sichuan

This week on Sinica, Kaiser welcomes back Jeremy Daum, senior research scholar in law and senior fellow at the Paul Tsai China Law Center. Jeremy has a well-deserved reputation as a debunker of myths and misperceptions about China. This time, he takes on the much-discussed “overseas police stations,” and examines how they are — and aren’t — related to China’s transnational repression.

01:03 – The overview of the investigation on Chinese overseas police stations

06:19 – The disparity between the press release and the actual charges against the investigated Chinese individuals

08:48 – The functions of so-called Chinese secret police stations in the U.S.

11:10 – What was wrong with the report written by Safeguard Defenders?

16:57 – What is being national in the aforementioned policies?

19:22 – Evidence of a link between physical presence with transnational repression or repatriation of criminals

26:29 – Is the media narrative regarding popular myths about China slowly changing?

30:22 – Other governments’ views on and actions towards Chinese police stations

31:38 – Tactics used on the return of alleged criminals to China

34:11 – An update on the topic of draft regulations on Generative AI

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

Recommendations:

Jeremy: I’m a Virgo, a television show on Amazon Prime.

Kaiser: A perfect family dinner for the summer: An easy recipe for spicy salmon/tuna

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This week on Sinica, UPenn legal scholar Neysun Mahboubi talks about his recently-concluded trip back to China — his first time back since the outbreak of the pandemic. Neysun talks about the importance of in-person, face-to-face scholarly exchange, and despite concerns over the more restrictive political space in China, sounds a hopeful note about what the restoration of in-person exchange might mean for the future of U.S.-China relations.

05:02 – Neysun Mahboubi’s YouTube-based initiatives on the U.S.-China relations

10:15 – The changes in Beijing in recent years

13:49 – The recently observed growing reticence of Chinese people to speak up, and the third-rail topics

16:50 – The effect of Chinese administrative handling of the pandemic on people’s trust

25:01 – What is the view of Chinese liberal intellectuals on the role of the U.S. in the worsening U.S.-China relations?

28:29 – Have the Biden administration’s recent efforts to thaw the U.S.-China relations been well received by the Chinese side?

32:48 – The future of scholarly exchanges from China and the U.S. in light of the pandemic and escalating political tensions

40:13 – The Ukraine War from the perspective of Chinese intellectuals

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

Recommendations:

Neysun: To Live, directed by Zhang Yimou

Kaiser: The Status Kuo, an American politics substack by Jay Kuo

Mentioned: 

To Live: A Novel by Yu Hua (translated by Michael Berry)

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Elsa Kania, a Ph.D. candidate in Harvard University's Department of Government and adjunct fellow at the Center for a New American Security who researches China's military strategy, defense innovation, and emerging technologies. Elsa joins the show to discuss China’s push for Military-Civil Fusion, debunking some of the myths about the program that U.S. pundits and policymakers have imbibed.

03:54 – Did the concept of Military-Civil Fusion start with the leadership of Xi Jinping?

06:48 What were the barriers to MCF’s successful implementation before Xi’s leadership?

09:50 – The comparison between attempts and successes of MCF in China and the U.S.

15:39 – Areas of focus of China’s MCF. Which areas offer the most significant possibility for success?

20:17 – A look at the perceived legal obligation of Chinese companies to participate in MCF

24:59 – The collaboration between Chinese and American researchers in light of MCF

31:00 – The awareness of Chinese policy-makers of the sensitivities associated with MCF by other nations

34:56 – Does MCF have the same place of prominence in the Biden administration 

that it did in the Trump’ administration?

37:20 – How should we approach the policy of MCF?

42:27 – Is the U.S. trying to “out-China” China?

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

Recommendations:

Elsa: Translation State by Ann Leckie

Kaiser: A recipe for making homemade nuomi cha / genmai cha — green tea with roasted glutinous rice

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With Secretary of State Antony Blinken's two days of meetings in Beijing just concluded, Kaiser spoke with Dennis Wilder, managing director for the Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues at Georgetown University, where he also serves as an assistant professor of practice in Asian Studies in the School of Foreign Service. Dennis was the National Security Council's director for China from 2004-2005, and then served as the NSC special assistant to the president and senior director for East Asian affairs from 2005 to 2009. From 2009 to 2015 Dennis served as the senior editor of the President’s Daily Brief, the worldwide intelligence update produced under the auspices of the director of national intelligence. He also served from 2015 to 2016 as the CIA’s deputy assistant director for East Asia and the Pacific. Who better to give an informed take on Secretary Blinken's diplomatic mission?

