The Old Reorient! Podcast

Published October 31, 2021

Robert has had a varied career spanning health and fitness, consultancy, and academia. Currently he works in a regional director role for one of the largest fitness solutions providers in the world. He has a BSc in Sports Science and Management from Brunel University and an MBA from the University of Lincoln. He did his doctoral studies in marketing at a university in Hong Kong. 

He is the author of two books: Marketing Professional Services in Asia (Lexis Nexis, 2009), which was called one of the most indigenous books on Asian marketing by Professor Oliver Yau (Chair Professor of Marketing at City University HK) and Developing a Profitable Practice in Asia (Ark Group, 2010). He has also published over 50 articles in various newspapers and magazines on the topics of strategy, marketing, and leadership. He has spoken at numerous events as a keynote speaker or panelist around Asia. 

Robert is a keen sportsman having played professional football. He still hits the gym five times a week and plays rugby. Recorded June 11, 2021.

Show notes:

• 07:26 “24 hour fitness hits a wellness culture.”
• 08:18 “What happens when Tai Chi meets HIIT?”
• 10:04 “A largely rural population has no need for gyms.”
• 11:03 “COVID has accelerated the move from fitness to wellness worldwide.”
• 13:28 “Have the leisure classes moved on from the gym?”
• 14:58 “Who is the Asian gym bunny?”
• 15:49 “Grandma and Grandpa hit the gym.”
• 17:30 “How to keep gym goers motivated beyond the first six months.”
• 20:25 “Adapting gyms to local cultural environments in Asia.”
• 22:22 “Group classes are especially popular in a collectivist society.”
• 22:50 “There is unlikely to ever be an Asian Jane Fonda.”
• 27:30 “Catering to a tech-forward customer base, Asian gym equipment companies are ahead of their American counterparts when it comes to innovation.”
• 29:46 “A bodybuilder turned academic turned entrepreneur has a unique perspective on narcissism vs. collectivism within the fitness industry.”
• 30:32 “Switching out fantasy for realistic expectations is key to a wellness approach”
• 36:46 “Virtual fitness may not be here to stay.”
• 40:42 “Why all the international fitness operators failed in China.”
• 44:12 “Gym equipment companies can succeed in Asia where gym operators failed.”
• 55:29 “If wellness is becoming an ecosystem, does the fitness club just happened to be one of the spokes of that ecosystem? Or does it become the hub?”

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Published October 17, 2021

As a journalist in the 1990s based in Moscow, Jeff Lilley wrote about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of 15 independent republics. He covered Russia's relations with Asia and reported from three Olympics Games. His first book, China Hands: Nine Decades of Adventure, Espionage and Diplomacy (Public Affairs, 2004) presents a fascinating portrait of an American family’s engagement with Asia in the 20th century. Lilley moved to Central Asia in 2004. During a three-year posting in Kyrgyzstan, he started reading the works of Chinghiz Aitmatov, slept in yurts, drank fermented mare’s milk and hiked in the country’s beautiful mountains. That led to his second book, completed over ten years as he worked in the field of democracy and governance support in Washington, DC and the Middle East. Have the Mountains Fallen? Two Journeys of Loss and Redemption in the Cold War was published by Indiana University Press in 2018. Jeff works as Director of Monitoring and Evaluation for American Councils for International Education, based in Washington, DC. Recorded July 2, 2021

Show Notes:

