Sinica Podcast

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser and Jeremy chat with Paul French, the best-selling author of Midnight in Peking. Paul has just written an outstanding new book called City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir, in which he tells a captivating story of two foreigners rising to prominence through conducting shady business in the underworld of Shanghai in the 1930s — a chaotic yet fascinating period, when the city was still known as the Paris of the Orient, leading up to the bleak realities of the war with Japan. Recommendations: Paul: A Killing Winter and A Spring Betrayal, two crime novels written by British author Tom Callaghan. Also, Hidden Man, a new movie directed by Chinese award-winning filmmaker Jiang Wen 姜文. Kaiser: The Anatomy of Fascism, by Robert O. Paxton. Jeremy: Jo Nesbø, Norway’s best-selling crime writer, whose notable books include The Snowman, The Thirst, and The Redbreast. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy chat with David Brophy, senior lecturer in modern Chinese history at the University of Sydney and a prominent scholar on Xinjiang, and with Andrew Chubb, a post-doc fellow this year at the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program, about the response to China’s alleged influence operations in Australia. David and Andrew were both signatories to one of two “dueling open letters” addressing the issue; the one they signed warned of the dangers of overreaction. Recommendations: Jeremy: Bruce Lee: A Life, by Matthew Polly. David: Two pieces on China’s re-education camps for muslims in Xinjiang: “New Evidence for China’s Political Re-Education Campaign in Xinjiang,” by Adrian Zenz, and Rian Thum’s follow up piece in the New York Times. Andrew: The Asia Power Index, by the Lowy Institute. It allows you to interact and play around with the ratings and measures that go into the somewhat arbitrary calculation of power and influence, and includes interesting metrics such as a “Google rating” of just the raw number of Google searches for the country, and the extent of visa-free entry agreements. Kaiser: Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right Paperback, by Arlie Russell Hochschild, an excellent example among the many books that attempt to explain the mindset of the kind of people who voted for Trump. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser and Jeremy chat with Matthew Kohrman, associate professor of anthropology at Stanford University, about his work on China’s tobacco industry – and why China isn’t doing more to curb smoking. His new book on the subject is titled Poisonous Pandas: Chinese Cigarette Manufacturing in Critical Historical Perspectives. Recommendations: Matthew: Jia Zhangke, a Guy From Fenyang. In this documentary, Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles accompanies the prolific Chinese director Jia Zhangke 贾樟柯 on a walk down memory lane, as he revisits his hometown and other locations used in creating his ever-growing body of work. You can stream it on Netflix. Kaiser: Cigarette Citadels Map, an interactive project that aims to locate all factories producing cigarettes worldwide and expose information about their practices. And Calypso, David Sedaris's new story collection. Jeremy: Arbor Day Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the world greener and healthier by planting trees. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hydropower dams are a source of debate in the environmental and international relations communities alike. China has made use of hydropower in the past to supplement its reliance on coal and other energy forms, and in total the country has 40 percent of the world’s large hydro dams. While the power from electricity-producing dams is relatively clean, the construction and placement of the massive pieces of infrastructure has long-term ecological consequences and severe impacts for communities downstream. This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser and Jeremy chat with Stephanie Jensen-Cormier, China Program Director for the NGO International Rivers, about the consequences of China’s aggressive building of large dams and other issues related to rivers in China – and to Chinese involvement in international dam building projects. She shares bad news, but also some surprisingly good news. Recommendations: Stephanie: River of Life, River of Death: The Ganges and India's Future, a book by Richard Mallet that discusses the Ganges’ cultural and economic importance. She also recommends Unbowed: A Memoir by Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Laureate who started the Green Belt movement. Kaiser: The audiobook for David Tod Roy’s translation of The Plum in the Golden Vase. The narrator, George Backman, has a perfect voice for the story, and performs it with decent Chinese pronunciation. Jeremy: Mortality, Christopher Hitchens’ last book. Jeremy insists that despite the bleak subject matter, it is a good, short, and enjoyable read. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this week’s episode of the Sinica Podcast, taped live in New York at the law offices of Dorsey and Whitney on June 19, Kaiser and Jeremy chat about DEF CON, the world’s premier hacker convention, which was — to the surprise of many — held in Beijing this May, and sponsored by Baidu. They also discuss U.S-China cyber relations throughout the years, including some of the finer emerging contours that define this relationship. Joining us are Kevin Collier, a reporter for BuzzFeed who reported on the conference from Beijing, and Priscilla Moriuchi, a 12-year veteran of the National Security Agency (NSA) who is now head of nation-state threat security at Recorded Future. Recommendations: Jeremy: Arab Tyrant Manual, a podcast hosted by Iyad El-Baghdadi and Ahmed Gatnash that discuss authoritarianism and freedom in the Middle East. Priscilla: Crimetown, a podcast about organized crime and political corruption in Providence, RI in the 80’s and 90’s that is sure to please fans of Serial and S-Town alike. Kevin: Tyler Childers, an authentic country musician who “cut his teeth” in Kevin’s Kentucky hometown. Kaiser: Free Salamander Exhibit, an experimental metal band that Kaiser says has “crazy chops.” See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of the Sinica Podcast, taped live at the US-China Strong Foundation’s China Careers Summit in Washington, D.C., on May 31, Kaiser talks to former assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs Kurt Campbell about his career, his critique of engagement, and the fascinating events that happened on his watch — including the extrication of blind activist lawyer Chen Guangcheng and the attempted defection of Bo Xilai’s former police chief in Chongqing, Wang Lijun. Recommendations: Kurt: Darkest Hour, a movie about Winston Churchill in the early 1940s that shows what is possible even in our darkest moments. Additionally, Kurt recommends The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a book by Richard Flanagan about an Australian POW’s experiences during World War II. Kaiser: Road to Unfreedom, a book by Timothy Snyder about the developments in Putin’s Russia and their implications for democracy and law across Europe, the United States, and other regions. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week’s show was recorded in Prague, where major developments in the continuing saga of a mysterious Chinese company called CEFC, with deep ties to the Czech president, Milos Zeman, unfolded during a recent visit by Kaiser. He spoke with Martin Hála of Charles University in Prague about the rise and fall of CEFC, and what this means not only for China’s efforts to expand its presence in Central and Eastern Europe, but also for China’s Belt and Road Initiative more broadly. Recommendations: Martin: An investigative journalistic piece on CEFC by Andrew Chubb. Kaiser: An Atlantic article on the class divide in America by Matthew Stewart, titled “The birth of the new American aristocracy,” and one in The American Interest by Damir Marusic, titled “The dangers of democratic determinism.” See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week’s Sinica Podcast features Andrew Chubb, a fellow at the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program. Andrew writes extensively on Chinese foreign policy, especially on topics related to maritime disputes in the South and East China seas, Chinese nationalism, and Chinese public opinion. Kaiser and Jeremy chat with Andrew the question of how popular nationalism in China shapes the country’s maritime behavior, and why its impact on policy is not as large as you may think. The discussion on China’s maritime activity involves disputes with Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam, showing the increasingly sophisticated methods China must take to influence public opinion as it gains international recognition. Recommendations: Andrew: NüVoices, a website that celebrates and supports China-related work done by women. It has a directory of nearly 500 female China experts, making it a great resource for event organizers and China enthusiasts alike. In addition to checking out the website, you can also listen to a Sinica podcast featuring the founder of Nüvoices, Joanna Chiu. Jeremy: Plantnet, an app that uses AI to identify plant species from photographs. After you have successfully identified your plant, you can then upload your photo to help improve the service’s recognition abilities. Kaiser: The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It, a book by Yascha Mounk on the recent surge of populist uprisings. It examines the contradiction between democratic liberalism and illiberal democracy, and describes the action needed to save democracy in an age of political distrust. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this week’s episode of Sinica, Kaiser chats with Bonnie Glaser in a crossover show that will appear both on Sinica and on the ChinaPower Podcast from CSIS, the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Bonnie is a well-known specialist on China’s security issues, and this week, we tour several locations where the Chinese military has evolving plans: the Korean Peninsula, Japan, the South China Sea, and Taiwan. Recommendations: Bonnie: Two books that examine how China’s history influences its current push for global power: Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power, a book by Howard French, and The China Order: Centralia, World Empire, and the Nature of Chinese Power, by Wang Fei-ling. Bonnie says that the latter is a more academic book with amazing sourcing from Chinese documents, and the two books provide phenomenal knowledge on China’s historical relations with its neighbors when paired together. Kaiser: Chinese Characters, a podcast series on BBC Radio 4 by Rana Mitter, which explores the lives of people who were significant or emblematic throughout Chinese history. Notable personalities include Deng Xiaoping, Empress Wu Zetian, and China’s factory girls. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, it’s a crossover show! Zara and Hans from the terrific 996 Podcast with GGV Capital join Kaiser at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a live recording with Yasheng Huang, professor of economics and management at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Yasheng — never known for his delicate pulling of punches — talks about trade, technology policy, and Chinese and Indian entrepreneurship. This episode was recorded on April 7, 2018. