Sinica Podcast

This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy speak with Julian Ku, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Maurice A. Deane Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law at Hofstra University. After the arrest of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Mèng Wǎnzhōu 孟晚舟 in Vancouver at the behest of the U.S. Justice Department dominated international headlines in December 2018, U.S.-China relations have entered uncharted territory. The three convened to discuss the many legal aspects of her arrest and what this means for the bilateral relationship moving forward. What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast: 7:54: Bank fraud, sanctions violations, or competition over 5G? All three? In response to Jeremy, Julian explains the strategy behind the decision to charge Meng with bank fraud and how this differs from the legal strategy in charging ZTE: “...as they did with ZTE, it’s actually much easier for the Commerce Department to just go after them on a civil standard and say you’re violating our sanctions laws and we’re just going to cut you off from the U.S. market. There’s no jury, there’s no trial, you don’t have to prosecute that person, and you don’t have to worry about the complications with extradition.” 20:15: What internal processes and parties were involved in this arrest? Julian explains how these extradition requests are generally handled as they work their way through various government offices. “It’s sort of like a bureaucratic process but with a little bit of wiggle room among the different departments so that you’re not putting a country in a bad position. So, I think Canada is supposed to have a little room to think about this, and I think ideally we gave them a chance to think about it and turn them down. But we obviously really wanted this to happen.” 34:24: Julian discusses the role that variable interest entities (VIEs) play in Chinese companies and the legal claims made by Meng and HSBC. “For tax purposes or for regulatory purposes, the law will sometimes allow companies to be structured in different ways...or for corporate governance purposes. Having said that, there [is] also a long tradition of what we call piercing the corporate veil in the United States. Which is, we say, ‘Look, we know technically it’s a separate corporation but because they commited a separate tort or crime, we’re just going to pierce the corporate structure and go straight to the shareholders and hold them accountable.’” Recommendations: Jeremy: Two Kinds of Time, by Graham Peck, with an introduction by Robert Kapp. A book of observations of China from the 1940s. Julian: Indonesia Etc.: Exploring the Improbable Nation, by Elizabeth Pisani. A 2014 memoir of a journalist from the U.K. in Indonesia. Kaiser: The instrumental progressive rock band Animals As Leaders, led by guitarist Tosin Abasi.This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jude Blanchette, the Senior Advisor and China Practice Lead at Crumpton Group’s China Practice, joins Kaiser and Jeremy for a live Sinica Podcast recording at Columbia University. Forty years after the policies of reform and opening up were adopted by the Communist Party of China, the three reflect on just how much the country has changed since 1978, and also restore figures like Zhào Zǐyáng 赵紫阳 and Hú Yàobāng 胡耀邦 to their proper place in the story of reform. Jude also talks about the conservative reaction to reform — the topic of his forthcoming book, Under the Red Flag: The Battle for the Soul of the Communist Party in a Reforming China. What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast: 21:36: Jude discusses the roles of Zhao Ziyang and Hu Yaobang in the context of reform in China: “I don’t know what any of you were doing when you were twelve, but [Hu Yaobang] joined his first revolution when he was twelve and ran away from home and joined the Communist Party when he was fourteen, and was one of the youngest members on the famed Long March.” 23:59: Zhao Ziyang’s central role as a reformer was often viewed as radical by many conservatives within the Party, particularly during his brief tenure as General Secretary after the ousting of Hu Yaobang. In 1987 he pushed for separation of the Party and the government (党政分开 dǎngzhèng fēnkāi), which was ultimately unsuccessful. “The Party is the owner of the restaurant, it can decide what’s on the menu, but the government is the chef in the back kitchen. It’s the one that is going to be actually making the dishes, we need to give them that latitude and leeway to do that.” 31:52: As China transitioned away from a reserved foreign policy of ‘hide and bide’ (韬光养晦 tāoguāng yǎnghuì) in the 1990s to more assertive approach of fènfā yǒuwéi (奋发有为). Jude elaborates on the transformation: “There’s also just the natural transition of a developing country to one becoming increasingly strong and articulating its own goals which diverge from that of the United States or other client states… we’re seeing now the full force of it coming out under Xi Jinping today. But I think the casting off of hide and bide, even as a cynical strategy we can see in retrospect was a catastrophic mistake by Xi Jinping.” 