China 21

In this episode, recorded in November 2025, Victor Shih sits down with Sarah Beran to discuss key developments in U.S.-China relations and how the relationship has evolved and may continue to evolve in the second Trump administration.

Center Executive Director Lei Guang recently sat down with Tyler Jost to discuss his new book, Bureaucracies at War. This podcast features highlights from their conversation, focusing on how Jost’s analysis sheds light on the dynamics of today’s U.S.-China tensions.

In this episode, UC San Diego Professor Barry Naughton talks globalization and economic development in China, Russia and India with Temple Professor Roselyn Hsueh.

21CCC Assistant Director Harris Doshay sits down with Syracuse Associate Professor and UCSD Alum Dimitar Gueorguiev to discuss his latest book, Retrofitting Leninism. In it, they explore the logic of popular participation in authoritarian regimes and the ongoing struggles faced by the CCP.

Susan Shirk, Chair of the 21st Century China Center, and former U.S. Attorney Carol Lam sit down to discuss the ways the China Initiative, from flaws in its inception to views towards the future of DOJ espionage prosecutions.

Micah Muscolino interviews James Millward, a leading scholar on China and Central Asia at Georgetown University. They connect the history of Xinjiang in the Qing Empire, to assimilationist policies and terrorism of the 2000s, and to present day large-scale repression and cultural genocide of Uighurs under Xi Jinping.   This episode is adapted from the China Throughlines web series, which features...

This episode is an extended interview adapted from the China Throughlines web series , which features UC San Diego’s China historians in conversation with their colleagues on the echos and connectedness of China’s storied past to the twenty-first century. Mary Augusta Brazelton is University Lecturer in Global Studies of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of Cambridge. Her book, Ma...

The 21st Century China Center is premiering a new web series: "China Throughlines" - featuring UC San Diego’s China historians in conversation with their colleagues on the echos and connectedness of China’s storied past to the twenty-first century. In this audo excerpt from the pilot episode, Paul Pickowicz interviews Perry Link, esteemed cross-disciplinary China scholar and translator of the Tian...

Since the novel coronavirus outbreak in the megacity of Wuhan in December 2019, lockdowns were also implemented across China’s vast countryside, home to more than 700 million people. Dr. Scott Rozelle, senior fellow at Stanford University FSI and co-director of the Rural Education Action Program, presents his latest study to assess the effects of local and nationwide disease control measures on th...

As we are living through a historic pandemic and ever more turbulent U.S.-China relations, we revisit a conversation recorded at our last public lecture right before the lockdown. 21st Century China Board Chair James Kralik interviews investor and best-selling author Weijian Shan about his memoir of living through the trauma and turmoil of Mao’s Cultural Revolution to become one of Asia’s most suc...

Wang Dan 王丹 speaks with Victor Shih on the lessons from the 1989 student democracy movement. They discuss Wang’s journey as a young student leading up to the Tiananmen Square protests and his life since. Wang describes his mission for Dialogue China - and the discussions he’s fostering about prospects of political reform and preparing citizens for potential crisis at the Chinese Communist Party....

Geremie Barmé is an esteemed historian, journalist, translator and film-maker. He spoke at UC San Diego in January on resistance movements in two Chinese cities - the case of Tsinghua Prof. Xu Zhangrun’s 許章潤 dissent, and the protests in Hong Kong. Prof. Barmé is the editor of China Heritage, a journal devoted to Chinese history, literature, and thought. Previously, he founded The Australian Cen...

Rebecca MacKinnon is the director of Ranking Digital Rights , a program at New America promotes freedom of expression and privacy on the internet by creating global standards and incentives for companies to respect and protect users’ rights. She was a Pacific Leadership Fellow at the Center for Global Transformation at UC San Diego School of Global Policy & Strategy . Ms. MacKinnon is the author o...

