Episodes
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This week on Sinica I'm delighted to be joined by Amy King, Associate Professor in the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre at The Australian National University. She shares her ideas about how perceptions of insecurity can paradoxically motivate closer economic relations between two states, and she looks at not only the examples of China and Japan after the end of World War II, but Australia and China as well. We also discuss Sino-Australian relations over the last 15 years, and much else!
2:48 – Key phases of Australia-China relations over the past 15 years and the security and economic nexus
9:05 – Amy’s research into the Sino-Japanese relationship and how perceptions of insecurity can motivate closer economic ties, and how Australia is responding to China now
21:22 – How Amy would argue the case for economic engagement with China to folks in Washington
26:31 – Securitization in Australia and the important differences between Australia and the U.S.
30:20 – The shift in the Australia-China relationship under the Albanese government
33:12 – What the U.S. can learn from Australia
35:14 – Why people tend to conflate Australia’s experience with America’s
39:04 – Amy’s essay, “The Collective Logic of Chinese Hegemonic Order,” and how we can understand China’s role in the emerging post-unipolar world
42:47 – Three mechanisms employed by China to amplify its voice post-war (amplifying, grafting, and resistance by appropriation) and how modern “middle powers” can influence the international order now
52:31 – The state of discourse on China in Australia and what Amy believes China wants
58:54 – Amy’s thoughts on pluralism and international order
1:03:22 – What lessons about de-risking and navigating multi-alignment Australia should be learning from other nations in the region
Recommendations:
Amy: Fintan O’Toole’s We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland
Kaiser: The Paul Reed Smith (PRS) SE Hollowbody II Piezo electric guitar
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China's rapid surge in electric vehicle manufacturing, adoption, and export has variously encouraged, delighted, impressed, frightened, and even enraged people around the world. What did China get right in facilitating the explosive development in this industry? Was is just subsidies, or were there other important policies that helped jumpstart it? How have other geographies responded? And what can they learn? Ilaria Mazzocco, deputy director and senior fellow with the Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) joins me to share her rich insights into the Chinese EV industry.
3:49 – How Ilaria became interested in green industrial policy
5:59 – The reality of progress in EVs in China
11:21 – The role of state subsidies and other things that tend to get missed in trying to understand EVs in China
16:51 – How other countries are trying to adopt China’s approach
19:21 – The differences between the EU and U.S. approaches
24:17 – The outlook for competition in the Chinese market
26:08 – Business models in the Chinese EV sector and the example of BYD
30:53 – Chinese firms’ push for internationalization and how the rapidity of becoming multinationals [multinational companies?] may pose challenges
35:54 – Alignment between host countries and Chinese companies
39:58 – What the U.S. is doing and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)
42:27 – How U.S. protectionist measures may affect third markets, and whether restrictions may backfire
48:57 – The coming shift to next-generation batteries, and the potential for international collaboration in advancing more circular practices
55:43 – How Ilaria’s fieldwork shifted her perspective on the EV industry
59:38 – How we can improve industrial policy
Recommendations:
Ilaria: My Antonia by Willa Cather; the Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel; The Army of Sleepwalkers by Wu Ming (an Italian novelist collective) about the French Revolution
Kaiser: The Wolf Hall audiobooks read by Ben Miles; the HBO series Rome (2005-2007)
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Missing episodes?
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This week on Sinica, I chat with Jane Hayward, lecturer at King's College London, about her excellent YouTube channel, Jane Hayward China, and her efforts to bring up-to-date scholarship on modern and contemporary China to audiences through internet video, slaying various bugbears along the way.
3:28 Why Jane started her YouTube channel, her intended versus actual audiences, and navigating the current toxic media environment
10:56 The benefits of an area studies approach, and why Jane chose a U.S. PhD program
14:46 Defining the complicated public discourse in the West
19:35 Jane’s videos: the surprising popularity of “Xi Jinping is NOT like an Emperor;” and more controversial videos
26:28 New Qing History and different critiques of it
34:50 Jane's series on types of communism, and her video on reporting on China in British media
42:31 What may be coming next on Jane’s channel
Recommendations
Jane: David Priestland’s The Red Flag: A History of Communism
Kaiser: The YouTube channel Chinese Cooking Demystified, and specifically their video “63 Chinese Cuisines: the Complete Guide”
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This week on Sinica, I chat with Michael Swaine, Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for the last couple of years, prior to which he spent nearly two decades as a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he led extensive work on Chinese defense and foreign policy, U.S.-China relations, and East Asian international relations more broadly. He was also a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation, where he developed a reputation for rigorous research on Asian security and crisis management. We focus on his recent report, “Avoiding the Abyss: An Urgent Need for Sino-U.S. Crisis Management,” which offers both a framework for understanding the forces driving U.S.-China crises and a roadmap to prevent or manage these crises effectively. He drew on his many decades of experience working on the security dimension of the bilateral relationship, including his participation in many Track II dialogues and simulations of crisis scenarios over the years.