• 03:00 “I found out my dad was a CIA agent when I was 16.”
• 05:08 “I was a child of the Cold War.”
• 10:13 A privileged expatriate childhood in the German colony of Qingdao in prewar China
• 11:44 The desire to birth a modern China through an ideology that was completely alien and antagonistic to the American way.
• 13:55 A father who fought the spread of communism throughout Southeast Asia through a series of covert operations.
• 16:30 A front row seat to the US-China rapprochement and a belief that the best way to deal with China was to engage with China.
• 18:33 Why is it that democracy in China never followed the trajectory that it did in Korea during Amb. James R. Lilley’s tenure?
• 20:21 One of the best American accounts of the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989
• 24:19 On being a junior high school waiter at a Chevy Chase luncheon with senior Chinese leadership and George H. W. Bush
• 27:44 The classic Yale gentleman
• 35:30 There are more students of English in Russia than there are of Russian in the United States
• 39:00 Covering Kyrgyz acrobats for Ringling, Barnum and Bailey brothers
• 45:25 Chinghiz Aitmatov: one of the most prominent non-Russian authors in the Soviet Union
• 51:32 The Soviet Union wasn’t all bad
• 58:22 The Islamist threat in post-Soviet Central Asia
• 1:02:33 The borders of post-Soviet Central Asia are as random and problematic as the borders in the post-colonial Middle East
• 1:06:20 The bright, smart and plugged-in younger generation of Central Asia

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Published October 3, 2021

Valerie Hansen teaches Chinese and world history at Yale, where she is professor of history. She is the author, most recently, of The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World and Globalization Began. In the course of writing The Year 1000, she traveled to some twenty different countries and was a visiting scholar at Xiamen University in China, University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, and the Collège de France in Paris.

Having lived in China for six plus years, Valerie has visited at least 300 temples, climbed the Great Wall multiple times (once during a lightning storm), and posed next to the Terracotta Warriors eleven times. (All this in the company of her husband and three children.)

Her other books include: The Silk Road: A New History, The Open Empire: A History of China to 1800, Negotiating Daily Life in Traditional China, Changing Gods in Medieval China, 1127-1279, and Voyages in World History (co-authored with Kenneth R. Curtis). Recorded April 8, 2021.

Show Notes

02:00 When the future feels especially unpredictable, the study of history can provide guidance

04:20 How to get a job with a PhD in history

05:40 Why is Chinese so difficult?

12:02 How to study Chinese history when your government won't let you go to China

16:29 If you want to study medieval Chinese history you need to speak Japanese

20:47 The true history of China according to the Japanese

22:54 Japan is to Tang China as America is to Tudor England

25:50 Why the dynastic paradigm may not be the most helpful to the historian of China

29:10 Maybe we should stop using the word China altogether

31:50 A language is a dialect with an army

34:48 The many different Chinas

37:57 The Chinese have always been selectively cosmopolitan

44:14 The farther back you go in the past, the less of the role of modern ideology and the more freedom accorded the historian

48:07 On being a non-Chinese historian of China

51:04 Does ancient Chinese history provide a framework for understanding China's great power ambitions today?

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Published 19 September, 2021

Michael C. Horowitz is Director of the Perry World House and Richard Perry Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of The Diffusion of Military Power: Causes and Consequences for International Politics (Princeton University Press, 2010) and Why Leaders Fight (Cambridge University Press, 2015). He won the 2017 Karl Deutsch Award given by the International Studies Association for early career contributions to the fields of international relations and peace research. He has published in a wide array of peer reviewed journals and popular outlets. His research interests include the intersection of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics with global politics, military innovation, the role of leaders in international politics, and geopolitical forecasting methodology. Professor Horowitz previously worked for the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy in the Department of Defense. He is affiliated with the Center for a New American Security, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Professor Horowitz received his Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University and his B.A. in political science from Emory University.  Recorded 7 April, 2021.

Show Notes

01: 17 MCH on how the invasion of Iraq kicked off renewed academic interest in international relations

04:24 MCH on how invasion is easy compared to rebuilding a nation

08:02 MCH on the challenge in matching national interest to what the American people will support

10:39 MCH on weighing the need to pull out troops against the risk of a place like Afghanistan becoming a haven for terrorist groups.

