Conversations exploring China's tech scene, economy and politics. Guests include a wide range of policy analysts, business professionals, journalists, and academics. Hosted by Jordan Schneider and published on Lawfare. Please consider supporting me via Patreon and check out the newsletter on Substack
Is the NSC Unwell?
Heart attacks, prostate cancer, Jake Sullivan awake for a home invasion attempt at 4 AM because he was just up working on a random Tuesday night?
Is the national security bureaucracy in America unwell?
To discuss, I have on today John Gans, a former Pentagon speechwriter, who’s had many, many other jobs in Washington. He is also the author of the fantastic “White House Warriors,” a history of the National Security Council.
We get into:
Why the organizational design of the NSC leads to such crushing burdens for midlevel and senior staffers
The kinds of high-flyers that are drawn to the national security complex and what keeps them there
How POTUS’s time constraints impact decision-making
Why NSC’s historically are excellent at spotting problems but often overeager when crafting solutions
The NSC’s role in America’s “forever wars.”
Roosevelt, Kennedy, Nixon, and Trump’s “maverick model” of running the NSC compared to the Eisenhower vision of “regular order”
How seemingly prosaic technological innovations like track changes and video conferencing have dramatically changed national security policymaking
How reading Shakespeare can improve the quality of our policy-making
What a better model could look like
Illustration from the New Yorker's recent feature on Sullivan. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/16/trial-by-combat
Outtro audio from
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2/1/2024 • 1 hour, 43 minutes, 42 seconds
Taiwan Election Results and Implications for Beijing
Kharis Templeman, research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, returns to ChinaTalk to break down the recent Taiwan elections, held on January 13.
We discuss:
The lack of surprises in the election results, the subdued vibes during the campaign, and contrasts between local perspectives and foreign media narratives.
Why the KMT failed to win the presidency, notwithstanding voter dissatisfaction with the DPP.
China’s surprisingly muted response to the election, and how it may reassess its cross-Strait policies given a third DPP president.
The new composition of the Legislative Yuan, and the strategic position of the Taiwan People’s Party as gatekeeper.
Observations from Kharis’s time in Taiwan during the election season, and the gift of Taiwan’s democratic process.
Outro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epwlWDCCevY
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1/25/2024 • 47 minutes, 31 seconds
How the Navy Learned to Fight
How did the US Navy evolve over the first half of the 20th century from a bunch of unschooled violent sailors who couldn't shoot straight to the world's largest and most technologically advanced fighting force? What lessons around organizational design can we learn from this transformation?
Trent Hone, author of Learning War and Mastering the Art of Command, joins to discuss.
Outtro Music: A selection from Brahms' 3rd Symphony, apparently Adm. Nimitz's favorite https://open.spotify.com/track/3T9xcTbS2E3epbncsMwkNC?si=296e316488c841d5
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1/18/2024 • 1 hour, 53 minutes, 31 seconds
Taiwan Election Results Rapid Reaction
How did Lai win, what does China think, and what’s at stake for the DPP?
ChinaTalk editor Nicholas Welch reads his latest recap of the 2024 Taiwan elections: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/taiwan-election-results-how-lai-won
Subscribe to the newsletter! https://www.chinatalk.media
Outro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JV9ayVWYr8
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1/16/2024 • 18 minutes, 20 seconds
AI: Open vs Closed + NeurIPS Reflections
Should AI be more open or closed? What does it mean to be open, anyway? And can France overtake China in AI??
Today I'm running a crossover episode with the Retort AI, hosted by AI Ethicist Tom Gilbert and Nathan Lambert who writes the fantastic https://www.interconnects.ai/ newsletter covering technological advancements in machine learning.
Outtro Music: Bela Fleck et al, Bahar https://open.spotify.com/track/4D1ne3QFCBtUU2xFnoTir4?si=aeef1aefc6e047c6
Cover photo is a Midjourney a riff off of this very cool Derian portrait showing in the MET till Jan 21 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/846896?pkgids=884
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1/15/2024 • 54 minutes, 27 seconds
PilotTalk: Cops and Journalists in PRC and Taiwan TV
New year, new PilotTalk! Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of Semafor, joins Jordan and editor Irene to watch Chinese and Taiwanese TV shows. Ben’s favorite genre is crime and police dramas, and we cover the following new-ish releases:
A Date With The Future 照亮你 (2023, mainland): Romance where a firefighter falls in love with a journalist!
**Ordinary Greatness** 警察荣誉 (2022, mainland): Sitcom about a local police station.
The World Between Us 我們與惡的距離 (2019, Taiwan): Acclaimed miniseries set in the aftermath of a mass shooting, addressing media sensationalism, treatment of the mentally ill, and the death penalty.
Outtro music: Kiss Me by Taiwanese artist Karencici https://open.spotify.com/track/7HZmJLWtISxYnoBqwx04bw?si=896165f1b52a4aa0
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1/11/2024 • 51 minutes, 16 seconds
The Pentagon's AI Implementers
Margaret Palmieri is the Deputy Chief Digital Artificial Intelligence Officer. I had her on to dicusss:
Innovation vs diffusion in the DoD context
Data issues making her life difficult
How CDAO sources and tests ideas for implementing AI into different corners of the kill chain
Thanks to the Andrew Marshall Foundation and the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology for bringing you this episode.
Outtro music: SCIENTISTS & ENGINEERS Andre 3k, Killer Mike, Future, Erykah Badu https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU0SmxKucCw
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1/5/2024 • 56 minutes, 14 seconds
Best Chinese Music of 2023
Jake Newby of the substack Concrete Avalanche with an end of year ChinaTalk takeover!
Here's his accompanying year in review post https://jakenewby.substack.com/p/2023-in-review?utm_source=activity_item
Tracklist:
Intro: 'Lost in China' (excerpt) – Tation 天声 (self-released) This 'postmodernist rock band from Tibet' produced some of their best work to date on the remarkable Illusions of the New Era EP.
‘Wen’s Woozy Wrap’ – Pu Poo Platter (fRUITYSHOP) Key cut from Brooklyn-formed Chinese funk group’s debut LP.
‘Greedysleeper’ – A Wordless Orange 沉默橙 (Taihe) Young Wuhan group deliver soulful pop-rock on one of the year’s best albums.
‘Watch the Crown’ – BoomHan 包涵 (Seafood Market Records) A sample of the 17-year-old Changsha rap prodigy’s impressive flow, from his debut album Gravediggaz.
‘Umbrella’ (featuring J-Fever) – PO8 (Tildawn Music) Not a Rihanna cover. Chengdu rapper toys with Shanghai jazz sounds.
‘Rap’ – ZhiYu Xia 夏之禹 (Mintone Records) Sichuan-born rapper, dubbed ‘the Jia Zhangke of hip hop’, dissects how he fell in love with the genre.
‘Where’s Tommy?’ – Hualun 花伦 (bié Records) intriguing change of direction from the ambient soundtrack masters.
‘Specter’ – The Fallacy 疯医 (Modern Sky) Brilliant return to form from Henan post-punks enlivened by new recruit Li Zenghui, who also played sax with Black Midi earlier this year
‘Cliff’ – The river, Orchestration, Walkman! 河边走 (self-released) Short sharp burst of bewildering brassy brilliance from one of the best new bands to emerge in 2023.
‘Vanished Instant’ – A Fishy Tale 有话 (Qiii Snacks Records) Another young band with a psychedelic sound; recorded during a trip to a Zhejiang mountain village.
‘East Yunnan Hallucinations’ – Instinkto Industrio 本能事业 (Maybe Mars) Folksy rhythms mix with techno-dystopian lyrics on one of 2023’s most characterful records.
‘Standing in the Wind’ – Zhaoze 沼泽 (self-released) Guangdong guqin-driven post-rock outfit’s new album is one of their best.
‘Station 2020’ – Wu Zhuoling 吴卓玲 (self-released) The leading lady of alternative Chengdu music serves up an immersive ambient tune.
‘The Little Assassin Who Lives Beside the Sea Becomes and Environmentalist’ – Li Daiguo 李带菓 (Beihesan) The Dali-based artist had a productive year; this beautiful number was among the highlights.
‘Daididau’ (excerpt) – Mamer (Old Heaven Books) A too-short taste of a 7-minute long improvised piece on traditional Kazakh instrument the sherter from musical genius Mamer.
‘Four Seasons’ – Hugjiltu (self-released) An emotive folk number from an album featuring ‘collaborations’ with tapes of the Mongolian musician’s late father.
‘Harbour for Bias’ – Louzhang 楼长 (Jyugam) An alt-ambient highlight from a strong year for this offbeat Guangdong electronic label.
‘Snoring in the Valley’ – Howie Lee (self-released) Quirky electronic music from the renowned producer, quietly slipped out at the start of the year.
‘Solaris’ – Zhang Weiwei 张玮玮 (self-released) Chinese folk grandee swaps his accordion for a synth to interesting effect on his first album in over a decade.
‘I Want An Earth’ – Yu Su (pinchy&friends) Title track from the celebrated producer’s impressive EP of clever, beguiling electronic sounds.
‘Holes of Time’ – 33EMYBW (SVBKVLT) A typically idiosyncratic slice of avant club music from one of China’s leading producers.
‘The Forest That Hears’ – Laughing Ears (self-released) A welcome return from one of the country’s most interesting electronic music artists.
‘W.C.’ (Liars remix) – otay:onii (No Gold) Acclaimed artist Angus Andrew adds a new dimension to otay:onii’s weirdness after bié Records released her third LP in March.
‘Ἀντὶ θεῶν’ – Ὁπλίτης (self-released) Incredible one-man-band creating blistering metal tunes examining Chinese social issues. In Greek, obviously.
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12/27/2023 • 1 hour, 45 minutes, 29 seconds
ChinaTalk 2023 in Perspective
80 episodes and 145 newsletters later, we've made it through my first year working on ChinaTalk full time. Editor Ryan Hauser hosts a review episode where we reflect on the past year, get into my production function, what I think the point of all of this is, and how I expect to evolve ChinaTalk in 2024.
Please get in touch! I'm at jordan@chinatalk.media
Here's my cause exploration essay: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/E2BghQq9pwPgtHgiH/war-between-the-us-and-china-a-case-study-for-epistemic
Outtro music: Gurrumul, Bayini https://open.spotify.com/track/1XZ9HxC4MiMUUNQ7WKFucM?si=a40c4dfdd71c428e
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12/20/2023 • 41 minutes, 54 seconds
Setser on US-China Trade, Lessons from USTR, Economics of Great Powers, and Panda Diplomacy
Brad Setser, fellow at CFR who spent a year during the Biden Administration in USTR, joins ChinaTalk to discuss:
China's long term growth trajectory and implications for national power
Zambia debt negotiations and Argentina's dollarization
When strategic trade policy can make sense
Panda export controls
Sign up here for international intrigue! https://www.internationalintrigue.io/?utm_source=chinatalk&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=1223
Kyla Scanlon of the https://kyla.substack.com/ newsletter cohosts.
Outtro music: I Hear a Rhapsody, Bill Evans and Jim Hall https://open.spotify.com/track/2oEvw0AfrT2fPNpEnBwVml?si=cc9f1add64034de7
Midjourney image: a panda bald eagle combined mystical animal in the style of a traditional chinese painting
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12/12/2023 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 8 seconds
US-China Tech in 2023: Top 5 Stories of the Year
Kevin Xu of https://interconnect.substack.com/ and I run down our top five stories of the year in US-China tech. We get into:
The eternal chip war
The battle for AI model supremacy
EV competition
Venture investing in China
PDD and Temu's rise
TikTok's impressive resilience
Here's ChinaTalk's attempt to benchmark Chinese models https://www.chinatalk.media/p/putting-chinas-top-llms-to-the-test
Outtro music: two songs from my spotify wrapped which are kind of ancillary to crappy US-China relations?
2gether, Mura Masa and Gretel Ganlyn: https://open.spotify.com/track/1Wqd0R1X1tuVK9FySVyLpt?si=48a61ddf3f094b57
No Talk, Lowell: https://open.spotify.com/track/0ToOqwERQswtN1O7AveCU9?si=9424183956b74960
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12/8/2023 • 55 minutes, 59 seconds
Taiwan Election Showdown! KMT Prof vs. DPP Pol
The Taiwanese populace will head to the polls to choose their next president on January 13, 2024 — and the three-party slate is set!
To discuss, we brought on Lu Yeh-chung 盧業中 — a professor of diplomacy at National Chengchi University 國立政治大學 — and Lin Fei-fan 林飛帆, previously the Deputy-Secretary of the DPP and well-known for leading the Sunflower Student Movement in 2014.
Our conversation gets into:
What a three-party race means in a first-past-the-post electoral system, and how the pan-blue and pan-green camps are feeling;
Why the KMT-TPP alliance broke down, and what the pan-blue side needs to do to mobilize its electorate;
The KMT’s and DPP’s views on whether Taiwanese and mainland Chinese are part of the same family 兩岸一家人;
What the 1992 Consensus means to the KMT and DPP, and the tensions and synergies between idealism and functionalism in Taiwanese politics;
How the CCP views the upcoming election, and to what extent it really fears pro-independence activists in Taiwan;
What demarcates the KMT and DPP outside of cross-Strait politics, and which domestic issues are most compelling for the average Taiwanese voter;
And how the KMT and DPP balance government spending on hard military assets versus subsidizing critical technologies like semiconductors.
DPP ticket:
president: William Lai Ching-te 賴清德
vice president: Hsiao Bi-khim 蕭美琴
KMT ticket:
president: Hou Yu-ih 侯友宜
vice president: Jaw Shaw-kong 趙少康
TPP ticket:
president: Ko Wen-je 柯文哲
vice president: Cynthia Wu Hsin-ying 吳欣盈
Outro music: 回春丹- 鲜花 https://open.spotify.com/track/35XxW360SO3puJQDfuaY4r
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11/30/2023 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 38 seconds
How Rep. Gallagher Would Fix Congress and Beat China
This was a good episode. Mike Gallagher, Chair of the Select Committee on China, has some thoughtful thoughts! We get into:
How he would fix Congress
Why the early Cold War is still relevant today
What he took away from his time in Iraq and the Eisenhower Archives
Why all you should really do to understand China is listen to ChinaTalk and read our substack (at https://www.chinatalk.media/)
My book rec: https://www.amazon.com/Men-Machines-Modern-Times-Press/dp/0262529319
Outtro music, Ella Fitzgerald, My Cousin in Milwaukee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWy9XjHt324
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11/26/2023 • 47 minutes, 28 seconds
Emergency Pod: We Are So Back! OpenAI Drama and US-China
Rohit Krishnan of Strange Loop Canon and I kibbitz about this weekend's OpenAI drama as well as the safety and US-China regulatory dynamics likely raised in the discussions with the board.
Some content we discussed:
Jade Leung PhD thesis: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ea3c7cb8-2464-45f1-a47c-c7b568f27665
Jeff Ding and Jenny Xiao's piece: https://www.governance.ai/research-paper/recent-trends-chinas-llm-landscape
The Foreign Affairs piece: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/illusion-chinas-ai-prowess-regulation
Image made by my mother on DALLE to represent Altman getting fired for the family groupchat.
Outtro music:
Happy Survival https://open.spotify.com/track/5txZKim1ruceUUhDlU84yc?si=b0d183344163418d
It'l All Be Over: https://open.spotify.com/track/1KFtR58Hn1nQ9fR0DRnC9n?si=512636c8caf24610
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
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11/23/2023 • 58 minutes, 57 seconds
Xi-Biden at APEC + What It Takes To Compete
Matt Turpin, China NSC Director in the Trump administration currently at Hoover and Palantir, comes on to discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of US-China relations coming out of APEC. We get into:
Realistic expectations for bilateral US-China diplomacy
What are the necessary ingredients for coherent and effective policymaking
What Matt expects and worries about from a second Trump administration
Why foundations and corporations should sponsor ChinaTalk!
Outtro music: Time/Breathe Reprise https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw1bJrFdCjY
Virtual insanity: https://open.spotify.com/track/24SUWisv2lYQiB3bVpE1sn?si=cf1cf18c0bc94ef7
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11/21/2023 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 40 seconds
Peter Harrell on Bureaucratic Barriers to Competition
Peter Harrell, who served as Biden's Senior Director for International Economics and Competitiveness on the NSC and NEC, comes on to discuss:
Why things do or don't happen in the executive branch
What reforms we might need to accelerate and amplify decision-making
Lessons from the sanctions response to the war in Ukraine for China
Check out our newsletter at https://www.chinatalk.media.
James Brown--Bewildered https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iXlDeqSTRA
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11/13/2023 • 58 minutes, 25 seconds
London AI Summit + OpenAI Dev Day!
Zvi Mowshowitz of Don't Worry about The Vase and Nathan Labenz of the Cognitive Revolution podcast come on for a quick recap of the past week's AI news!
We get into:
What AI diplomacy is looking like post-Bletchley Park
What new applications OpenAI's latest announcements mean for future AI applications
Outtro: Bizarrap with Milo J https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGWa-GO8mKg
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11/9/2023 • 42 minutes, 51 seconds
(fixed audio) RAND CEO Jason Matheny Gives a Masterclass on Risk and Organizational Design
This interview was so good.
Jason Matheny, Biden's former top tech + national security advisor, has recently reached one year as CEO of RAND.
We had a truly classic ChinaTalk-style conversation, hitting on:
How to design a world-class research organization
The right and wrong lessons to learn from RAND's heyday in the 1950s
Existential risks around AI and bio
Government's capacity to grok and implement technology strategy
What national security professionals can learn from art and architecture
And a ton more.
Thanks to Check out the Hudson Institute's defense research center here: https://www.hudson.org/policycenters/center-defense-concepts-technology
Some 1950s vibes for our outtro music:
Julie London: https://open.spotify.com/track/6crfO56bDm0RjpctUuGs5X?si=5a434079b24b4d03
Doris Day: https://open.spotify.com/track/20G1XJaTwIm2IuwA3Pjg1d?si=22095e2f9aa842cc
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11/5/2023 • 1 hour, 51 minutes, 34 seconds
RAND CEO Jason Matheny Gives a Masterclass on Risk and Organizational Design
Jason Matheny, Biden's former top tech + national security advisor, has recently reached one year as CEO of RAND.
We had a truly classic ChinaTalk-style conversation, hitting on:
How to design a world-class research organization
The right and wrong lessons to learn from RAND's heyday in the 1950s
Existential risks around AI and bio
Government's capacity to grok and implement technology strategy
What national security professionals can learn from art and architecture
And a ton more.
Thanks to Check out the Hudson Institute's defense research center here: https://www.hudson.org/policycenters/center-defense-concepts-technology
Some 1950s vibes for our outtro music:
Julie London: https://open.spotify.com/track/6crfO56bDm0RjpctUuGs5X?si=5a434079b24b4d03
Doris Day: https://open.spotify.com/track/20G1XJaTwIm2IuwA3Pjg1d?si=22095e2f9aa842cc
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11/3/2023 • 1 hour, 51 minutes, 34 seconds
Emergency Pod: AI Executive Order!
Biden just dropped a 50 page executive order that's going to make the world safe for AI, hopefully? To discuss the sprawling EO we've brought on three CNAS analysts, Vivek Chilukuri, Bill Drexel and Tim Fist.
We touch on:
Immigration and federal hiring
If AI + bio can ever be a safe thing
What's going to happen to cloud access
What are the hoops you'll need to jump through to train GPT5 and whether they're enough
What to do about open source
Why Jordan just wants to be an AI czar
RSVP to the Los Angeles meetup! https://partiful.com/e/SgjdajUSrD1aEOOrVgXk
Outro music (yea I was not going to impose Devo on you all): The B Tune by Bela Fleck https://open.spotify.com/track/6h6vvG1t4xtfP9lkOKzBTv?si=6ec3f32629bd46a2
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11/1/2023 • 1 hour, 2 minutes, 19 seconds
Can AI Be Governed?
In this episode, Jordan Schneider interviews Markus Anderling and Anton Korinek, two of the coauthors of the paper 'Frontier AI Regulation: Managing Emerging Risks to Public Safety'. They discuss the need for regulation and oversight of advanced AI models, known as frontier models, that have the potential to pose significant risks to public safety and national security.
Jordan came in as a skeptic. Will he be convinced?
Here's the paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.03718
Here's Markus' song choice: - -- ・ -・・ ・ ・-・・ ・- https://open.spotify.com/album/1NogWso5ElfJe4n8qKSdy9?si=mD9j5WB3TWuFGVkJRBI_Jg
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10/27/2023 • 53 minutes, 12 seconds
PLA Purges + Taiwan War Risk
Defense Minister Li Shangfu just got officially purged. To discuss, we brought on Joel Wuthnow, a fellow at NDU. His research areas include Chinese foreign and security policy, Chinese military affairs, US-China relations, and strategic developments in East Asia. He joined ChinaTalk to discuss Xi Jinping’s recent purges of high-ranking members of the People’s Liberation Army, Xi’s larger vision for the PLA, and what all this internal turmoil might mean for China’s longer-term designs on Taiwan. This was recorded earlier in October.
