ChinaTalk

Dr. Yan Zheng, senior technical staff specializing in microelectronics at In-Q-Tel, discusses What it's like to invest in startups for the CIA and the rest of the US intelligence community What's broken in the early stage chip ecosystem and how to fix it Why the US government should consider expanding its direct investments in hard tech companies How the US needs to counterbalance CFIUS with carro...

Bell Labs is dead, long live Bell Labs! This week's guest, Ilan Gur, the CEO of Activate.org, has a plan to improve America's R&D apparatus: fund start-ups that allow entrepreneurial researchers to pursue the practical applications of their world-class basic research. We discuss why we're lucky to have Moderna and BioNTech (beyond the obvious reasons), the impact of research moving from corporatio...

The Endless Frontier Act, the most important piece of legislation no one's heard of, got blown to bits in committee this week. Sam Hammond of the Niskanen Center joins to discuss.  My recent coverage in the ChinaTalk newsletter https://chinatalk.substack.com/p/endless-frontier-the-most-important  Sam's coverage: https://www.niskanencenter.org/how-congress-ruined-the-endless-frontier-act/  Outtro M...

Why hasn’t North Korea emulated Deng’s Opening & Reform? Are China’s wealthy, educated, urbane youth liberals? Could the PLA cooperate with the U.S. military in the event of Korean reunification? Dr. Sungmin Cho of the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies joins ChinaTalk for a discussion of the Korean Peninsula as viewed by Beijing. This episode is a companion to this week’s ChinaTalk with Odd...

Odd Arne Westad joins ChinaTalk to discuss his latest book Empire and Righteous Nation: 600 Years of China-Korea Relations. Westad’s work is a diplomat’s handbook that connects the sweeping currents of history to the geopolitics of today. Co-hosting today is Danny Crichton of Techcrunch. We explore how Korea, past and present, navigates its relationship with the powerful empires on its doorstep. K...

For Part Three of ChinaTalk's industrial policy series, we are joined by two leading lights of the American left: Saikat Chakrabarti, AOC's former Chief of Staff, and Zack Exley of the 2016 Bernie campaign. (Don't forget to check out Part One with Rob Atkinson and Part Two with José Fernandez.) Co-hosting is Vishnu Kannan, a junior fellow in Carnegie's Technology and International Affairs Program....

Kevin Xu of the fantastic Interconnected newsletter, and formerly of Commerce and the Obama White House, ran through a grab bag of some of the hottest topics in US-China tech. We got into the politics of Tesla in China, what Morris Chang of TSMC thinks about the future of the semiconductor industry, how open source is key to the future of American industrial policy, why the Endless Frontier Act (w...

Student Research Symposium: https://forms.gle/FYoSeHS7t3ZLLwEh9 Work with me! https://rhg.com/job/research-assistant-china-technology-and-industry-research/ Thomas Shugart joined me and Eric Lofgren on another cross-over episode of ChinaAcquisitionTalk. Thomas spent 25 years in the US Navy and is currently an adjunct senior fellow at CNAS. This possibility is made more dangerous considering the ri...

Fascinated (or stunned) by China’s recent anti-monopoly moves against tech giants Ant and Meituan? Want to get inside the head of Chinese regulators as they plan their moves against the globe’s largest corporations? ChinaTalk has you covered. This week I’m joined by Dr. Angela Zhang, a professor at The University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Law, to discuss her new book “Chinese Antitrust Exceptional...

Enzo Chen, author of the Substack 推播助栏The Podcast Pick, and Caiwei Chen, the host of 定向跳转 The Redirect Podcast and the superb newsletter Chaoyang Trap, discuss all things podcasting in China and Taiwan. We get into the best Chinese-language shows, what makes China's leading podcast app so special, the demographics of podcast listeners, censors efforts to control the newly popular medium, a...

What as the rise of streaming, idols, and increased censorship done to Chinese TV?   Co-hosting is Ina Yang, one of the founders of the Chinese-language podcast Loud Murmurs. We discuss Chinese dramas with AvenueX, the intrepid YouTuber who has an encyclopedic knowledge of the Chinese TV scene. AvenueX explains how the internet changed Chinese dramas (and not always for the better), why China’s ce...

What is Huarong and why do its struggles explain the central contradictions of China's financial system? To discuss, Logan Wright of Rhodium joins the show. In the first ten minutes, Logan catches us up on the news of the week. Then in the following hour, I rerun an episode we recorded together in late 2018 discussing his report Credit and Credibility, which explains why the big one hasn't hit yet...

