ChinaTalk

Guest Nick Consonery Director of China Macroeconomic & Policy research @rhodium_group Rhodium Group Nick Consonery (@nconsonery) | Twitter Nick Consonery of the Rhodium Group with support from the Asia Society recently published The China Dashboard. This piece of research provides a quarterly update on the key fields of economic policy reform, including topics like the environment, fiscal policy, and innovation. In this podcast, we review the dashboard's latest disappointing findings, and discuss why some policy aims may be at cross-purposes. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

China's northeast, a region that in the 1970s comprised over 10% of national GDP, now only makes up 3%. In this interview, Song Houze walks listeners through the policy challenges facing the rustbest. He also provides some context behind two developments that recently made international news: a famous entrepeneur berating a local official for squeezing his ski resort and provincial-level GDP revisions.. For more research, see his recent series up on Macropolo on the province of Liaoning. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Guests Oona Hathaway Professor @YaleLawSch, Director @YaleLawGLC, Editor @just_security, fmr Special Counsel @DeptofDefense, co-author of The Internationalists Oona A. Hathaway - Yale Law School Oona Hathaway (@oonahathaway) on Twitter Scott Shapiro Prof @YaleLawSch + Philosophy @Yale. Visiting Quain Prof @UCLLaws. Editor, Legal Theory and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. #Internationalists THE INTERNATIONALISTS Scott Shapiro (@scottjshapiro) on Twitter Given how Xi today struts on the world stage with ambitions to use today's "historic opportunity" to reshape the international order, its useful to look back in history to the last time the world faced a revolution in legal norms. Yale Law Professors Scott Shapiro and Oona Hathaway recently published The Internationalists, an intellectual history of how international legal norms have evolved since the days of Grotius. In particular, they focus on the movement to outlaw war peaking in the early 20th century with the Kellogg Briand Pact fundamentally reframed interstate relations and created many aspects of the modern international system China is navigating today. This discussion ranges from how Japan adopted to the western legal reality in the late 19th and early 20th century, to origins of sanctions, the South China Sea and even wars started by claims of wife-stealing. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Barry Eichengreen, Professor of Economics and Political Science at Berkeley (not to mention one of my favorite authors of accessible yet profound global economics books) recently published his How Global Currencies Work: Past, Present, and Future. We talk about the rise of the US Dollar and how its transition to global leader was slower and more gradual than many have thought. We then turn to the Yuan and the challenges it faces as the government pushes the currency's internationalization. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Max Zhou, former head of Mobile at Mobike and co-founder of Meta App, discusses his experience at Uber, the growth of bike-sharing in China, and the global expansion plans of Mobike and Ofo. He also shares his crackpot theory on negative stories about Ofo and Mobike, and talks about his new project, MetaApp, which aims to access app features without downloading. The podcast explores the influence of the 'Uber Mafia' in China and the challenges faced by developers in the app market.

Keller Easterling, architect and professor at Yale, discusses her research on free zones (aka Special Economic Zones). We start by discussing the history of free zones and whether the Chinese success stories of SEZs such as Shenzhen drove their proliferation around the world. We also discuss a few more next-generation free zone proposals such as the NEOM project in Saudi Arabia and Refugee Cities. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peter Lorentzen, professor of economics at the University of San Francisco, talks protests and provincial politics. We start by discussing 'Designing Contentious Politics in Post-1989 China,' which uses game theory to analyze and explain how the CCP responds to on-the-ground protests. Next, we take on his 'Racing to the Bottom or to the Top? Decentralization, Revenue Pressures, and Governance Reform in China' and explore what actually drives municipal responses to orders from on high. Music this week by 阴三儿, 北京晚报 and 没钱没朋友. Do note that after this episode was recorded, some protests against "low-end population" removal broke out. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Matt Sheehan is a fellow at the Paulson Institute and writes his own newsletter, "Chinafornia". We discussed the evolving relationship between China and Silicon Valley, their cultural differences and commonalities and, of course, the state of Chinese rap music. Stay tuned until the end of the episode to hear Matt's favorite Chinese rap song in full. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Jonathan Woetzel, Mckinsey Global Institute Director and Senior Partner in the Shanghai office, recently co-authored a report entitled China's Digital Economy. In this podcast, he discusses the impact of BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent) on the broader startup ecosystem, the role of the government in fostering these firms, and China's potential for continued economic creativity. He also astutely recommends that you read all of Jonathan Spence. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Julian Gewirtz is currently a Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and author of Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China. In it, he argues that "western economists played a crucial role in shaping the ideas and strategies of key CCP economists and policymakers. Without their participation, China would not have reformed as quickly, innovatively, and successfully." In this discussion, we focus on the critical 1985 Bashan Conference and the echoes of the Unlikely Partners narrative you can see even today in Chinese policymaking. Julian's book recommendations included 9 Continents and Everything Under the Heavens. Follow Julian on twitter at @JulianGewirtz. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices