This week on Sinica, I chat with Jessica Chen Weiss, until recently at Cornell University but now the David M. Lampton Professor of China Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, SAIS, in Washington D.C. Jessica, to those of you familiar with her work, has been at the forefront of the fight for a less strident, diplomacy-first approach to China, balancing threats with assurances to find a modus vivendi with China. She has challenged prevailing notions about China's intentions, and has called for the U.S. to advance an affirmative vision of how it wants to live in the world with China. We focus in this conversation about a recent piece in Foreign Affairs in which she challenges both the solidity and the logic of the "bipartisan consensus" on China, and holds out hope that a next administration might approach the relationship differently.
3:45 – How Jessica has settled into D.C.; her professorial namesake; and how she has become a leading voice for a less confrontational approach to China
9:30 – Where Jessica sees diverging views on China in the Republican and Democratic Parties
12:41 – What a more durable basis for coexistence should look like
14:46 – Credible deterrence and strategic ambiguity in the context of Taiwan
16:03 – Acknowledgements to limits on American power and the importance of being realistic
18:09 – Assurances on Taiwan and what threatens their credibility
21:13 – The question of engagement and the deterrent effect of economic integration
25:30 – How the U.S. can combat legitimate national security threats from China without undermining its own values, and the importance of not treating the Chinese in diaspora as a fifth column
31:31 – Electoral politics: the importance of welcoming and inclusive policies and creating space for debate and discernment
35:07 – The importance of testing our assumptions
38:30 – What another Trump presidency might look like
40:30 – How a Harris administration might differ from the Biden administration
44:13 – The U.S. and China-Russia relations
Recommendations:
Jessica: Valarie Kaur’s Sage Warrior: Wake to Oneness, Practice Pleasure, Choose Courage, Become Victory
Kaiser: BeaGo, an AI-powered search tool (download from your app store!)
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