Key insights:
Over ten years after coming to power, Xi is still purging corruption from the military, reflecting his continued lack of trust in the PLA;
Corruption is historically endemic in the PLA in part because of its incentive structure, which makes graft a prerequisite for rising through the ranks;
Xi’s efforts to break up the PLA’s supervisory apparatus have only been partially successful (they’re still the same people even if they’re in a different department);
Amid the anti-corruption shakeup, China’s Rocket Force has been successfully developing hypersonic missiles, technology viewed as critical to countering US intervention in a regional conflict over Taiwan;
Despite Xi’s apparent distrust of his inner circle of military advisors, an echo chamber–induced invasion of Taiwan is still a live possibility.
Joel Wuthnow is a senior research fellow with the National Defense University.
Nicholas Welch cohosts.
Outtro Music: The Weeknd's take on Drake's Trust Issues https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVCV6hyv7ac
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10/25/2023 • 59 minutes
Jason Furman on Inflation and Policymaking
Jason Furman was Obama's CEA chair and a Harvard econ professor, while Kyla is the my favorite economics influencer. We get into:
What the deal is with inflation
How policymaking is broken and what we need to fix it
How Homer would tackle SBF
Why goodreads is such a trash website
Outtro music: Chocolate Snow, Inflation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9E6F8xMjoA
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10/21/2023 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 51 seconds
How to Process Violence
Two rabbis on ChinaTalk? What am I even doing?
Zohar Atkins of the wonderful Meditations with Zohar podcast alongside Ari Lamm of Bnai Zion come to discuss and process the aftermath of the Oct 7th attack.
Outtro music: Ishay Ribo - Seder Ha'Avoda https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECy3CMxShIQ
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10/20/2023 • 41 minutes, 7 seconds
EMERGENCY POD: Export Controls Dropped!
BIS just released its revision to the Oct 7 2022 restrictions. Jon of Asianometry, Dylan of Semianalysis, and Doug of Fabricated Knowledge join the pod to discuss why NVIDIA got screwed, why ASML may not have, and what these regs mean for the future of China and AI.
Outtro music: Warren G Regulate remix https://soundcloud.com/dj-eric-rhodes/warren-wallen-mashup-final-edit
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10/19/2023 • 57 minutes, 32 seconds
Cities of Slaughter
Israel is a country dear to my heart and I wanted to provide the ChinaTalk audience with one more perspective on the events of this past weekend before returning to our regularly scheduled program.
To that end, I'm running a guest episode from the Promised Podcast, a show from TLV1 which is "an inside view of how Israel can warm your heart and make your blood boil. It’s a show by a journalist, a professor and an NGO professional who live in and love Israel even though it drives them crazy, and who each week discuss the latest in Israeli politics, culture, and society."
Thanks for listening.
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10/13/2023 • 1 hour, 40 minutes, 39 seconds
EMERGENCY POD: Two Views from Israel on Hamas + China-Middle East Relations
We discuss their experience of the past few days, China's response, its broader policy and aspirations in the Middle East, and what comes next.
Our first guest is Carice Witte who is the founder and director of the SIGNAL Group.
Second in the episode is Ofir Dayan, a researcher at the Israel-China Policy Center at INSS.
Outtro music: World Champion, sung by family members and victims of terrorism https://youtu.be/yofkk5Vaif8?si=JskMFXK3-srR5z8L
Lyrics translation:
I'm a world champion in repressing
Anything that scares me, anything stressful, I put on mute
I'm a world champion in loving
Firstly myself, then at the stage and the street
The hardest is to give it to someone close
I'm a world champion in not being
In not solving your problems
Even the pictures on the walls
I wasn't the one who hanged them
I'm only in charge of the melodies
I'm a world champion in falling
And getting back up like a champ
You'll see, like a phoenix
I'm burning, but choosing every day to live on
I'm a world champion in wanting
At least trying
You'll see, how in the end
After the losses, the victory is so much sweeter
I'm a world champion
I'm a world champion in justifying
Weaknesses and desires
The urge is an old acquaintance
I know every old trick it keeps in its bag
But look, someday I'll be righteous
Deep down what I have is not enough, at all
I'm a little rat and life is a pipe1
Falling down the hole because I can't distinguish
Between good and evil, and where does it all lead to
You're being all usual
But soon we'll run out of fuse
I'm a world champion in falling
And getting back up like a champ
You'll see, like a phoenix
I'm burning, but choosing every day to live on
I'm a world champion in wanting
At least trying
You'll see, how in the end
After the losses, the victory is so much sweeter
I'm a world champion
I'm a world champion in compensating
Apologizing and pleasing
Sinning, cleansing myself
Exposing, covering up
Say, how can one write songs with a thousand expectations
Millions of views
I'm a world champion in falling
And getting back up like a champ
You'll see, like a phoenix
I'm burning, but choosing every day to live on
I'm a world champion
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10/10/2023 • 48 minutes, 49 seconds
Kurt Campbell on Grand Strategy and US-China
Kurt Campbell is the Deputy Assistant to the President and the White House Coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs. ChinaTalk recently joined Campbell in Washington to discuss US-China relations and mark the podcast’s 300th episode.
We discuss:
The nature of national power today;
If China is peaking;
How ideology impacts Beijing’s foreign policy;
Campbell’s hopes and fears for the Biden administration’s Asia policy;
Whether the US is still aiming to “maintain as large of a lead as possible” on chips and AI;
How to think about the risk of and effectively deter military escalation;
And the dark shadow of Tiananmen and its lasting impact on Chinese politics and US foreign policy.
Outtro music: Brahms: Sonata in E flat major for Viola and Piano, Op. 120, No. 2 I. Allegro amabile https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYrC4rx5VrA
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10/5/2023 • 1 hour, 33 seconds
Deep Tech VC On AI, Chips, and US-China Competition
James Wang, partner at Creative Ventures, joins to discuss:
Huawei breakthrough implications and why NVIDIA's CUDA will make it particularly difficult to create a useful domestic AI chip
Why China's AI companies have been underperforming my expectations
How semiconductor industry dynamics parallel the challenges facing AI startups
How pizza machines explain AI's future impact on the labor market
Challenges and opportunities in investing in deep tech, including the eager but raw founder talent pool as well as the importance of market structure and distinguishing between R&D and engineering risk
This show was brought to you by Creative Ventures.
Creatives Ventures is at https://creativeventures.vc/
James writes at https://weightythoughts.com/ and tweets at @AJamesWang
Outtro Music: the legendary Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell
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9/30/2023 • 1 hour, 7 minutes, 20 seconds
Peak China with Noah Smith and Matt Klein
Noah Smith of https://www.noahpinion.blog/ and Matt Klein of https://theovershoot.co/ join ChinaTalk to discuss:
We get into:
What's really happening with China's economy and why it matters strategically
How China's potential peak parallels Japan's
Why the world should and shouldn't be scared of China's progress in semis and EVs
What another Trump Administration could do for US-China relations
How Noah actually does his substack
This was a fun one, I hope you enjoy!
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9/22/2023 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 43 seconds
EMERGENCY POD: Huawei's Breakthrough, the Technical, Industrial and Strategic Implications
Huawei’s breakthrough Kirin 9000s: what is it, why is it a big deal, and what if anything should the US do about it? Joining me, I have on two fantastic semiconductor analysis, Doug O'Laughlin of Fabricated Knowledge and Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis. We get into:
How this chip illustrates Chinese engineering excellence and the porous nature of the current export control regime
Why we can expect AI chips on par with the A100 coming out of China in the next two years
What steps the US government could take to tighten export controls and set back the Chinese semiconductor ecosystem
How China has come to dominate both the lagging edge and the EV space
Here's my piece on the topic: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/huaweis-breakthrough-the-strategic
And here's Dylan's: https://www.semianalysis.com/p/china-ai-and-semiconductors-rise
Outtro music: 潮州土狗 - 50元的檳榔 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjl2qabfSNs
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9/13/2023 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 53 seconds
Why Congress Can Save Us All
This episode of China Talk explores the past, present, and future of Congress with AEI's Philip Wallach. We get into:
Origins of representative government trace back to medieval England, when the king consulted regional advisors – leading to development of Parliament
Founders inspired by this model when establishing Congress, wanting representation for diverse parts of young U.S.
But competing visions emerged for how Congress should work:
Madison's view: embrace factional conflict and compromise
Wilson's view: stronger centralized leadership
These tensions played out through different eras of Congress:
Early years: backlash against Hamilton’s Treasury power leads to first political party
New Deal/WWII: Congress oversees executive branch while enabling key programs
Civil rights era: Senate leaders allow extended filibuster, focus national attention, build enduring coalition
1970s reforms decentralize Congress but decrease cooperation between members over time
Under 1994 Gingrich revolution, partisan centralization becomes norm – embraced by both parties
Potential futures discussed, including a fever dream of Philip's where an immigration crisis actually prompts real lawmaking.
Outtro music: Nixon's 1972 campaign song
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9/6/2023 • 1 hour, 2 minutes, 27 seconds
How China Regulates AI
How does the public, corporations, academia and civil society end up directly influencing some of China's most important regulations? What's the trajectory of China's approach to AI?
Matt Sheehan of CIEP returns to discuss the AI regulatory policy process in China!
Matt's paper: https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/07/10/china-s-ai-regulations-and-how-they-get-made-pub-90117
Outtro music: 曾涵江Cup :天选 CHOSEN ONE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB607_3sDYQ
Image: I took an image from Dunhuang and prompted it with "artificial intelligence"
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8/29/2023 • 56 minutes, 48 seconds
Culture Month! Painting in Premodern China
Culture month continues with some traditional Chinese painting coverage!
What was it like to paint in premodern China? How did a husband-wife and master-mentee team up to produce some remarkable art? Why is it okay to say Chinese art is "good" or "bad" while those who critique western art have so much heartburn over saying their opinion?
Cohosting is Joseph Scheier-Dolberg, Chinese paintings curator at the MET.
This episode is better experienced on YouTube. Check out the video on ChinaTalk's YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/Rxr6xOj29A8
Here's the link to the exhibit: https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/learning-to-paint/exhibition-objects
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8/16/2023 • 1 hour, 2 minutes, 30 seconds
"Emergency" Pod: Outbound Investment Screening!
Emily Benson (CSIS) and Martin Chorzempa (PIIE) come on to discuss the new executive order and Treasury's ANRPM (advanced notice of proposed rulemaking) on novel outbound investment screening rules on AI, quantum and semis.
Treasury document: https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/206/Treasury-ANPRM.pdf
Outtro music: 水碾河南三街 LSGCsikoriot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wzz1Deafh8
Midjourney: used this 18th century Japanese woodprint and prompted it with "quantum semiconductor"
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/55371
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8/12/2023 • 54 minutes, 31 seconds
Beyond Decoupling: NATO for Trade
Should democracies band together to protect themselves from Chinese economic coercion? What can deterrence theory teach us about geoeconomic strategy?
