‘Shaken Authority’: Party-speak, propaganda, and the Sichuan earthquake of 2008

This week on Sinica, the winners of the 2023 Schwarzman Capstone Showcase. Two individuals and one team were selected as the best research projects after review of their projects and presentation of their findings. Their work is first-rate — and if you don’t factor in the very young age of the Schwarzman Scholars in competition. You’ll meet Shawn Haq, who won for his work on U.S. and Chinese expert perspectives on Taiwan; Corbin Duncan, who looked at the impact of the One Child Policy on the economic and social circumstances of only children in China; and the duo of Kelly Wu and Manthan Shah, part of a larger team that studied decarbonization efforts in Shandong province in steel, aluminum, chemical, and cement production. All three of these research efforts yielded fascinating insights.

2:15 – Introducing the Schwarzman Capstone Showcase: topics, judges, and process

4:41 – Self-introductions from Shawn Haq, Corbin Duncan, Kelly Wu, and Manthan Shah

15:07 – Shawn Haq: U.S.-China Expert Perspectives on Cross-Straits Relations

29:09 – Corbin Duncan: Only Children and Contemporary China

48:12 – Kelly Wu and Manthan Shah: Decarbonization of Shandong Province’s Materials Sector

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This week on Sinica, a special taping of an online event I moderated on February 22, just two days shy of the second anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The session was titled “The Ukrainian Factor in China’s Strategy,” and it was organized by the Ukrainian Association of Sinologists, and featured that organization’s chairperson, Vita Golod; Bartosz Kowalski, senior analyst at the Center for Asian Affairs at the University of Lodz; Lü Xiaoyu of Peking University’s School of International Studies; and Klaus Larres, distinguished professor of history and international affairs, at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. 

Please support Sinica by becoming a subscriber at sinica.substack.com. Please note that I have discontinued Patreon, and ask all supporters to help out over on Substack. 

2:42 – Introducing the guests

6:19 – Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba’s meeting with top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi

12:19 – What do Ukraine and its allies want from China?

16:59 – What inducements might Ukraine’s Western allies offer China?

21:51 – How has China’s position changed over the course of the last two years?

29:52 – The space for expression of pro-Ukraine voices in China

32:08 – Ukrainian and Chinese popular opinion 

36:44 – Does the diplomacy of sanctimony work on a realist power?

48:00 – China’s 12-Point Position

51:48 – Does Russian economic dependency on China translate into leverage?

54:04 – The overlap between China’s 12 points and Zelenskyy’s 10 points

57:42 – How reliable is America as a partner in this election year?

1:08:53  – How will this war end? What compromises are the sides willing to make?

1:21:32 – Lü Xiaoyu’s trip to Ukraine and his meeting with President Zelenskyy

There’s a complete transcript to this episode available at sinica.substack.com.

Sorry, no recommendations this week, but here’s one from me: The new remake of James Clavell’s epic novel Shògun, which is out on Hulu and FX. It’s pretty mind-blowing!

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This week on Sinica I'm delighted to bring you a live conversation with writer Peter Hessler, recorded at Duke University's Nasher Auditorium in Durham, North Carolina on November 10, 2023. The event was sponsored by the Duke Middle East Studies Center and the Asian Pacific Studies Institute, and was titled "Modern Revolutions in Ancient Civilizations."

Peter, known for both his trilogy of books written in China — Rivertown, Oracle Bones, and Country Driving — as well as for his reporting for The New Yorker, talks about how his years in China gave him perspective when living in Cairo and writing about Egypt during the Arab Spring. His book on Egypt, The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution, was made richer for me by the comparisons and contrasts with China threading throughout.

Special thanks to Griffin Orlando of the Middle East Study Center and Alex Nickley from the Asia Pacific Studies Institute, and Ralph Litzinger from Duke Anthropology.

6:27 – What Peter’s China experience brought to his writing on China — and vice-versa

9:45 – Contrasting the Chinese and Egyptian revolutions

18:37 – Revolution in thinking in Egypt and China

35:49 – Peter on his approach to the craft of reporting and writing

51:47 – Peter’s work in China as a longitudinal cohort study — and what it reveals so far

58:03 – A preview of Peter’s forthcoming book, Other Rivers

Recommendations:

Peter: Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals is one of the books

Kaiser: Kenneth W. Harl’s book Empires of the Steppes: A History of the Nomadic Tribes Who Shaped Civilization.