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today, we bring you a special live panel discussion from the 2018 Harvard College China Forum on China's international relations. The panelists are: Jiang Changjian – associate professor of international studies, Fudan University; host, The Brain (最强大脑 zuìqiángdànǎo) Ira Kasoff – senior counselor, APCO Worldwide; former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of commerce Anthony Saich – professor of international affairs, Harvard Kennedy School; director, the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation The discussion of today's China and its influence in the world often centers on this question: How much has China's foreign policy changed since Deng Xiaoping famously advocated in the 1980s that the country should "conceal its strengths and bide its time" (韬光养晦 tāoguāngyǎnghuì), and how much does the recent change originate from Xi Jinping? Our panelists have different interpretations of the question, and address it from many angles, including, of course, the big ones: U.S.-China trade, the Belt and Road, the South China Sea, and the Korean nuclear crisis. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What challenges do women face in the workplace in China? What fears, motivations, and priorities do women in China have, and how are they different from men’s? How can we help women to overcome barriers and achieve success in all areas of their life? Answering and addressing these questions is the full-time work of the highly talented Virginia Tan, who has helped found three organizations that are dedicated to empowering women. These are: Lean In China, a Sheryl Sandberg–inspired women’s network that now has about 120 chapters across China, and tens of thousands of members. She Loves Tech, a global initiative focusing on technology by women and technology for women, which houses the world’s largest competition for women tech entrepreneurs, held across more than 10 international locations. Teja Ventures, a venture capital fund targeting women-impact early-stage ventures in Asia. Lean In China recently published a white paper titled “Women, Work and Happiness: Impact of Women in the Workplace in a Digital Age,” which used survey data to understand many key issues for women working in China. Virginia sat down with Kaiser Kuo and David Moser on April 13 at the Yenching Global Symposium in Beijing for a live Sinica podcast, and discussed the organizations she leads and the work she is doing for women’s empowerment in China and beyond. Recommendations: David: The ChinaEconTalk podcast, hosted by Jordan Schneider. Also, the Peking University campus, as it is a popular tourist attraction and has made many renovations in the lead up to the 120th anniversary of the university. Virginia: David and Goliath, by Malcolm Gladwell, which takes some conventional wisdom about “strength” and “weakness” and turns it on its head. Also, Yiqi, a social dating app that recently became #7 in China, which analyzes a recording of your voice to help you find a partner. Two-thirds of its users are women! Kaiser: The Romance of the Three Kingdoms podcast, by John Zhu. John was interviewed about his project to tell the classic Three Kingdoms tale in vernacular English in this Sinica podcast last year. Kaiser just did a guest recording for Episode 150. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Big news: The Sinica Podcast network is expanding! Today, we introduce a new podcast: TechBuzz China by Pandaily, a weekly show about technology, innovation, and startups in China, created by Pandaily, a China-focused tech news site. The show is co-hosted by Rui Ma and Ying-Ying Lu, seasoned China-watchers with years of experience working in tech in China. They discuss the most important tech news from China every week, and include commentary from investors, industry experts, and entrepreneurs. Subscribe to TechBuzz China on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, or Stitcher, or click here for the RSS feed. Right after the TechBuzz preview episode (the third of the series; subscribe to listen to previous episodes), Joanna Chiu of Agence France-Presse joins Kaiser to discuss the illicit wildlife trade in Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Joanna went undercover in the two cities to search for stores that would illegally sell her two items in particular: scales of the endangered pangolin — the most heavily poached mammal in the world — and rare totoaba swim bladders. Click on the links to read her AFP reports on her investigations. Recommendations: Joanna: Crime and the Chinese Dream, by a leading criminologist of China, Børge Bakken, who discusses different examples of how Chinese people are sometimes pushed into a life of crime, as they feel the “Chinese Dream” is unattainable for them by normal means. Kaiser: “Homo Orbánicus,” by Jan-Werner Müller in the New York Review of Books, an analysis of how the strongman Viktor Orbán came to power and maintains power in Hungary. Also, “The Right to Kill,” an essay by Cleuci de Oliveira in Foreign Policy, which asks the question, “Should Brazil keep its Amazon tribes from taking the lives of their children?” See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is live at the Princeton US-China Coalition Global Governance Forum, where he speaks with Gao Yutong (Tony Gao) about the wunderkind entrepreneur's experience as a Chinese student in the U.S. from age 16 to his present 23. Gao is the founder and CEO of Easy Transfer, which Chinese students use to pay their college tuition from Chinese bank accounts without all the hassle, paperwork, and expensive fees. He was named last year to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list. Gao talks about his time amidst the cornfields (in his sophomore year of high school, he attended an all-boys Catholic boarding school in Lincoln, Nebraska), his stint as president of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association at the University of Southern California, and how students from China might prepare themselves better for the experience of study in the U.S. If you like this episode, be sure to check out — or re-listen — to another recent episode: The Chinese student experience in America, with Siqi Tu and Eric Fish. Recommendations: Gao: A recommendation for college students to pick the thing they like most. Also, to take the advice of Jack Ma: “When you are 20 to 30 years old, you should follow a good boss [and] join a good company to learn how to do things properly. When you are 30 to 40 years old, if you want to do something yourself, just do it. You still can afford to lose, to fail. When you're 40 to 50 years old, my suggestion is you should do things you are good at. When you are 50 to 60 years old, spend time training and developing young people, the next generation. When you are over 60 years old, you better stay with your grandchildren." Kaiser: The podcast of the UPenn Center for the Study of Contemporary China, specifically, the recent episode with Damien Ma on China’s political economy. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week's podcast was recorded live on March 13 at The Bookworm in Beijing as part of the Bookworm Literary Festival, which is why you'll notice the prolonged and decidedly rambunctious audience pop at the start of the show. No matter where Sinica goes, it'll always be most enthusiastically received in the city where it began. The entire episode is a hoot, as SupChina Asia managing editor Anthony Tao sat in for Kaiser and Jeremy to talk music with longtime jazz musicians David Moser (no stranger to Sinica listeners) and Jess Meider. Moser is associate dean of Yenching Academy at Peking University, but his true passion is jazz. He studied music as an undergrad in the U.S. before moving to China, where he happened upon a band at a place called Maxim’s in 1993. You’ll need to listen to get the story. Other highlights include his explaining of swing (11:25), retelling of particular adventures translating for Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (22:30 mark), and what makes for good jazz (31:45 — including a Charles Mingus anecdote, featuring one of the three times we had to press the bleep button on him). Jess Meider has spent more than two decades singing in China, and can still be seen (and heard) around Beijing. She was previously the resident jazz artist at East Shore Jazz Club and booker/resident artist at Chao Hotel. She’s worked with Cui Jian, the father of Chinese rock ‘n’ roll, and voiced a part in his movie Blue Sky Bones. She talks about that experience just before the 19-minute mark. Also listen to what she has to say about playing with Chinese musicians (30-minute mark) and her thoughts on the future of jazz in China (39:45). Be sure to stick around for the musical performance at the end. Recommendations: David: The young Chinese jazz pianist A Bu 阿布 (real name Dai Liang 戴梁), who is a prodigy. “Very modest and unassuming, but the future of Chinese jazz right there,” Moser says. “He grew up listening to it.” Check out videos of him playing here and here. Jess: Contemporary jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, who is relatively new on the scene but is amazing. (She won a Grammy last year for her album Dreams and Daggers; here she is singing You’re My Thrill from that album.) Anthony: Three recommendations: 1. The American Jazz Museum coupled with the Negro Leagues Museum in the 18th and Vine District of Kansas City, Missouri. (Tao grew up in Kansas City — though on the Kansas side of State Line.) 2. Contemporary poetry: Poetry 180 (a project of former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins, highlighting contemporary poems) and the Poetry Foundation podcast. 3. The Bookworm Literary Festival: May we all spread the lore of The Bookworm and the Bookworm Literary Festival ever far and forever. It is truly special. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Christopher Rea and Bruce Rusk, both professors at the University of British Columbia, about their translation of Book of Swindles: Selections from a Late Ming Collection (骗经 piànjīng), by Zhang Yingyu 张应俞. Anyone who has lived in China in recent decades will understand intuitively why a podcast ostensibly about current affairs in China would want to talk about a 16th-century book. However, for anyone who doubts the relevance for today's China, we believe it all will become painfully clear as you listen. Recommendations: Bruce Rusk: The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man. Written by David Maurer, a professor of linguistics who spent the 1930s hanging out with a legion of con artists to learn their languages and tricks, the book is one of the most colorful, well researched, and entertaining works of criminology that has ever existed. Christopher Rea: Slapping the Table in Amazement: A Ming Dynasty Story Collection. Originally written by Ling Mengchu 凌濛初 (1580–1644) and translated by Shuhui Yang and Yunqin Yang, the book is full of fantastic tales that collectively present a broad picture of traditional Chinese society during that period of time. Kaiser: The Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset that blew Kaiser away. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The dominant narrative in the U.S. about China’s relationship with the small northeastern neighbor is relentlessly one-sided. For decades, American officials have referenced Mao Zedong’s famous (though slightly mistranslated) description that North Korea and China are as close as “lips and teeth.” This perception has continued to recent times, such as when President Donald Trump insisted in July last year that if only China put a “heavy move” on the country, it could “end this nonsense once and for all!” But could it? What is the relationship, really, between China and North Korea, and how has it changed in recent years? Has China — or any country, for that matter — ever played a decisive role in North Korea foreign policy? To answer these questions, and bring context to current tensions in Northeast Asia, we welcome Ma Zhao, an associate professor of modern Chinese history and culture at Washington University in St. Louis, and John Delury, an associate professor of Chinese studies at Yonsei University in South Korea. Ma Zhao has written Runaway Wives, Urban Crimes, and Survival Tactics in Wartime Beijing, 1937-1949, and is working on a new book called Seditious Voices in Revolutionary China, 1950 to 1953. John has become a go-to citation for media seeking commentary in the most recent busy year of North Korea news, and co-authored (with Orville Schell, who we interviewed last week) an excellent book titled Wealth and Power: China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century. Please note that this episode was recorded on March 24, a few days before the world learned that Kim Jong-un had traveled to Beijing to meet with Xi Jinping. Recommendations: Ma Zhao: Two books: A Misunderstood Friendship: Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung, and Sino–north Korean Relations, 1949–-1976, by Zhihua Shen and Yafeng Xia, and Seditious Voices in Revolutionary China, 1950 to 1953, Ma Zhao’s own book that is “in the pipeline.” John: Deng Xiaoping’s famous interview with the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, possibly the most frank and interesting interview that a leader of the Communist Party of China will ever give. Of particular note: Deng’s comments that “life tenure of cadres in leading posts” was an “institutional defect.” Kaiser: The really well organized and high-caliber Association for Asian Studies annual conference. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“Can a society which has not...come to terms with its own past go on to have a successful future, or do the sins of the past somehow...come back to haunt it and reexpress themselves in some mutant form?” This is a question that the seasoned historian and scholar of China, Orville Schell, has been thinking and publishing academic articles about in recent years, and is now writing a book on. Schell has stated that "nowhere is history more relevant to the future than in China, a nation that has for millennia seen its destiny inextricably connected to the dynastic record of what has preceded." On the one hand, the idea that a psycho-reconciliation with the past is necessary for a country is a very Western, and a very Freudian, concept. But partly, that’s because it seems to have worked in the West — if Germany had not recognized its own past atrocities, could it have amicably dealt with its neighbors and become a leader in today’s Europe? But the Chinese Communist Party’s official position is that no reconciliation is necessary. A Party communiqué called Document No. 9, which was leaked in 2013, made clear that certain historical events and ideas were strictly off limits, and that discussing them publicly was nothing but “historical nihilism.” That is not to say that there haven’t been attempts in China — by intellectuals, activists, and even the government, particularly in the 1980s leading up to 1989 — to critically analyze the past to avoid similar mistakes in the future. But the status of historical inquiry in China today is bleak, and Schell has a lot to say about what that may mean for the country’s future. Recommendations: Orville: The works of the legendary writer Lu Xun, whose writings inspired by his love-hate relationship with the history, philosophy, and traditional culture of China remain a must-read for understanding why China is the way it is. Check out Wild Grass, translated by Xianyi Yang and Gladys Yang, and Jottings under Lamplight, a new compilation by Eileen J. Cheng and Kirk A. Denton. Kaiser: The Amazon Echo Dot, a gadget that he uses for playing his Spotify playlists. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, our featured topic is Chinese students overseas. There are about 800,000 of them, and according to China’s Ministry of Education, nearly 80 percent choose to return to China soon after finishing their education. This group is referred to as “sea turtles” (海龟; a pun on 海归 hǎiguī, meaning “to return from overseas”) for their ambitious swim to and from faraway shores. Historically, overseas Chinese students were almost exclusively from the wealthiest and best-educated families in Chinese society, but nowadays, the group is dramatically more diverse. The new students abroad, however, face many of the same identity issues that the previous generations faced. Chinese students who are studying at American universities are, as Eric Fish put it in an article on SupChina recently, caught in a cross fire. Many of these 300,000-plus students find themselves grappling with their Chinese — or, as most Americans simply see it, “Asian” — identity for the first time, and are taken aback by the biased views that many Americans have about China. They feel forced to choose: to either defend their country against ignorant attacks, or take very Americanized worldviews to prove that they are not “brainwashed.” But if they go too far and adopt too liberal of a viewpoint, they may get accused back home of being a “white-left” (白左 báizuǒ; a derogatory term for white Western liberals). To discuss the ideology and identity issues at play, as well as more routine aspects of the Chinese student experience in America, we welcome Eric Fish — the author of China’s Millennials, who is now working on a second book about university students from China in the U.S. — and Siqi Tu — a graduate student in sociology at the City University of New York looking at Chinese high school students in America. The podcast was recorded live in New York at the China Institute on March 14. Recommendations: Jeremy: For anyone who (like him) is having trouble with the American bureaucracy regulating septic tanks as they try to build a house in a holler (what people in Tennessee call a hollow, or a small valley between two hills), Jeremy recommends the Sun-Mar Compact Composting Toilet and the EcoJohn Waterless Incinerating Toilet. No septic permit necessary! Siqi: Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It’s written by a Nigerian immigrant to America about her experience figuring out racial identity in the country, finding love, and then undergoing reverse culture shock upon returning to Nigeria. Eric: Fortunate Sons: The 120 Chinese Boys Who Came to America, Went to School, and Revolutionized an Ancient Civilization, by Liel Leibovitz and Matthew Miller. It’s about the experience of what is considered the first group of Chinese students to come over to the U.S., way back in 1872. Kaiser: America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism, by Anatol Lieven, an incredibly prescient book written six years ago. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There is no question that China has seen a miracle of poverty reduction. According to the World Bank, since the economic reforms that started in 1978, economic growth in China has “lifted more than 800 million people out of poverty.” Chinese state media regularly reminds us that the country has about 50 million people left in poverty, particularly in rural areas, but not to worry: President Xi Jinping will completely eliminate poverty by 2020! About all this, there are many questions: Really? Complete elimination of poverty by 2020? How does the government define poverty, are those numbers reliable or do they understate the problem, and what would the government consider “total elimination of poverty”? How much of the poverty reduction so far was the direct result of government policy? How does China’s primary social insurance program, dibao (低保 dībǎo), actually work? How effective is it at reducing poverty? What is the difference between dibao and other targeted poverty alleviation programs? What is the relation between poverty alleviation and urbanization in China? To answer all these questions and more, Jeremy and Kaiser sat down with Gao Qin, professor of social policy and social work, and director of the China Center for Social Policy at Columbia University. She is the author of an excellent book on the subject of social assistance in China published just last year called Welfare, Work, and Poverty: Social Assistance in China, which looks at dibao and the tens of millions of people that it covers. Recommendations: Jeremy: The blog of Stephen Jones, an ethnographer who’s been traveling around China since the 1980s, documenting folk religion, theater, and other random things, particularly in rural life. Also see his Twitter feed @Stevejonesblog. Qin: Life and Death in Shanghai, the autobiography of Cheng Nien, an ordinary mother whose life was dramatically impacted like so many others during the Cultural Revolution. Kaiser: Grant, the biography of famed U.S. general and president Ulysses S. Grant, written by Ron Chernow. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, we have an inadvertently timely podcast on China’s authoritarian revival. Mere days before the episode’s recording, Chinese President Xi Jinping set the stage to extend his power to rule China indefinitely. As Carl Minzner, professor of law at Fordham University, explains, the abolition of term limits for Xi was only the latest — and easiest for non-China specialists to understand — of many signs that China was heading down the path to strengthening its one-Party and one-man rule to an extent not seen since Mao. He details this path, and why he thinks it is limiting China’s development, in his new book, End of an Era: How China’s Authoritarian Revival Is Undermining Its Rise. Unlike many commentators, Carl sees the signs of China’s illiberal turn as dating way back before 2008, when the unrest in Tibet in March and Olympics in August of that year demanded greater social control. It is then widely agreed that the signs of an authoritarian revival have rapidly accumulated since Xi Jinping assumed power in 2013. Carl also has some interesting observations about how Xi’s “Chinese Dream” represents a surprising turn toward tradition (including a radical redefining of what is traditional Chinese culture) as the Party seeks legitimacy in the New Era of Xi Jinping. All the while, Carl explores the underlying reasons for China’s hardening and approaches the question with admirable empathy. And though this topic is one that Kaiser and Jeremy have discussed before many times on the show, Carl brings fresh angles to the conversation, including an exploration of how changes in China’s educational system may be restricting social mobility in China. Recommendations: Jeremy: “Carry the struggle to criticize Lin Piao and Confucius through to the end,” a Peking Review translation on Marxists.org of the original 1974 People’s Daily propaganda piece — once you read it, it will help you understand just how different a beast Xi Jinping is from Mao. Carl: A variety of books related to his, but with different viewpoints: China's Future, by David Shambaugh; The Perfect Dictatorship, by Stein Ringen; and China's Trapped Transition and China's Crony Capitalism, by Minxin Pei, whose book on crony capitalism in particular helps us understand why Xi Jinping went in the direction he did, especially with the anti-corruption campaign. Kaiser: David Brophy’s review in the Australian Book Review of Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia, by Clive Hamilton. Kaiser says that Brophy’s perspective is highly applicable to the situation in the U.S., which Kaiser fears could become worse in many ways than our overreaction to Islamic fundamentalism. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"Having read hundreds and hundreds of these cases, I have decided that I'm never going to drive in China." That is what Benjamin Liebman, the director of the Center for Chinese Legal Studies at Columbia University, concluded after his extensive review of laws relating to traffic violations in Hubei Province. Geoffrey Sant, a partner at the law firm Dorsey & Whitney, notes that traffic accidents in China are substantially more fatal than traffic accidents in the U.S. While the U.S. only sees about one death per 70 traffic accidents, China sees one death per four accidents. Whether it be the explosion of car ownership and road infrastructure (new drivers in new places), more drunk and reckless driving, an expectation that traffic laws (such as stopping at red lights even when no one is coming) are "optional," or a variety of other factors, Chinese roads can be dangerous. There are also some quirks in the legal system that create perverse incentives, leading to some pretty extreme cases. For example, as Geoffrey detailed in an article on Slate, more than a few videos have surfaced of drivers intentionally running over or otherwise killing people they have injured on the road. The reason for this? In China, the liability payout for an accidental traffic death is a small fraction of what you have to pay out if you cripple someone for years. The way that courts deal with these extreme cases, as well as more routine traffic tort cases, reveals a lot about the function of courts in Chinese society. That is what Geoffrey and Ben argue and discuss in this live Sinica Podcast, recorded on February 26 at the offices of Dorsey & Whitney in New York. Recommendations: Jeremy: The Twitter feed of Tong Bingxue 仝冰雪 (@tongbingxue), a great place to find rare old photos and videos of China. Geoffrey: Persuasive Business Proposals: Writing to Win More Customers, Clients, and Contracts, written by his father, Tom Sant. It’s useful for writing pitches when you’re trying to get people to hire you — for example, when you’re a lawyer trying to get clients. Ben: The Handpulled Noodle, a restaurant in New York at the corner of 148th and Broadway, which serves genuine Xinjiang noodles. And China in Ten Words, by Yu Hua, which explores the lack of trust in Chinese society. Kaiser: The work of MacroPolo, specifically, a piece by Evan Feigenbaum titled “A Chinese Puzzle: Why Economic ‘Reform’ in Xi's China Has More Meanings than Market Liberalization.” See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“We hear, in the media and in comments by politicians, a lot of very glib statements that oversimplify China, that suggest all of China is one thing or one way,” says Michael Szonyi, a professor of Chinese history and director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. China, of course, is as complicated as — if not more complicated than — any other country, and misunderstandings about it among Americans are both common and consequential. The relationship with China is “arguably — in anyone’s estimation — the most important bilateral relationship that the U.S. has,” says Jennifer Rudolph, a professor of modern Chinese political history at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Jennifer and Michael edited a book to address 36 questions that ordinary people, especially Americans, ask about China. The book is titled The China Questions: Critical Insights Into a Rising Power, and it draws on the expertise of the Fairbank Center and prompts these accomplished academics to write 2,000-word essays for a general audience that they typically never aim to reach. View the entire list of questions on the Harvard University Press website. A sampling: “Is the Chinese Communist Regime Legitimate?” (by Elizabeth J. Perry) “Is There Environmental Awareness in China?” (by Karen Thornber) “Will China Lead Asia?” (by Odd Arne Westad) “What Does the Rise of China Mean for the United States?” (by Robert S. Ross) “Can China and Japan Ever Get Along?” (by Ezra F. Vogel) “Will Urbanization Save the Chinese Economy or Destroy It?” (by Meg Rithmire) “Why Does the End of the One-Child Policy Matter?” (by Susan Greenhalgh) “Why Do Classic Chinese Novels Matter?” (by Wai-yee Li) Recommendations: Jeremy: Drawn Together: The Collected Works of R. and A. Crumb, by Robert Crumb and Aline Kominsky-Crumb. The husband-and-wife pair became known for their funny, vulgar comics in the late 1970s, though Robert’s zany work goes back a decade earlier. Jennifer: Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, by Katherine Boo. A work of creative nonfiction about a young boy and his family, and how the system is stacked against them. Michael: The Fairbank Center website, which features a blog and a podcast. Also, Michael’s new book, titled The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China. And The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World, by Greg Grandin. Kaiser: The North Water: A Novel, by Ian McGuire. A dramatic tale that includes whaling, murder, and brutality, and whose overall flavor Kaiser describes as Joseph Conrad meets Cormac McCarthy meets Herman Melville meets Jack London. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Outside observers typically view China’s media as utterly shackled by the bonds of censorship, unable to critique the government or speak truth to power in any meaningful sense. In part, this is true — censorship and other pressures do create “no-go” zones for journalists in China, as well as gray zones that sometimes rapidly turn red. But Maria Repnikova, a professor at Georgia State University, believes that the critical role of media in China is underappreciated. While allowing that “speaking truth to power” in the sense of a free press in a liberal democracy is obviously not how China works, many investigative journalists and journalist-intellectuals play a surprisingly active role in giving feedback and constructive criticism to the Party-state. Maria discusses this theory in her new book, Media Politics in China: Improvising Power Under Authoritarianism, for which she interviewed 120 sources — journalists, officials, and experts — to uncover exactly how the improvised “dance” of mutual feedback between the media and the government in China really happens. On Sinica, she discusses both this research and her work on Russia, comparing the management of media in both countries and questioning how we should understand the role of media in authoritarian countries in general. Recommendations: Jeremy: The Afrikaners: Biography of a People, by Hermann Giliomee, a fascinating history of the people who migrated to South Africa from the Netherlands, from the time that they arrived and began calling themselves African right to the end of apartheid. Maria: Losing Pravda: Ethics and The Press in Post-Truth Russia, by Natalia Roudakova, one of the best overviews of the delegitimization of media in Russia, from the Soviet period to the Putin period. Kaiser: Pop music of the late 1970s. Kick back, go on Spotify, and listen to some Billboard top 100 hits from ’77 to ’79. . Introducing SupChina Access, a membership program that gives you exclusive access to SupChina's digital newsroom, succinct summaries of the week in China, discounts on SupChina events, and more. Sign up here! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

China, as we say at the beginning of each Sinica Podcast episode, is a nation that is reshaping the world. But what does that reshaping really look like, and how does — and should — the world react to China’s role in globalization? Few are better placed to answer these questions than Kishore Mahbubani, a veteran former diplomat from Singapore who recently ended a stint as dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. He remains on the faculty there but is taking a sabbatical, in part to write a book for Penguin UK titled Has the West Lost It? His most recent book was titled The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace. In this podcast, Kishore, as he often does, brings up a number of provocative ideas (read here a piece in the World Post last year in which he raises many of the same ideas), particularly for Americans. Among them: The most important event of 2001 was not the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. The U.S. and China are perfectly positioned for an infrastructure cooperation deal, but China’s communist identity, more than anything, makes such cooperation unthinkable. To address this psychological block, Americans — and all Westerners — should think of China’s government as led by the Chinese Civilization Party, not the Chinese Communist Party, because its goal is to revive Chinese civilization, not to export communism. If Americans don’t start preparing for a world in which they are the number two power, the political shock when it happens could very well lead to a president even more misguided than Trump. (Both the International Monetary Fund moving its headquarters to China and Chinese currency becoming the primary international reserve currency in the coming decades are inevitable, for example, Kishore argues.) Recommendations: Jeremy: A field guide to the wild birds of Beijing (北京野鸟图鉴 běijīng yěniǎo tújiàn), available only in Chinese. Kishore: A recommendation to visit Indonesia, what Kishore calls “one of the most underrated and underappreciated countries in the world.” A decade ago, it was hit hard by the financial crisis and many Westerners thought it would fracture as a country — but now, it is the most successful democracy in the Islamic world. Kaiser: A typically tongue-in-cheek tweet from New York Times reporter Chris Buckley, which purports to show how the Warring States–era political philosopher Han Feizi explained the selection process for the Politburo Standing Committee at the 19th Party Congress last fall. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Associated Press (AP) reporter Gerry Shih was hard at work in 2017 writing a remarkable series of articles on China’s Uyghur Muslim minority. By traveling not just to China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where 10 to 15 million Uyghurs live, but also to Syria, where some have fled and taken up arms with militant groups, he sought to answer the most politicized and consequential questions about the ethnic group. These include: How long and to what extent have authorities in Xinjiang forced Uyghurs into indoctrination camps? How long and to what extent have they compelled residents to give DNA samples to the state? What role has Chen Quanguo 陈全国 had in building Xinjiang’s new digital police state, and will he succeed in subjugating separatist thought? Are China’s Uyghurs involved in global jihadi terrorism? Where and how do they get recruited, and how does China try to influence Uyghurs overseas? His four articles released in December were as follows: December 17: In western China, thought police instill fear December 23: Uighurs fighting in Syria take aim at China December 28: China's crackdown on Uighurs spreads to even mild critics December 29: China's Uighurs work to fend off pull of jihad They are part of a larger AP series titled “China's Uighurs on edge,” comprising 12 stories that seek “to flesh out the profile of a people whose voices have largely been silenced or gone unheard under the blanket of security in the region.” They also were published around the same time that the Wall Street Journal (paywall) and BuzzFeed published similarly alarming stories about the police state in Xinjiang. For more on Muslims in China, check out a previous Sinica Podcast titled “Islamophobia in China, explained by Alice Su and Ma Tianjie,” and an article on SupChina that seeks to answer the question “Where does Chinese Islamophobia come from?” Recommendations: Jeremy: A re-recommendation for Birding Beijing, a great site if you’re interested in birds in China. It is now in the second year of tracking cuckoos who fly all the way from Africa to China to migrate. (Also listen to a Sinica Podcast and read a SupChina Q&A with the website’s founder, Terry Townshend.) Gerry: The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia's New Geopolitics, by Andrew Small of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. With Belt and Road’s rising importance, it is a must-read, Gerry says. Kaiser: Kialo.com, a place for online debate that’s supposed to help people bridge contentious issues. It enforces ground rules, limits the number of words you can use, and crowdsources the most compelling arguments on both sides for each claim. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Yukon Huang thinks that China’s economy is extremely unconventional. Unsurprisingly, then, that nearly all the conventional economic wisdom we hear about this economy — particularly the two hugely popular poles of opinion that treat it as either an unstoppable force or a crisis-in-waiting — is wrong. So goes the contrarian take of the former World Bank Director for China and Russia, who is now Senior Fellow in the Asia Program at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Huang detailed his thoughts on China’s economy is his most recent book, Cracking the China Conundrum: Why Conventional Economic Wisdom Is Wrong. http://supchina.com/2017/10/24/cracking-the-china-conundrum-makes-bold-claims/ He sat down with Jeremy and Kaiser at SupChina’s NEXT CHINA Conference on January 17, and in this live podcast, answered provocative questions and defended surprising statements: "Why is it that people think China's unbalanced growth is a risk, when it actually is a positive development?" "Why do people think [China] has a debt problem, when actually it's a sign of financial deepening?" "Why is it that corruption is seen as an impediment to growth, when in China actually it's been a booster to growth?" "We assume that the more innovative you are as a country, the faster you grow, when actually it's the opposite." Recommendations: Jeremy: The China Questions: Critical Insights into a Rising Power, a fantastic collection of essays by scholars at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, edited by Jennifer Rudolph and Michael Szonyi. And radiooooo.com, a site you should definitely check out if you are a music lover. Yukon: The recent movie Hidden Figures, about black women mathematicians who worked for NASA in the 1960s. Kaiser: A two-part documentary on Channel NewsAsia called China on Film, a collection of the earliest footage ever shot in China, dating back to the last years of the Qing Dynasty. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, we bring you a special preview of a new podcast called 996 Podcast with GGV Capital, which we are very excited to co-produce. Subscribe to the 996 Podcast here on iTunes, and here on Stitcher. GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Jerry Yang, the founder and former CEO of Yahoo, who orchestrated arguably the best deal in tech history: In 2005, he arranged for Yahoo to invest $1 billion for a 40 percent stake in fledgling Chinese ecommerce site Alibaba at a post-money valuation of $5 billion. Today, Alibaba is worth almost half a trillion dollars. During the interview, Jerry conducts a postmortem for Yahoo’s China strategy, and offers advice for U.S. tech companies looking to expand into China. We’d love to hear your feedback! Please send comments and suggestions to [email protected]. GGV Capital also produces a weekly email newsletter in English, also called “996," which has a roundup of the week's most important happenings in tech in China. Subscribe at 996.ggvc.com. The 996 podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital and co-produced by the Sinica Podcast. On this show, we interview movers and shakers of China's tech industry, as well as tech leaders who have a U.S.-China cross-border perspective. GGV Capital is a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. It has been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs since 2000 from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, ecommerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 200 companies, including Airbnb, Alibaba, Ctrip, Didi, Domo, HashiCorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Slack, Square, Toutiao, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others, with 29 IPOs and 22 unicorns to date. Find out more at ggvc.com. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

China is a world leader in artificial intelligence (AI) technology. If you had said that even five years ago — or in many circles, as recently as three years ago — you might have been laughed out of the room. But around the spring of 2015, a recognition of China’s progress in AI began to spread widely. As private companies have invested billions in research and the government has made it a top priority in the years since, that recognition has turned into shock and awe. This week on Sinica, Jeremy and Kaiser are joined by Jessi Hempel, a senior writer with Wired magazine who recently published an excellent piece titled “Inside Baidu’s bid to lead the AI revolution.” Jessi explains on Sinica how the smallest of the three big Chinese tech companies (Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent) is applying extraordinary talent to AI puzzles, and where its advantages and disadvantages lie in the revolutionary new world of Chinese AI research. Jeremy, Kaiser, and Jessi also discuss: Should we be afraid of our new robot overlords? Are Chinese less afraid of robot overlords than of Westerners? Why? What is the role of the Chinese government in AI research? Will SkyNet be real in China? What are the challenges in making new AI technology? Why does China have unique advantages in this field? Recommendations: Jeremy: Magpie Digest, a newsletter about contemporary China, written by a few ethnographers and social scientists. Jessi: Who Can You Trust?: How Technology Brought Us Together and Why It Might Drive Us Apart, by Rachel Botsman. It’s the best book that she’s read about understanding how the shift in tech is impacting the shift in organization. Also, it will help you understand bitcoin. Kaiser: The newly released audiobook narrated by Michael Page of The Long Ships, a famous Swedish story of 10th-century Vikings by Frans G. Bengtsson. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jiayang Fan is a staff writer at the New Yorker who writes on many topics, but in the past year, has penned several one-of-a-kind pieces on Chinese society. She has been on Sinica before to discuss why so many Chinese people admire Donald Trump. Her most recent piece for the magazine is titled “China’s selfie obsession,” and is a fascinating look at a company called Meitu (美图 měitú; “beautiful picture”), an app and mobile phone producer that is now responsible, it is estimated, for the editing more than half of China’s selfies. So many mobile phone users — including users of Meitu’s own branded phones — have used Meitu’s apps to enhance their self-portraits that the company is now worth $6 billion. But what does the intense obsession with beauty, and the way that young people share beautified pictures online, say about changing values in China? How does this relate to internet celebrity (网红 wǎnghóng) in the country and obsessions over teen male stars (小鲜肉 xiǎoxiānròu; literally, “fresh young meat”)? What redeeming qualities of these phenomena can be found, and why are they especially prevalent in China? Jeremy and Kaiser sat down with Jiayang at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business’s New York campus to discuss these topics. They also discuss Jiayang’s piece from earlier this year titled “China’s mistress-dispellers,” a rare inside look at the booming business of sabotaging the exploits of unfaithful husbands, and what it means for matrimony in the Middle Kingdom. Recommendations: Jeremy: Buying a DJI Phantom 4 drone. Jiayang: Using white pepper in recipes, particularly for hearty soups. She says it’s a bit spicier than black pepper, but “fruitier” and “a lot more complex” — contrary to what the internet says. Kaiser: The article “Where millennials come from,” by Jia Tolentino of the New Yorker. It’s about millennials from a millennial perspective, and skewers some of the common media myths about the generation, while also identifying what the author thinks is actually worth criticizing. And Chinese Warlord: The Career of Feng Yu-Hsiang, by James E. Sheridan, about an interesting general from the Warlord Era whom Kaiser’s maternal grandfather worked for as a diplomatic adviser. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Stephen Roach is a senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and a senior lecturer at the Yale School of Management. He was formerly the chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and the firm’s chief economist, positions of immense influence on Wall Street. His longtime study of globalization has led to many books, most recently Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China in 2014. He also writes for Project Syndicate. Stephen joins Kaiser and Jeremy on Sinica to discuss many of the findings of his book, and what has changed since it was published. The topics include: The unhealthy codependency between the economies of China and America, and the inverse nature of their savings rates, investment rates, labor, and consumption. How much of the West has relied on economic policies that promise “false prosperity,” and how China may fall into the same trap. Where the U.S. trade deficit with China actually comes from. Whether savings rates in China are changing dramatically, or will change soon. Why Xi Jinping has formed leading small groups on economic policy, and what that means for the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and China’s economic direction. The path toward rebalancing, for both the U.S. and China. Recommendations: Jeremy: The literary website The Bitter Southerner, which covers the American South from a broad-minded perspective that Yankees often overlook. Stephen: The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization, by Richard Baldwin. It forced the former chief economist of Morgan Stanley to rethink many of the ideas he had about globalization. Kaiser: An app called Audm, which has audiobook narrators read aloud long-form articles from outlets such as the Atlantic and the New Yorker. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week marks the 80th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking, which began with the fall of the capital of the Republic of China on December 13, 1937. Few events in modern Chinese history have a historical valence comparable with the Nanjing Massacre. The wholesale slaughter of Chinese soldiers and civilians, the notorious “killing contests,” and, of course, the horrific sexual violence visited on Chinese women during the six weeks that followed Nanjing’s fall inhabit an understandably large part of China’s historical memory. The details of the event, however, and the way that those details are remembered, remain a sticking point in relations between China and Japan. On the podcast to discuss his own study of the Nanjing Massacre, and the way that historical atrocities are remembered around the world, is Rana Mitter of Oxford University. Rana teaches the history and politics of modern China, and has written several excellent books on China, most recently, China's War with Japan, 1937–1945: The Struggle for Survival, which was released in the U.S. with the title Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937–1945. Rana also works with the nonprofit Facing History and Ourselves, which works to provide educational resources about historical atrocities. See in particular these pieces on Nanjing: Facing History's featured resource collection on the Nanjing Atrocities (an umbrella term for all violence visited upon Nanjing by the Japanese in 1937–38), which includes a rich multimedia collection of maps, videos, timelines, and teaching strategies that place the Nanjing Atrocities within the larger context of World War II in East Asia. A print resource called The Nanjing Atrocities: Crimes of War, which is available as a free PDF download or for purchase as a paperback. Two blog posts, 3 reasons to explore the Nanijng Atrocities 80 years later and 80 years later, Nanjing reminds us of the humanity we need today. Recommendations: Jeremy: Re-recommends some previous recommendations from Kaiser: the trilogy of spy novels by Adam Brookes set in Beijing — Night Heron, Spy Games, and The Spy’s Daughter — and Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History, by Kurt Andersen. Rana: The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography, by Joshua Fogel, a sober, sane, and objective treatment of some controversial questions. And a lighter selection, Manhattan Beach, by Jennifer Egan, a fictionalized account of the first woman diver to serve in the U.S. Navy in WWII. Bonus: Rana has an interview with Jennifer that will air on the BBC’s Arts and Ideas podcast in early 2018. Kaiser: The Empire of the Steppes, by René Grousset, a fantastic book about Central Asian history. And The May 4th Movement, by Chow Tse-tung, a seminal work on the most important intellectual movement of 20th-century China. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