Today is a public U.S. holiday so we'll get the transcript and podcast page with show notes up later in the week. Look for it on the TheChinaProject.com website.

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Keyu Jin, associate professor of economics at LSE, who talks about her new book, The New China Playbook: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism, a wide-ranging, ambitious, and accessible book that explains the unique Chinese political economy, emphasizing both its successes to date and how it must change to meet the challenges to come.

01:01 – An overview of the book The New China Playbook: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism by Keyu Jin

09:22 – Is the criticism about being pro-China justified?

14:25 – The element of culture in the Chinese economy

27:56 – What is the mayor economy and what are its pros and cons?

38:00 – The power of the Chinese state to affect changes in the macroeconomy

42:52 – The modern state-owned enterprise and its purpose

47:39 – China’s financial system – the disparity between China’s GDP growth and its abyssmal stock market

52:07 – The current situation with the real estate market: Is the bubble going to pop?

1:02:03 – Pros and cons of the growth of the shadow banking sector in China

1:06:32 – The position of China in the global trading system

1:13:52 – How does China respond to technology restrictions in key areas such as semiconductor manufacturing?

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

Recommendations:

Keyu: When the Facts Change: Essays, 1995-2010 by Tony Judt

Kaiser: 1776 (Musical)

Mentioned:

The New China Playbook: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism by Keyu Jin

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with David Ownby, the University of Montreal historian who runs the excellent ReadingTheChinaDream.com website — a trove of translations of writings by mainstream Chinese intellectuals. David talks about the website’s mission and about tells about his recent three-week trip to Beijing and Shanghai, in which he met with many of the people he translates on his site. Many of them are profoundly disillusioned with the leadership’s handling of the end of Zero-COVID, he found.

03:38 – Genesis of the project Reading the Chinese Dream

09:32 – The choice of intellectuals being translated

14:11 – An overview of common ideological denominators for the New Confucians, the Liberals, and the New Left.

24:19 – The emerging groups as a direct response to certain phenomena happening in the West

25:58 – How did we fail to understand the intellectual life in China?

30:30 – An overview of David’s recent trip to China

35:12 – How does the post-COVID reality in China affect Chinese intellectuals?

45:34 – Are we observing a turning point in the intellectual community and its relationship with the Chinese government?

47:41 – The attitudes of Chinese intellectuals towards the U.S.

56:04 – Will the negativity currently observed among Chinese intellectuals a temporary or enduring issue?

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

Recommendations:

David: Ties by Domenico Starnone, translated by Jhumpa Lahiri

Kaiser: The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy by Peter H. Wilson

Mentioned:

Translating Myself and Others by Jhumpa Lahiri

Simplicissimus by Johann Grimmelshausen

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With the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue kicking off in Singapore on Friday, June 2, Kaiser chats with the organizer’s managing director for Asia, James Crabtree, about the history, structure, and significance of this Asian answer to the Munich Security Conference, James, who joined the Institute for International Strategic Studies in 2018, offers a great sneak-peek and a curtain raiser on the three-day event, which will bring ministers and secretaries of defense together from all over the region and beyond.

05:54 – What are the differences between the Munich Security Conference and the Shangri-La Dialogue?

10:21 – Notable past Shangri-La Dialogues

14:42 – Who are the guests of this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue?

19:53 – The programming of the Shangri-La Dialogue

26:48 – The Chinese participation in the event and the background of China-US and Sino-Japanese relations

34:16 – European delegations in recent years attending the event and the challenges they face

37:42 – The connotation of Indo-Pacific as opposed to the Asia-Pacific

41:17 – The dynamics on the axis China-India-US and a multipolar vision for Southeast Asia

52:33 – The current intentions for the bilateral relationship between the United States and China?

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

Recommendations:

James: The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark; and The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life by John le Carré

Kaiser:  A Perfect Spy: A Novel by John le Carré 

Mentioned:

The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India’s New Gilded Age by James Crabtree

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This week on Sinica, Harvard’s eminent sinologist William Kirby joins Kaiser to talk about his book Empires of Ideas: Creating the Modern University from Germany to America to China, and to share his views on the state of higher education in China and the U.S，

03:12 – Wissenschaft and the German contribution to the creation of the modern research university

06:30 – The decreasing number of Chinese students willing to study in the U.S. and the defunding of American public universities

12:17 – What is the current state of higher education in China?

