The US-China Podcast

In China’s Economic Challenge: Unconventional Success, Albert Keidel examines the economic approaches responsible for China’s 40 years of rapid growth, suggesting how such strategies might be applied elsewhere. He discusses the government’s leadership role, success in poverty reduction, and international finance and trade experience. The book reviews why China’s success challenges the United States and the field of development economics. He describes how generous rural price and land-tenure reform in the 1980s caused a rural income boom that threatened urban subsidized livelihoods and underpinned consequent violence. China may face similar challenges moving forward, during the planned merger of the rural and urban work forces.

In an interview conducted on June 17, 2022, Albert Keidel analyzes the institutions and policies responsible for China’s successful development and possible future trajectory, examines the U.S.-China trade war, and considers the country’s economic prospects in light of COVID-19.

Less than a century ago, China faced myriad challenges in catching up to a world that had passed it by technologically. In her new book, Kingdom of Charactes, Jing Tsu breaks down how the monumental and transformative task of bringing the Chinese language into the modern era also modernized China itself.

Jing Tsu joined the National Committee on June 1, 2022 to discuss the visionaries, reformers, and revolutionaries whose linguistic innovations made China’s ascent to its global role today possible.

China is under scrutiny as it attempts to quash its largest COVID-19 outbreak since the early days of the pandemic. The latest wave of infections is the most serious in the country since the disease first emerged in Wuhan two years ago and is putting the government under immense pressure as it sticks with its ‘dynamic zero-COVID strategy’. Shanghai has been in lockdown for over a month, causing serious disruption to its 25 million residents and the economy, with a potential lockdown in Beijing on the horizon.

Silvia Lindtner and Melinda Liu discuss China’s current COVID situation and explore the many secondary and tertiary effects that the Omicron wave in China is having around the world during an interview conducted on May 23, 2022.

According to a Pew Research Center report released in April, Americans view China's partnership with Russia as a serious problem for the United States, amid concerns over China's growing superpower status and economic might. More than 60 percent of American adults believe the Russia-China relationship is a very serious problem, more people than say the same about other critical issues, including China's involvement in American politics, its human rights policies, and tensions between China and Taiwan.

Pew Research Center senior researcher Laura Silver discussed the survey findings in an interview conducted on May 10, 2022.

President Biden will visit Seoul in May for his first meeting with newly-elected South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, as both countries face increasing mutual concerns, including North Korea's first intercontinental ballistic missile launch since 2017 in March, followed by the April test of a new tactical guided weapon to boost nuclear capability. How will these events influence Korea-China-U.S. Relations? What are the effects of Russia's invasion of Ukraine? What should we expect from President Biden's visit to Seoul?

Sue Mi Terry discusses North Korea’s recent weapons tests, China’s response, and the implications for U.S.-China relations during an interview conducted on April 29, 2022.

A war between China and the United States would be catastrophic, but, unfortunately, is no longer unthinkable. In "The Avoidable War," Kevin Rudd demystifies the actions of both sides, describing how the countries can coexist without betraying their core interests.

According to Mr. Rudd, a former Australian prime minister who has studied, lived in, and worked with China for more than forty years, the relationship between the United States and China is especially volatile. It sits atop cultural misunderstanding, historical grievance, and ideological incompatibility. No other nations are so quick to offend and be offended; the capacity for either country to cross a critical line is growing rapidly.

Mr. Rudd discusses how the United States and China can find a way to co-exist without compromising their core interests through “managed strategic competition” in an interview conducted on April 25, 2022.

The United States and China, as the world’s two largest economies and carbon emitters, have an opportunity to accelerate financing for low-carbon technologies, particularly in developing countries. One promising mechanism for action is climate finance; nevertheless, experts estimate an annual shortfall of $850 billion in climate-related financing in developing markets, which need it most.

 

In an interview conducted on April 6, 2022, Kelly Sims Gallagher discusses the importance of U.S.-China cooperation in accelerating global climate finance.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the Chinese government has tried to walk a fine line of neutrality. It has abstained on UN resolutions and not condemned the Russian invasion or the slaughter of civilians. On the other hand, it has restated its support of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the UN Charter. State owned media and social media have often repeated Russia’s propaganda to the great concern of the U.S. and European governments.

Xiaoyu Pu and Maria Repnikova discuss China’s international and domestic media coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the system behind this coverage, and its implications for U.S.-China relations during an interview conducted on April 18, 2022.

On January 20, 2022, a federal court in Boston dismissed charges against Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineering professor Gang Chen, who had been accused of concealing his affiliations with Chinese government institutions. The dropping of all charges against Dr. Chen was a major setback for the China Initiative, a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) program meant to combat economic espionage and intellectual property theft conducted by the Chinese government. Some argue that the DOJ’s efforts to counter Chinese national security threats led to racial profiling and created a climate of fear among academics and researchers of Chinese descent in the United States. On February 23, 2022, the DOJ announced that it had terminated the China Initiative.

In an interview conducted on April 13, 2022, Professor Gang Chen talks about his case and his reaction to the end of the China Initiative, what it means to him and the broader scientific community.

Gang Chen is the Carl Richard Soderberg Professor of power engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He served as the head of the MIT department of mechanical engineering from 2013 to 2018. His research interests center on nanoscale thermal transport and energy conversion phenomena and their applications in energy storage and conversion, thermal management, and water treatment and desalination. He has received numerous awards, including the National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, an American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ (ASME) Heat Transfer Memorial Award, an ASME Frank Kreith Award in Energy, and a Nukiyama Memorial Award by the Japan Heat Transfer Society, among others. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Physical Society, the ASME, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He is an academician of Academia Sinica, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.

On April 12, 1972, the Chinese national ping pong team arrived in Detroit, the first unofficial visitors from the People’s Republic of China to the United States since the establishment of the PRC in 1949. One of the many excited people waiting on the tarmac to welcome the team was Jan Berris – at that time a program associate with the National Committee, now its vice president.

Fifty years later, on April 12, 2022, Jan Berris shared stories of the historic process – from the funny to the momentous – and reflected on the enduring legacy of Ping Pong Diplomacy on U.S.-China relations.

Jan Berris has been with the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations since 1971 – beginning as program associate, moving on to program director, and vice president. She is responsible for overseeing all program activities of the Committee: this includes the preparation and execution of hundreds of Chinese delegations to the United States, American delegations to China, as well as NCUSCR’s Track II programs, and other flagship programs. Given her familiarity with the Chinese media at the time, the U.S. State Department asked her to coordinate Chinese press activities during Premier Deng Xiaoping’s February 1979 visit to the United States, and she has been the lead for the Committee’s hosting of major welcoming events for all of the most senior Chinese leaders.

Prior to joining the Committee, Ms. Berris was a foreign service officer, stationed in Hong Kong and Washington, D.C. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Michigan.