The US-China Podcast

Over the last three and a half decades, China’s rise has largely been underpinned by two great transitions: from socialism to capitalism, and from agriculture to industry. The workplace and the institutions that govern it have served as the critical link that enabled these transitions to take place. As these processes continue, the interests of the central government and Chinese workers have converged upon improved working conditions and formalization of employment. Workers have naturally sought greater security in their new urban homes, and China’s leaders have seen the long-term strategic utility of better labor laws as the country moves away from reliance on low cost, low-tech manufacturing. Even so, there remains a wide gap between what is promised by the central authorities, and what is delivered on the factory floor.

How the Chinese government confronts this complex policy landscape is the central question of political science professor and China expert Mary Gallagher’s new book: Authoritarian Legality in China: Law, Workers, and the State. In her book, Dr. Gallagher elucidates the aims and trajectory of Chinese labor law, as well as what the implications are for China’s workers. She joined the National Committee on December 12, 2017, for a discussion of her book and new developments in China’s labor laws and workplace relations. The conversation was moderated by Qin Gao, professor of social policy at the Columbia School of Social Work

Mary Gallagher is a professor of political science at the University of Michigan where she is also the director of the Kenneth G. Lieberthal and Richard H. Rogel Center for Chinese Studies. She is the author and editor of several books, including Contagious Capitalism:  Globalization and the Politics of Labor in China (Princeton 2005); Chinese Justice: Civil Dispute Resolution in Contemporary China (Cambridge 2011); From Iron Rice Bowl to Informalization:  Markets, Workers, and the State in a Changing China (Cornell 2011); and Contemporary Chinese Politics: New Sources, Methods, and Field Strategies (Cambridge 2010). 

Qin Gao, PhD, is professor of social policy and social work at Columbia University School of Social Work and founding director of China Center for Social Policy. She is a faculty affiliate of the Columbia Population Research Center and Weatherhead East Asian Institute. She is also an academic board member of the China Institute for Income Distribution at Beijing Normal University, and a Public Intellectual Fellow of the National Committee on United States-China Relations.

The National Committee on U.S.-China Relations is the leading nonprofit nonpartisan organization that encourages understanding of China and the United States among citizens of both countries.

In his third book on China, acclaimed reporter and travel writer Michael Meyer provides an account of his 22 years of engagement with the country. Beginning with his arrival as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Sichuan in 1995, The Road to Sleeping Dragon: Learning China from the Ground Up recounts how he came to understand the country that looms so large on today’s global stage. By sharing his deeply personal journey over two decades, the book offers a unique perspective on China’s culture and society. Mr. Meyer joined National Committee Vice President Jan Berris for a conversation about his new book and experiences living in and writing about China, on November 16, 2017 in New York. Mr. Meyer is associate professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh and a fellow in the National Committee’s Public Intellectuals Program.   The National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (www.ncuscr.org) is the leading nonprofit nonpartisan organization that encourages understanding of China and the United States among citizens of both countries.

In recent years, China has taken an increasingly active role in global affairs. From the managers of state owned enterprises to political and military leaders, Chinese have looked abroad, including to the resource rich Middle East. What does Chinese engagement mean for the region? What opportunities and challenges does the Belt and Road Initiative bring?

Dr. Pan Guang, professor at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, Vice President of Chinese Association for Middle East Studies and director of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and Belt and Road Studies Center, joined the National Committee in New York on October 20, 2017 for a conversation with National Committee Vice President Jan Berris that addresses these critical questions.

The National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (www.ncuscr.org) is the leading nonprofit nonpartisan organization that encourages understanding of China and the United States among citizens of both countries.

Over the past four decades, global cities have emerged in both the United States and China, including Hong Kong. In the process, they have absorbed their local environments and expanded their commercial networks around the world. As the urban landscapes and global reach of Chinese and American cities have grown, so have their environmental footprints. Challenging issues of air and water quality, water supply, transportation, land use, and food have accompanied rapid urban growth. In many cases, municipal leaders have developed innovative solutions that restructure patterns of resource consumption. In a new book, Robert Gottlieb, an urban and environmental policy expert, and sustainability expert Simon Ng assess the policy responses of different cities in the United States and China to rapid urbanization and its environmental impact.

In The Global Cities: Urban Environments in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and China, Mr. Gottlieb and Mr. Ng identify and analyze how urban environmental issues have been addressed in these localities and the reasons behind the policies. They also examine what lessons can be learned from those experiences to inform policy debates, as well as the role of social movements in influencing policy-making. On October 19, 2017, Mr. Gottlieb and Mr. Ng joined the National Committee for a discussion of their book, recent developments in municipal sustainability efforts, and opportunities for further policy innovation in city government.

Robert Gottlieb is emeritus professor of urban and environmental policy and the founder and former director of the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College.