1:02:31: In the past few years, Deng Xiaoping has been written out of the history of Reform and Opening. Jude speculates on why: “As long as Deng Xiaoping and his legacy is around, that’s a cudgel that opponents can pick up… the more you allow the speeches of Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang and Deng Xiaoping… speeches from Zhao Ziyang on political reform, speeches from Deng Xiaoping on separating the Party and the government. Basically, just Deng Xiaoping on [not having] a cult of leadership and how disastrous that is. Those are political weapons, so, clear them all away, get rid of them, burn the books.” Recommendations: Jude: Free Solo, a documentary of the climber Alex Honnold and his no-ropes climb up the 3,000-foot rock face of El Capitan. Kaiser: These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore, a historiographical account of the American experiment beginning in 1492. Jeremy: One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps by Andrea Pitzer. ---- From now until January 14, get a year of SupChina Access at 25% off for just $66!This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.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, Jeremy and Kaiser are joined by Benjamin Shobert, who visited the Sinica South studio in Durham, North Carolina, for this episode. He is a senior manager at Healthcare NExT, a healthcare initiative of Microsoft, and leads strategy with national governments. The topic of discussion is his compelling book, Blaming China: It Might Feel Good but It Won’t Fix America’s Economy. The three discuss the taxonomy of dragon slayers and panda huggers, and some realities with which the world is now grappling: the rise of China, outcomes of globalization, the watershed moment of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and the impact it has had — and will continue to have — on the bilateral relationship between the United States and China. What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast: 13:06: Ben talks about how, in 2016, traditional messaging by American politicians on the campaign trail in regard to China changed significantly: “...and to see [Mitt Romney] in the Rust Belt states talking quite vociferously about China as a near-peer threat and the source of economic anxieties…that was a signal.” 21:39: Ben explains the outsize role that the American Midwest has played in shaping the modern U.S.-China relationship: “Geographically, literally in parts of the American Midwest that matter to where this relationship goes, where there’s a realization that ‘China is not going to look like the way we thought, and I don’t know if we’re comfortable with that.’” 35:54: Ben reflects on the compatibility of views between “panda huggers” and “dragon slayers.” Is there any common ground between the two? “It’s almost as if this is a board game, and it’s not actual people making hard decisions in the context of different political systems, different cultures, different histories, and again the subtext for me in all of this is the United States during this modern global era has not been tending to its own knitting.” 37:24: “This is one of those conversations where if you get six people of both political persuasions in the same room, you’ll get more or less six people that agree: we need to invest more in infrastructure, we need to invest in healthcare and social spending, and yet, at the end of the day we didn’t do that. So we’re talking about China from this point of view of just extraordinary insecurity. Again, how much of that is because of what China has done? How much of that is because of things we haven’t?” Recommendations: Jeremy: Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors and the Drug Company that Addicted America, by Beth Macy, a nonfiction book that charts the opioid crisis in the United States. Ben: Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town, by Brian Alexander, a story of Lancaster, Ohio, and the upheavals globalization brought to the community Kaiser: Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age, by Stephen R. Platt, plus its (exceptional) audiobook narration by Mark Deakens.This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.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 speaks with Charles Bedford, who has been the managing director since 2012 of The Nature Conservancy (TNC)’s Asia-Pacific region, which encompasses Asia, the Pacific Islands, Indonesia, and Australia. The organization focuses on solving incredibly pressing and paramount issues central to the health of our planet. TNC is a charitable environmental organization that focuses on bringing the “best available science” to decision makers in all levels of government and local communities both inside and outside of the United States. In this episode, Kaiser and Charles discuss the formation of the national parks system in China beginning nearly two decades ago in which Charles and TNC played an instrumental role; the promising Chinese ecotourism industry; hydropower in China; “sponge cities” and “green bonds”; environmental activism and philanthropy; and local Chinese environmental organizations. What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast: 12:30: Charles on responsibly developing hydropower projects in Southeast Asia: “The problem with the way that we have developed the world’s rivers is that we’ve done it through a death of a thousand cuts. In a sense that if you do these things bit by bit and without looking at entire river systems, then you can essentially destroy the ecological diversity, the function of the river for people, the ability of the river to produce food, to produce silts that are nutritional for agricultural production.” 