ChinaTalk

Jeremiah Jenne, history teacher, writer, and the man behind Beijing by Foot, is in the guest seat this week. He speaks with Jordan about the changes — both tangible and intangible — that Beijing has undergone in the last few decades. They chat about how Chinese history is reinterpreted through the lenses of different regimes, the ways in which this new history is presented to the world, and Beijin...

Puzzled by rising drug deaths at raves in the United States, author and investigative journalist Ben Westhoff set out to find answers. A Google search for “Buy fentanyl in China” took him down a rabbit hole that led to a face-to-face meeting with the CEO of a company selling fentanyl on Skype “all day long” and a drug lab in Shanghai. Ben tells Jordan the remarkable story. 5:06: The digital rabbit...

Bloomberg technology reporter Lulu Chen gives the scoop on the tech world in China: what’s to come for Alibaba under newly minted CEO Daniel Zhang, the long-standing grudge Meituan CEO Wang Xing holds against Jack Ma, the Communist Party’s growing presence within technology companies, and her own views on reporting on tech in China.  2:07: Hong Kong protests 24:03: Daniel Zhang’s new venture 28:11...

Jake Sullivan served in the Obama administration as National Security Advisor to Vice President Joe Biden and Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department. He currently teaches at Yale Law School. In this episode, Sullivan discusses his perspectives on the current U.S.-China relationship, his experiences working in the Obama administration and on the campaign trail with Hillary Clinton...

Mira Rapp-Hooper, senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, provides an overview of the history of U.S. foreign policy from Washington’s farewell address to the modern day. She also discusses the implications of a rising China for the future of U.S. alliances. 3:20: The costs of going it alone  10:41: Cold War “Great Power” competition 36:32: The Taiwan Strait crisis 41:47: Trump and the...

ChinaEconTalk is live from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C., with Martijn Rasser, a senior fellow in the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. Host Jordan Schneider sits down with Martijn to discuss a few of the more contentious topics surrounding the ongoing friction between the United States and China, including rare...

Douglas Irwin is the John French Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College and the author of Clashing Over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy. On this episode, Irwin provides an overview to the history of U.S. trade policy from the 18th century to the modern day, highlighting significant legislation as well as the formation of important intergovernmental organizations that have sprung up alo...

Douglas Fuller is an associate professor in the Department of Asian and International Studies at the City University of Hong Kong and the author of Paper Tiger, Hidden Dragons: Firms and the Political Economy of China’s Technological Development. In his book, Fuller explores a question that has hounded heads of state around the world for decades: How can a developing country get ahead in the tech...

Danit Gal is a former Yenching Scholar and coauthor of a recent paper, “Perspectives and Approaches to AI Ethics: East Asia.” On this episode, Gal discusses how Japanese, South Korean, and Chinese experts are forging new paths in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), exploring societal applications — and the unexpected drawbacks of “female” virtual assistants. Gal also explains the tech conne...

On this episode of ChinaEconTalk, Jordan interviews Lauren Teixeira, a freelance reporter based in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. After what has been a jam-packed few months of China news, Lauren discusses a wide range of topics, from engaging with mainlanders about the anti-Extradition Bill protests in Hong Kong to the downsides of Chinese superblock urban planning. Lauren finishes the interview with...

This week on ChinaEconTalk, Jordan interviews Chris Miller, associate professor of international history at Tufts University and a specialist on Russian politics, economics, and foreign policy. Drawing on some of his recent publications, Miller discusses topics ranging from Sino-Soviet collaboration and competition to their respective economic and political reform programs in the 1970s and 80s. Mi...

This week on ChinaEconTalk, Jordan speaks with Dongwoo Kim, a postgraduate research fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada who specializes in AI. Dongwoo discusses his research on the progress of AI development in Japan, Korea, and China, including the challenges faced by Chinese AI researchers overseas, and the need for greater tech literacy in general. What to listen for on this week’s...

This week, Jordan speaks with Graham Webster, a China digital economy fellow and coordinating editor of the DigiChina project at New America. He was previously a senior fellow and lecturer at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center. The two talked about Graham’s work at DigiChina, artificial intelligence in China and its complex legal infrastructure, the facts (and fiction) behind China’s controv...