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Sinica is proud to present historian James Carter's column "This Week in China's History," one of the most popular offerings from the late great China Project. I'm delighted to be able to bring this back and to narrate it. You can expect a new column every other week, and we'll be publishing on Fridays.

This week, Jay looks at the last Qing emperor, Puyi's, abdication in February 1912, marking the end not only of the Qing Empire but of imperial Chinese history. Please enjoy!

The music on this episode is from the song "Between the Mountains and the Sea" (山海间) by my old band, Chunqiu. This song was written and performed by Yang Meng.

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Sinica is back, and on this first post-China Project show, Kaiser chats with TCP’s ex-editor-in-chief and Sinica’s co-founder and former co-host, Jeremy Goldkorn. They chat about the Beijing that was, their theories as to why things changed as they did, and share some of their favorite precepts for understanding contemporary China.

03:15 – What’s new with Sinica in the post-TCP era

04:34 – Jeremy reflects on the history of Sinica and of The China Project

20:25 – Jeremy’s characterization of how his approach to China differs from Kaiser’s

25:01 – How our China experiences shaped our perspectives

26:44 – Jeremy’s long, fraught relationship with the media biz in China

36:47 – What brought on the end of the golden years of liberalization in China?

47:45 – How China changed our politics

1:08:44 – Jeremy’s reveals (some of) his big plans

1:10:15 – Gen X China-watchers and what made them special

Recommendations: 

Jeremy: The Ghosts of Evolution by Connie Barlow

Kaiser: Ma in All Caps by Jay Kuo (the audiobook version, read by Kaiser); and the Captain Alatriste novels by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

Support Sinica by subscribing to the new Substack at https://sinica.substack.com, or on Patreon — same content — at https://Patreon.com/Sinica.

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This week on Sinica, a live recording from New York on the eve of the 2023 NEXTChina Conference. Jeremy Goldkorn joins Kaiser as co-host, with guests Maria Repnikova of Georgia State University, who specializes in Chinese soft power in Africa and on Sino-Russian relations, and Eric Olander, co-founder of the China Global South Project and co-host of the excellent China Global South Podcast and China in Africa Podcast. This show is unedited to preserve the live feel!

Recommendations:

Jeremy: Empire podcast William Dalrymple and Anita Anand, about how empires rise, fall, and shape the world around us

Maria: A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy by Nathan Thrall

Eric: Eat Bitter, a documentary by Ningyi Sun, a filmmaker from China, and Pascale Appora Gnekindy, from the Central African Republic

Kaiser: Wellness, an ambitious novel by Nathan Hill about a Gen X couple in Wicker Park, Chicago; and the NOVA documentary Inside China's Tech Boom, of which Kaiser is correspondent, narrator, and co-producer.

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This week on Sinica, we're running an interview with Jeffrey Bader from early last year. We learned on Monday morning that Jeff had died, and we dedicate this interview to his memory.

___

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Jeff Bader, who served as senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council during the first years of the Obama presidency, until 2011. Now a senior fellow at the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institute, Jeff was deeply involved in U.S.-China affairs at the State Department from his first posting to Beijing back in 1981 continuously for the next 21 years, through 2002. He later served as U.S. ambassador to Namibia and was tapped to head Asian Affairs at the NSC after Obama took office. Jeff is the author of a fascinating book on Obama’s China policy, Obama and China’s Rise: An Insider’s Account of America’s Asia Strategy. In this conversation, he offers a candid critique of the Biden China policy to date.

Note that this conversation was taped in mid-February — before the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, and before the Department of Justice announced the end of the “China Initiative.”

Note that this conversation was taped in mid-February — before the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, and before the Department of Justice announced the end of the “China Initiative.”

3:23 – How viewing China over 40 years of rapid development has shaped the way Jeff thinks about China

8:54 – Jeff Bader’s critique of the Biden administration’s China policy

19:40 – Is it important to have a China strategy?

24:55 – Right-sizing China’s ambitions: Is Rush Doshi right?

31:17 – Defining China’s legitimate interests

38:31 – Has China already concluded that the U.S., irrespective of who is in power, seeks to thwart China’s rise?

43:16 – How can China participate in the rules-based international order?

47:52 – Is it still possible for Biden to change his tune on China?

52:57 – How much room does Biden have politically? Can he exploit to electorate’s partisan divide on China?

59:54 – What is the “low-hanging fruit” that Biden could pluck to signal a lowering of temperature?