To discuss these questions, I brought on Matt Goodman and Matt Reynolds of CSIS along with Matt Klein of The Overshoot and David Talbot of the Milken Institute.
We discuss:
–Why China uses economic coercion, especially against smaller states.
–How democracies might join together to deter and respond to this aggression.
–Why reslience beats retaliation when it comes to economic conflict.
Outro music: "(You're The) Devil in Disguise," Elvis Presley.
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8/7/2023 • 51 minutes, 43 seconds
Culture Month! Indie Chinese Music Hour with Concrete Avalanche
This August, ChinaTalk is going to take a bit of a break from our usual routine of tech and politics coverage to spend some time with Chinese culture! Starting us off is Jake Newby of the Concrete Avalanche substack who will be taking us through a radio hour of some of the most interesting independent music coming out of China.
Here's the playlist:
Intro music: Voision Xi - 'Too Late to Complain' from Five Loops in Her Way. More on that EP here; listen to Voision's jazz record Lost For Words here.
1. Voision Xi - 'Catch the Train' from Eating Music's Running With Friends. More on that compilation here.
2. Vii M - 'Man O' War (Cocoonics remix)' from The Other Side of Sublunary (The Remixes). More on Vii M and Sublunary here.
3. Lygort Trio - '藏身之处' from Lygort Trio. More on them here.
4. Hualun - 'Cities of the Red Night' from Tempus. More on Tempus here.
5. Zhou Shijue - '幸福来的这么自然‘ from 应运而生. More on his record with J-Fever and Eddie Beatz here.
6. 33EMYBW - 'The Unheard Southern Mountains' from Long May the Water Flow. More on that compilation here.
7. Li Daiguo - '小精灵幼儿园放学' from 吥哔呢未来音:奇幻童年.
8. Zhaoze - 'Stand in Wind' from No Answer Blowin' in the Wind. More on that album here.
9. Ὁπλίτης - 'Ὁ τῶν τραυμάτων ἄγγελος' from Τρωθησομένη. More on Hoplites here.
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8/4/2023 • 55 minutes, 1 second
How Can the Pentagon Trust AI?
How is the DoD thinking about deploying AI? What are the challenges and opportunities involved in building out AI assurance?
To discuss, I brought on Dr. Jane Pinelis, Chief AI Engineer The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. She was previously the Chief of the Test, Evaluation, and Assessment branch at the Department of Defense Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC). Prior to joining the JAIC, Dr. Pinelis served as the Director of Test and Evaluation for USDI’s Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team, better known as Project Maven.
Cohosting is Karson Elmgren of CSET.
Outtro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgzGwKwLmgM
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8/1/2023 • 1 hour, 3 minutes, 13 seconds
EMERGENCY POD: Qin Gone!
Until yesterday, Qin Gang 秦刚 was serving as China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. But on Monday, July 24, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee announced an emergency meeting for the next day, July 25, during which Qin was “removed” 免职 (albeit not “dismissed” 撤职) from his position as China’s #2 diplomat.
To dissect the rumors and make sense of it all, we have on Matt Brazil — a senior China analyst at BluePath Labs, writer for SpyTalk, fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, and longtime friend ChinaTalk. (Check out our January 2021 show with Matt!)
We discuss:
Precisely what we know and don’t know about l’affaire Qin;
How journalist Fu Xiaotian 傅晓田 is wrapped up in all of this — and how those with CCP connections somehow end up with private jets and buy-ins to elite universities;
Qin’s possible connections to the Ministry of State Security — and why that might rub his subordinates the wrong way;
How the CCP has dispensed with previous political elites, and whether Qin’s treatment resembles theirs; and
Why it is that sometimes even the heads of CCP security don’t even know what’s going on!
Outro music: 我要你的愛, by 葛蘭; “Saving All My Love For You,” by Whitney Houston
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7/26/2023 • 35 minutes, 59 seconds
Taiwan’s Presidential Elections: A Primer
ChinaTalk welcomes Taiwan expert and Hoover research fellow Kharis Templeman. This episode is all things 2024 Taiwan elections — slated for January 13, 2024.
In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Kharis is the program manager of the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific, and previously was the program manager of the Taiwan Democracy and Security Project.
In this show, we discuss:
The frontrunners’ profiles — Lai Ching-te 賴清德, Hou Yu-ih 侯友宜, and Ko Wen-je 柯文哲 — and what makes this three-way race different from previous elections;
Why the KMT’s nomination process was somewhat quirky this time around;
The importance of party unity, and why some Taiwanese political parties have failed to unify in past election cycles;
What’s on Taiwanese voters’ minds — beyond national-security concerns;
The CCP’s preferred winner — plus if and how any PRC-based interference may manifest over the coming months;
Why Taiwan’s election system is “unhackable”;
What to make of the spread of disinformation and hyper-partisanship in Taiwan’s domestic media;
And some pro tips on escaping the DC bubble and understanding the Taiwanese populace.
Outro music: Bubble Tea, by Mango Street Papa 芒果街老爸
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7/25/2023 • 1 hour, 7 minutes, 33 seconds
Why Chinese EVs Will Take Over the World
• How did the Chinese EV industry become so dominant?
• What institutional and cultural factors shape China’s auto market?
• What can Western democracies learn from Chinese industrial policy?
To discuss these questions, I brought on GWU professor John Helveston, an expert in tech and innovation policy and Chinese electric vehicles.
Outro music:
https://open.spotify.com/track/4QQEzkxcONBthDLfzqIh9S?si=2af235017c8c4449
Photo: Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images
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7/22/2023 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 12 seconds
AI Beyond OpenAI
What companies beyond OpenAI matter to the future of AI?
What is the relationship between closed and open source source?
When will researchers lose the reins to government on AI's trajectory?
To discuss, this week I brought on Matt Lynley of the fantastic Supervised News substack as well as Lux Capital's Danny Crichton.
Jade Leung's thesis: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ea3c7cb8-2464-45f1-a47c-c7b568f27665
Outtro music: https://open.spotify.com/track/2opgXfgG4tdM2fuHiamoaG?si=e1eabaf135d846d3
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7/12/2023 • 1 hour, 5 minutes, 42 seconds
Moneyball for Foreign Aid
Foreign aid is dominated by just a few huge players that receive the bulk of grants from the US government. But is bigger better? And are local players with innovative solutions to global issues missing out?
Unlock Aid wants to see smaller stakeholders get access to more funding and seats at the table. The group’s executive director, Walter Kerr and COO Amanda Arch explain why.
We also discuss:
How much the US spends on foreign aid each year and who gets that money.
How to make the distribution of foreign aid more efficient.
Why Unlock Aid wants to break down the barriers to accessing public funding.
How AI could be used in foreign aid.
China’s latest attempts to restrict data access to international researchers.
Outro music: 好了啦 (Piss Off) by 鼓鼓呂思緯 (GBOYSWAG) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D-ixUMcTPY
Check out the Substack at ChinaTalk.media!
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7/7/2023 • 1 hour, 6 minutes, 52 seconds
PLA Invasion: Is Taiwan's Military Ready?
Paul Huang, Taiwan military expert and research fellow at the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation, returns to ChinaTalk! Today he gives us an update on Taiwan’s military readiness, the PLA’s expansion, and whether Xi Jinping would really send it.
If you missed his episode back in 2020, give it a listen, too. And check out his recent thoughts posted on NBR, as well as his long-form special report, “Threats to Taiwan’s Security from China’s Military Modernization.”
In this episode, we cover:
The status quo of Taiwan’s reservist forces and command-and-control capabilities — and how Western countries perceive that status quo;
How the PLA’s military capabilities stack up against Russia’s performance in the Ukraine war thus far;
What insights we can glean from PLA-facing propaganda;
Why Ukrainian forces have been successful in repelling the Russian military thus far, and why Xi Jinping would loathe a protracted war over Taiwan;
Paul’s take on the PLA’s recent military maneuvers against US and Canadian assets in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea;
What the Taiwanese populace believes about PLA military action, US military support for Taiwan — and why these trends have changed over time;
China’s robust satellite expansion program, and how it plays a role in its aircraft carrier “kill chain”;
Likely and unlikely PLA invasion scenarios — and the corresponding discussions that would occur in the White House;
What Taiwan military officials — like Admiral Lee Hsi-ming (Ret.) 李喜明 — think about Taiwan’s military readiness for an invasion.
If you liked the podcast, make sure to hop on our newsletter, too! https://www.chinatalk.media
Outro music: 逆光 - Kimberley Chen 陳芳語 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDw1B_hWwbw
This interview was taped on June 16, 2023, in Taipei.
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7/3/2023 • 50 minutes, 33 seconds
EMERGENCY EDITION: Coup in Russia with Kamil Galeev
What happened over the past few days in Russia? What does this mean for the future of Putin and the war in Ukraine? To discuss, I recorded today a show with Kamil Galeev, a PKU classmate of mine formerly of the Wilson Center.
Outtro music: Repo Man, Coup d'etat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJjuVzZQj0U
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6/27/2023 • 51 minutes, 33 seconds
Blinken to Beijing!
Blinken went to China to meet with Qin Gang, Wang Yi, and Xi himself!
What happened, why does it matter, and does this make it any less likely we'll be in WWIII anytime soon?
Do discuss, I bought on Dali Yang, political science professor at UChicago, and Nathaniel Sher of Carnegie.
Subscribe to ChinaTalk at https://chinatalk.substack.com/!
Outtro music (a two-parter!):
Selena Gomez: Lose You to Love Me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlJDTxahav0
Beyonce: Start Over https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJAXC1lz65I
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6/20/2023 • 56 minutes, 4 seconds
Chinese TV PilotTalk: Farmers, Murders, and Anime
We're talking Chinese TV this week on ChinaTalk! Hollywood writer Trey Kollmer and ChinaTalk editor Irene Zhang discuss farming reality tv, a dongbei murder, and some super creative animated content out of Bilibili.