18:19 – Continuities between the old imperial civil service examination system and the current higher education system in China

23:08 – The state of Chinese universities before the Cultural Revolution

29:23 – How China revived higher education on the model of American universities in the early years of Reform and Opening

33:00 – Why does China maintain the gaokao examination despite its great unpopularity?

41:38 – Differences between the two leading universities in China: Peking University and Tsinghua University

44:00 – Institutional entrepreneurship at Tsinghua University

50:01 – The origins of Nanjing University and how it evolved over the years

57:21 – The importance of governance and management in the example of the University of Hong Kong

1:05:23 – What is the future of the joint programs between American and Chinese universities? 

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

Recommendations:

Bill:

Made in Hong Kong: Transpacific Networks and a New History of Globalization by Peter E. Hamilton

The Dean of Shandong: The Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University by Daniel A. Bell

The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be by Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner

9,000 Years of Wine: A World History by Rod Phillips

Red Mandarin Dress: An Inspector Chen Novel by Qiu Xiaolong

Kaiser: Adventures of Horatio Hornblower by Entertainment Radio

Mentioned: Empires of Ideas: Creating the Modern University from Germany to America to China by William C. Kirby

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This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser is joined by The China Project's CEO Bob Guterma, who just so happens to have served at Chief Compliance Officer (and later Managing Director for Europe and the U.S.) for the expert network Capvision. Capvision, as listeners may well be aware, was the Shanghai-based company whose offices in China were raided by Chinese law enforcement, resulting in the detention of two experts for allegedly passing on military secrets to foreign companies. Does this signal a major crackdown on consultancies? And what are the implications for foreign businesses in China? Bob shares his insights — and things are more complicated than you might think.

03:39 – Background information on Capvision

10:29 – The national security concerns in the Capvision case.

12:27 – Is there a connection between the case of Capvision with the previous cases of Bain and Mintz?

20:13 – Is there changing optics for Western companies doing business in China?

22:13 – The possible connection between the Capvision case and the Espionage Law

32:22 – The context of bigger changes in the past three years in China in light of achieving government goals.

34:34 – The inner workings of a compliance officer in expert networks

36:44 – Media outlets’ misconceptions and a lack of diligent research regarding the Capvision case 

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

Recommendations:

Bob:  Energy and Civilization: A History by Vaclav Smil

Kaiser: Mr. Bungle’s debut album Mr. Bungle

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This week on Sinica, Kendra Schaefer, a partner specializing in technology at China-focused consultancy Trivium, and Jeremy Daum, Senior Research Scholar in Law and Senior Fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center. discuss the new draft regulations published in April by the Cyberspace Administration of China that will, when passed, govern generative AI in China. Will it choke off innovation, or create conditions for the safe development of this world-changing technology?

04:36 – What is the difference between deep synthesis internet services and generative AI?

06:17 – Areas affected by the set of newest regulations: recommendation algorithms, deep fakes

11:15 – Major national regulations governing generative AI in China vs. in the West.

15:35 – The question of the privacy policy in China

18:25 – How far along are the tech companies when it comes to truly applying generative AI?

24:16 – Main areas of concern about ChatGPT raised in China and the US. What are the government and companies doing to deal with these issues?

28:04 – Is the idea to label AI-generated content sufficient?

38:28 – Requirements and concerns for training data for generative AI. Questions of accuracy and authenticity.

47:21 – Will the generative AI stay in the social media landscape, or spread toward the industrial sector?

50:12 – To what extent will export restrictions affect the development of generative AI in China?

A transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com

Recommendations:

Kendra: Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara

Jeremy: The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan

Kaiser: The Earth Transformed: An Untold History by Peter Frankopan; Belafonte: At Carnegie Hall by Harry Belafonte; and Belafonte Returns to Carnegie Hall (Live) by Harry Belafonte

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Andrew Stokols, a Ph.D. researcher at MIT who has been studying the “techno-natural utopia” that the Chinese government is now building a hundred kilometers southwest of Beijing: Xiong’an. Andrew breaks down why he sees it as an urban manifestation of the fundamental ideas embodied in Xi Jinping’s ideological vision for China.

02:02 - Xiong’an New Area as a bold vision for China

07:36 - Planned stages for the development of Xiong’an. Milestones in 2035 and 2050.