This week, in part 2 of a special two-part edition of ChinaEconTalk, Jordan interviews Professor Julia Lovell, author of the recently published book on Mao’s international legacy entitled Maoism: A Global History. In this episode, Lovell recounts the ways in which Maoism truly started going global in the 1950s and 1960s. With some prompting courtesy of the Chinese government’s propaganda machine,...

This week, in part 1 of a special two-part edition of ChinaEconTalk, Jordan interviews Professor Julia Lovell, author of the recently published book on Mao’s international legacy entitled Maoism: A Global History. In this episode, Lovell introduces the core tenets of Maoist thought and its complex impact on both the Chinese Communist Party and other, offshoot devotees around the world. She outline...

While it may be a pipe dream for ChinaEconTalk to ever merit a billion-dollar price tag, in China, podcast “unicorns” are everywhere. Companies like Ximalaya and Yudao have multibillion-dollar valuations, but feature startlingly different content from what consumers expect in the West. What drives these differences, and what does the future hold for spoken audio in China? To answer these questions...

This week on ChinaEconTalk, Jordan speaks with Donald Clarke, a specialist in Chinese law and the David Weaver Research Professor at George Washington University. Following a thorough introduction to the structure of the Chinese legal system starting from the Qing dynasty, Clarke discusses a provocative article he recently co-authored, Who owns Huawei?, which discusses in detail the legal ownershi...

This week, in the second installment of the series “The Future of U.S.-China Relations” on ChinaEconTalk, Jordan speaks with Professor Hal Brands of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Zack Cooper, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. In addition to offering some prescriptions for relieving some of the tension points in the U.S.-China relationship more...

This week on ChinaEconTalk, Jordan speaks with veteran journalist Peter Hessler. Peter spent seven years in China as a correspondent for The New Yorker, followed by five years in Egypt. In this episode, Peter discusses his long and prolific career reporting on the society, politics, and culture of these two dynamic nations; he also considers the similarities and differences in the ways the Chinese...

Why did Shenzhen, a backwater fishing village, spawn the likes of industry leaders ZTE, Huawei, and Lenovo, while Suzhou, which previously scored massive investments from top “dragon head” foreign firms like Samsung and Philips, failed to spawn domestic innovation? What role did FDI and the local bureaucrats in charge of economic development play? And what lessons does this story hold for today's...

This week, ChinaEconTalk launches its “Future of U.S.-China Economic Relations” miniseries with an interview featuring Melanie Hart, a senior fellow and the director of China Policy at the Center for American Progress. At the Center, Melanie specializes in U.S.-China foreign policy and explores new opportunities for bilateral cooperation on topics such as energy, climate change, and cross-border i...

Over 100 million Chinese adults have used the Liulishuo (流利说 liúlì shuō) app to learn English through AI-powered tutoring. This week on ChinaEconTalk, host Jordan Schneider interviews Liulishuo co-founder and CTO Ben Hu about the company’s journey from its early days to its recent listing on NASDAQ. Along the way, they discuss the current state of development of Liulishuo’s speech-recognition c...

Is Huawei unfairly maligned or rightly feared? Are the tech supply chains running through China a marvel of 21st-century globalization, or dangerous oversight on the part of U.S. tech firms and the federal government? Today’s guest on ChinaEconTalk — Nick Weaver, a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute and a lecturer at UC Berkeley — provides some clarity. Huawei and other Chi...

This week on ChinaEconTalk, host Jordan Schneider discusses China’s aviation industry with Neil Thomas, Research Associate at the Paulson Institute’s in-house think tank, MacroPolo. Focusing on Boeing’s long history in China, they explore how the company’s interactions with the state have actually proven to be a microcosm of the larger U.S.-China relationship — from early involvement navigating bu...

In this episode of ChinaEconTalk, host Jordan Schneider interviews Professor Christopher Marquis, professor at Cornell’s SC Johnson College of Business. Christopher discusses a few of his recent publications, which focus primarily on how Chinese communist ideology impacts thinking within private sector firms and policy implementation by Chinese politicians. Recommended reading: Also by Christopher...