Sinica Podcast

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Sir Danny Alexander, vice president and corporate secretary of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and former Liberal Democrat MP and chief secretary to the Treasury of the United Kingdom. Sir Danny gives an overview of how Asia’s financial sector has been impacted by COVID-19. 5:27: The United Kingdom’s decision to join AIIB 11:49: AIIB and its accounta...

This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy talk to Wall Street Journal reporters Bob Davis and Lingling Wei about their great new book, Superpower Showdown: How the Battle Between Trump and Xi Threatens a New Cold War . 5:11: The increasingly insulated Chinese political elite 18:08: Chinese import competition and its effect on U.S. manufacturing employment 28:27: Líu Hè 刘鹤 and internal politics with...

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Andy Purdy, chief security officer of Huawei USA, and Paul Triolo, practice head of geotechnology at the Eurasia Group. They explore the complexities of the 5G ecosystem, challenges to cybersecurity on 5G networks, the process of standards setting in advanced telecommunications, and how the Trump administration's animus toward Huawei might ultimately handicap...

Late on the night of June 15, a deadly melee erupted on the banks of the Galwan River, in a disputed region called Ladakh, high in the mountains between China and India. To help guide a discussion on this landmark event in China-India relations, Kaiser welcomes back Ananth Krishnan, a longtime correspondent for The Hindu, who is based in Beijing. Ananth discusses the context of the clash, which pi...

This week on Sinica, Kaiser speaks with Michael Berry, the translator of the Wuhan-based writer Fang Fang’s controversial Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City . Michael discusses Fang Fang’s body of work and how her daily online posts on WeChat (which were compiled to become her book) drew the ire of critics who have denounced the diary as an act of national betrayal and have even level...

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Bloomberg’s chief economist, Tom Orlik, about his new book, China: The Bubble That Never Pops . A longtime resident of Beijing, Tom wrote for the Wall Street Journal before joining Bloomberg as chief Asia economist. His book argues that Beijing's leaders have learned valuable lessons from their own history and from the experiences of other countries, and appl...

This week on Sinica, we continue with the ongoing California series of podcasts that Kaiser recorded last winter, and present a conversation taped in December, when he chatted with Margaret (Molly) Roberts, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. Molly also co-directs the China Data Lab at the 21st Century China Center, and her late...

This week, Kaiser and Jeremy speak with Michael Schuman, a reporter and writer who’s been covering China for 23 years, about his new book, Superpower Interrupted: The Chinese History of the World . The book sets out to present world history as China has understood it, and what that understanding of history tells us about what the China of today really wants.  11:12: Notable historical books o...

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Max Fisher, one of The Interpreter columnists for the New York Times, on what U.S. media coverage got right — and wrong — about the outbreak of COVID-19 in China, and the concerning parallels between 2002 and 2020. 8:33: American media coverage of the outbreak 15:14: Dehumanizing the disease in China 22:17: The role of the media in American political discours...

In this second half of our interview with Kishore Mahbubani, a former UN ambassador of Singapore, he talks to Kaiser about the perils of American exceptionalism, the poverty of strategic thinking in Washington, and the view of U.S.-China competition from the rest of the world. His latest book, Has China Won? The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy , is a bracing read, unsparing in its criticisms...

In the first part of this two-part conversation, Kishore Mahbubani, a former UN ambassador of Singapore, returns to Sinica to chat with Kaiser about his latest book, Has China Won? The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy . It’s a bracing read, unsparing in its criticisms of Chinese and American strategic blunders, and its tough-love approach is sure to rankle. Part 2 will run next week.  12...

No, not that Gordon Chang. The other one: the good one. Gordon H. Chang is a professor of American history at Stanford University, where he is also the Olive H. Palmer Professor in Humanities and the senior associate vice provost for undergraduate education. In this prelapsarian podcast, taped on December 19, Gordon chats with Kaiser about the rising tide of Sinophobia — presaging things to come o...

A congressional bill and a draft executive order threaten to prevent U.S. government agencies from using drones made in China or that contain Chinese components. Concerns over security issues may end successful programs by the Department of the Interior and other agencies using Chinese-made drones for a huge range of purposes. Brendan Schulman, vice president for public policy and legal affairs of...