12:03 - Cities as expressions of political ideas

15:32 - Different facets of the Xiong’an as the legacy of Xi Jinping

20:03 - The elements of ecological civilization intended to be built into the new city

27:41 - Technologies employed with the intention of making Xiong’an a smart city

31:56 - The idea of incentivizing the digital yuan into the city of Xiong’an

34:55 - Xiong’an as an expression of Chineseness

40:05 - How is Xiong’an discussed in the English-language press outside of China?

47:59 - Approaches to technology and nature in Western and Chinese discourses. The 

 concept of techno-naturalism.

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

Recommendations:

Andrew:  The Institutional Foundation of Economic Development by Shiping Tang

Kaiser:  Five Families by Selwyn Raab

Mentioned:

Andrew’s article on Xiong’an:  Chinas techno-natural utopia: A deep dive into Xiong’an

Shanghai Future: Modernity Remade by Anna Greenspan

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This week on Sinica, an Earth Day special: Kaiser chats with Marilyn Waite, managing director of the Climate Finance Fund; Alex Wang, a UCLA law professor who specializes in China climate and environmental law; and Deborah Seligsohn, a political scientist at Villanova University who served as the Environment, Science, Technology and Health Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. This episode was taped live on Thursday, April 20, as a webinar from The China Project.

5:24 – Taking stock: Where have we come since the first Earth Day in 1970?

14:24 – Is the Inflation Reduction Act an unalloyed good for the environment and climate?

17:17 – The good and the bad of China’s recent record on climate

20:45 – The unmet need for climate finance globally, and what China’s PbOC is doing right

27:54 – Should we roll our eyes when China speaks of “ecological civilization”?

31:57 – Embracing the JEDI approach in addressing climate change

35:30 – Can the U.S. and China harness competition to drive better climate outcomes?

39:54 – Why pushing each other won’t work, and cooperation is still needed

45:15 – Addressing hard-to-abate sectors like agrifood

50:30 – Balancing cooperation and competition between the U.S. and China on climate

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

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This week on the Sinica Podcast, Jeremy and I chat with Mike Chinoy, the legendary award-winning TV newsman who helmed CNN in Beijing for many critical years. Mike talks about the video documentary series and accompanying book Assignment China: An Oral History of American Journalists in the People’s Republic, for which he interviewed about 130 journalists whose careers spanned an 80-year period, from the 1940s to the present.

04:08 – The genesis of the Assignment China project

11:15 – Editorial decisions: What was included, and what wasn’t

16:13 – The big takeaways for Mike on finishing this project

25:13 – The role of contingency and the observer effect

32:52 – How Tiananmen really made CNN and changed the future of cable news

36:30 – Tough ethical calls in the reporting of China 

42:42 – Structural biases in American reporting on China…

50:50 – …and what news consumers can do to adjust for those baked-in biases

52:54 – Does where the reporters are actually determine what the story is?

1:02:17 – What went wrong with TV news?

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

Recommendations:

Mike:  Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai by Matti Friedman

Jeremy: From the Jewish Provinces: Selected Stories by Fradl Shtok, translated by Jordan Finkin and Allison Schachter

Kaiser: Father's Laszlo Ladany's "Ten Commandments" on China-watching, and playing around with ChatGPT 4

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This week on Sinica, Kishore Mahbubani, who served as Singapore's UN Ambassador and has written extensively on ASEAN and the U.S.-China rift, returns to the show to discuss his recent essay in Foreign Affairs, and to advocate for the pragmatic approach that's held ASEAN together for over five decades of continuous peace and growing prosperity.

4:36 – Kishore talks about Macron’s state visit to China and the controversy around his comments in media interviews

8:53 – How the Ukraine War has highlighted divisions between the West and the Global South

11:45 – Pragmatism: is this a euphemism for amorality?

15:26 – ASEAN as a template for multipolarity

19:38 – Cultural relativism, moral absolutism, and the shift in the American intelligentsia

24:56 – How does ASEAN handle specific issues of U.S.-China tension?

29:12 – Investment and trade: China and ASEAN vs. U.S and ASEAN — guns and butter

40:04 – The Belt and Road Initiative and American attitudes toward it

44:10 – Kishore’s “three rules” for U.S. engagement with ASEAN

49:49 – China’s recent diplomatic efforts: Saudi-Iran, and the Ukraine War

52:34 – How receptive has the American strategic class been to Kishore’s ideas?