4:51 – Defining "crisis" and "crisis prevention"
10:13 – The possibility of a crisis in the South China Sea
12:31 – Lessons from past crises
20:08 – The problematic moralistic stances and tit-for-tat escalation produced by yǒulǐ, yǒulì, yǒu jié 有理, 有利, 有节
27:37 – U.S. concern over the credibility of its alliance commitments
34:50 – The problem of perception
38:16 – Examples of how each side is sometimes unable to see how its own actions are perceived by the other
41:20 – The dangers of failing to understand and making assumptions about the China’s historical memory
45:42 – Problems of signaling and how best to solve them
51:17 – Mike’s suggestions for a crisis toolkit and his proposal of a civilian-led two-tier dialogue structure
58:41 – Track II dialogues
1:02:47 – The importance of educating leaders up and down the system on crisis management
1:06:08 – The structural issues of the decision-making systems in China and the U.S.
Recommendations:
Michael: Art critic Brian Sewell’s The Reviews That Caused the Rumpus; Robert Suettinger’s The Conscience of the Party: Hu Yaobang, China’s Communist Reformer
Kaiser: The Great Transformation: China’s Road from Revolution to Reform by Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian
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The British literary quarterly Granta has published a new issue dedicated to Chinese writers, featuring familiar mainstays of contemporary literature and some fresh new voices. This week on Sinica, I chatted with Thomas Meaney, editor of Granta, about what's happening in the literary scene in China today and how this fantastically interesting issue came together. Tom is wonderfully thoughtful and articulate, and we really get into some of the individual stories and the larger trends they may or may not represent.
3:17 – Tom’s familiarity with Chinese literature and China
4:40 – Why Granta dedicated this issue to Chinese literature, how the issue came together, and how Granta found its translators
10:54 – Balancing political considerations with artistic merits in curating this issue
17:20 – The Chinese literary obsession with losers and the role of losers in Xiao Hai’s “Adrift in the South”
25:11 – The so-called Dongbei Renaissance, and Wu Qi’s interview and why he pushes back on the idea of the Dongbei Renaissance genre
33:02 – Granta staff favorites
35:18 – The phenomenon of gratuitous name-dropping and borrowing stylistically from other writers
38:05 – The issue’s three photo essays by Feng Li, Li Jie and Zhan Jungang, and Haohui Liu
44:36 – Yu Hua’s “Tomorrow I’ll Get Past It”
50:09 – Mo Yan’s “The Leftie Sickle”
53:10 – Yan Lianke’s “Black Pig Hair, White Pig Hair”
57:56 – The "filmability" of some of the short stories and the connection between the film world and literary writers in China
1:00:08 – Where you can get Granta and pick up this issue
Recommendations:
Tom: The Egalitarian Moment: Asia and Africa, 1950-1980 by Anthony Low, a comparative history of land reform
Kaiser: The ever-expanding library of guitarless backing tracks on YouTube to play along to
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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This week on Sinica in a show taped live at China Crossroads, Shanghai's premier event series, I'm joined by my good friend Cameron Johnson, who is on the governing board of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, specializes professionally in supply chains in China, and teaches at NYU Shanghai.