Farmer show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fklN-OnYuGc
Dongbei show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs0OJVemJz4
Animated show: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0gnw1pNh6C1yA3EUU-aQrOjI3hvBC7oQ
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6/9/2023 • 45 minutes, 43 seconds
NVIDIA and the Future of AI
Doug O'Laughlin of the Fabricated Knowledge substack and I discuss:
NVIDIA's corporate history and how it arrived at such a dominant position today
What makes it so irreplacable in the coming AI revolution
The national competitiveness implications of NVIDIA in a US-China context
Outtro music: 邓典果DDG/李尔新 -《帅到没朋友》 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CqvpDd1xK0
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6/3/2023 • 51 minutes, 40 seconds
Flournoy on US-China and DoD Innovation
Michele Flournoy, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy under Obama, CNAS founder, and co-founder of WestExec Advisors, returns to ChinaTalk to discuss:
How the Biden Administration is trying to re-engage with China
Reflections on innovation in defense, AI, and the war in Ukraine
ChinaTalk meetup in NYC this Friday! https://partiful.com/e/taNb35oaCKjglbHHdEA1
Reuters reporting: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/why-us-delayed-china-sanctions-after-shooting-down-spy-balloon-2023-05-11/
New Yorker piece: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/05/29/two-weeks-at-the-front-in-ukraine
Socila history of the machine gun: https://www.amazon.com/Social-History-Machine-Gun/dp/0801833582
Outtro music: the great Tina Turner with Marvin Gaye: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTsy-uPvQoY
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5/31/2023 • 1 hour, 4 minutes, 25 seconds
DoD Tech Strategy: How the Pentagon Hopes to Innovate
The Pentagon has a new tech strategy! What does it say, what impact will it have, and what do its authors think about technological change and warfare?
Dr. Nina Kollars, advisor to Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD(R&E)) Heidi Shyu, and R&E’s Chief Data Officer Cyrus Jabbari join us to discuss in a wide ranging and at times philosophical conversation about
the challenges of peacetime innovation
critical technology lists
lessons from the origins of the machine gun and development of modern fighter jets
What Cezanne and Picasso can teach us about military innovation (from this piece https://warontherocks.com/2017/03/when-clausewitz-meets-cezanne-mastery-and-the-art-of-future-war/)
NYC ChinaTalk Meetup! https://partiful.com/e/taNb35oaCKjglbHHdEA1
Here's the strategy: https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3389118/dod-releases-national-defense-science-and-technology-strategy/ R&E’s Chief Data Offcer yrHerus Jabbari
Music: a guy banging on pots and pans https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQEedhz9ERs
Midjourney is a prompt of an F16 with this late 19th century Japanese calligraphy https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/55820
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5/23/2023 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 46 seconds
AI Implementation: The View From the Trenches
Dan Faggella, who for ten years has interviewed business leaders about the challenges of implementing AI, joins ChinaTalk to discuss about just how hard it is to get AI to diffuse across an economy.
We also get into:
Why the past ten years of AI hasn't lived up to its promise
The technological, bureaucratic, and cultural challenges of corporate AI diffusion
Which sectors are most and least likely to adopt quickly
NYC ChinaTalk meetup: https://partiful.com/e/taNb35oaCKjglbHHdEA1
Music: Uyghur drill, Ahh? Ohh! by Athree https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdfgc2yr9Co
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5/18/2023 • 45 minutes, 10 seconds
Jeff Ding on US vs China AI and Lessons from Past Industrial Revolutions
Jeff Ding is the leading US scholar on China and AI and author of one of the earliest China-focused Substacks, ChinAI.
He recently published a fire paper called, “The diffusion deficit in scientific and technological power: re-assessing China’s rise.” It makes the argument that diffusion capacity (not just innovation capacity) is critical to economic growth — and China actually fares much worse in diffusion capacity than mainstream narratives imply.
In particular, “In cases when the emerging power has a strong innovation capacity but weak diffusion capacity (diffusion deficit), it is less likely to sustain its rise than innovation-centric assessments depict. Conversely, when the emerging power possesses a strong diffusion capacity but weak innovation capacity (diffusion surplus), it is more likely to sustain its rise than innovation-centric assessments portray.”
Mainstream narratives, meanwhile, “only compare the U.S. and China’s ability to produce new innovations, neglecting their ability to effectively use and adopt emerging technologies. By revealing the gap between China’s innovation capacity and diffusion capacity, this paper argues that innovation-centric assessments mistakenly inflate China’s S&T power.”
NYC ChinaTalk Meetup: https://partiful.com/e/taNb35oaCKjglbHHdEA1
Cohosting is Teddy Collins, formerly of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and DeepMind.
Outtro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17Y7-gm8STI
midjourney prompt: "frank quietly industrial revolution"
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5/11/2023 • 1 hour, 16 minutes, 34 seconds
Crafting A National Tech Strategy and Reviving Net Tech Assessment
PJ Maykish, Abigail Kukura, and Will Moreland from the Future Technologies platform team of the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP) join the conversation to discuss critical technologies and the development of a national technology strategy.
The guests provide insights into how the United States can create a comprehensive technology strategy that prioritizes the development of critical technologies to compete with China. They also discuss the importance of international collaboration in the development of emerging technologies and the challenges faced in building consensus among different stakeholders.
This is the paper we primarily discuss: Platforms-Panel-IPR.pdf (scsp.ai)
Vishnu Kannan of Carnegie cohosts.
Midjourney art: the prompt is "A Bauhaus poster for a production of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Featuring a young man looking out from a turret on a castle out towards the sea" but I thought it has a bit of a tech forecasting vibe!
Music by the great Cab Calloway: Hi De Ho Man - YouTube
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5/6/2023 • 1 hour, 2 minutes, 46 seconds
Sen. Warner on the RESTRICT Act, AI, Bipartisanship on China and a New Era of Intelligence
On Monday, May 1, I interviewed Virgina Senator Mark Warner.
We get into the RESTRICT Act, state capacity to analyze emerging technologies, the future of industrial policy, the nature and limits to bipartisanship around China, as well as the government’s role in regulating artificial intelligence.
Check out the ChinaTalk newsletter for a full transcript! https://www.chinatalk.media/
Art via midjourney prompt: corporate America’s naïveté vis-à-vis China
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5/2/2023 • 45 minutes, 26 seconds
Hoover, Communism, and the FBI
J. Edgar Hoover was a controversial figure who served as the director of the FBI for nearly five decades. In this episode, we explore his life and legacy with Beverly Gage, a professor of 20th-century U.S. history and author of the Bancroft Prize-winning biography "G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century."
We discuss
The context in which Hoover developed his anti-communist worldview, and how this shaped his approach to law enforcement.
The deportation of anarchists to Bolshevik Russia.
Similarities between Hoover and Xi Jinping.
The role of FBI informants, including one who met with Mao Zedong.
Outro music: G-Man Hoover by Van Dyke Parks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E566LbON5QA
Check out ChinaTalk.media for transcripts, analysis and more!
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4/25/2023 • 1 hour, 37 minutes, 16 seconds
Schell on The Long Arc of US-China and Long Reach of Leninism
How did Xi Jinping’s formative years influence how he views the world today? Veteran China scholar Orville Schell, the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations, looks back at decades of writing and working on China, weathering the cycles of the country opening up and shutting down and gives his two cents on what’s going on in Xi’s head.
We also discuss
— Why Mao Zedong is a better read than Xi
— China’s reciprocity problem on the international stage
— How US officials reacted to Tiananmen in a secret meeting with Deng Xiaoping
— A history of accessing China for academics, businesspeople and journalists
— Xi and victim culture
Outro Music: Glenn Gould performing Contrapunctus, I, IV from Bach’s amazing Art of the Fugue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqDCieiDWAE
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4/14/2023 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 45 seconds
Roach on US-China Couples Therapy
Stephen Roach is a Yale professor with extensive experience in China. He also taught the first China class I ever took, so it may be fair to say he's partially to blame for the entire ChinaTalk enterprise.
In our conversation (taped on February 23), we discuss:
The nexus between US-China relations and the DSM-5 (we need some relationship therapy!);
How false narratives strangle effective diplomatic development;
What Stephen thinks about the odds of a hot conflict over Taiwan;
Practical proposals to improve the bilateral relationship, including what a “US-China Secretariat” (based in neutral Tahiti, obviously) would look like;
Is it the US or China — or both — who fundamentally has no interest in engagement?
Apologies for my audio quality in the second half of the show.
Outro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRM70Jw7F4M
You all should check out the ChinaTalk newsletter!
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4/9/2023 • 55 minutes, 23 seconds
AI Military Competition: Tactical, Operational, and Strategic Implications
Paul Scharre, Vice President and Director of Studies at CNAS, joins ChinaTalk to discuss AI, military, strategy, and US-China geopolitics.
Listen in for a discussion on:
How AI will impact the tactical, operational and strategic levels of war
How and why AI operates — whether in chess, Dota 2, or aerial dogfighting — in fundamentally different ways than humans;
Why AI called for a “protective response from the bureaucracy”
The significance of the US’s comparative advantage over China in talent and compute — two of Scharre’s “Four Battlegrounds”;
The dictator’s dilemma, and how advances in AI will challenge the CCP in the coming years;
When in China, how to interview like a pro!
Outro music: a missy elliot + spice girls mix from Arthi, a UK-based DJ who's also an economics correspondent for the times of london! https://youtu.be/iHkfmwy1-OI?t=252
Paul’s latest bestseller: https://www.amazon.com/Four-Battlegrounds-Power-Artificial-Intelligence/dp/0393866866
The cover image is Midjourney on “Dota 2–inspired F-35 dogfight”
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4/2/2023 • 1 hour, 5 minutes, 52 seconds
What to Do About Foreign Interference
What actually is foreign influence, and how might Canada handle China’s interference in its domestic affairs? Akshay Singh is a research associate at the Centre for International Policy Studies at the University of Ottawa. We discuss:
How to roll out a foreign agent registry;
The role of the US-Canada relationship;
Whether foreign influence is a diaspora problem;
And performance reviews for the United Front’s Canada desk.
Akshay on how democracies should respond to foreign influence: https://www.cigionline.org/articles/faced-with-foreign-interference-how-should-democracies-respond/
Outtro music: 公公偏頭痛 by Jay Chou https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU-RuR-qO4Y
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4/2/2023 • 42 minutes, 6 seconds
Chips Avengers 2023: Chips Act + AI Revolution
The Chips Avengers assemble once again! Reva Goujon of the Rhodium Group, JP Kleinhans of the European think tank SNV, Jay Goldberg of Digits and Dollars, and Dylan Patel, who writes SemiAnalysis.
In this episode of ChinaTalk, we all:
Deep dive into the CHIPS Act's recent Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO);
Discuss the potentially existential impact of AI on global power dynamics;
Consider the true intentions of the October 2022 export controls — from military constraining China to crippling manufacturing in the broader economy;
Muse about the potential for a "splinternet" to emerge as countries around the world — in particular, the US, China, EU members states — adopt different standards and regulations for their tech industries;
And more!
Outro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1_Amc4Ysv0
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3/28/2023 • 57 minutes, 22 seconds
TikTok Hearing: The End of an Era
Kevin Xu, Obama-era White House official and creator of https://interconnect.substack.com/ comes on ChinaTalk to discuss:
Our impressions of the House's TikTok hearing
Continued cross-border reliances around batteries and cloud computing
The missed opportunity of Zhang Yiming's generation of founders
GPT4's remarkable translation capabilities
Outtro Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQiOA7euaYA
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3/24/2023 • 1 hour, 40 seconds
Kotkin on China
Stephen Kotkin is a legendary historian, currently at Hoover, previously at Princeton. Best known for his Stalin biographies, his other works include Uncivil Society, Magnetic Mountain, and Armageddon Averted.