25:50: Kaiser and Charles discuss sponge cities: “What China’s done over the last few years is taken a pretty remarkable step to rebuild its city infrastructure across the whole country. This is a massive, national ‘sponge city’ program to go back in and figure out how to de-hardscape and put in bioswales [drainage receptacles].” 31:21: Does China get too much credit or too much blame on the environmental front? “The preponderance, I’m told, of civil disturbances, riots essentially, in China, are resulting from pollution. [They] derive from some type of local pollution or land use problem with the government. So China is not necessarily a democratic place where issues can turf themselves up and go through a political process, but there’s still an outlet for people to say this is wrong. And the great thing about this is the Chinese government is pretty much open to these kinds of [environmental] protests.” 37:42: Charles tells Kaiser about an interview he had with Jack Ma, in which Ma describes nearly drowning in a river as a child in his native Hangzhou. He also shares that he returned there years later, and things had changed — he would have been hard-pressed to drown in that same river because the water now only reached his ankles, and he wouldn’t want to swim in it because it was clearly polluted. Ma is a Global Board Member of The Nature Conservancy. Recommendations: Charles: Brave Genius: A Scientist, a Philosopher, and Their Daring Adventures from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize, by Sean C. Carroll, a book on World War II and the stories of Albert Camus and Jacques Monod. Kaiser: The Wizard and the Prophet, by Charles C. Mann, and a seven-part recording of a 1995 live show by the band Idiot Flesh. --- Check out the sponsor of this episode, Yoyo Chinese, by going to www.yoyochinese.com/sinica — be sure to enter the code Sinica at checkout to receive 15% off!This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.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 speak with Christian Sorace, assistant professor of political science at Colorado College. The three discuss his book, Shaken Authority: China’s Communist Party and the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake, which analyzes the ways the Communist Party uses rhetoric to serve its interests, the consequences of this endeavor for the region and survivors of the quake, and the urbanization of China’s rural areas. Christian spent a year and a half in the region starting in 2012, conducting fieldwork in affected areas via open-ended interviews, ethnographic observations, meetings with leaders of non-governmental organizations and scholars, and analysis of hundreds of pages of internal Party reports. What to listen for this week on the Sinica Podcast: 13:10: Sorace explains why, for a short time in the aftermath of the quake, some perceived the seeds of civil society to be growing: “This activity was limited to a short window of the rescue period in which lives were at stake and time was of the essence. And after this short window of rescue, the reconstruction phase begins, and then the picture changes entirely and top-down control was reasserted.” 18:03: Sorace elaborates on the role of gratitude education (感恩教育活动 gǎn ēn jiàoyù huódong) in shaping perceptions of post-earthquake reconstruction: “Officials would talk about gratitude education as a way of ‘removing psychological obstacles, and returning overly emotional people to a reasonable and rational state,’ so there’s also a kind of control element here.” He then elaborates on the haunting similarities between what happened in the aftermath of the earthquake and the horrors that are occurring now in Xinjiang. 26:32: “Over 7.7 million square meters of urban space was built in the reconstruction. Fifty percent of their entire rural population were moved into cities, so this is a massive expansion of urban space.” Christian reflects on the concept of “utopian urbanization” and his time living in these newly built apartments that housed disaster victims. 39:11: Superfluous slogans, turgid language... Can anything of value truly be gleaned from official language coming from the Chinese state? Sorace explains the significance of rhetoric in understanding the Communist Party: “…to dismiss everything that the Communist Party says, as this empty propaganda actually makes everything that’s going on in China actually much harder to understand. And if we pay close attention and train [our] sensitivity to listening to this ‘Party-speak,’ it actually can tell us quite a bit about what’s going on.” Recommendations: Jeremy: The Epic of Gilgamesh, by father and son duo Kevin and Kent Dixon, a graphic novel version of the original epic. Kaiser: The Vietnam War, by Ken Burns. Christian: Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, by Peter Godfrey Smith, a look at the nature and evolution of consciousness.This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.