NOTE: If you haven’t read the book and are allergic to spoilers, please be aware that the interesting surprises of Scott’s story are discussed in this podcast. Scott Tong is a reporter for American Public Media’s Marketplace, and from 2006 to 2010, he helped found and run the radio program’s Shanghai bureau. During that time, he also experienced a lot of culture shock — his Chinese-American upbringing in the U.S., Hong Kong, and Taiwan didn’t prepare him for mainland China as much as he had expected, and while in Shanghai, he uncovered some surprising truths about his family, which has roots in nearby Jiangsu Province. A Village With My Name: A Family History of China's Opening to the World is Scott’s deeply personal reporting and reflection on what he learned about his family, and China’s history, by visiting distant relatives in a forlorn part of Jiangsu Province. It is a highly engaging, eye-opening story that sheds light on how Chinese people engage with their past — and their present. Recommendations: Jeremy: McKay Books, a huge used books store in Nashville, Tennessee. And Congo Cables: The Cold War in Africa—From Eisenhower to Kennedy, by Madeleine Kalb. Scott: Resigned Activism: Living With Pollution in Rural China, by Anna Lora-Wainwright. And Rough Translation, an NPR podcast about how foreigners see America. Kaiser: Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History, by Kurt Andersen. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Leta Hong Fincher is the author of the book Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China and the upcoming book Betraying Big Brother: The Rise of China's Feminist Resistance, and a regular commentator on the state of feminism and gender discrimination in China today. She joins Jeremy and Kaiser to discuss sexism and sexual harassment in China and why, she says, the government is complicit. Explosive cases of sexual harassment and abuse have grabbed headlines for months in the U.S., as countless men in media, entertainment, and politics have been accused of gross sexual misbehavior. Most of the accused who are not politicians have faced serious consequences, as a majority of America rallies around the #MeToo campaign, raising awareness of the severity of the problem. In China, Leta says, the situation is entirely different. Sexist behavior is rampant in Chinese workplaces, but the government is intolerant of social media campaigns like #MeToo. Feminism is treated as a sensitive subject by censors and by the state-controlled press, which is unwilling to publish allegations that could be socially destabilizing. And though some women have broken through in business despite extraordinary sexism, representation by women at the top of China’s government is not even token. Recommendations: Jeremy: A Japanese Mirror: Heroes and Villains of Japanese Culture, by Ian Buruma. Leta: The blog Women and Gender in China, and the twitter account @halfthesky49, run by University of Nottingham scholar Séagh Kehoe. Kaiser: The China Channel from the L.A. Review of Books. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Everyone knows, or at least recognizes, the image of the Flying Tigers (飞虎队 fēihǔduì). The shark-faced noses of these American airmen’s planes streaked across the skies of China, as they racked up an impressive string of successes in defending China from Japanese forces from 1941 to 1942. They are so recognizable, in fact, that their story has obscured the equally fascinating stories of other American pilots who landed in China — or, in the case of the two stories on this podcast, crash-landed. Melinda Liu, the Beijing bureau chief for Newsweek, joins Kaiser Kuo and David Moser to tell the story of the Doolittle Raiders, whose unprecedented — and successful — mission to bomb Tokyo from an aircraft carrier ended with scattered landings throughout Japan-occupied eastern China. Melinda’s father, it just so happens, met some of these pilots and was able to translate for them as they continued to sneak through occupied territory. Jonathan Kaiman, the Beijing bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, relates an incredible tale of how a blond, blue-eyed American pilot flying the “Hump” from India to Chongqing allegedly found himself enslaved by the Yi minority in southwest China. Melinda has a 10-minute video documentary of the Doolittle Raiders’ story in China, and John’s piece in the LA Times on the legend of the American slave can be found here. Recommendations: David: A Chinese state-media-run YouTube channel called zuǒyòu shìpín 左右视频, which has amazing and rare videos of people speaking early modern Chinese language, historical stories (from a state media perspective, but with unique source material), and much more. Melinda: Dick Cole’s War: Doolittle Raider, Hump Pilot, Air Commando, by Dennis R. Okerstrom, about the last surviving Doolittle Raider — 102 years old now! And Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor, by James M. Scott, which includes fascinating details from Western missionaries who were paired up with some of the fallen pilots. Jon: Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, a historical mystery by David Grann about a Native American tribe in southwest Oklahoma that struck oil beneath its land and was among the richest people in the world — until the murders started. Kaiser: “The risk of nuclear war with North Korea,” by Evan Osnos at the New Yorker. The Retreat of Western Liberalism, by the Financial Times’ Edward Luce. And as a counterpoint to Luce’s view of liberal identity politics, “The first white president,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Atlantic. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jane Perlez is the Pulitzer Prize-winning Beijing bureau chief of the New York Times, and her own reporting focuses on China's foreign policy, in particular its relations with the United States and China’s Asian neighbors. She was previously on Sinica in March 2017 to discuss Chinese foreign relations in a new age of uncertainty. In this episode of Sinica, she discusses Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing on November 8 and November 9, 2017. In this podcast: Is Trump’s rapport with Xi genuine? How did his performance in China compare with his performance in Japan and South Korea? Were human rights discussed? Was Taiwan mentioned as a bargaining chip? What do Chinese leaders actually think of Trump? Was Trump’s “I don’t blame China” line intended as strategy, or an off-the-cuff remark? And, most importantly, how has this visit changed U.S.-China relations? Recommendations: Jeremy: Huang Fei Hong Spicy Crispy Peanut, which you can buy online or at some Asian grocery stores in the U.S. Jane: Pachinko, an excellent historical novel about the Korea-Japan relationship by Min Jin Lee. Also see an interview with the author (paywall) on the New York Times by Jonathan Soble. Kaiser: World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech, a book on the perils of monopolistic behavior by Google, Facebook, and Amazon, by former New Republic editor-in-chief Franklin Foer. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The South China Morning Post has been up to big things recently — and faced big doubts from those who worry about its editorial independence as Hong Kong’s paper of record. In late 2015, it was announced that the paper would be acquired by Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba, bringing the paper both a huge infusion of cash and a wave of questions about whether the new owners would maintain the SCMP’s editorial independence from Beijing. Gary Liu, formerly CEO at content aggregator Digg and head of labs at streaming music service Spotify, was appointed CEO of the SCMP a year after the Alibaba acquisition. He aims to adapt the 114-year-old newspaper for an age of technology disruptions, and talked to Jeremy and Kaiser about the paper’s editorial independence, its plans to evolve and build out digitally, and how it plans to contribute to the global conversation on China’s rise. This podcast was recorded in front of a live audience at the China Institute in New York on October 9. Recommendations: Jeremy: The WeChat app of China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), a good way to get real news about China because spitting out propaganda is not a priority of the NDRC. Just search “国家发改委” (guójiā fāgǎiwěi) on WeChat. Gary: The Party, a book by Richard McGregor that gives a fascinating exploration of how the Communist Party of China wants the world to perceive it, how it plans to stay in power, and how it manages to affect everyone’s life in China. Also, Destined for War, by Harvard professor Graham Allison, which discusses the Thucydides Trap, China’s rise, and the history of great power rivalries. Kaiser: A research paper from the Mercator Institute for China Studies titled “Ideas and ideologies competing for China’s political future,” which identifies really interesting clusters of people in China who have diverse ideological alignments. A Sinica podcast on a similar subject can be found here. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we welcome back to the show two regular Sinica guests, Bill Bishop and Jude Blanchette, to discuss the outcomes of the 19th Party Congress, which wrapped up on October 24 in Beijing. Bill Bishop authors the Sinocism newsletter, an essential resource for serious followers of China policy, and he is regularly quoted in a variety of major news outlets reporting on China. He has been on Sinica most recently to discuss how to understand media coverage of China. Jude Blanchette is the associate engagement director at The Conference Board’s China Center for Economics and Business in Beijing, and is a scholar writing a book on neo-Maoism in China — you can listen here to a Sinica episode featuring him discussing the topic. Click here to read an article on SupChina that rounds up the top three takeaways of the 19th Party Congress, drawing on both this podcast and on SupChina reporting. Recommendations: Bill: The Spy's Daughter, the third book in a trilogy by Adam Brooks, a former BBC correspondent in China who quit his job and started writing spy fiction based in China. Jeremy: The article “Aerospace experts in China’s new leadership” on China Policy Institute: Analysis, which discusses the substantial number of technocrats in the new Central Committee, even if they are now less prevalent in the upper echelons of leadership. And Ear Hustle, a podcast produced by the inmates of San Quentin State Prison in California about their experience in prison. Jude: Mao's Invisible Hand: The Political Foundations of Adaptive Governance in China, a book by Sebastian Heilmann and Elizabeth J. Perry on how policy making in China is affected by the Communist Party’s revolutionary experience. Also, the work of the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), where Heilmann now works. Kaiser: Putin’s Revenge, a two-part series on PBS Frontline that explains Putin’s rise and the events that shaped his worldview. And The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, a book by Masha Gessen. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Lina Benabdallah is an assistant professor of political science at Wake Forest University in North Carolina who recently completed a Ph.D. focusing on South-South cooperation. Much of her research was on the ties between China and countries in Africa. She sat down with Kaiser and Jeremy for a live podcast at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, to discuss the state of China-Africa relations and how they have evolved over the past several years. At the 2006 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Beijing, international media and many in academia became fixated on a striking new phenomenon: an unprecedented uptick in ties in economics, migration, and diplomacy between China and many African countries. Since then, discussion of the Africa-China relationship has been generally locked in a dichotomy between those who believe China is “colonizing” Africa in some significant way, and those who believe pure intentions and great benefits are directed to and from both sides. It’s much more complicated than that, so Jeremy and Kaiser asked Lina to talk about issues such as the perception of Chinese investment projects on the African continent, China’s involvement in security in Africa, model farms projects, media cooperation, racism, and more. Recommendations: Jeremy: The 99% Invisible podcast, which focuses on a range of stories related to design, specifically its recent episode on Ponte City, a high-rise apartment building in Jeremy’s hometown of Johannesburg. At the time the tower was built, South Africa was a highly segregated society, and the building became one of the first places in Johannesburg where different races could rub shoulders. Lina: Guangzhou Dream Factory, a documentary made by Christiane Badgley and Erica Marcus. It documents the lives of African entrepreneurs in Guangzhou, China, in a highly realistic way — sharing stories of opportunity, success, and challenges, including racism. Kaiser: Read Lina’s review of Guangzhou Dream Factory, published on the blog Africa Is a Country. Also check out the novels of Adam Brooks, a former BBC correspondent in China who quit his job and started writing spy fiction based in China. Kaiser recommends his book Night Heron. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When American journalist Lenora Chu moved to Shanghai, she faced tough choices about where and how to educate her kindergarten-age son. She chose an elite state-run school down the street, but soon found that its authoritarian teaching style offended many of her sensibilities of how to nurture a child. At the same time, she found herself appreciating the discipline and mathematical ability that the system was instilling in Rainey. She embarked on an investigative mission to answer the question: What price do the Chinese pay to produce their “smart” kids, and what lessons might Western parents and educators learn from this system? Her book, Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve, tells not just the story of Lenora and Rainey, but also the story of China’s educational system as a whole, backed up by research and interviews with a variety of students, teachers, and experts. Jeremy and Kaiser sat down with Lenora to discuss the Chinese educational system and the range of pros and cons it presents, and to compare that with the dramatically different American system. Recommendations: Jeremy: A Washington Post article titled “To deter North Korea, Japan and South Korea should go nuclear,” written by Bilahari Kausikan, formerly the permanent secretary of Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It’s an interesting and compelling argument, whether or not you agree with it. Lenora: Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change, the new book by Ellen Pao, a woman trying to pull back the curtain on gender discrimination in Silicon Valley. Kaiser: He recommends that residents in his town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, vote for Hongbin Gu, a woman running for the Chapel Hill Town Council who is a quantitative psychiatric researcher originally from Shanghai. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In April 1992, China implemented a law that, for the first time, allowed families from other countries to adopt Chinese children. Since then, around 120,000 Chinese have been adopted abroad, with 80,000 finding a home in the United States. But when adoptions started in that first year, only 206 came to America. Rae Winborn is one of that first wave of adoptees, brought over at just nine months old to the U.S. to grow up with a white, middle-class American family in Durango, Colorado. Charlotte Cotter was adopted a few years later at the age of five months in 1995, and grew up with two moms in Newton, Massachusetts. She is now the president of China’s Children International, a support and networking organization run by and for Chinese adoptees around the world, which she co-founded in 2011. Kaiser and Jeremy had a conversation with Rae and Charlotte about their experiences growing up in America, why they both chose to learn Chinese and spend time working in China — which Rae described as the “Chinese-American experience on steroids” — and what it was like when Charlotte made contact with her birth family. Recommendations: Jeremy: Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve, an excellent book on education by Lenora Chu. Also, The China Questions: Critical Insights Into a Rising Power, by Jennifer Rudolph and Michael Szonyi. Rae: italki, a private tutoring service for language learning where you can get Skype lessons to improve your Chinese. Charlotte: Somewhere Between, a documentary of Chinese adoptees in America by Linda Goldstein Knowlton, and Twinsters, a movie about two Korean twins separated at birth and raised separately in America and France. Kaiser: The Book of Swindles: Selections from a Late Ming Collection, a book written by Yingyu Zhang and translated by Christopher G. Rea and Bruce Rusk, which describes the incredibly clever ways in which people cheated one another in 17th-century China. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On August 17, 2017, the global community of China scholars erupted in outrage over one particular and unusual case of censorship in China — the decision of Cambridge University Press (CUP) to comply with requests to censor 315 articles deemed sensitive by the Chinese government. Jim Millward, a professor of history at Georgetown University, who has written many articles on China and the book The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction, was one responder. He quickly published on Medium an “Open Letter to Cambridge University Press about its censorship of the China Quarterly,” which condemned what he called the “craven, shameful and destructive concession to the PRC’s growing censorship regime.” CUP reversed its decision on August 21, and in the following weeks, other academic publishers and journals revealed that they had received similar requests. The Guardian later noted on September 9 that China’s State Council had indirectly responded to CUP, warning that “all publications imported into China’s market must adhere to Chinese laws and regulations,” and that an additional journal, the American Political Science Review, had also received and rebuffed censorship requests from China. What does the CUP fiasco mean for censorship and academic freedom in China? Why did CUP yield to the censorship pressure, and how should other academic institutions approach their operations in the country? In many ways, these questions are still unanswered, and Jim sat down with Kaiser and Jeremy to sort through what happened and discuss where it might lead. Recommendations: Jeremy: Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship, by J. M. Coetzee, a South African (now Australian) who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2003. The book was written in apartheid-era South Africa, which had a system of censorship that has many features in common with China’s today. Jim: “Travels with my censor,” a piece by Evan Osnos in the New Yorker, which portrays the censor as a very sympathetic individual. Osnos has been engaged in a back-and-forth with fellow New Yorker staff writer Peter Hessler, who, unlike Osnos, decided to go forward with publishing a censored version of his book for the Chinese market. Osnos explains his reasoning for refusing to publish censored content in China in this New York Times op-ed. Also, a young Chinese musician and composer named Baishui, who grew up in Sichuan and now lives in the U.S. He has a Chinese folk music background, but also does abstract and electronic music. Find his website here, or find him on Spotify or iTunes. Kaiser: Porcupine Tree, an English neo-progressive rock band active in the 1990s. Albums to check out: In Absentia and Deadwing, plus two solo albums by the band’s founder, Steve Wilson, The Raven That Refused to Sing and Other Stories and Hand.Cannot.Erase. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Richard McGregor is the former Washington and Beijing bureau chief of the Financial Times, and a notable writer on Chinese politics. His last book was The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers. His new book, Asia's Reckoning: China, Japan, and the Fate of U.S. Power in the Pacific Century, tells the story of the triangle of the three most important powers in East Asia, none of which can be fully understood without some knowledge of the other two. Richard talked with Jeremy and Kaiser about the events and issues that have impacted relations between China, Japan, and the U.S. since World War II. These include: how the U.S. blindsided Japan by acknowledging Beijing as the Chinese capital with only a few hours of notice in 1971; how Japan’s leaders have refused to grapple with the reality of comfort women during the war; and how China’s leaders and media have comfortably settled into using anti-Japanese sentiment as a convenient political tool. Recommendations: Richard: The Invention of Russia: The Rise of Putin and the Age of Fake News, a book by journalist Arkady Ostrovsky, who has written for the Economist and the Financial Times. And Fauda, an Israeli TV series about the Israeli Special Forces and Hamas. Jeremy: The Twitter feed of Jorge Guajardo, former Mexican ambassador to China. Kaiser: The works of Alan Furst, specifically, his book Dark Star, which unpacks the mentality of the purge of the mid-1930s in Russia. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