Simon Ng is an independent consultant working on air quality, urban transportation, and sustainability issues. Trained as a geographer, Simon is known for his ground-breaking work on ship emissions inventory and control policy in Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta, as well as his research on walkability.

The National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (www.ncuscr.org) is the leading nonprofit nonpartisan organization that encourages understanding of China and the United States among citizens of both countries.

Popular images of Chinese media generally cast it as an agent of state propaganda. This is hardly surprising given the history of Chinese official media, and the swift suppression of those who openly criticize the regime. Yet the dichotomy between media and the party, with the former perpetually dominated by the latter, is complicated by the emergence of what Maria Repnikova, in her new book, terms “critical journalism.”

In Media Politics in China: Improvising Power under Authoritarianism, Dr. Repnikova reveals a web of complex negotiations taking place between investigative journalists who have probed sensitive issues such as food safety and corruption, and party officials. Chinese critical journalists do not protest overtly, but their dynamic relationship with the party-state, characterized by what Dr. Repnikova calls “guarded improvisation,” leaves room for an important creative and political agency as they cautiously cover complicated, and sometimes controversial, topics. On November 2, 2017, Dr. Repnikova joined National Committee Senior Director for Education Margot Landman in New York for a discussion of her book, the role of Chinese media, and what it means to be a Chinese journalist in the Xi era.

In this podcast interview, Ian Johnson discusses his recent book, the religious revival underway in China, and what this means for the world’s newest superpower, with National Committee Senior Director for Educational Programs Margot Landman.

The Communist Party of China has long had an uneasy relationship with religion. Its antipathy reached a crescendo during the Cultural Revolution when religion was attacked as part of the “Four Olds” campaign; public worship and ceremony were banned, members of the clergy were imprisoned or sent to forced labor, and religious buildings and texts were destroyed. Since the death of Mao, and especially in recent years, religion has seen a resurgence, as people search for meaning in a rapidly changing political and social landscape. Many questions have emerged over questions of identity and how to lead an ethical life.

In his recent book, The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ian Johnson recounts a six-year odyssey travelling and observing contemporary Chinese religion. From underground Christian churches to rural Daoist priests, Mr. Johnson outlines various manifestations of the greatest spiritual revival of our time, and probes the myriad questions and doubts that motivate millions of Chinese to seek religious support. On October 26, 2017, Mr. Johnson joined the National Committee for a discussion on his book and China’s epic religious renaissance.

Ian Johnson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer focusing on society, religion, and history. He works out of Beijing, where he also teaches undergraduate classes.

Mr. Johnson has spent over half of the past thirty years in the Greater China region, first as a student in Beijing from 1984 to 1985, and then in Taipei from 1986 to 1988. He later worked as a newspaper correspondent in China, from 1994 to 1996 with Baltimore's The Sun, and from 1997 to 2001 with The Wall Street Journal, where he covered macro-economics, China's WTO accession and social issues. In 2009, Johnson returned to China, where he writes features and essays for the New York Times, The New York Review of Books, as well as other publications, such as The New Yorker and National Geographic. He teaches undergraduates at The Beijing Center for Chinese Studies, where he also runs a fellowship program. In addition, he formally advises a variety of academic journals and think tanks on China, such as the Journal of Asian Studies, the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies, and New York University's Center for Religion and Media.

In recent years, China has devoted massive resources to advancing its capacity for technological innovation. The resulting deluge of R&D activities has brought Chinese companies significant commercial success. However, the massive resources China has mobilized are not yet efficiently translating into successful outputs, resulting in a “low metabolism” of inputs into technology innovation.

Scott Kennedy, deputy director of China studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), has published a comparative analysis of China’s innovation push that uses quantitative measures to evaluate its effectiveness. On October 6, 2017, he discussed his findings with National Committee President Stephen Orlins in New York City.

In a globalized world where millions of people travel between east and west each year and formerly separate cultural zones now overlap, it has never been more important to understand the values and perspectives that inform cross-cultural relations. Two new works of cultural observation and commentary put the differences in education, identity, and politics in the United States and China in perspective:

Lenora Chu’s Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve, examines the benefits and drawbacks of China’s famously rigorous education system through the lens of her son’s experience attending an elite public school in Shanghai. The book then expands to consider what Americans can learn from Chinese pedagogy, and, more broadly, what the purpose of education is.

Gish Jen’s The Girl at the Baggage Claim: Explaining the East-West Culture Gap, is a wide-ranging investigation of how differing conceptions of the self in Asia and the western world can explain the incongruous expectations and assumptions that can produce awkward or confusing cross-cultural encounters. Gish Jen explores how emphasis on the individual or on context in western and eastern cultures respectively anchor very different understandings of the same events and behavior, which is ultimately reflected in distinctive educational, business, and governing institutions.  

On September 18, 2017, both authors joined the National Committee for a conversation about their books, contemporary east-west exchange, and how people on both sides of the cultural divide can better understand and learn from one another, in a conversation moderated by NCUSCR Senior Director for Educational Programs Margot Landman.