4:20 – What makes up a supply chain ecosystem, and why it is difficult to build out
8:39 – A brief history of decoupling, the warning signs, and whether it matters “who shot first”
16:43 – Personal protective equipment (PPE) manufacturing in America, the lessons we (should have) learned, and Washington’s response
25:13 – EVs and batteries: manufacturing in America, and what it looks like on the ground in China
30:46 – The semiconductor industry
34:24 – “China Week” in Congress, and the different responses of GOP versus Democratic congressmen
38:36 – De-risking as globalization 2.0
42:21 – Cameron’s predictions on the effects of the [upcoming] U.S. elections
44:10 – Inside Chinese factories
47:44 – American shortfalls in manufacturing
50:21 – The importance of seeing China’s competitive markets and ecosystem clusters for oneself
53:09 – Cameron’s advice for the next U.S. administration
Recommendations:
Cameron: Gōngyìng liàn gōngfáng zhàn 《供应链攻防战》 (Supply Chain Offensive and Defense War) by Lin Xueping; No Trade is Free: Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America’s Workers by Robert Lighthizer
Kaiser: The Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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This week, in a show taped in Beijing at the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University, I speak with Professor Da Wei about a new public opinion poll on China's perception of international security and review its important findings. We also discuss Chinese views on the Russo-Ukrainian War and the upcoming U.S. presidential election.
2:11 – Da Wei’s new podcast
4:05 – CISS’s “Public Opinion Poll: Chinese Outlook on International Security 2024”
7:46 – The poll’s findings on pessimism about global security and the global influence of the U.S. and China
11:56 – China’s growing national confidence and growing pessimism about the U.S.-China relationship
18:26 – Paradoxical poll findings: proactive foreign policy stance vs. prioritizing domestic affairs, and involvement in global scientific cooperation vs. withdrawing in other areas of international agreement
24:30 – Why older respondents tended to be more pessimistic about China’s international security situation
25:58 – Understanding negative attitude toward the United States and the effectiveness of diplomacy
30:17 – The belief that the U.S. goal is containment of China’s development and the shift in view of America from a values-based country to a power-based country
36:12 – Chinese viewpoints on the Russo-Ukrainian war
39:22 – Da Wei’s travels in the U.S. and the changes he has perceived
45:04 – The U.S. agenda to dissuade China from deepening its involvement with Russia
49:02 – How Chinese views on the upcoming U.S. election have changed since Kamala Harris’ nomination
Recommendations:
Da Wei: Chen Jian’s Zhou Enlai: A Life; for Chinese to travel to the U.S. more
Kaiser: Chen Jian and Odd Arne Westad’s The Great Transformation: China’s Road from Revolution to Reform; for Americans to travel to China (and Beijing)
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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This week on Sinica, in a show recorded in Beijing, I speak with Liu Yang and Jiang Jiang, the authors of two excellent newsletters — The Beijing Channel and Ginger River Review, respectively — and two of the guys behind the YouTube show "Got China." They're making a great effort to bridge Chinese journalism with Anglophone reporting on China with perspectives and insights from within the Chinese state media system.
4:24 – How Jiang Jiang and Liu Yang became journalists
11:42 – How Liu Yang and Jiang Jiang decided to launch their newsletters, and the advantages of being tǐzhì nèi 体制内
20:29 – Jiang Jiang and Liu Yang’s Got China show
25:46 – Liu Yang’s and Jiang Jiang’s empathy for American perspectives
29:53 – The negative American discourse on the Chinese economy and “China collapse theory”
37:21 The recent press conferences on monetary and policies, and the response in the realty market in Beijing
46:17 What’s next for Got China
Recommendations:
Liu Yang: Modern Chinese Government and Politics 《当代中国政府与政治?》, a Chinese-language textbook
Jiang Jiang: The Chinese podcast Bié de diànbō 别的电波; and Shan Weijian’s Out of the Gobi: My Story of China and America
Kaiser: The album The Last Will and Testament by Swedish metal band Opeth; and the Provincial Cuisine Club in Beijing, for trying food from different parts of China
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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This week on Sinica, in a show recorded at Syracuse University on September 30, I chat with my old pal Bryce Whitwam about the remarkable rise of live-streaming e-commerce — and how it's already making its way to the U.S.