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

Recommendations:

Kishore: John Rawls, A Theory of Justice

Kaiser: The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan

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This week on Sinica, something different: Kaiser asks over a dozen scholars of various facets of China studies to talk about their work and make some recommendations! You'll hear from a variety of scholars, from MA students to tenured professors, talking about a bewildering range of fascinating work they're doing. Enjoy!

3:00 – Kristin Shi-Kupfer — recommendations: this essay (in Chinese) by Teng Biao on Chinese Trump supporters; Han Rongbin's work on digital society; and Yang Guobin's work on digital expression on the internet in China.

7:48 – Lev Nachman — recommendation: Ian Rowen, One China, Many Taiwans: The Geopolitics of Cross-Strait Tourism; and the city of Taichung, and especially its night market food on Yizhong Street and the Fang Chia Night market.

9:27 – Lin Zhang — recommendation: Victor Seow, Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia; and Gary Gertle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the 20th Century

15:32 – Maura Dykstra — recommendation: Richard von Glahn's contribution to the Oxford History of Modern China about registration in imperial China

19:00 – Jonathan Elkobi — a Rand Corporation study on economic cooperation between Israel and China; the fusion band Snarky Puppy

22:22 – Seiji Shirane — Seediq Bale (Warriors of the Rainbow) and Lust, Caution

25:18 – Zhu Qian — Rebecca Karl, Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the 20th Century, and two films: Hou Hsiao-hsien's A City of Sadness and Jia Zhangke's A Touch of Sin

31:23– Fabio Lanza — Sarah Mellors Rodriguez, Reproductive Realities in Modern China: Birth Control and Abortion, 1911–2021; and Leopoldina Fortunati, The Arcane of Reproduction: Housework, Prostitution, Labor and Capital by Leopoldina Fortunati 

33:04 – Catherine Tsai —:Hiroko Matsuda’s The Liminality of the Japanese Empire

34:46– Lena Kaufmann — Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China and other works by Francesca Bray

39:05 – Josh Freeman — Works of Uyghur poetry by Ghojimuhemmed Muhemmed, Ekhmetjan Osman, Tahir Hamut Izgil, Perhat Tursun, Dilkhumar Imin, Abide Abbas Nesrin, Erkan Qadir, and Muyesser Abdul'ehed Hendan.

41:32 – Susan McCarthy — Joanna Handlin Smith, The Art of Doing Good: Charity in Late Ming China

49:18 – Brian DeMare — William Hinton, Fanshen

50:47 – Juliet Lu — Maria Repnikova, Chinese Soft Power, and Samuel L. Jackson reading Adam Mansbach's Go the F--k to Sleep

58:29 – Sabina Knight — Wu Ming-Yi, The Man with the Compound Eyes, translated by Darryl Sterk

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

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Chris Marquis, a professor at Cambridge University’s Judge Business School, and formerly at Cornell’s business school, about the book he co-authored with Kunyuan Qiao, Mao and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise. In it, they examine how even in China's private sector, socialization into the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party among some entrepreneurs has left an enduring legacy that is visible in some of the ways Chinese private enterprises conduct business.

3:35 – Motivation for Mao and Markets

5:34 – Enduring elements of Maoism in contemporary Chinese enterprise

12:35 – Variation among “Maoist” entrepreneurs

20:40 – Differentiating superficial and authentic Maoist entrepreneurship

35:04 – Is today’s China ideological or simply nationalistic?

39:17 – Xi’s Maoist revival: real or imagined?

44:30 – Chris’s transition from business and sociology to Chinese politics

47:09 – Chris’s experience as a Thousand Talents recipient

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

Recommendations:

Chris: The Entrepreneurial State and The Big Con by Mariana Mazzucato

Kaiser: This calendar of lunar phases from theoriginallunarphase.com, and Mongolian salty milk tea, or sūūtei tsai

which is easy to make at home

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This week, a bonus episode to keep you caught up on the week's biggest China story: Xi Jinping's two days of meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Maria Repnikova, a Latvian-born native Russian speaker who is also fluent in Chinese and who teaches Chinese politics and communications at Georgia State University, joins the show again to talk about what each side hoped for, what each side got, and the asymmetries of power on conspicuous display in Moscow.

1:53 – Does Beijing look at the Ukraine War and still see the United States, as Maria argued last year?