Our discussion on China is far-ranging yet in-depth — we manage to pack in:
The two dominant subjects taught at the CCP’s Central Party School;
Kotkin’s assessment of the main threat to Communism — what “Communism with a human face” means, and why Gorbachev’s reforms ultimately destroyed Communism in the USSR;
Why the CCP fears color revolutions more than, say, NATO expansion — and why Xi snapped on Hong Kong in 2020;
The twin components of Marxism-Leninism: anti-capitalism + anti-imperialism;
And an understanding of Lenin’s “commanding heights,” and what China’s commanding heights are today;
The case for optimism about US-China relations, despite — or because of — the recent ratcheting up of tensions;
Why Kotkin believes a US-China Cold War is both good and necessary;
How the US can get on the diplomatic “front foot”;
Making sense of Reagan’s foreign policy — how he was both a “movement conservative” and a “dealmaking conservative.”
Outro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4GLAKEjU4w.
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3/20/2023 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 58 seconds
GPT4—AI Unleashed?
How will GPT4 change the world?
What implications does it have for policy, economics, and society?
How will US-China 'racing dynamics' play out and what are the implications for AI safety?
To discuss, I've brought together the AI Justice League: Zvi of 'Don't Worry About the Vase', Nathan Labenz of Waymark, and Matthew Mittelsteadt of Mercatus.
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3/16/2023 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 51 seconds
The CIA’s China Capabilities
Dennis Wilder returns to ChinaTalk — this time with some broader thoughts on how the US intelligence community can rise to the occasion vis-à-vis China. In particular, we discuss:
The importance of government hiring those with experience living in China;
Contributions that the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service (FBIS) has made to China intelligence, and why it should be reinstated;
A serious request to make an ChatGPT as good as Alice Miller is at analyzing CCP documents; https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/clm57-am-final.pdf
Why the State Department has established China House and the CIA has established the China Mission Center;
What we can learn from Richard Danzig’s Driving in the Dark; https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/driving-in-the-dark-ten-propositions-about-prediction-and-national-security%C2%A0
How to maintain robust intelligence capabilities in the long-run;
Raymond P. Ludden and the “Dixie Mission” — and why the US needs more Luddens today. https://uschinadialogue.georgetown.edu/essays/we-need-more-luddens
Outro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l6vqPUM_FE
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3/13/2023 • 41 minutes, 57 seconds
Economic Warfare: Implications for Sanctions Today
Welcome back to the second part of my conversation with Nick Mulder and Lars Schönander.
Picking the narrative up in 1935, get real in this episode:
Why the Great Depression, counterintuitively, made importing commodities cheaper, and how that affected Germany’s and Japan’s protectionism;
The difference between autarky and autarchy;
Whether Kim Jong-un’s North Korea could survive a full-on fuel embargo today by using Nazi-era technology;
Nick’s definition of “temporal claustrophobia,” and what it has to do with Japan ultimately siding with the Axis;
Parallels between the “ABCD circle” (America, Britain, China, Dutch East Indies) and the semiconductor export controls today;
Why having an empire was a liability for Britain;
What sanctions had to do with the Czechoslovaks — even with a larger army — falling to the Nazis;
How the blockades of WWI differed from WWII;
And what lessons pro-decouplers should learn from this history of sanctions.
Nick’s book recommendations:
https://www.amazon.com/Athene-Palace-Rosie-G-Waldeck/dp/1592110088
https://www.amazon.com/World-Late-Antiquity-150-750-Civilization/dp/0393958035
https://www.amazon.com/Thirty-Years-Review-Books-Classics/dp/1590171462
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Maisky-Diaries-Volumes-Communism/dp/0300117825
Nick’s excellent book: https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Weapon-Rise-Sanctions-Modern/dp/0300259360
Outro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5mdvyIqrs4
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3/8/2023 • 1 hour, 3 minutes, 39 seconds
Economic Warfare: A History
Today we’re releasing part one of our a two-part conversation with Nick Mulder, a history professor at Cornell and author of The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War — a Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2022.
With cohost Lars, Schönander, we discuss:
The recent advent of the use of sanctions (for example, in the Crimean War, Britain continued to fulfill payments to Russia, the nation it was fighting right then!)
Why Europeans were reluctant to employ blockades and sanctions in the early twentieth century, and how their thinking evolved through two world wars
How Wilson’s notion of “moral sanctions” and decision to keep blockades in place after the war were important to the development of sanctions, especially during the interwar period
The League of Nations’ efforts to establish a “positive sanctions” fund, and why the concept never took off
Nick’s take on why Hoover is underrated
When and why Italy almost fought a war against Germany over Austria
Stay tuned for part two, when we connect this sanctions history to implications to US-China relations today!
Nick’s excellent book: https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Weapon-Rise-Sanctions-Modern/dp/0300259360
Outro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzd4VtkNjmc
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3/3/2023 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 47 seconds
How does AI actually work, anyways?
Data scientist Bryan Cheong breaks down how AI actually works, creating video using AI and how the technology is being used beyond image and language models.
Also, I've got a meetup March 7th in Palo Alto! https://partiful.com/e/dVY7k51xQX4WhNr6AUcH
Joined by Zheng, we also discuss:
The farmers in India using AI for marketing
Denoising and weights, the tech behind AI image generation tools
What's next for developments in AI
Singapore's tech scene
Outro music: 我說所有的酒都不如你 by 房東的貓 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2zj74iK1MI
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3/2/2023 • 51 minutes, 45 seconds
Will Xi Give Putin Arms? Has A Cold War Already Begun?
Today we’re going to do a show about the scariest US-China news story I’ve seen in years, that “The US has intelligence that the Chinese government is considering providing Russia with drones and ammunition for use in the war in Ukraine.”
Would China really arm Russia, and if so what will that mean for the world if the US and China end up on opposite sides of a proxy war?
To discuss this I have on today Georgetown’s, Dennis Wilder, a longtime CIA veteran who served as an NSC director on the China desk under the bush administration and spent six years under Obama editing the presidential daily brief before concluding his career in government as the CIA’s deputy assistant director for East Asia and the Pacific.
Outtro Music: Ukranian rap https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgDXAAh-cXw
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2/28/2023 • 48 minutes, 29 seconds
AI's Regulatory Future in the US, China, and EU
With AI on the verge of transforming the world, how are regulators across the globe approaching the challenges the technology might pose?
Also, what does US-China AI collaboration look like today, and will it get caught up in broader tensions in the relationship?
Matt Sheehan and Hadrien Pouget, who are both at Carnegie, come on to discuss.
Matt's paper on US-China collaboration: https://www.brookings.edu/research/can-democracies-cooperate-with-china-on-ai-research/
Matt's work on Chinese algorithmic regulation: https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/12/09/what-china-s-algorithm-registry-reveals-about-ai-governance-pub-88606
Hadrien's article about the EU: https://www.lawfareblog.com/eus-ai-act-barreling-toward-ai-standards-do-not-exist
Outtro Music: Monkey Bee: A Short Film by Jamie Hewlett https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y90ONojCc6Q
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2/20/2023 • 57 minutes, 34 seconds
BalloonTalk: Alien Valentine Edition
William 'Balloon Guy' Kim returns for a roundup of the past few days of news around the Chinese spy balloon and unidentified object shooting. We share our favorite theories of what on earth is going on and what this all means for US-China relations.
Subscribe to the ChinaTalk newsletter! https://www.chinatalk.media/
Outtro Music: Sammy Davis Jr's Up Up and Away https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hYNMZtxJoU
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2/15/2023 • 39 minutes, 21 seconds
Mechanical Keyboards in China (中文版)
Hey ChinaTalk listeners, this year we’re going to do something new—occasional episodes in Mandarin!
While getting mainland guests to talk about more conventional topics like US-China relations and export controls has been nearly impossible, I think doing more slice of life/business stories about odd corners of China in the pale imitation of Gushi FM is both fun and enriching to our coverage.
In this episode, you’ll hear from the founder of mechanical keyboard manufacturer Meletrix, Simba Hua, about why people like to make their own keyboards, the challenges and wonders of working with the Chinese keyboard supply chain, and customer preferences between East Asian and western keyboard fans.
Cohosting with me is Irene Zhang, one of ChinaTalk’s editors. You can find more of her writing, and more ChinaTalk in general, on our newsletter at https://www.chinatalk.media/. And if you can’t understand Chinese, not to worry, we’ll be running a translated transcript later this month on the newsletter!
Outtro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hlp8XD0R5qo
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2/12/2023 • 50 minutes, 27 seconds
How YOU Can Change S&T Policy
How does one organization turn expert knowledge into real policy change? Dan Correa, CEO of the Federation of American Scientists and Founder of the Day One Project, discusses the power of policy entrepreneurship and shares examples of the ideas his nonprofit helped turn into legislation.
We'll delve into the nitty-gritty of policymaking and explore topics such as:
How to make meetings with government officials more productive.
The importance of pre-work in preparing good ideas and the role experts can play in shaping policy.
Why it's sometimes better to focus on practical solutions rather than comprehensive strategies.
Why think tanks always feel the need to create comprehensive, hundred-page strategies.
Article about the creation of the development finance corporation: https://www.cgdev.org/publication/how-might-think-tanks-make-real-things-happen-lessons-creation-dfc
Check out the Substack at ChinaTalk.media.
Cover art is midjourney taking a rothko that I then prompted with "innovation"
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What do we talk about when we talk about tech policy? What are the weird corners of the chips and science bill? How is talent policy broken and what can anyone do about it? And broadly, if you want to change the world through better regulatory and executive action, how do you go about this?
To discuss all that we have Divyansh Kaushik, a newly minted PhD from Carnegie Mellon currently at the Federation for American Scientists focusing on emerging tech policy. He was also closely involved with the chips and science bill negotiations.
We talk about
- How to talk to lawmakers and share your thoughts on legislation
- The complex visa system for foreign workers in the US
- The thousands of green cards that never get used.
Outro music: When the Levee Breaks
By Led Zepplin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwiTs60VoTM
Midjourney art prompted with 'innovation' from this painting https://www.moma.org/collection/works/180114?sov_referrer=art_term&art_term_slug=painting
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2/8/2023 • 50 minutes, 1 second
BALLOONTALK: EMERGENCY EDITION
Chinese balloons over Wyoming!! To discuss, we have on today William 'Balloon Guy' Kim of the Marathon Initiative, Eric Lofgren of AcquisitionTalk, and Gerard Dipippo of CSIS.