4:28 – Why Bryce chose to leave Shanghai and pursue a doctorate in the States
8:08 – How big livestream e-commerce has gotten and its predicted trajectory
9:37 – E-commerce livestreaming and the pursuit of celebrity
14:08 – The different types of livestream commerce
17:30 – Xiaohongshu
20:45 – Why Taobao has lost its dominance
22:07 – The value-add of an influencer’s pitch
27:00 – The demographics of Chinese livestream e-commerce consumers
29:09 – Insights from Bryce’s 25 interviews
36:36 – Buying food on livestream e-commerce and how agribusinesses are getting involved in the trend
41:21 – Livestream commerce in the United States
44:34 – How livestream e-commerce has changed the retail experience in China
46:43 – Potential future disruptions in the industry
Recommendations:
Bryce: Jeffree Star on TikTok as an American livestream commerce example and Omar Nok’s “Egypt to Japan Without Flying” TikTok stream
Kaiser: The album True by Jon Anderson and The Band Geeks
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This week, a show taped live at Syracuse University on September 30 with Associate Professor Dimitar Gueorguiev, author of the excellent Retrofitting Leninism: Participation Without Democracy in China. We discuss his book, his recent paper exploring hawkishness in Chinese public opinion, and his thoughts about the upcoming U.S. presidential election.
1:59 Syracuse University’s MAX 132 class ("the globalization class")
4:10 Dimitar’s background and how he became interested in China
7:44 How the genre of authoritarian resilience took off
14:26 China’s understanding of democracy (whole-process democracy)
17:40 Features of Leninism that have allowed the Chinese Communist Party to survive
21:21 Why China in the 1980s and '90s admired Singaporea's authoritarian PAP
23:37 The idea of the mass line
27:16 China’s sentiment analysis through technology, and using bottom-up information as performance evaluation
34:03 The COVID-19 pandemic and the confirmation bias of the regime-type explanation
37:37 The National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC)
40:14 Dimitar’s research on hawkishness in China: how he got the data, what drives Chinese hawkishness, and the national security vs. economic lens
51:08 Why those who are dissatisfied with the government lean more hawkish and those who are satisfied with the government lean more dovish
56:30 The upcoming U.S. election: how things may play out under the two different administrations, and understanding Chinese preferences
Recommendations:
Dimitar: The TV series The Expanse (2015-2022)
Kaiser: Anthea Roberts’ Six Faces of Globalization: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why It Matters; and the documentary Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos (2024)
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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This week on the Sinica Podcast, I chat with my dear friend David Moser, a longtime resident of Beijing, formerly an occasional co-host of Sinica and associate professor at Beijing Capital Normal University. We have a long history of exploring the underlying issues in our approach to China, and this week, we unpack some of those, focusing on the role of outsiders in Chinese society and their role in "changing China," drawing on David's response to an essay I recently published.
3:46 —David’s thoughts on Kaiser’s essay (“Priority Pluralism: Rethinking Universal Values in U.S.-China Relations”)
5:18 —How David thinks about going on state media and the reasons he does so
10:37 —How David’s engagement with state media has changed over time
15:04 —Conscience, moral intuition, drawing lines, and whataboutism
26:35 —The outsider urge to change China: the differences between the U.S. and Chinese governments and COVID as a test of the two systems; the role of American policy in working toward positive change and the importance of continuing engagement; and so-called Enlightenment values and priority pluralism
50:46 —The debate over cultural differences
57:09 —China’s notion of whole-process democracy versus American democracy
1:05:55 — “Give them time:” Anticipating when we will see big changes in China’s political culture
Recommendations:
David: Richard Nisbett’s The Geography of Thought; and his own article, “A Fearful Asymmetry: COVID-19 and America’s Information Deficit with China”
Kaiser: The “Open Database for China Studies Resource Guide” published by ACLS
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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This week on Sinica, I chat with Jessica Chen Weiss, until recently at Cornell University but now the David M. Lampton Professor of China Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, SAIS, in Washington D.C. Jessica, to those of you familiar with her work, has been at the forefront of the fight for a less strident, diplomacy-first approach to China, balancing threats with assurances to find a modus vivendi with China. She has challenged prevailing notions about China's intentions, and has called for the U.S. to advance an affirmative vision of how it wants to live in the world with China. We focus in this conversation about a recent piece in Foreign Affairs in which she challenges both the solidity and the logic of the "bipartisan consensus" on China, and holds out hope that a next administration might approach the relationship differently.