12:24 MCH on the tension between the political administration and career civil servants in US foreign policy

14:36 MCH on how new administrations change their policy positions once they come into power because of access to better information

18:54 MCH on bipartisan agreement on the need for a pivot to the Indo-Pacific that was more than merely symbolic

26:05 MCH on the partisanship that characterized the debate around the JCPO/ Iran nuclear deal

38:20 MCH on the Abraham Accords

42:39 MCH on the need for free societies to work together

45:08 MCH on the role of advancements in technology in ensuring the United States’ continued dominance

48:31 MCH on the role of a space mission in military strategy

52:28 MCH on why he continues to be pro-democracy and pro- the United States

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Published September 6, 2021

Jonathan Medved is a serial entrepreneur and according to the Washington Post (2007) "one of Israel's leading high-tech venture capitalists". In the 2008 NY Times Supplement "Israel at 60," Medved was named one of the top 10 most influential Americans who have impacted Israel.

Medved is the founder and CEO of OurCrowd, the leading global equity crowdfunding platform for accredited investors and angels. OurCrowd has $1.7B in commitments and has made investments in more than 240 companies, in 25 funds and has seen 46 exits since its launch in February 2013. OurCrowd exits include: Jump Bikes sold to Uber, Briefcam sold to Canon, Argus sold to Continental, Crosswise sold to Oracle, and Replay sold to Intel. Bloomberg Businessweek said in the May 7, 2015 edition that "OurCrowd is hands down the most successful equity-crowdfunding platform in the world right now." The Street.com described OurCrowd as "Crowdfunding for Real Investors."

Prior to OurCrowd, Medved was the co-founder and CEO of Vringo (Nasdaq:VRNG) and the co-founder and General Partner of Israel Seed Partners, with $262M under management. Recorded April 2, 2021.

Show Notes

01:15 JM on his educational and career path and what attracted him to Israel

03:14 JM on the early days of VC in Israel

06:16 JM on how he started OurCrowd

08:55 JM on the role played by venture investments in a portfolio

11:45 JM on OurCrowd’s star performers, including Beyond Meat

16:14 JM on the role that Asian investment has played in the development of the Israeli startup ecosystem

23:36 JM on seeing Israel as part of Asia and the economic implications of the Abraham Accords

24:40 JM on an emerging perception of the Middle East beyond conflict and as an economic powerhouse in its own right

26:51 JM on how the Middle East is the bright spot on the economic horizon and OurCrowd’s moves to take advantage of this growth opportunity

28:51 JM on how the changes in the Middle East appear to be coming from the bottom up as well as top down

31:36 JM on the common heritage of Israelis and Arabs

34:04 JM on how the business culture of the Middle East differs from that in the West

37:50 JM on the small country advantage

41:33 JM on Israel as a leader in agricultural technology

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Published August 25, 2021

Jeanne Lim is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of beingAI, a transmedia AI company creating AI beings™ that build long-term engagement and trust with digital-native consumers anywhere, anytime, on any device and media platform. Jeanne is an angel investor and advisor of several startups, and a board member of Kami Intelligence, a conversational AI company.

Jeanne has over 25 years of experience in business management and technology marketing. She is the former CEO and CMO of Hanson Robotics, the creator of Sophia the robot, and held marketing leadership roles at Dell, Cisco, Danaher, and Apple, where she was the product and business manager responsible for launching Apple’s most groundbreaking products in the region. She started her career as a Group Management Trainee at John Swire & Sons.

Jeanne is a Founder and Director of Nama Institute, a not-for-profit organization creating solutions to gamify the learning of wisdom. She is also a Volunteer and Director of Himalayan Consensus Institute, an NGO involved in social enterprise development and climate protection.  

Jeanne has a Ph.D. in integrated and holistic health, an MBA degree from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and a BA degree in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. Recorded 20 August, 2021. .

Show Notes:

03:02 JL on her first job and her subsequent move to Apple.