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 traveled across the Atlantic to host a live podcast at the Asia Society of Switzerland in Zurich. The topic of discussion is the social credit system (SCS) in China, a fiercely debated and highly controversial subject in the West, often construed as a monolithic and Orwellian initiative. Our guests are Manya Koetse, editor and founder of What’s on Weibo — a wonderful resource that aggregates and examines trending information from social media platform Sina Weibo — and Rogier Creemers, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Leiden, who has done extensive research on China’s governance and digital policy and has translated extensive primary source materials from Chinese government sources and publications on SCS. Rogier and Manya provide fresh perspectives on a subject that has become a wedge in the China-watching community. They discuss the varying perceptions of SCS around the world; what observers have gotten right and wrong about the system according to government publications; the relative lack of integration in the many different moving parts that comprise the SCS; and the changing role of technology in daily life and how big of a role that could play when one thinks of social credit. What to listen for this week on the Sinica Podcast: 13:19: Manya explains to Kaiser that “We in the West have somehow been trapped in this one-dimensional vision of this system, or this policy. Just looking at it from that angle, politically and also from the idea that it’s the state versus the people. Always the state versus the people … and it’s much more multidimensional than that.” 27:01: Is discussion of social credit systems suppressed in China? Manya answers, “This was a little bit difficult for me … I see it everywhere on Twitter, but it’s not a trending topic on Weibo, so I was looking on Weibo on what to write about.” Kaiser asks if this is because of internet censorship, to which Manya responds, “I don’t think so … there are some websites like freeweibo.com [that show uncensored trending topics] and social credit system definitely is not one of them. Another thing is that state media is trying to propagate articles that are about the system and various local credit systems are on Weibo. If anything I have the feeling that there are probably people out there that wish this was more talked about on Weibo.” 37:16: Despite popular belief, there is local pushback against some local credit systems, which Rogier elaborates on: “One of the local trials, run in a place called Suining close to Shanghai in Jiangsu province, was actually shut down after it was criticized quite harshly in national official media. There is some jostling for ‘we want the system on the whole,’ but as with any system there are going to be negative consequences … not to want to present the Chinese government as more benevolent than it is … but it is also too simplistic to say that this is top-down impulse, no questions asked.” 43:01: Rogier provides two key takeaways to Kaiser’s question on how our expectations towards the world outside of the West have changed in the age of the internet. How have our perceptions of technology changed in the modern era? Towards China as a rising technological power? What role is an acceptable role for technology to play in our lives and in governance? Recommendations: Kaiser: The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, the Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of Alexandre Dumas written by Tom Reiss. Rogier: DigiChina, a platform for information on the development of China’s digital economy and digital politics, and The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, by Peter Frankopan. Manya: Manc.hu, a digital platform for studying the Manchu language.This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.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 speaks with Lucy Hornby, the deputy bureau chief of the Financial Times in Beijing and a veteran guest on the show. She has appeared on Sinica before to discuss professional representation for women in China, the last surviving comfort women in the country, and domestic environmental challenges. The two discuss shadow banking in China and its history; the cat-and-mouse relationship between regulators and shadow financiers; the advent of fintech and the proliferation of peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms; and Lucy’s reporting on a pyramid scheme involving selenium-infused wheat in Hebei. What to listen for this week on the Sinica Podcast: 11:15: Lucy responding to Kaiser’s question on perceptions of shadow lending in China: “You see repeated attempts by the Chinese state to shut this down. And also the words that they use around it: shadow banking, private banking, private financiers, capitalists… They’re very much painted in a negative light. But at the same time, some of China’s biggest entrepreneurs have said they would never have gotten started or been able to make it through a downturn [without a shadow loan].” 13:02: Lucy points out that in the lead-up to the financial crisis of 2008, the state took control of building housing from private investors: “This cutoff in loans [to private entities] happened roughly around the time you had the global financial crisis and the Chinese government putting out a massive stimulus plan…and suddenly if you can make a 30 percent profit on something, you can take out a 20 percent loan… That's when you really had this explosion of shadow banking that reached into every sector of the economy.” 30:35: “The other thing I think a lot of people don’t realize is that Chinese shadow financing has flowed into peripheral countries… A lot of Mongolian entrepreneurs turn to that shadow financing, and you even had some who then took that and repackaged it at higher rates to Mongolian retail customers. So, that means that basically the nation of Mongolia is now completely exposed to the Chinese shadow banking sector.” 