Sinica Podcast

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.

Jerry Yang, Founder and former CEO of Yahoo, 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. 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.

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, a staff writer at the New Yorker, discusses the obsession with beauty in China, the impact of selfie beautification apps, and the rise of internet celebrities. They also delve into the business of sabotaging unfaithful husbands and its implications for marriage in China. The podcast explores the connection between women's status and marriage, gender relations, and the sacrifices parents make for their children's well-being.

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.