The US-China Podcast

Michael Meyer, author of In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China discussed the genesis of his new book, the village called Wasteland (set in the beautiful landscape of Jilin Province), his research process and life in the village in an interview with National Committee Program Officer Maura Elizabeth Cunningham on April 2, 2015.

 As the author of the acclaimed The Last Days of Old Beijing (2008), Mr. Meyer received a Whiting Writers’ Award for nonfiction, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He also won a Lowell Thomas Award from the Society of American Travel Writers. Mr. Meyer’s stories have appeared in the New York Times, Time, Smithsonian, Sports Illustrated, Slate, the Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and on This American Life.

He recently taught literary journalism at the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Center, and is now an assistant professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh where he teaches nonfiction writing.  He divides his time between Pittsburgh and Singapore.

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.

China formally announced its bid for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in January 2015. Dr. Susan Brownell, Renowned authority of Chinese sports and the Olympics, discusses China’s Olympic aspirations, prospects for the 2022 bid and her experiences participating in and studying Chinese sports.

Dr. Brownell is a professor of anthropology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and currently a visiting professor at the Institute of Sinology, Heidelberg University (Germany), is an internationally recognized expert on Chinese sports and the Olympic Games. 

Dr. Brownell was a nationally-ranked track and field athlete in the United States before she joined the track team at Beijing University in 1985-86 while she was there for a year of Chinese language study.  She represented Beijing in the 1986 Chinese National College Games and set a national record in the heptathlon. 

Based on her experience with the team, as well as on extensive field research, Dr. Brownell wrote Training the Body for China: Sports in the Moral Order of the People's Republic (University of Chicago Press, 1995). 

Dr. Brownell was a member of the team of academic experts that worked with the Beijing municipal government to design the 2008 Olympic educational programs in Beijing schools and universities and was an expert commentator for China Central Television during the Games.  

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.

Author Eric Liu (A Chinaman’s Chance), discusses the evolving identity of Chinese-Americans in light of their growing role in American society in the midst of America’s engagement with a more prosperous China. Liu discusses the personal experiences reflected in the book’s themes and the unique history and development of Chinese-American identity. Interviewed on February 20, 2015 by Jonathan Lowet, NCUSCR’s Senior Director, Leadership Initiatives.

Eric Liu is an author, educator, and civic entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of Citizen University, which promotes and teaches the art of great citizenship through a portfolio of national programs, and the executive director of the Aspen Institute Citizenship and American Identity Program. 

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.

Dr. Nicholas Lardy, a leading expert on China’s economy and  the Anthony M. Solomon Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, discusses key points of his most recent book “Markets Over Mao: The Rise of Private Business in China” in an interview with National Committee President Stephen Orlins.

Dr. Lardy addresses the misperception that state-owned entities are the driving force of the Chinese economy and how this influences U.S. policies towards China. Topics of the discussion include:  insights on high-growth sectors, protectionism, the growth of China’s private entities and the service sector, the effects of anticorruption initiatives and the role of foreign corporations. Dr. Lardy also outlines potential growth trends and the sectors these will affect.

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. www.ncuscr.org

One of China’s most influential economists, Huang Yiping, deputy dean and professor at Peking University’s National School of Development, discusses his views of current downward pressures on the Chinese economy and whether reforms will improve growth by 2020. In a conversation with Stephen Orlins, president of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, Dr. Huang explains current efforts in China to re-allocate capital and liberalize interest rates with respect to their effects on state-owned enterprises, energy pricing, carbon tax prospects in China, recent Third Plenum reforms and the probability of short-term deflation.

This interview was conducted on January 8, 2015 in New York during Dr. Huang’s visit to participate in the National Committee’s annual forecast for China’s economy, held at the New York Stock Exchange, and for an ongoing National Committee Track II economic dialogue with American counterparts.  Video, presentations and information on the economic forecast: https://www.ncuscr.org/content/china%E2%80%99s-economy-2015-forecasts-leading-chinese-economists

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 China 1945 Richard Bernstein tells the incredible story of that year’s sea change, analyzing its many components, from ferocious infighting among U.S. diplomats, military leaders, and opinion makers to the complex relations between Mao and his patron, Stalin. Bernstein examines the first time that American power and good intentions came face-to-face with a powerful Asian revolutionary movement, and challenges familiar assumptions about the origins of modern Sino-American relations.

Richard Bernstein studied Chinese history with the legendary John K. Fairbank at Harvard University before becoming one of the first American journalists to be stationed in the People’s Republic of China, opening the Time bureau in Beijing in 1980. He then spent twenty-five years as a staff correspondent for the New York Times for which he reported from more than two dozen countries in Asia, Europe, and Africa. His postings included the United Nations, Paris, and Berlin; he was also a national cultural correspondent and daily book critic.

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.

China's management of urbanization is an under-appreciated factor in the regime's longevity. The Chinese Communist Party fears the emergence of unequal megacities with their attendant slums and social unrest, as has occurred in many cities around the world, because such cities might threaten the survival of the regime. To combat the threat, many regimes, including China's, adopt policies that favor cities. Cities and Stability shows this "urban bias" to be a Faustian bargain: cities may be stabilized for a time, but the massive in-migration from the countryside that results can generate the conditions for political unrest.

Dr. Jeremy Wallace discussed his new book Cities and Stability at a National Committee public program on December 17, 2014. Dr. Wallace is an assistant professor of political science at The Ohio State University. His research focuses on authoritarian regime survival and how such regimes—particularly China’s—grapple with threats.

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.

Prizewinning foreign correspondent Howard French tells the story of China in Africa in China’s Second Continent. Through meticulous on-the-ground reporting, conducted in Mandarin, French, and Portuguese, among other languages, French creates a multi-leveled picture through discussion not only with policy-shaping leaders and diplomats, but also with the ordinary men and women navigating the street-level realities of cooperation, prejudice, corruption, and opportunity forged by this important geopolitical development.

William C. Kirby is T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies at Harvard University and Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. A historian of modern China, Professor Kirby's work examines China's business, economic, and political development in an international context. Can China Lead?: Reaching the Limits of Power and Growth asserts that while China has experienced remarkable economic growth in recent decades, it now faces major challenges--tests that could shift the country's political and economic trajectory. A lack of accountability, transparency, and ease of operating in China, combined with growing evidence of high-level corruption, has made domestic and foreign businesspeople increasingly wary of the "China model." 

Join National Committee Senior Director for Education Programs Margot Landman as she interviews Jessica Chen Weiss, assistant professor of political science at Yale, about her book, Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China's Foreign Relations. Dr. Weiss discusses Chinese government management of nationalist, anti-foreign protests and their diplomatic consequences from 1985 to 2012. She argues that official response ranges from repression to tolerance to facilitation of such protests- in ways that might surprise the listener.