3:06 – How Xi and Putin spoke to their own domestic audiences, and to each other’s

4:43 – How the Xi-Putin meeting was viewed in the Global South

8:10 – Why was the elephant in the room go mostly unremarked upon?

10:27 – Junior partner, senior partner, and “optionality”

16:27 – Did Putin come away disappointed from the meeting?

18:03 – How did China’s peace framework come off in the West vs. in China?

21:11 – What might the United States have done differently — and what might it still do to prevent China from drifting too close to Russia?

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

Recommendations:

Maria: Solomon Elusoji, Travelling with Big Brother: A Reporter’s Junket in China 

Kaiser: The Polish progressive rock band Riverside, and its latest album ID.Entity

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser welcomes Tuvia Gering of Israel's Institute of National Security Studies, where he focuses on China's relations with Israel and other countries of the Middle East. Tuvia breaks down the agreement to normalize relations between Riyadh and Tehran, which Beijing brokered during secret talks that were only revealed, along with the fruit they bore, on March 10.

6:05 – How was China able to broker the Saudi-Iran normalization?

17:00 – Notable commitments from Saudi, Iran, and China

25:01 – China’s non-energy interests in and engagement with the Middle East

29:03 – Reactions from world capitals

39:28 – Saudi’s balancing act between U.S. security partnership and engagement with China

49:52 – Implications for China as a mediator in Ukraine and other international conflict zones

52:44 – Overview of China-Israel relations

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

Recommendations:

Tuvia:  King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard on YouTube

Kaiser: The Venture of Islam by Marshall G. S. Hodgson

Mentioned:

Tuvia's Discourse Power Substack

The China-Global South Podcast

Tuvia’s interview with retired PLA Colonel Zhou Bo

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser welcomes Taisu Zhang, professor of law at Yale University, who discusses his recent work on the expansion of the administrative state down to the subdistrict and neighborhood level — changes that are far-reaching, and likely permanent. They also discuss a recent essay in Foreign Affairsi n which Taisu argued that Beijing is shifting away from "performance legitimacy" as the foundation of political rule, and more toward legality — not to be confused with the rule of law.

3:29 – Nationalism as legitimacy, and its grounding in economic performance

7:45 – The CCP’s unique approach to “legal legitimacy”

21:28 – Evidence from the Two Meetings, or 兩會 liǎnghuì

35:56 – Chinese Administrative Expansion in the Xi Jinping Era

49:40 – The role of the anti-corruption campaign in expanding local government authority

56:18 – Changes in local governance after COVID

1:01:27 – Who were the dàbái?

1:04:10 – Technology in China’s post-pandemic power structure

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

Recommendations:

Taisu: The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy by David Graeber; The Rise and Fall of Imperial China: The Social Origins of State Development by Yuhua Wang; Uncertainty in the Empire of Routine: The Administrative Revolution of the Eighteenth-Century Qing State by Maura Dykstra; The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu; and The Lower Yangzi Trilogy by Ge Fei

Kaiser: Kaiser: Assignment China: An Oral History of American Journalists in the People's Republic by Mike Chinoy; and the many uses of beeswax

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A second full episode this week for you Sinica listeners! Jude Blanchette joins to talk about the House Select Committee on United States Competition with the Chinese Communist Party, and all that is wrong with it, from its framing of the CCP as an "existential threat" to its focus on the CCP, and how all of this adds up to an embarrassing moral panic that distracts from the serious issues the U.S. confronts when it comes to China.

4:37 – What’s wrong with the Select Committee’s framing of China as an “existential threat,” and why the first hearing was an embarrassment

9:01 – The current moment as a moral panic over China

12:09 – Domestic political drivers of U.S. China policy

15:04 – Why the United States versus the Chinese Communist Party is the wrong framing too

22:46 – Is this more like McCarthyism — or antisemitism? 

28:58 – The downstream effects of U.S. tech containment policy toward China

42:01 – The advantage of simplistic, Manichean messaging

46:15 – Prioritizing U.S. issues with China: why Confucius Institutes and TikTok are so far down the to-do list, and what really matters48:59 – And what are the real issues that deserve priority?

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

Recommendations:

Jude: Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon by Malcolm Gladwell and Bruce Headlam, from Audible

Kaiser: This podcast interview with Angela Rasmussen, the virologist who has been in the front lines fighting back against the resurgent lab leak theory, from the Slate What Next: TBD podcast

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.