The US-China Podcast

On March 5, 2023, China set a GDP growth target of around five percent for 2023, which is lower than expected. What are the major challenges and risks for China’s economic growth in 2023 and beyond? Where do the strengths in China’s economy lie? Both the promise of continued export and consumption growth and the threat of rising debt and property sector instability raise critical questions. How will tariffs, trade imbalances, and geopolitics affect China’s economic prospects?

In an interview conducted in partnership with Peking University’s National School of Development on March 14, 2023, Dr. Hu Yifan and Dr. Lu Feng provide their forecasts of China’s economy for the coming year.

0:00-2:10 introductions 

2:10-10:10 Predictions for 2023

10:10-23:10 incentives, growth, and economic policy

23:10-31:53 China’s population demographics and economy

31:53-43:15 U.S.-China cooperation and trade

43:15-50:06 Bank failures, nervous markets

50:06- State of the RMB and USD

About the speakers: https://www.ncuscr.org/event/forecast-of-chinas-economy-for-2023/

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About the speakersSubscribe to the National Committee on YouTube for video of this interview. Follow us on Twitter (@ncuscr) and Instagram (@ncuscr).

What are the implications of this year’s Two Sessions for President Xi Jinping and the latest roster of Party leaders, for those in the United States with a close eye on the U.S.-China relationship, and for the Chinese people? In an interview conducted on March 20, 2023, Dimitar Gueorguiev speaks with Rory Truex, and Ling Li about the 2023 Two Sessions in the context of China’s domestic and international policies.  

The annual meetings of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), known as the “Two Sessions” or “Lianghui,” feature the gathering of political leaders in Beijing each spring to announce plans and goals for the coming year. In 2023, after a period of dramatic changes including China’s new approach to COVID-19, an economic downturn, and the war in Ukraine, the significance for the world of political events in China is clearer than ever.   

About the speakers: https://www.ncuscr.org/event/two-sessions-many-implications/

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Follow Ling Li on Twitter: @lingli_vienna

Follow Rory Truex on Twitter: @rorytruex

Follow Dimitar Gueorguiev on Twitter: @DimitarGueorg1

Subscribe to the National Committee on YouTube for video of this interview. Follow us on Twitter (@ncuscr) and Instagram (@ncuscr).

Over the past few years, we have marked the 50th anniversaries of official visits to China by then National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and President Richard Nixon. Historians have scrutinized the records of their conversations with Chinese leaders, but less attention has been given to people-to-people exchange that began with “ping-pong diplomacy.” Based on archival sources in China and the United States and numerous interviews, Pete Millwood argues in Improbable Diplomats that the significance of cultural and scientific exchanges goes beyond reacquainting the Chinese and American people with each other after two decades of minimal contact; exchanges also influenced Sino-American diplomatic relations and helped transform post-Mao China.

In an interview conducted on March 9, 2023, Pete Millwood discusses with Alison Friedman how a diverse cast of Chinese and Americans – athletes and physicists, performing artists and seismologists – played a critical, but often overlooked, role in remaking U.S.-China relations.

About the speakers: https://www.ncuscr.org/video/improbable-diplomats-us-china/

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Follow Pete Millwood on Twitter: @PeteMillwood

Follow Alison Friedman on Twitter: @AlisonMFriedman

Subscribe to the National Committee on YouTube for video of this interview. Follow us on Twitter (@ncuscr) and Instagram (@ncuscr).

In Dictatorship and Information, Martin K. Dimitrov offers an approach to understanding possible solutions to the dictator’s dilemma (the balance between authoritarian governments’ use of information communication technology for economic development and the need to control the democratizing influences of this technology), which arises from the difficulty of calibrating repression and concessions due to distorted information about elite and popular discontent. Dr. Dimitrov argues that communist regimes are adept at developing sophisticated systems that mobilize the party, state security, and internal journalism to assess levels of dissent. Drawing from evidence across multiple communist regimes and numerous interviews, Professor Dimitrov contributes to our understanding of how autocrats learn – or don’t learn – about the societies they rule, and how they maintain or lose their hold on power.