Intro Music: Up Up and Away, The 5th Fifth Dimension https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5akEgsZSfhg
Outro Music: NENA | 99 Luftballons [1983] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpu5a0Bl8eY
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2/3/2023 • 41 minutes, 27 seconds
AI Compute 101: The Geopolitics of Giant Models
Love it or hate it, AI capabilities continue to advance. As futurists imagine how this technology may one day be used, how it develops and who will be able to access AI tools will also depend on who funds AI projects and what hardware will be needed to get it to work.
Lennart Heim is a researcher at the Center for the Governance of AI and the author of a fantastic AI compute syllabus primer, which I have just spent the past few weeks obsessed with. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DF31DIkwS9GONzmy1W3nuI9HRAwSKy8JcIbzKYXg-ic/edit?usp=sharing
Joining as co-host is Chris Miller, author of the FT business book of the year Chip War - The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology.
We discuss:
How much does it cost to develop an AI system?
The competition for access to specialized AI chips.
Whether investing heavily in large AI models is financially viable.
Chip smuggling versus cocaine smuggling.
Outro music: 年度专辑 by AR刘夫阳 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifkVhOQYnO0
Check out the Substack at chinatalk.media
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2/3/2023 • 1 hour, 14 minutes, 42 seconds
War in Taiwan: Who Would Win?
China v Taiwan: who would win? Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow and director of research at Brookings. He specializes in U.S. defense strategy, the use of military force, and American national security policy.
We discuss
The limits of scenarios that predict the outcome of a China-Taiwan conflict.
What are intercontinental rail guns?
How sports teams that play each other in the same year can have different outcomes - and what this says about predictability.
Given all this, what’s the point of modelling exercises?
Mike's paper: https://www.brookings.edu/research/can-china-take-taiwan-why-no-one-really-knows/
My paper: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/E2BghQq9pwPgtHgiH/war-between-the-us-and-china-a-case-study-for-epistemic
Outro music: Battle Cry of Freedom by George Root https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW4ZwyYJYbQ
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1/29/2023 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 49 seconds
China's Data Policy Future
This episode is sponsored by Policyware. Check out Samm's class at https://www.policyware.org/chinatalk
How do Chinese cyber laws and regulations affect multinational companies, and US-China relations? Samm Sacks of Yale Law School walks us through the latest developments in this arena — we discuss:
Why Chinese data policy has been on front-page news in the past few years;
What China is hoping to gain from its new laws and regulations;
The status of TikTok negotiations, and the prospects of a deal given today’s political climate;
How the US and China can — yet sometimes don’t — leverage their data policy infrastructure against one another.
Outtro music: 回答 - YOUNG 建坤 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5Obr1iXFCs
Midjourney is me prompting a Duchamp painting "data privacy"
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1/25/2023 • 24 minutes, 32 seconds
War for Taiwan: What Happens If China Wins?
Say China wins a war for Taiwan. What happens next?
To discuss the political and economic consequences of a PRC takeover of Taiwan, I have on today Jude Blanchette and Gerard Dipippo, both fellows at CSIS. Our conversation builds off their paper https://www.chinatalk.media/p/war-for-taiwan-what-happens-after.
We recorded this episode in mid-December.
Outtro Music: 水哥 ft. 蛋堡 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHU9kEYiAQw&list=PLegPxPQebljkJOhscK3tLUXfZ9n1lgkwC&index=31
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1/23/2023 • 1 hour, 5 minutes, 23 seconds
Rep. Ro Khanna on AI, the China Committee, and Industrial Policy
In 2023, ChinaTalk is going to Congress! First up in our series is Rep. Ro Khanna, Democrat who represents Silicon Valley.
We get into:
What he hopes the China Committee can accomplish
Why ChatGPT let him down
What an effective industrial policy looks like
Also, I'm hosting a ChinaTalk meetup in DC next week! RSVP here: https://partiful.com/e/Zni1rBY3PFhy6WYFm2VK?
Outtro music: Bruce Springsteen, My Hometown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77gKSp8WoRg
Cover Art: I gave midjourney a Miro and told it "US capitol supply chain"
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1/19/2023 • 34 minutes, 59 seconds
Chips Act: A How To Guide
What can $52bn for semiconductors actually accomplish? To discuss the tensions and tradeoffs underlying the decisions that the US government is about to make on how to spend this money, I have on today Jacob Feldgoise, an analyst at CSET and Vishnu Kannan, who works at the Carnegie Endowment. We'll be discussing their fantastic paper entitled: "The Limits of Reshoring and Next Steps for U.S. Semiconductor Policy."
Jacob and Vishnu's paper: https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/11/22/after-chips-act-limits-of-reshoring-and-next-steps-for-u.s.-semiconductor-policy-pub-88439
Subscribe to the ChinaTalk Newsletter!!!!: https://www.chinatalk.media/
Outtro Music: federal funding by Cake https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phHe6aNcocQ
Cover art: I fed midjourney a picasso portrait and told it 'semiconductor supply chain'
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1/17/2023 • 51 minutes, 53 seconds
Knowledge and AI with a Rabbi and Substacker
As AI becomes increasingly sophisticated, we consider the question of whether there are limits to what computers can know and how this compares to human understanding.
Joining me on this episode is Sam Hammond, the director of social policy at the Niskanen Center, and Zohar Atkins, a rabbi and host of the podcast "Meditations with Zohar."
We discuss
The impact of AI on creativity and human thought.
Fears around AI and the centralization of power.
The potential for AI to have an egalitarian effect on closing innate and environmental differences such as education and access to information.
Whether the creative class will be automated out of their jobs.
Outro music: Genesis by Daniela Adrade https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SJ6KNhA9QY
Check out the substack at chinatalk.media
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1/13/2023 • 1 hour, 7 minutes, 6 seconds
Tyler Cowen on AI and China
Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution makes his ChinaTalk debut!
We get into:
How AI is going to change art, education, politics and human relationships
Why Tyler tried to write a book to explain America to the PRC
How babies born in 2023 will see their educations changed by AI;
Playing chess against the computer and creativity in the AI era;
Religion, American antisemitism, and the movie Her;
Writing a book about America for Chinese people;
Why China is one of the hardest countries to predict.
Outtro Music: Beethoven X, an AI-assisted version of Beethoven's unfinished 10th symphony https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rvj3Oblscqw
For more context: smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-artificial-intelligence-completed-beethovens-unfinished-10th-symphony-180978753/
Image by midjourney seeded with a photo of Tyler.
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1/9/2023 • 1 hour, 21 minutes, 58 seconds
Year in Review!
Before we get back to the interviews, I read from the newsletter I run which you should subscribe to at https://www.chinatalk.media/
If you're interested in advertising on ChinaTalk, reach out at Jordan@chinatalk.media!
Here's my year in review: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/chinatalks-year-in-review
Favorite books: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/a-year-in-books
Favorite everything else: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/2022-media-diet-tv-movies-chess-elden
Outtro music 忏悔录 by KKECHO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePC-FQwLnts The song apparently is her riffing off seeing the 50 Cent biopic
Image: I asked chatgpt to summarize my year in review post visually and it gave me the following prompt that I then fed into midjourney: "An abstract representation of the author's journey as a China analyst, such as a journey through a landscape. This painting could be done in a more impressionistic style, using loose brushstrokes and a muted palette of colors to convey a sense of movement and change.”
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1/6/2023 • 23 minutes, 57 seconds
What to do about TikTok
Subscribe to the ChinaTalk newsletter! https://www.chinatalk.media/
Outtro music: Fred Again's Frank Ocean remix https://soundcloud.com/joseph-ibrahim/chanel-vs-a-new-error-frank-ocean-moderat-fred-again-mix
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12/20/2022 • 16 minutes, 2 seconds
Chips: 2022 in Review
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Doug O'Laughlin of Fabricated Knowledge and Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis go through our most important semis stories of 2022. We get into:
Samsung and Intel's stumbles
Arm taking on Qualcomm
Risc-V's rise
The politicization of semiconductors
Outtro music: ChatGPT + PG One https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDvFGLSIU2c
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12/16/2022 • 48 minutes, 7 seconds
Nuclear Fusion: Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Today US Department of Energy Secretary Granholm announced a nuclear fusion breakthrough at Livermore Labs. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to be getting commercially viable fusion reactors anytime soon.
Economist Eli Dourado wrote in a piece today: “Nuclear fusion has long been hailed as the next great energy source, capable of providing nearly limitless power without the harmful emissions and waste associated with other forms of energy generation. This week, the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced that it had achieved “ignition,” which occurs when the energy output from plasma in a fusion reactor exceeds the energy put into the plasma. With continued investment from government and the private sector, we are likely to see many such scientific milestones reached in the next few years.
it is important to be wary. Many of these milestones have little bearing on the commercial viability of nuclear fusion. Despite the press releases, the National Ignition Facility conducts weapons tests, not clean-energy research. There is no realistic path from the kind of fusion being celebrated this week to any sort of commercial project. To a lesser extent, that may also be true of progress that we’re seeing in other fusion projects, even commercial ones.”
In the 1970s, many thought we were only a few years away from fusion, but here we are today still burning oil, gas and coal. To explore why, I wanted to repost a fantastic episode of a podcast from a friend of the show. Ben Reinhardt is the host of the Idea Machines podcast, a show that explores innovation systems from history and today. In this episode, Ben interviews Stephen Dean, who was present at the creation of America’s investment in fusion in the mid-70s and has been working in the space ever since. It’s a fascinating exploration of how government-funded science can fail us. Ben Reinhardt is also the creator of PARPA, a private sector DARPA aiming to “unlock robust technology to open new frontiers” which you can check out at parpa.org. This show was recorded in 2021.
Here's the link to the plan discussed in the podcast: https://fire.pppl.gov/us_fusion_plan_1976.pdf
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12/14/2022 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 1 second
Semis 101 with Asianometry and Fabricated Knowledge
How do you get into chips? Doug O'Laughlin of Fabricated Knowledge and Jon Y of Asianometry run us through how to they came to
We also discuss
Why starting with something's history can help you understand how it works.
Who they talk to and what they read to understand their niches.
Following your passion and making a whole video on Taiwanese 7-Elevens.
Keeping the YouTube algorithm happy.
SIA job posting: https://www.semiconductors.org/sia-jobs/
Outro music: Still Alive by Johnathan Coulton, performed by Ellen McLain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ljFaKRTrI
Check out the substack: https://www.chinatalk.media
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12/8/2022 • 36 minutes, 23 seconds
EMERGENCY POD: How will the CCP respond to the protests?