1:12:09 – Jeff Bader’s precepts for better understanding of — and better policy toward — China

Recommendations

Jeff: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom, a book by Stephen Platt about the Taiping Civil War focusing on Hong Rengan.

Kaiser: Re-recommending two previous guests’ recommendations: Iaian McGilchrists’s The Master and his Emissary recommended by Anthea Roberts; and Unfabling the East: The Enlightenment’s Encounter with Asia by Jurgen Osterhammel, recommended by Dan Wang.

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This week on Sinica, a live recording from October 10 in Chicago, Kaiser asks Chang-Tai Hsieh of the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, Damien Ma of the Paulson Institute’s think tank MacroPolo, and our own Lizzi Lee, host of The Signal with Lizzi Lee, to right-size the peril that the Chinese economy now faces from slow consumer demand, high youth unemployment, a troubled real estate sector, and high levels of local government debt. This event was co-sponsored by the University of Chicago’s Becker-Friedman Institute, the Paulson Institute, and The China Project. 

06:32 – What is the current state of the Chinese economy?

11:14 – The origins of China’s crisis in comparison to crises from 1990 in Japan and 2008 in the U.S.

14:25 – Real estate sector’s role in the crisis and possible solutions

22:51 – The significance of able management during times of crisis. Is this a crisis of confidence or expectations?

29:34 – The question of the general direction of the Chinese economy 

43:33 – What does an actual debt crisis look like in China?

48:00 – The right  U.S. policy towards China in light of current affairs

The complete transcript of the show is now in the main podcast page for the episode!

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This week on the Sinica Podcast: a lecture by Robert Daly, director of the Wilson Center's Kissinger Institute, delivered last year to D.C.-based Faith & Law at their Friday Forum. The lecture, titled "Is Our Foreign Policy Good? American Moral Absolutism and the China Challenge," is a powerful and thought-provoking talk. Kaiser follows up with a long conversation with Robert about the themes raised in the talk, and then some. Enjoy.

03:04 – A talk by Robert Daly from June 24th, 2022, given at Faith & Law’s Friday Forum

45:49 – What is lacking in the mainstream dialogue about American policies on China-related issues?

49:37 – Over-willingness to turn towards a military approach in the U.S.-China relationship in recent years

1:00:48 – The missionary aspect of the American approach in dealing with China

1:05:02 – The differences and commonalities between Chinese and American exceptionalism

1:17:42 – Are we in a state of Cold War with China?

1:23:54 – The question of moral standing in light of whataboutism

1:27:08 – Comparing American intentions with Chinese realities and the issue of moral absolutism

1:44:50 – What a “Just Cold War” would involve?

1:51:34 – Can the U.S. imagine a world in which it is not a hegemonic power?

A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com.

Recommendations: 

Robert: The House of Sixty Fathers (a Newbury Award-winning book) by Meindert DeJong with illustrations by the late Maurice Sendak

Kaiser: Wolf Hall: A Novel by Hilary Mantel

Anda Union (Inner Mongolian band)

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Jason McLure, a correspondent for a new investigative reporting outfit called The Examination, and reporter Jude Chan, who writes for Initium Media. The two worked with two other reporters on a fascinating expose, funded by the Pulitzer Center, of China's tobacco monopoly, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (or China Tobacco), and how it has managed to be both the biggest seller of tobacco in the world — and also the effective regulator of tobacco laws in China.

06:41 – The origins and mission of The Examination 

09:24 – An overview of the tobacco industry in China 

12:17 – What is the true power China Tobacco holds in the Chinese tobacco industry?

14:34 – The history and inner workings of China Tobacco

20:30 – China Tobacco - a manufacturer or a regulator?

28:42 – The current situation of anti-smoking advocacy in China

31:47 – The role of smoking in the Chinese culture and the gender discrepancy within the custom of smoking

39:09 – How does China Tobacco manage to prevent the implementation of smoking bans in Chinese cities?

48:07 – What was the reason behind the faltering of promising initiatives regarding smoking control?

55:33 – The approach of Chinese youth towards the unequal fight with China Tobacco?

A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com.

Recommendations:

Jude: Zhang Chunqiao: 1949 and Beyond by Zheng Zhong

Jason: Top Boy (British crime drama on Netflix)

Kaiser: The music of Florence Price, and especially Symphony No. 1 and Symphony No. 3 recorded by the Philadelphia Orchestra

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