A former TV correspondent with Thomson Reuters and a contributing writer with CNNMoney.com, Lenora Chu is an award-winning journalist. Her freelance work has appeared in The New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, APM’s Marketplace and PRI’s The World. She has lived in Shanghai since 2010. Ms. Chu holds degrees from Stanford University and Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, and she speaks Mandarin.

The author of six previous books, both fiction and non-fiction, renowned writer Gish Jen has published short pieces in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and dozens of other periodicals and anthologies. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories four times, including The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike. 

Ms. Jen is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has been awarded the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, a Guggenheim fellowship, a Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study fellowship, and numerous other awards. An American Academy of Arts and Letters jury granted her a five-year Mildred and Harold Strauss Living award. Ms. Jen delivered the William E. Massey, Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization at Harvard University in 2012.  She is a graduate of Harvard University and the Iowa Writers Workshop.

A call to action by President Xi Jinping has led to significant resources being devoted to the development and expansion of China’s think tanks. While some critics have derided them as “tanks without thinkers,” China’s think tanks play a growing part in the crafting of domestic and foreign policies. In addition, their connections to party leadership make them an invaluable window through which foreign scholars and officials can observe both the Chinese intellectual discourse and policymaking process. 

In a pioneering new study, The Power of Ideas: The Rising Influence of Thinkers and Think Tanks in China, Dr. Cheng Li of the Brookings Institution examines the complicated relationship between the Chinese government and think tanks and the prospects for China’s efforts to promote new types of think tanks. On September 6, 2017, Dr. Li joined the National Committee for a discussion of his book with NCUSCR President Stephen Orlins.

Cheng Li is director and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center. Dr. Li is also a director of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, a member of the Academic Advisory Team of the Congressional U.S.-China Working Group, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the Committee of 100. He is the author/editor of numerous books, including Rediscovering China: Dynamics and Dilemmas of Reform (1997), China’s Leaders: The New Generation (2001), Bridging Minds Across the Pacific: The Sino-US Educational Exchange (2005), China’s Changing Political Landscape: Prospects for Democracy (2008), China’s Emerging Middle Class: Beyond Economic Transformation (2010), The Road to Zhongnanhai: High-Level Leadership Groups on the Eve of the 18th Party Congress (2012, in Chinese), China’s Political Development: Chinese and American Perspectives (2014), Chinese Politics in the Xi Jinping Era: Reassessing Collective Leadership (2016) and The Power of Ideas: The Rising Influence of Thinkers and Think Tanks in China (2017). He is the principal editor of the Thornton Center Chinese Thinkers Series published by the Brookings Institution Press. 

Dr. Li has advised a wide range of U.S. government, education, research, business and not-for-profit organizations on work in China, and is frequently called upon to share his perspectives and insights as an expert on China. He recently appeared on BBC, CCTV, CNN, C-SPAN, ABC World News with Diane Sawyer, NPR Diane Rehm Show, and the PBS Charlie Rose Show. Dr. Li grew up in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution. In 1985, he came to the United States where he later received an M.A. in Asian studies from the University of California and a Ph.D. in political science from Princeton University.

Creating Across Cultures is a collection of stories about visionary women in China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan who defied cultural and social expectations to become leaders in the arts. Working in the literary, visual and performing arts, these women journeyed outside their cultures, engaging with the international artistic community. Their personal histories open windows onto the larger, historical trajectory of China over three generations, while their artwork delves into social realities and challenges of the day. The stories, based on personal interviews and professional archives, were written by a team of arts specialists, journalists, and academics who have made these accounts available in English for the first time. In bringing these 16 women’s stories together in one book, editor Michelle Vosper illuminates the value of the exchange of arts and ideas across borders and cultures, while offering inspiring role models for women aspiring to careers in the arts. Ms. Vosper joined the National Committee on June 26, 2017, to discuss her book, the women whose stories it details, and her own experience fostering cross-cultural artistic exchanges, in a conversation moderated by National Committee Vice President Jan Berris. For more information about Creating Across Cultures and profiles of the artists: https://www.ncuscr.org/sites/default/.... Michelle Vosper served as the first director of the Asian Cultural Council’s (ACC) program in Hong Kong for twenty-five years (1986-2012), supporting and organizing exchanges of artists from the United States and Asia. Ms. Vosper’s career began in 1978 when she became the first assistant director of the Center for US-China Arts Exchange established at Columbia University. During the early period that followed normalization of diplomatic relations, she worked with prominent artists on programs such as Isaac Stern’s film From Mao to Mozart and Arthur Miller’s Chinese-language production of Death of a Salesman in Beijing. She also travelled frequently in China as interpreter and coordinator for cultural figures including Susan Sontag, Howard Gardner, Alwin Nikolais and Jacques d’Amboise. In 1980 Michelle co-translated Cao Yu’s play Peking Man for its New York premiere.