42:15: To conclude the discussion, Lucy provides a bird’s-eye view: “I think your point about China’s need for flexible financing is a real one, and that’s going to continue. But I think what we’re also seeing is a massive deleveraging and default of all these boom years into the pockets of the average Chinese person.” Recommendations: Lucy: Den of Thieves, by James B. Stewart, the tome-like account of the junk bond trading craze of the 1980s, and The China Dream, by Joe Studwell. Kaiser: Two books by Stephen R. Platt: Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age and Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War.This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In lieu of Sinica this week, we are proud to announce the newest addition to our network, Ta for Ta, hosted by Juliana Batista. Ta for Ta is a new biweekly podcast, which captures the narratives of women from Greater China at the top of their professional game. “Ta for Ta” is a play on the Chinese spoken language that demonstrates equality between the sexes. Tā 他 is the word for “he”; tā 她 is also the word for “she.” Chenni Xu is the inaugural guest, a corporate communications executive and gender advocate. She moved back to New York after spending nearly a decade abroad in Beijing. Tune in to hear about the #MeToo movement in China and the proponents at the fore, Chenni’s views on gender inequality and professional representation for women, as well as her own experiences as a woman and an Asian American in China. Subscribe to Ta for Ta on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, or Stitcher, or plug the RSS feed into your favorite podcast app. For more musings and links relevant to this episode of Ta for Ta, check out this post on Juliana’s Medium page. Juliana loves to hear from listeners — send her a message at ta.for.ta.china@gmail.com.This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Kevin Rudd, former prime minister of Australia, discusses Xi Jinping's worldview and the changes in Chinese foreign policy. They delve into the ongoing flux in the US-China relationship, Chinese foreign policy transitioning to a more active approach, and the current state of Australia-China relations.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser speaks with Danny Russel, career diplomat and former assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs from 2013 to 2017, and currently vice president for international security and diplomacy at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI). The conversation centers on all things diplomatic in East and Southeast Asia: the Trans-Pacific Partnership; internet freedom in China; the country’s “illiberal turn”; espionage and intellectual property theft during his time in Washington; the Obama administration’s position on the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB); and, finally, reflections on the current state of the U.S.-China relationship. What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast: 3:20: Kaiser begins the discussion with a question about the characterization of the Obama administration’s regional strategy, the “Pivot to East Asia.” Russel maintains that “[Barack Obama]…understood intellectually and understood viscerally, that America’s economic development, that America’s security interests and America’s future, was inextricably linked to the Asia-Pacific region, which was clearly the driver of global growth.” 38:25: Assistant Secretary Russel elaborates on the driving forces behind the “illiberal turn” that has fueled anxieties among China-watchers. “It felt as if the impact of the 2008 financial crisis had sent a pulse through Chinese thinking. This pulse seemed to dispel the long-held notion that there was something to respect, and to perhaps imitate, in the Western economic model.” 57:31: “If China’s going to throw a lot of money behind the laudable objective of promoting infrastructure development in Asia, why doesn’t it use the Asian Development Bank, or the World Bank, or some of the existing mechanisms that are proven institutions? And if then, if China is going to create not a national bank, but an international development bank, the starting point for any new multilateral banking institution had better be the high-water mark in terms of standards and operations that have been achieved over the last 70 years by the existing multilateral banks.” 59:00: “Early on in the time of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank’s conception, it was all label and no substance. What we were seeing, and hearing was that China was asking governments to buy what was a pig in a poke.” 1:05:36: Kaiser raises a question regarding the anxieties that have taken root between Washington and Beijing and now are straining the relationship, some deserved and others unfounded. “We’re seeing what’s almost a perfect storm in which the accumulated frustration and unhappiness among so many different elements of U.S. society, and so many stakeholders that traditionally have supported the U.S.-China relationship,” Assistant Secretary Russel comments on the continually worsening state of affairs, as there is a the “diminished willingness to speak up” in defense of the relationship. Recommendations: Assistant Secretary Russel: No book or show, but rather a plea for public service; the Foreign Service, joining a non-governmental organization, nonprofit work, etc. Kaiser: Educated, by Tara Westover, a memoir of a young girl raised in a fundamentalist, survivalist Mormon family in Idaho.This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.