In an interview conducted on March 7, 2023, Martin Dimitrov discusses information-gathering of communist regimes and how it extends authoritarian governments’ tenure with Kellee Tsai.

About the speakers: https://www.ncuscr.org/video/dictatorship-information-china/

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Follow Kellee Tsai on Twitter: @HongKongKellee

Subscribe to the National Committee on YouTube for video of this interview. Follow us on Twitter (@ncuscr) and Instagram (@ncuscr).

Ever since a balloon flew from China over the United States in February, concerns about surveillance have been at the forefront of U.S.-China relations. But the two countries have a long history of spying on each other. In this short explainer, John Delury contextualizes the current tensions and assesses just how worried Americans should be about Chinese espionage.

If you missed it, listen to our interview from January with John Delury, Gina Tam, and Jerome Cohen on John's new book, Agents of Subversion: The Fate of John T. Downey and the CIA's Covert War in China.

About the speaker: https://www.ncuscr.org/video/chinese-espionage/

Read the transcript of this conversation 

Follow John Delury on Twitter: @JohnDelury

Subscribe to the National Committee on YouTube for video of this interview. Follow us on Twitter (@ncuscr) and Instagram (@ncuscr).

With Chinese President Xi Jinping’s political authority unmatched, his sense of mission to restore what he believes is China’s natural position as a great power drives the nation’s foreign policy. When China was weak, it was subordinated to others. Now China is strong, and wants others to fall in line, at least on the issues involving what it regards as core national interests.

In The Dragon Roars Back, Suisheng Zhao weaves together complex events, processes, and players in an analysis of Chinese foreign policy transitions since the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Xi Jinping were and are transformational leaders who have charted unique courses of Chinese foreign policy in the quest for security, prosperity, and power.

In an interview conducted on February 15, 2023, Suisheng Zhao discusses the key leaders who have shaped Chinese foreign policy with Sheena Chestnut Greitens.

About the speakers: https://www.ncuscr.org/event/dragon-roars-back-chinese-foreign-policy/

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Follow Suisheng Zhao on Twitter: @SuishengZhao

Follow Sheen Greitens on Twitter: @SheenaGreitens

Subscribe to the National Committee on YouTube for video of this interview. Follow us on Twitter (@ncuscr) and Instagram (@ncuscr).

Since its advent in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, blockchain technology has taken the economic world by storm. Open-source blockchain transactions have increased the speed of, and trust in, cross-border financial transactions. Many in the United States see the technology as a new and improved medium to raise and exchange capital. In China, the technology, though much more tightly regulated, has likewise begun to proliferate and has even been identified as one of China’s seven “frontier technologies” in its 14th Five Year Plan (2021-2025). Blockchain has the potential to transform industries in both countries and globally. This pioneering system is at the forefront of U.S.-China technological competition, and both nations have the potential to use the technology to remake the global financial system.

In an interview conducted on February 9, 2023, Paul Triolo examines recent developments in China’s blockchain evolution, focusing on its role in the U.S.-China relationship.

0:00-4:08 Introduction, What is blockchain? 4:08-15:11China’s innovation and regulation 15:11-20:09 Can we regulate cryptocurrency? 20:09-26:18 U.S.-China blockchain regulation 26:18- the metaverse

About the speakers: www.ncuscr.org/event/blockchain-china-prc/

Read the transcript to this conversation 

Follow Paul Triolo on Twitter: @pstAsiatech

Subscribe to the National Committee on YouTube for video of this interview. Follow us on Twitter (@ncuscr) and Instagram (@ncuscr).