3:45 – How Jessica has settled into D.C.; her professorial namesake; and how she has become a leading voice for a less confrontational approach to China
9:30 – Where Jessica sees diverging views on China in the Republican and Democratic Parties
12:41 – What a more durable basis for coexistence should look like
14:46 – Credible deterrence and strategic ambiguity in the context of Taiwan
16:03 – Acknowledgements to limits on American power and the importance of being realistic
18:09 – Assurances on Taiwan and what threatens their credibility
21:13 – The question of engagement and the deterrent effect of economic integration
25:30 – How the U.S. can combat legitimate national security threats from China without undermining its own values, and the importance of not treating the Chinese in diaspora as a fifth column
31:31 – Electoral politics: the importance of welcoming and inclusive policies and creating space for debate and discernment
35:07 – The importance of testing our assumptions
38:30 – What another Trump presidency might look like
40:30 – How a Harris administration might differ from the Biden administration
44:13 – The U.S. and China-Russia relations
Recommendations:
Jessica: Valarie Kaur’s Sage Warrior: Wake to Oneness, Practice Pleasure, Choose Courage, Become Victory
Kaiser: BeaGo, an AI-powered search tool (download from your app store!)
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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This week I continue my conversations with some of the outstanding Schwarzman Scholars who presented at the Capstone Showcase in late June. In this episode, I speak with Nainika Sudheendra about the problem of space debris and what can be done to reduce the creation of more of it or even begin removal of debris before it makes the launching of new satellites more costly or even impossible.
2:34 Nainika’s background and interest in the Schwarzman program
5:33 Why Nainika focused on space debris
7:23 Nainika’s prior knowledge about the Chinese space program and what she learned through the Schwarzman program
10:30 How space debris is measured, the Kessler syndrome, and the hazards that space debris poses
14:33 The obstacles Nainika encountered in her research
16:35 How political leaders in China and the U.S. are thinking about the space debris problem
20:02 How debris mitigation might [ought to?] be incentivized, who is working on the problem now, and the role of private insurers
24:03 The Wolf Amendment and Chinese private sector space companies
27:22 Technologies for mitigating and remediating debris
31:00 Lessons from another tragedy of the commons (the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer), and how the EU could take a leading role
34:59 The importance of data standardization and opportunities to negotiate fair use and safety precautions
38:17 How redundancy prevents public perception — the difficulty in going from “outage” to “outrage”
40:27 What Nainika has been doing since finishing at Schwarzman
Recommendations:
Nainika: From Streets to Stalls: The History and Evolution of Hawking and Hawker Centres in Singapore by Ryan Kueh (another Schwarzman alum)
Kaiser: Journalist Andrew Jones on Twitter; the South Indian restaurant Viks Chaat in Berkeley, California
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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I thought Sinica listeners might be interested in listening to an audio narration of my latest essay. I hope you enjoy and that it gives you some food for thought! If you prefer to read, you can find the essay — free for everyone this week — right here.
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The Chinese game studio Game Science has a hit on its hands! The game Black Myth: Wukong, an action role-playing game (ARPG) based on the Monkey King from Journey to the West, has sold extraordinarily well in China and is breaking new ground in the U.S. market as well. This week, I speak with Rui Ma, who runs Tech Buzz China and is one of the most highly-regarded China tech commentators in the U.S., and with Robert Wynne, an industry veteran with many years in China currently serving as COO of a new game start-up that's still under wraps. They share their insights into the strengths and weaknesses of Black Myth: Wukong and the future of Chinese games.
6:44 – The scale of the phenomenon of Black Myth: Wukong
12:01 – Rui and Rob’s thoughts about the game (so far)
17:23 – What Chinese players think of the game, and the difficulty in understanding its esoteric characters for Western players
24:23 – The appeal of mobile games versus console games in China
27:30 – The difficulty of attracting investment [or “How Game Science attracted investment”]
31:06 – Rob’s criticism of the game’s go-to-market strategy and its lost opportunities
35:46 – The party-state's response so far, and the politics surrounding the game
40:57 – Feng Ji, the founding of Game Science, and his criticisms of the gaming industry
46:01 – AAA Chinese games to look forward to
49:29 – The impressive success stats of Black Myth: Wukong
Recommendations:
Rui: Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
Rob: The Chinese TV series Escape from Trilateral Slopes (Biān shuǐ wǎngshì 边水往事) (2024)
Kaiser: Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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This week on Sinica, I chat with Olivia Fu, who this spring completed her year at Schwarzman College and wrote her Capstone project — a research paper that is required of all Schwarzman Scholars — on the rise and fall of the Beijing hip-hop scene. We explore some of the parallels to Beijing's rock scene, and how many of the same factors that stifled rock in Beijing ultimately led to Beijing's relative decline as a hip-hop city.