08:26 JL on how she came to appreciate the centrality of the user experience during her years at Apple

09:20 JL on Apple's most valuable asset, its loyal fanbase

11:26 JL on her introduction to yoga, the book that caused a life-changing epiphany and studying energy medicine in Sausalito

16:58 JL on how, upon her return to the corporate world, her colleagues were more open to the wisdom she gained from her time away because of her corporate background

20:10 JL on the process behind Sophia the robot's very human-like interface

23:59 JL on Sophia's ability to empathize

26:35 JL on Sophia's curated machine learning, leading to higher levels of empathy

27:25 JL on Sophia's first creative act as an artist

28:04 JL on her new company Being AI, a new generation of computer user interface and targeting the digital natives of Gen Z

31:36 JL on how to create morally interactive AI characters, such as ZD, with instructive backstories

43:03 JL on a more rational way to think about AI and its place in our lives

47:51 JL on the Chinese social credit system and whether there are lessons in there for the rest of us

54:19 JL on how we might measure the life of an AI Being: by productivity? by its ability to inspire? by its ability to entire into meaningful human relationships?

58:54 JL on where to draw the line on the inexorable march of technology

1:07:11 JL on the need for checks and balances on the power of big tech

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Published 22 August, 2021

David Zweig (Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1983) is Professor Emeritus, Division of Social Science, HKUST and Director, Transnational China Consulting Limited. He is an Adjunct Professor, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, National University of Defence Technology, Changsha, Hunan, and Vice-President of the Center on China’s Globalization (Beijing). He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University in 1984-86. He has lived in Hong Kong since 1996 and was a fulltime faculty member at HKUST for 25 years. Dr. Zweig studied in Beijing in 1974-1976 and did field research in rural China in 1980-1981 and 1986. In 1991-92 and 1997, he did field research on China’s “opening to the outside world.” Since 1991, he has surveyed and interviewed academics, scientists, entrepreneurs, and employees who returned from studying abroad, and Mainland-born Chinese working overseas. In June 2012, he gave Li Yuanchao, then head of the Organization Department of the Chinese Communist Party, a critical evaluation of the CCP’s Thousand Talents Plan. He is the author or editor of ten books, including Internationalizing China: domestic interests and global linkages (2002) and Sino-U.S. Energy Triangles: Resource Diplomacy under Hegemony (2016). “’The best are yet to come’: State programs, domestic resistance and reverse migration of high-level talent to China,” appeared in the Journal of Contemporary China (Sept. 2020), and in May 2020, his report, America Challenges China’s National Talent Programs (with Kang Siqin), was published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. He is a Contributing Writer to the South China Morning Post. Recorded 13 May, 2021.

Show Notes:

• 05:08 DZ on his days as an aspiring revolutionary at Beijing University during the 1970s
• 07:13 DZ on basketball and the Gang of Four
• 10:17 DZ on the first Tiananmen Square protest
• 16:05 DZ on the second Tiananmen Square protest
• 19:22 DZ on how the Chinese have always wanted to find a way to get back to their glory days
• 23:00 DZ on how China is now ready to share the "Chinese model" with the world
• 27:50 DZ on the different models of economic development that China experimented with during Mao
• 29:37 DZ on the different models of economic development that China experimented with during Deng
• 34:00 DZ on some of the key tensions in the Chinese model
• 36:30 DZ on the Xi Jinping model of development
• 41:06 DZ on why so many China observers got it wrong and whether things could have been done differently
• 46:45 DZ on China's undemocratic capitalism
• 51:54 DZ on the political and economic leanings of the real China
• 59:29 DZ on the difference between India's and China's treatment of reverse migrant entrepreneurs
• 1:07 DZ on what the West can learn from China

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Published July 25, 2021

Author Dori Jones Yang is a former foreign correspondent in Asia. Dori grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, the daughter of a bookseller. At Princeton, she majored in history but spent most of her waking hours at the college newspaper, The Daily Princetonian. Eager to explore the world, she taught English in Singapore for two years, where she plunged into the study of Chinese. She traveled all over Asia on a shoestring and returned home through Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, six months before the Shah fell. To deepen her understanding of Asia, she earned a master’s at Johns Hopkins in international studies, with a focus on China.