In the year since Russia invaded Ukraine, U.S.-China relations have continued to deteriorate; one factor is Beijing’s continued support of Moscow’s position and rhetoric. What does Beijing gain from its tacit backing of Russia? How successful have the U.S.-led sanctions been at stemming Russia’s war effort? As China reopens its economy and looks to rebuild its international business and diplomatic relationships after three years of Covid lockdowns, how does its relationship with Russia affect China’s strategic, economic, and diplomatic goals?

Yun Sun discusses the dynamics among China, Russia, and the United States in an interview conducted on February 17, 2023.

0:00-0:45 introductions 

0:45-10:07 What is China’s impact on the war? China-Russia trade and relations

10:07-13:28 Ukraine-Taiwan parallels 

13:28-20:34 China in the middle

20:34- 23:42 The impact on U.S.-China relations

23:42- The future of China-Russia relations 

About the speakers: https://www.ncuscr.org/event/eyes-on-ukraine-part-iii/

Read the transcript to this conversation 

Subscribe to the National Committee on YouTube for video of this interview. Follow us on Twitter (@ncuscr) and Instagram (@ncuscr).

Summer 2022 was hot! On June 25, the temperature in Hebei province reached 111.6°, breaking an all-time record. A few weeks later, the temperature in Shanghai hit 105.6°, the highest ever recorded there. On July 19, weather stations in the United Kingdom recorded temperatures above 104° for the first time in history; in the United States, at least 43 locations broke or tied their records for the hottest July ever. The temperature in western Iran reached 128.5° on August 9, the highest August temperature ever recorded in Asia. Increasingly severe and frequent storms, droughts, and floods lie ahead, and seas are rising. As the world’s leading emitter of heat-trapping gases by a wide margin, there is no solution to climate change without China.

In an interview conducted on February 3, 2023, Guide to China’s Climate Policy 2022 co-authors David Sandalow and Edmund Downie discuss China’s role in facing the global challenge presented by climate change with Angel Hsu.

0:00-1:14 Introductions 

1:14-9:38 China’s climate background and efforts

9:38-20:24 China’s climate market

20:24-24:48 What will it take to lower coal consumption?

24:48- U.S.-China climate cooperation

About the speakers: https://www.ncuscr.org/event/guide-to-chinas-climate-policy-2022/

Read the transcript to this conversation 

Follow David Sandalow on Twitter: @dsandalow

Follow Edmund Downie on Twitter: @ned_downie

Follow Angel Hsu on Twitter: @ecoangelhsu

Subscribe to the National Committee on YouTube for video of this interview. Follow us on Twitter (@ncuscr) and Instagram (@ncuscr).

Agents of Subversion reconstructs the story of a botched mission into Manchuria, placing it in the context of a wider CIA campaign against China. In the winter of 1952, the CIA flew a covert mission into China to pick up an agent. One of the Americans on the mission, a recent Yale graduate named John T. Downey, ended up a prisoner in China for the next twenty years. The U.S. government kept the public in the dark about decades of covert activity directed against China while Downey languished in a Beijing prison and his mother lobbied desperately for his release. John Delury sheds new light on Mao’s campaigns to eliminate counterrevolutionaries and on his use of captive spies in diplomacy with the West.

In an interview conducted on January 25, 2023, John Delury and Jerome Cohen discuss Downey’s story and its implication for today with Gina Tam.

0:00-2:11 introductions 

2:11-11:03 Who was John Downey? 

11:03-15:44 Cold War framework

15:44-23:16 What did it have to take for Downey’s release?

23:16-29:10 CIA activity in China

29:10- U.S.-China cooperation

About the speakers: https://www.ncuscr.org/event/agents-of-subversion-john-t-downey/

Read the transcript to this conversation 

Follow John Delury on Twitter: @JohnDelury

Follow Jerome Cohen on Twitter: @jeromeacohen

Follow Gina Tam on Twitter: @DGTam86

Subscribe to the National Committee on YouTube for video of this interview. Follow us on Twitter (@ncuscr) and Instagram (@ncuscr).