3:16 – Olivia’s background and connection to China, and what drew her to the Schwarzman Program and studying hip-hop
6:13 – Olivia’s Schwarzman mentor, Paul Pickowicz
7:47 – How Olivia dealt with censorship in her Capstone project
10:24 – The parallels and differences between the hip-hop and rock scenes in China
12:27 – The dakou CDs and the origins of the hip-hop scene in China
17:03 – The influences of Japanese and Korean rap and hip-hop and Black American culture
18:30 – The importance of studying Beijing hip-hop
23:05 – The spirit of Beijing and societal commentary in Beijing hip-hop
27:38 – The phenomenon of Rap of China
29:50 – The divergence of PG One and GAI, and the regulatory influence of the State Administration on Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television
35:13 – Sinifying hip-hop
37:21 – What the burgeoning hip-hop scene in China was like in the early 2000s
40:10 – Critiques of the Beijing dialect in rap and the Beijing rap style
45:16 – Iron Mic rap battles and Shanghai, and Chinese hip-hop’s critique of the educational system
48:34 – Why Beijing rap declined
59:09 – What’s next for Olivia
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Hey folks! I took some time off to drive the kids to college and then flew to California to celebrate my brother John’s birthday. The upshot is there’s no interview this week, so in place of that, here’s my essay from this week. Hope you enjoy it. If all goes as planned, I’m back next week with regular interview for Sinica!
You can find the text of the essay at sinicapodcast.com.
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I was looking for a good episode to pull from the archive to run this week as I'll be traveling and I asked my good friend Deb Seligsohn for a recommendation. She went immediately to this one, and by God if it's not an oldie-but-goodie. This is from December 2015 and features Jeremy Goldkorn — I miss him dearly! — and Terry Townshend, an absolute institution in China's birding community.
I'll likely have to run another re-run next week, and I welcome your suggestions!
All best,
Kaiser
Recommendations and Links:
Birding Beijing
Action for Swifts
British Trust for Ornithology
Jonathan Franzen, Purity: A Novel
Cement and Pig Consumption Reveal China's Huge Changes
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Here's a little bonus ep for you ahead of tomorrow's show, which will be a re-run of a really fun one from about 10 years ago! I'm driving the rest of this week to the Midwest to drop my kids off at their respective universities, and I've been thinking a lot about the education systems in China and the U.S. So here's my essay for this week.
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This week on Sinica, Paul Triolo rejoins the show for a deep, deep dive into China's response to American export controls on advanced semiconductors and related technologies. How much hurt has the policy put on Chinese firms — and how far along is China in finding its way toward technological autonomy? Kevin Xu, author of the fantastic "Interconnected" newsletter, joins to talk about some of the big ideas he's written about in recent months and to play co-host as we grill Paul on China's efforts to get out from under American controls.
9:10 – The downplaying of generative AI in the Third Plenum’s decision document
18:25 – Why the Middle East is an appealing and important region for major AI players
26:20 – Why chip wars have evolved into to cloud wars
29:36 – How China has fared in trying to achieve its goal of indigenous advanced semiconductor manufacture
31:50 – Semiconductors: What lies within the “small yard” versus what products are unaffected under U.S. export controls
35:42 – The quality and reliability caveat to China’s goal of self-sufficiency in semiconductor manufacture
38:35 – The success of the Biden administration’s export controls and whether the controls have really put the hurt on anyone
46:00 – The Harmony operating system
47:47 – The importance of packaging
50:45 – Paul explains what he calls “China Semiconductor Industry Policy 3.0” and its predecessors
57:03 – China’s EUV lithography challenge
1:03:14 – DUV lithography and multi-patterning, and the importance of collaboration across the ecosystemin the process of making semiconductors at scale
1:11:50 – Huawei’s progress so far and remaining major hurdles and bottlenecks
1:18:42 – Paul and Kevin’s thoughts on whether the American strategic class will regret its approach to export controls and whether there is an off-ramp
Recommendations:
Paul: Ed Conway’s Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization
Kevin: Thurston Clarke’s The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America
Kaiser: The House of the Dragon (2022- ) TV series
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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