She began her career just as Washington and Beijing established diplomatic relations. BusinessWeek offered her dream job: foreign correspondent in Hong Kong. The youngest of the magazine’s foreign bureau chiefs, she covered the negotiations over Hong Kong’s future, the opening of China, and the Tiananmen Square crisis in Beijing. During eight years there, she met and married a Chinese man, Paul Yang, and they had a daughter, Emily. She tells the full story of those amazing years in her memoir, When the Red Gates Opened, publication date September 22, 2020. Disheartened by the Tiananmen crackdown, she moved to Seattle in 1990, where she covered Northwest companies for Business Week and later worked for U.S. News & World Report, covering Silicon Valley. Recorded May 14, 2021.

Shownotes:

03:05 DY on how her upbringing was very different from the life she later chose to lead.

03:42 DY on how a love for foreign languages led her to an international career.

05:33 DY on having to study Mandarin in Singapore as China was closed to Americans.

07:50 DY on witnessing Deng Xiaoping’s first visit to Washington D.C.

08:47 DY on the excitement in the American business community when the US began to normalize relations with China.

11:01 DY on just how communist life in China was in the 1980s.

13:34 DY on shopping for unmentionables in communist China when her Chinese still wasn’t that good.

16:56 DY on witnessing the birth of private enterprise in China.

20:24 DY on how every aspiring capitalist country needs a hyper-capitalist incubator city like Hong Kong.

22:12 DY on the difference between American and Chinese views on capitalism.

24:08 DY on how Reagan-era capitalism shaped her outlook.

26:41 DY on having repeated front row seats to history.

29:03 DY on how so many observers thought Tiananmen would put an end to the Chinese experiment with capitalism.

31:20 DY on the extremely difficult choices that Deng had to make at Tiananmen.

36:38 DY on what it was like to marry into a Chinese family.   

41:37 DY on assertive Chinese women playing against western stereotypes.

45:20 DY on the secret to making cross-cultural marriages work.

50:04 DY on how terrifying it was the break the news of her decision to her parents in Ohio.

54:30 DY on her other publishing projects, both past and upcoming.

1:04:22 DY and JF on the parallels between their lives.

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Dr. Hong Tang is the Chief Medical Officer and co-founder of OnQuality Pharmaceuticals, a targeted cancer supportive care company developing medications to address specific side effects and improve the quality of life for patients receiving anti-cancer medications, with operations in Seattle and Shanghai.

Dr. Tang brings to this position a wealth of medical and pharmaceutical experience. From 2017 to 2019, she held executive positions at Juno Therapeutics, an American biopharmaceutical company with a focus on CAR-T therapy and acquired by Celgene in 2018, and Dendreon, a Seattle-based company that develops personalized immunotherapy to fight cancer. Prior to that, she was the executive medical director for oncology medical affairs at Chicago-based Astellas Pharma. She has been the medical lead for Opdivo or Nivolumab (Anti-PD1), the blockbuster oncology drug from Bristol-Myers Squibb. She started her research career at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland.

She received her undergraduate degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine in Hefei, China, her graduate degree in Western medicine in Guangzhou, China, and her Phd. in pharmacology at the University of Texas in San Antonio. She is also board certified in internal medicine and practised as an internist in Indiana for almost 7 years. Recorded May 28, 2021.

Show Notes:

01:22 HT on her career journey from rural China to CEO of a leading edge biotech firm.

05:38 HT on how her foundational training in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) informed her philosophy of medicine.

07:21 HT on whether TCM can be translated to a Western scientific context.  

08:22 HT on the unregulated neutraceuticals sector and how it cannot be compared to the more rigorous oversight in TCM.

09:29 HT on how her parents’ experience with cancer drove her entrée into the field of immuno-oncology and her work on developing Opdivo, an immune-oncology drug at Bristol-Myers Squib.

11:48 HT on how she came to join her current company, OnQuality, of which she is the CMO, and why their approach to supportive cancer care resonated with her.

13:09 HT on the difference between working for a large pharmaceutical company and early-stage startup.

13:56 HT on the scale of OnQuality’s current operations.

15:15 HT on OnQuality’s approach to cancer supportive care, and what sort of side effects it aims to treat.

19:20 HT on the active ingredient in OnQuality’s treatment.