Paul Pickowicz, Perry Link and Jeremy Murray speaks with guest host Lazlo Montgomery in this special co-produced episode with China History Podcast, with excerpts from their new book “China Tripping: Encountering the Everyday in the People’s Republic” and discussion about how traveling to China across four decades changed these authors. (Part 1 of 2) Buy the book from Rowman & Littlefield: htt...

Paul Pickowicz, Perry Link and Jeremy Murray speaks with guest host Lazlo Montgomery in this special co-produced episode with China History Podcast, with excerpts from their new book “China Tripping: Encountering the Everyday in the People’s Republic” and discussion about how traveling to China across four decades changed these authors. (Part 1 of 2) Buy the book from Rowman & Littlefield: htt...

Diana Fu describes the evolution of activism, citizenship and civil society in China, and how NGOs engage in unconventional mobilization under authoritarian rule, based on her research on migrant workers and labor organizations. Diana Fu is an associate professor of political sciences at the University of Toronto. She’s the author of the award-winning book Mobilizing Without the Masses, which desc...

Steph Haggard speaks with Danny Russel about the intensifying U.S.-China rivalry that is ushering in new dynamic in the Asia Pacific region. They address the trade war, negotiations with North Korea, American alliance with Japan, the Indo-Pacific strategy, and warn against the notion of decoupling. Prof. Stephan Haggard is the Lawrence and Sallye Krause Professor of Korea-Pacific Studies and Direc...

Barbara Finamore , who founded the National Resource Defense Council’s China program, discusses with China Focus editor-in-chief Charlie Vest about China’s clean energy sectors, domestic environmental activism and its push to develop renewable energy infrastructure abroad. Barbara Finamore founded NRDC’s China program, focusing on climate, clean energy, environmental protection, and urban solution...

Elsa Kania discusses the potential and concerns of cutting-edge technologies that are underpinning the competition between the U.S. and China, especially in the race towards supremacy in AI and 5G Elsa Kania is an independent analyst, consultant, and co-founder of the China Cyber and Intelligence Studies Institute. She is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Among he...

Alibaba’s Joe Tsai speaks with Susan Shirk in front of a live audience on a wide-ranging conversation about current trade disputes, security concerns, technological competition, and the innovation and collaboration capacity for U.S. and China. Mr. Tsai is the co-founder and Executive Vice Chairman of Alibaba Group, and this year’s speaker for the Sokwanlok Distinguished Lecture Series at the 21st...

Andy Rothman speaks with Victor Shih on the opportunities and volatility of investing in the People's Republic and the outlook on China's impact on global economic growth. They discuss the risk of including China's bonds and SOEs in passive indices, the challenge of data verification and spurring entrepreneurship, how to actively look for the dynamic industries and avoid risks, and the rebalancing...

In the critical period of China’s opening in the 1980s, Chinese policymakers invited Western economists to learn and debate the way forward for China, and that’s the subject of fascinating research by Julian Gewirtz in his book “Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China” Gewirtz is currently a Fellow in History and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy...

As President Trump’s team continues trade negotiations in Beijing this week, we bring you this recently recorded conversation between GPS professors Natalia Ramondo, Barry Naughton and Victor Shih. They discuss the current threat of tariffs by both countries, and implications on multilateral trade norms, the effectiveness of Chinese industrial policy and American innovation strategy. Natalia Ramon...

Ian Johnson joins Richard Madsen to discusses how today’s Chinese Communist Party is striving for a national set of values, and how ordinary Chinese are seeking for deeper meaning in their lives, and the lessons for the rest of the world in this global populist moment. Ian Johnson is a Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter in China for over 20 years, for various publications, including The New York Time...

Historian Paul Pickowicz interviews acclaimed author John Pomfret about patterns in the long history of US-China relations, and how it informs the controversies in the current moment of Sino-American relations ranging from the impact of Chinese students on US universities, Xi Jinping’s end to presidential term limits, and trade and business relations. Dr. Paul Pickowicz is one of the country’s lea...