Literature professor and cineaste Jiwei Xiao, who grew up in Wuhan and whose mother still lives there, published a piece in the New York Review of Books about watching the coronavirus pandemic unfold — first at a distance in Wuhan, then up close in the U.S., where she now resides. In this episode, Jiwei joins Kaiser and Jeremy to discuss her experiences.  11:56: China’s initial response to th...

For our 10th anniversary show, Kaiser and Jeremy recorded live on Zoom, shared some reminiscences, reflected on how China and the podcast have changed in the years since they started the show, and took questions from listeners who tuned in. A video version of the podcast is available here .  8:05: A bird’s-eye view of Western media coverage of China 26:52: The demise of area studies, and the...

In a show taped on March 2, before the full force of COVID-19 had hit the U.S., Kaiser and Jeremy chatted with Parsifal D'Sola Alvarado about China's strategy in the resource-rich but economically devastated Venezuela. Parsifal is a co-founder of the Andrés Bello China-Latin America Research Foundation and a foreign policy adviser to Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó. 2:47: China-Venezuela...

Liú Déhǎi 刘德海, master of the pipa , a type of Chinese lute, died at the age of 83 on April 11, 2020.  Liu was born in Shanghai in 1937. He received his early music education there before the Communist victory in 1949, and went on to become one of the idealistic young musicians who tried to form a specifically Chinese orchestral tradition. He learned a number of traditional instruments but...

In a show taped in late February, Kaiser chats with Barbara Finamore, senior attorney and senior strategic director, Asia, for the Natural Resources Defense Council, who shares her perspective on China's impressive progress in curbing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing the price of renewable energy, and producing electric vehicles. Tune in for a rare bit of optimism in these tough times! 6:05: How...

This week, we bring you another show from the California podcast series that Kaiser recorded back in December, before the ravages of COVID-19. Take a break from thinking about the virus to listen to Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, talk about why China requires a very different foreign policy approach than Russia.  4:31: Ideology and remnants of the Cold War 13:57: Promotin...

On this week's show, veteran reporter Dexter "Tiff" Roberts chats with Kaiser and Jeremy about his new book, The Myth of Chinese Capitalism: The Worker, the Factory, and the Future of the World . 6:28: What is the myth of Chinese capitalism? 20:17: Chinese migrant workers and their children 35:54: Labor conditions in China 40:28: Strikes, the CCP, and labor union overhaul 45:48: Taobao villages an...

This week on Sinica, Kaiser continues his California series with a conversation with Janet Yang, one of the legends of the U.S.-China film world, and Michael Berry, a professor at UCLA and a leading expert on Chinese cinema. They discuss how politics and other factors have taken the shine off the initial promise of U.S.-China film collaboration, but how some bright spots remain.  This episode...

In a show taped live at the China-U.S. Summit at Duke University on February 29, Kaiser chats with Ambassador Craig Allen, the longtime Asia-based diplomat who now serves as president of the U.S.-China Business Council. Topics include the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on U.S. businesses with China exposure, the major issues plaguing American companies, the phase one trade deal inked in January,...

In this episode, part of Sinica's California series, Kaiser chats with Alex Wang, a professor of law at UCLA and an expert on China's environmental law. Just back from the COP25 meeting in Madrid, Alex provides an informed and dispassionate assessment of China’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 8:26: China and the EU on climate change 21:42: Is coal making a resurgence in China?  2...

From the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 that ended the Qing dynasty to the Second Sino-Japanese War to Tiananmen in 1989 and Hong Kong 30 years later, songs have inspired and united people in protest and political movements in China. In this episode, Kaiser chats with Jeff Wasserstrom of the University of California, Irvine, about the anthems that have animated activism, and about Jeff’s new book, Vigi...

In a live show taped at the Asia Society, in partnership with ChinaFile, Kaiser sat down to chat with prolific author Mara Hvistendahl at the launch event of her latest book, The Scientist and the Spy: A True Story of China, the FBI, and Industrial Espionage . Written in the style of a thriller, this page-turner is well researched, admirably balanced, and incredibly timely.  12:49: Accusation...