21:17 HT on the status of the clinical trials of this product.

22:43 HT on cancer rates in the West than in Asia and whether there are certain precautionary measures.

25:37 HT on her view of current status of the Chinese biotech industry.

27:30 HT on the extent to which biotech and pharmaceutical are viewed as a national strategic industry.

28:35 HT on the challenges of doing US China cross border research in general and with the current pandemic.

31:16 HT on trends in outsourced research and testing organizations, whether in China or other parts of the world.

34:29 HT on other Chinese-pioneered innovations in cancer therapy such as CAR-T, drawing upon her work at Juno Therapeutics.

37:21 HT on why OnQuality’s topical treatment is superior to systemic delivery when treating the side effects associated with cancer therapies.

39:24 HT on what she is hearing from her colleagues in China about that nation’s current public health strategies to manage the COVID-19 pandemic and how that compares to the approach in the United States.

Correction

In an earlier version of this episode, when talking about OnQuality’s approach to cancer supportive care, and what sort of side effects it aims to treat, Dr. Tang named “EGFR (Epidermal grow factor receptor)” instead of “VEGFR (vascular endothelia grow factor receptor).” The podcast has been updated to reflect this correction.

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Professor Makarand Paranjape is an Indian novelist, poet and literary critic. He has been the Director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, since August 2018. 

Professor Paranjape has been teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students for almost thirty years. His teaching career has spanned the better part of the globe. A large part of this has been spent in the United States and India, where he has lived and worked. He started his career in 1980, as Teaching Assistant at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Since 1999, he has been a professor of English at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, Centre for English Studies. He has published over 120 academic papers in various refereed journals and edited books within the country and internationally. In addition, he is the author of several poems and short stories, over 200 essays, book reviews, and occasional pieces in academic and popular periodicals in India and abroad. He was a columnist in Sunday Observer, Business Standard, The Pioneer, and Life Positive. He has been twice the chairperson of the Centre for English Studies, JNU, and is a member of the Board of Studies, the Academic Council of JNU, and the Vision Committee of JNU; the Coordinator for UGC Special Assistance Programme, in the Centre for English Studies, JNU from 2003 to 2008; the principal investigator of the Project on Indian Perspectives on Science and Spirituality, from 2006 to 2009. He is the General Editor of a series of reprints of rare and out of print Indian English titles published by the Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi. He is the founding Trustee of Samvad India Foundation, a Delhi-based non-profit, public charitable trust, and also the founding editor of Evam: Forum on Indian Representations, an international bi-annual, multi-disciplinary journal on India. He was the chairperson for the Europe and South Asia region of Pan-Commonwealth panel of judges for the 2008 and 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize; he also served as the Indian host judge for the 2010 Prize awarded in New Delhi. Recorded June 8, 2021.

Show Notes

01:36 MP on the idea of Asia as a European creation.

03:30 MP on India as the crossroads of the world and its inherent pluralism.

05:27 MP on the oft ignored scientific and material aspect of Indian culture vs its spiritual aspect.

13:50 MP on how India’s salubrious climate influenced its culture.

14:25 MP on the fallacy of setting up Buddhism in opposition Hinduism.  

15:45 MP on the lens of dharma (rather than religion) to understand the faith traditions of the subcontinent.

18:04 MP on the meaning of the word Hindu.

21:35 MP on the Gandhian view of modernity and environmentalism.

27:35 MP on the problem with imposing external paradigms on the Indian polity and China envy in India.

31:30 MP on the Indian caste system.

38:00 MP on India’s role in the changing world order.

45:30 MP on the pressing need for India to balance its idealism with realpolitik in its foreign policy.

50:20 MP on Narendra Modi as a transformational leader in Indian history.

57:57 MP on why a Western or Chinese modernity may not work for India, and the need to evolve its own version of modernity.

01:04:31 MP on his experiences fostering better understanding between India and China.

01:06:02 MP on the challenges facing classical liberalism, from cultural revolutionaries to hyper-globalization.

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