othello with Born in Blackness by Howard French)

Juliet:

• Try to drive your car less and learn to embrace the pace change that brings you!

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Jeffrey Qi discusses China's growing role in high-level, high-stakes global climate governance. We discuss research Jeffrey conducted as a master's student in political science at the University of British Columbia and the resulting article he wrote with his advisor Peter Dauvergne, China's rising influence on climate governance: Forging a path for the global South (2021), which can be found here.

Jeffrey Qi is a policy analyst at the International Institute for Sustainable Development's Resilience Program (IISD). Based in Vancouver, he provides research, project management, and communication support with a focus on national adaptation planning (NAP) processes, ecosystem-based adaptation, and multilateral agreements. He works on supporting developing countries’ national adaptation planning processes and the implementation of the Paris Agreement and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. 

Recommendations:

Jeffrey:

• China's Environmental Foreign Relations by Heidi Wang-Kaeding (2021)
• Analysis: Nine key moments that changed China's mind about climate change by Jianqiang Liu from Carbon Brief (2021)
• Competing narratives of nature-based solutions: Leveraging the power of nature or dangerous distraction? by Marina Stavroula Melanidis and Shannon Hagerman (2022)

Erik:

• If you get the chance to go on a safari, take it!
• Same goes for the Chinese-built SGR railway in Kenya

Juliet:

• Travelling with Big Brother: A Reporter's Junket in China by Solomon Elusoji (2019)

Thanks for listening!

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