Sinica Podcast

Yasheng Huang, MIT professor, talks about trade, technology policy, and Chinese and Indian entrepreneurship. Topics include trade war with China, 'Made in China 2025' initiative, comparing Soviet Union and China's approach to science and technology, impact of Trump trade war on China, targeting in the trade war, and the relationship between tech and government in the US and China.

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.

Chinese students studying abroad in America face identity issues and biased views. They must choose between defending their country or adopting Americanized worldviews. These students also deal with social isolation, racism, and political beliefs. The podcast explores their experiences in American universities, including interactions with other students and stereotypes they face. It also discusses the inhibition of Chinese students in American classrooms, the controversy surrounding Confucius Institutes, and alternative toilet options. The chapter wraps up with a discussion on American nationalism and insights on the Chinese student experience in America.