North Korea is a mystery to nearly everyone — even those who have dedicated their lives to studying the country — including Korean experts based in Seoul, national security experts in Washington or Beijing, and a variety of foreigners who have spent extended periods studying in or reporting from the North. There is great uncertainty about what the country’s leaders really think of China, how self-sufficient the North’s economy actually is, and even the background of the “respected” leader, Kim Jong-un, beyond a few seemingly random details (he studied in Switzerland and likes basketball and Whitney Houston, for example). Evan Osnos — former Beijing correspondent for the New Yorker and now the magazine’s correspondent in the currently far more unpredictable capital of the U.S. — recently travelled to the Hermit Kingdom and reported an extensive cover piece for that magazine: “The risk of nuclear war with North Korea.” What are the prospects for war and peace in northeast Asia? Evan talked with Jeremy and Kaiser about his conversations with North Korean, Chinese, and U.S. government officials and people involved in the complicated regional powerplay. Recommendations: Jeremy: Jeeves & Wooster, a comedy TV series adapted from the P.G. Wodehouse books about a gormless English aristocrat and his very bright butler, played by Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, respectively. It’s “really a wonderful escapist pleasure [for] when you don’t feel like thinking about Donald Trump and North Korea,” Jeremy adds. Evan: The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot, a book by Blaine Harden that explains how North Koreans think about the Korean war — an essential piece of the current conundrum we all face. Kaiser: China in Disintegration, by James Sheridan, a narrative history of the Republican Era (1912-1949) in China. Events during the period such as the Republican Revolution and the May Fourth Movement are key to understanding modern China. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Michael Bristow was stationed in Beijing as the Asia Pacific editor for the BBC World Service from 2005 to 2013. He has written a book called China in Drag: Travels with a Cross-Dresser, in which he recounts his time in China — his travels, his reporting, and his myriad experiences — through the prism of his relationship with his Chinese teacher. The Teacher — who insisted on anonymity — is a Beijinger. He’s a thoughtful and educated man, and also a transvestite. Yet his transvestism is just one aspect of a many-faceted individual whose life has mirrored incredible changes in Chinese society since the Cultural Revolution. On this episode, we talk to Michael about his teacher, and what he learned about China — and about cross-dressing — while traveling through the country with this fascinating man. Recommendations: Jeremy: The Mala Market, where you can get fresh Sichuanese ingredients shipped straight to your door (in the U.S.), and the accompanying blog called Mala Project — not to be confused with the New York City restaurant of the same name, which Jeremy has previously recommended. Also, the BBC’s new West African news service in Pidgin, a form of English common in West Africa, something completely original to the BBC. Michael: The book A Whole Life, by Austrian author Robert Seethaler. It’s about an ordinary guy who lives in a valley in the Alps in Austria. Almost nothing noteworthy happens to this guy, but he’s lived a full and rich life nonetheless. Kaiser: 1MORE Triple Driver In-Ear Headphones, affordable and excellent in-ear monitors that sound infinitely better than what you’re probably using now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Adam Segal is the Ira A. Lipman Chair in Emerging Technologies and National Security and director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations. You may remember him from an episode of Sinica last year, when he discussed his excellent book The Hacked World Order: How Nations Fight, Trade, Maneuver, and Manipulate in the Digital Age. Adam returns to Sinica to comment on China’s recent cybersecurity law — where it came from, how it changed as it was being drafted, and how it may shape the flow of information in China in the future. Other issues discussed include the bargaining power — or lack thereof — of foreign companies such as Apple when faced with new rules and regulations in China, and related crackdowns on VPNs and other aspects of China’s ironically anti-globalized view of the internet. Recommendations: Jeremy: A three-part BBC documentary, about 30 minutes long, about live streaming in China. It follows the story of a very popular 24-year-old woman who claims to make $450,000 per year by performing and sharing her life with adoring fans online. Watch the first part here. Adam: Flood of Fire, the third book in the Ibis Trilogy by Amitav Ghosh about the Opium War. It brings together characters from India, the U.S., and China, and tells their stories in a sweeping saga. Kaiser: The podcast Binge Mode, with Jason Concepcion and Mallory Rubin, a smart and funny look at every episode of Game of Thrones. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Lucy Hornby is a China correspondent for the Financial Times. She has previously been on Sinica to speak about China’s last surviving comfort women and about women’s representation in China expertise. Li Shuo is the Senior Climate & Energy Policy Officer for Greenpeace East Asia. He oversees Greenpeace’s work on air pollution, water, and renewable energy, and also coordinates the organization’s engagement with the United Nations climate negotiation. Lucy returns to the podcast to discuss her reporting on Chinese environmental challenges — particularly overfishing and soil pollution — issues that Li Shuo, on the pod for the first time, has also researched. Recommendations: Jeremy: “The Anaconda and the Elephant,” an essay by Xu Zhiyuan 许知远 about self-censorship and how to be a Chinese writer in these strange times under Xi Jinping. Lucy: The latest book of her FT colleague Richard McGregor: Asia's Reckoning: China, Japan, and the Fate of U.S. Power in the Pacific Century. McGregor previously wrote The Party, a popular book among those wanting an in-depth look at Chinese politics. Li Shuo: A Chinese book called huanjing waijiaoguan shouji (环境外交官手记; “Notes of an Environmental Diplomat”), an autobiography of one of China’s early environmental diplomats, Xia Kunbao 夏堃堡. He was born in the 1940s, learned English, lived through the Cultural Revolution, and ended up at the highest levels of environmental governance in China. The book is written in fairly simple, short sentences. Kaiser: Washington Post reporter David Weigel’s new book, The Show That Never Ends: The Rise and Fall of Prog Rock. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Has the last half year of turbulent U.S.-China relations and Chinese politics passed you by? Confused you? Perhaps you’d like a clear recap in plain English? If yes, then this is the podcast episode for you. Susan Shirk is a professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego, where she’s also the chair of the 21st Century China Center. Susan served as deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia during the Clinton administration, and is the author of several influential books on China, including most notably China: Fragile Superpower. Stan Rosen is a professor of political science at the University of Southern California and a close observer of the interplay between culture and politics in China. He writes on subjects as varied as the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese legal system, public opinion, youth, gender, human rights, Sino-American relations, and film and the media. Kaiser spoke to them in front of a live studio audience, a notably not wonky group of teachers and China-curious folk at the 1990 Institute’s Teachers Workshop in San Mateo, California. Topics covered include how China has dealt with Trump, trade negotiations between the U.S. and China, Chinese soft power and Belt and Road, leadership transition in China, and the country’s push into Hollywood. Recommendations: Susan: The website of the UC San Diego 21st Century China Center, and also The Noise of Time: A Novel, written by Julian Barnes about the perspective of famed Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich and what he endured under Stalin. The oppression of artists and writers in that time and place is newly relevant to China, after the death of Liu Xiaobo. Stan: If you want to know more about Shostakovich, read his memoir, Testimony, or watch the film of the same name. Also check out three Chinese films, the first of which is the famous To Live by Zhang Yimou. Watch the film, but also read the book by Yu Hua, a much tougher version, which was toned down in its adaption to the screen. Second, The Mermaid, by Stephen Chow, by far the top-grossing film in China — until Wolf Warriors 2 overtook it this month. Finally, Lost in Thailand, which Stan describes as “like The Hangover, but without all the raunchiness.” Of course, that is a big part of the reason why Chinese films aren’t quite making it overseas. Kaiser: Czech composer Antonín Dvořák and his Seventh and Eighth Symphonies — get the whole collection of his symphonies and concertos. (You may already be familiar with the Ninth, the famous New World Symphony.) And the Chinafornia newsletter, a great free weekly roundup of U.S. state-level engagement with China. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dirty words, politically incorrect phrases, the legal distinction between suspect and criminal, customs boundary versus national boundary, and better ways to refer to disabled people and minorities: All are discussed in the recent Xinhua style guide update, translated and explained on SupChina here. Jeremy and Kaiser discussed the style guide and took audience questions at a live podcast at the Definitive China Happy Hour in Washington, D.C., on August 10, 2017. The Happy Hour brings together China professionals and enthusiasts from over 30 D.C.-area China organizations, including Chinese nationals, students, young professionals, and employers. Jeremy and Kaiser wish to thank: Winslow Robertson and his team at Cowries and Rice for organizing the event and hosting them American Mandarin Society Young China Watchers China Society See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Gillian Wong has been reporting from China since 2008 and is now the news director for Greater China at the Associated Press. High-profile stories Gillian has covered include the 2012 Tibetan self-immolations and the downfall of Bo Xilai 薄熙来. Her husband, Josh Chin, works as a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, where he has covered China since 2007. Prior to the Journal, Josh was a research fellow at the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations, where he helped produce the China Boom Project. Between the two of them, Gillian and Josh have covered a host of China-related topics, ranging from cybersecurity to Xinjiang. They talk to Kaiser and Jeremy about their paths to becoming journalists, their experience of the changing working conditions for journalists in China, and their efforts to create diverse and representative narratives — complicated, and sometimes aided, by the fact that they are both at least part ethnically Chinese. Recommendations: Jeremy: Memphis, Tennessee, an American cultural destination and the musical hometown of B.B. King and Elvis Presley. Kaiser: Matt Sheehan’s piece on California’s transformation into an epicenter for U.S.-China relations, “Welcome to Chinafornia: The Future of U.S.-China Relations.” As a second recommendation, The Polish Officer, by Alan Furst, which does an incredible job of re-creating an old-world style of language and immersing the reader in its respective time and space. Gillian: The audiobook reading by Tom Perkins of John Pomfret’s The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom. (Listen to John Pomfret discuss his book on Sinica.) Josh: The Paulson Institute’s MacroPolo initiative, which uses the latest research to decode China’s economy, urbanization, and development. A lot of great data all in one accessible, punny place. Also check out Gillian and Josh’s coauthored front-page piece, “China’s new tool for social control: A credit rating for everything.” See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.