What was the Chongqing Model and why does it still matter? Yueran Zhang, a PhD student in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, discusses. We talk about how Bo Xilai utilized mass mobilization against his enemies in the central government and China’s labor movements, and the significance of the 2018 Jasic protests. Zhang’s two recent articles for Made In China journal, “The Chongqin...

Scott Rozelle (legend, Stanford professor, co-director of the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions) joins ChinaTalk to discuss his recent book Invisible China: How the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China’s Rise, co-authored with Natalie Hell. We discuss how China’s 900 million-strong low-income population will decide China’s future development path. Is China is the next Mexico? Why i...

To discuss, ChinaTalk assembled two of my favorite Japanese think-tankers, Yuka Koshino, a Research Fellow at the UK think tank International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), and Akira Igata, the Executive Director at the Tama University-affiliated Center for Rule-making Strategy (CRS). Joshua Fitt of The Center for a New American Security cohosts. Thanks to CNAS for making this show possib...

Derek Sandhaus is the author of Drunk in China: Baijiu and the World's Oldest Drinking Culture and part of the team behind Ming River Baijiu, the first (good) Baijiu created especially for the international market. We discuss AA in china, Baijiu's origins, different varieties of Baijiu, the drink's evolving role in modern China, as well as the challenge of bringing such a polarizing drink to Europ...

Are the US and China in ideological competition? How does one go about answering that question? Dan Tobin of the US Intelligence Community's National Intelligence University and Ryan Manuel of Official China have a dangerous amount of fun debating guiding ideologies and what they mean for geopolitics. Dan's 2020 congressional testimony on CCP ideology: https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/test...

John Verwey of the Substack “Semi-Literate" (and formerly of Commerce’s BIS, USITC, and USTR) talks the history and future of China's chip industry. We get into government guidance funds, the CHIPS Act, “Fabs not Labs,” export controls, and more.  John's substack: https://semiliterate.substack.com/ Outtro Music: Justice‘s Genesis (Live Version) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdsEaSx7u90 Get bonus...

Michèle Flournoy joined AcquisitionTalk's Eric Lofgren and me for another crossover episode of China-AcquisitionTalk. Flournoy is a former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, co-founder and new board chair of CNAS (where I'm a fellow), and currently the founder and managing partner of WestExec Advisors. I dove deep into the archive, digging up copies of Flournoy's undergraduate and master's thes...

In her years as a Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent in Hong Kong and Beijing, Te-Ping Chen came across a lifetime of remarkable characters and events. Most of these didn’t make her newspaper articles, so she began collecting them in short stories, which were collected in a book published just last month, Land of Big Numbers. Mara Hvistendahl guest hosts an interview with Te-Ping, where we...

Dan Rosen is the founding partner of the Rhodium Group and leads the China team. He is also my boss! We talk about our plans for China tech coverage, lessons from thirty years of China-watching, how he thinks about decoupling, China's debt situation. We also play underrated/overrated on whether track two dialogues are a waste of time, PDF length, and talking to government officials.  Want to work...

Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at Australia National University discusses his new book 'Indo-Pacific Empire.' We talk 15th-century Korean maps, the promise of the 1947 Asian Relations Conference, Australia and India's shifting conceptions of their place in the region, the origins of the Quad, China-Australia relations, and advice Rory has for the Quad countries as they try to...

Adam Tooze (now on Substack!) and Matt Klein, author of Trade Wars Are Class Wars, return to ChinaTalk and pick up right where they left off in September.  We discuss whether Ricardo’s theories of comparative advantage actually work in a globalized age, why Stalin’s embrace of “socialism in one country” was a response to the hegemonic power of British (and American) capital, whether a Bolshevik Re...

Shen Lu of Protocol discusses the magical world of Mandarin language Clubhouse before diving into the feminist movement in China. We cover the Xianzi case, Bilibili's misogynist content, and the challenges that women face working in China's highest-flying tech firms. Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at glow.fm/chinatalk Outtro Music: 賽文&GOD - 努力工作吧 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYSncv...

Aizhe, 故事FM's founder, runs the leading Chinese language podcast. His show gives a platform for everyday Chinese to tell their stories. We talked about his show and the state of journalism in modern China. Aizhe is a personal hero of mine and I'm so grateful I had this opportunity to record this episode.  Aizhe would love to get in touch with American podcast producers, so if you are one, please...