Ling Li, lecturer at the University of Vienna, comes on the pod to discuss:
The origins and evolution of Covid Zero
Different paths the CCP could take to cracking down
What the protests tell us about modern China
Intro sounds: https://twitter.com/renminwansui5/status/1597064778543157250
Outtro sounds: https://twitter.com/whyyoutouzhele/status/1597225385728827392
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11/29/2022 • 41 minutes, 31 seconds
EMERGENCY POD: China's Protests: What Happens Next
I talk about where I think these protests are heading and what they mean for Covid Zero and the international situation.
First voice memo is from @wstv_lizzi and the second is from @lichtspektrum.
The outtro singing is protesters in Shanghai singing the Internationale.
Here's my essay on the topic in written form: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/chinas-protests-harbinger-or-passing
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11/28/2022 • 22 minutes, 15 seconds
Can the US and China work together on anything?
Can the US and China play nicely enough with each other to not ruin the planet in the coming century? In particular, what prospects are there for cooperation around global challenges and biotech? For this episode, I'm joined by Scott Moore, Penn's director of China programs and strategic initiatives and perhaps the nicest person on China Twitter.
We discuss
Medical cooperation between China and the US during the Ebola outbreak.
Whether shared global challenges can be combatted without China.
Leapfrogging as a means of developing technologically versus innovation.
The scariest things that could happen as a result of biotech research.
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Outro music: 杨和苏KeyNG - “王位” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2FsnXOKTZ8
Episode cover art made using Midjourney with the prompt "US China reluctant cooperation in the style of john singer sargent"
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11/15/2022 • 41 minutes, 43 seconds
Export controls for AI: Will they work?
Do export controls work? And will they work for AI? Meet Emily Weinstein and Tim Hwang. They're research fellows at Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) and have written a paper on the goals of export controls and whether what the US government is trying to achieve with them is clear.
We discuss
Did the US inadvertently help China make better missiles?
How export controls have hurt some US industries' international competitiveness.
What export controls can - and can't - do to prevent technology from being developed abroad.
Important questions about the management of bowling alleys and churches.
Here's the paper we discussed: https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/decoupling-in-strategic-technologies/
Annotated bibliography: https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/from-cold-war-sanctions-to-weaponized-interdependence/
Trade Journal Collective: https://www.tradejournalcooperative.com/
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Outro music: Noodles and Butter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlP-J5rssa0
Episode cover art made using Midjourney.
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11/8/2022 • 48 minutes, 21 seconds
US-China Chip War
What will the Biden administration's new export controls mean for the US and Chinese semiconductor industries as well as the future of the US-China relationship?
To discuss, I assembled the Chips Avengers, consisting of Reva Goujon (Rhodium Group), Jay Goldberg (Digits to Dollars), Doug O'Laughlin (Fabricated Knowledge), and Martin Chorzempa (PIIE). We got into
The second-order implications of the Biden Administration's moves for industry
What it would take for China to circumvent these controls
How Beijing might strike back
How the regulations could impact the risk of war
Outtro music by Chinese rapper and pop star 婁峻碩 called Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGl-s-FzsFI
Image courtesy of midjourney from the prompt: "US China chip war EUV"
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10/27/2022 • 1 hour, 2 minutes, 41 seconds
How AI is Unlocking Creativity
The AI revolution in art is coming, not in decades but months and years. What does this mean for creativity and how will it change the way artists work?
Meet Campfire creative director Steve Coulson. He recently produced an entire comic book using images created by the midjourney AI art generator. Together with my brother Phil Schneider cohosting, we discuss:
Whether using tech to generate art is taking money from already struggling artists
How AI will end the stock photography industry
Why Xi Jinping is banned on midjourney
How young artists can get a leg up by learning to use AI
The challenge of using AI generator tools when you don't speak English
Check out Steve's comic Summer Island here: https://campfirenyc.com/summer-island/
Outro music: Antonio Vivaldi "Vedro con mio diletto" from Il Giustino by Jakub Józef Orliński (counter-tenor) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF4YXv6ZIuE
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10/25/2022 • 31 minutes, 7 seconds
Life in Mao's China
What was life actually like for people in rural China over the last seventy years?
Brew up a nice cup of tea and find a comfy armchair, it's time for another special edition of ChinaTalk. In this episode, Stanford University graduate student Vivian Zhong tells the story of her grandfather's life, from his childhood in the early days of the People's Republic to today pieced together from conversations they've shared over the years.
She talks about:
What it was like being a student in provincial China
Days long trips down the Yangtze
Why you shouldn't date in college
How her grandfather came to hate sweet potatoes
Outro music: Pengyou 朋友 by Emil Chau 周华健 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxaA94HGo9A
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10/22/2022 • 28 minutes, 49 seconds
Kamil on Nukes and Civil War in Russia
Kamil Galeev comes on the show to talk about the current situation in the war in Ukraine and what it means for:
prospects of nuclear war
Elite Russian politics and Putin's future viability
State stability
Moscow's grip on the regions
This show was recorded on October 6th.
Outtro music is a tatar folk song with the google-translated title "Look at your eyelashes" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY-axn5sk70
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10/13/2022 • 54 minutes, 25 seconds
EMERGENCY PODCAST: New Tech Export Controls with Kevin Wolf
The US Commerce Department just dropped 100+ pages of new export control regulations that have the potential to reshape the future of the global semiconductor industry. But will these regs stop China from getting below 14nm? Is that a goal even worth pursuing? Are they really enforceable? And what are the tradeoffs baked into taking a unilateral vs multilateral approach?
To discuss, I have on today Kevin Wolf, partner at the law firm Akin Gump and former BIS official with thirty years' experience in the field, to explain what it all means. We recorded this show Sunday October 9th.
Cover art was created by midjourney with the prompt: "cyberpunk bureaucrat managing an export control regime"
I could not find any good supercomputer music so this week's outtro music is a puerto rican banger by Mora and Jhay Cortez, perhaps reflecting the emotions MIIT employees are feeling at the moment?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vgyn7_e9ReQ
The views I express in this show do not reflect those of my employer the Rhodium Group.
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10/9/2022 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 43 seconds
China + AI = Military advantage?
How advanced is China's AI ecosystem and how much of it has military applicability? For a Department of Defense perspective, former DOD staffer and current CSIS fellow Greg Allen talks us through AI technology in China.
Co-hosting is Eric Lofgren of the podcast AcquisitionTalk.
We discuss
AI usage in the war in Ukraine
China's strategy for AI up to 2030
The military applications of AI technology
How China's mixing of commercial and military tech makes international cooperation difficult
Outro music: 谢帝 by 阿达娃 Adawa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcoIny3TD80
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9/22/2022 • 1 hour, 5 minutes, 50 seconds
Why won't China get vaccinated?
Why aren't elderly people in China getting vaccinated? To talk all things vaccine from the early days of the PRC to Covid-19, this episode's guest is Cambridge University associate professor in global studies of science, technology and medicine Mary Brazelton (@brazelton_hps). She is also the author of the 2019 book Mass Vaccination: Citizens' Bodies and State Power in Modern China.
Co-hosting is Henry Li (@AliusHenricus), policy lead at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
We discuss
Covid-19 vaccinations and why some citizens need incentives to get vaxxed
Unit 731 and the history of biological warfare in China
What China learned from SARS
The role of Traditional Chinese Medicine in modern health
Outro music: Love Will Prevail by Various Artists including Jackie Chan and Wang Leehom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt2-5NrWQbU
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9/15/2022 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 12 seconds
Paul Kennedy's Jonathan Spence Memories
Prepare a nice cup of tea and put your feet up for a special episode of stories and anecdotes about the late American historian and Sinologist Jonathan Spence, as told by his friend and colleague Paul Kennedy.
He takes us through
Why the worst thing about being stationed in Germany was the drunk British soldiers
Conversations about Chinese history with Henry Kissinger
How archaeological digs win you contracts with provincial governments
Spence's approach to research and scholarship
Outro Music: 'This Map' from the opera The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (!!!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71cJopakfAw
Here's a video recording of the whole opera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_susz11wE9Q
PLUS I HAVE A NEWSLETTER! Check it out! https://www.chinatalk.media/
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9/8/2022 • 53 minutes, 28 seconds
AI and the Future of War
AI safety is having a moment. To discuss why AI safety matters for national security, today I have on Paul Scharre (@Paul_scharre). He’s the Vice President and Director of Studies at CNAS. He previously served in OSD Policy and as a US Army Ranger.
We discuss
What the future of war looks like as militaries around the world adopt AI technologies
Why using AI in warfare isn't as easy as people think
How supply chains can be used as a form of arms control
Historical weapons so horrible people simply didn't use them
How to get a job at CNAS (they're hiring at cnas.org/careers)
Outro music: A.I. 爱 by 王力宏 Wang Leehom, a very much cancelled Taiwanese pop star https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4DuqEL0ChQ.
I HAVE CHINATALK NEWSLETTER WHICH YOU SHOULD ALL SIGN UP TO READ!
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9/4/2022 • 1 hour, 41 seconds
Industrial Policy for Biotech?
Does America need an industrial policy to compete in biotech?
Today I'm joined by two guests, Ryan Fedasiuk (@RyanFedasiuk) and Gigi Gronvall (@ggronvall). Ryan is a fellow currently on leave from Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET). Gigi is a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
We discuss:
The growing uses of biotechnology
Biotech security in China and the US
How biotech students can be better supported
Whether Dwight Schrute was right about the value of beets all along
Outro music: 发现美的耳朵 by 马思唯 and 也是福 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaJHDriJGPE
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8/28/2022 • 51 minutes, 22 seconds
Moneyball and US State Department
Wouldn't it be nice to have a world where important policy decisions were decided based on evidence and data rather than narratives and turf battles? Dan Spokojny thought so too, and that's why he's the founder of fp21, a think tank dedicated to changing the processes and institutions of US foreign policy.
Along with Jon Bateman, a senior fellow in the technology and international affairs program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in this episode we talk about some of the failings of contemporary foreign policy decision making processes and what can be done to fix them, including:
How to bring more rigor to making policy decisions
Why the current system loves a good storyteller
What sort of training future foreign policy makers should be getting - but aren't
Outro music: Good Bayesian by Baba Brinkman, MC Lars and Mega Ran https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV6Wc_f1Cgo&t=195s
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8/22/2022 • 1 hour, 40 minutes, 25 seconds
The Science of the "Chips + Science Bill"
On Aug 9th Biden signed the Chips + Science Act into law. What’s it gunna do for science?
Joining us today is
Tim Clancy, founder of Arch Street consulting and former COngressional staffer and NSF official.
Toby Smith, Senior VP for Science Policy at the Association of American Universites
Cohosting with me is Jacob Feldgoise, Who recently wrote a column on the Act on the CHINATALK NEWSLETTER WHICH YOU SHOULD ALL SIGN UP TO READ! I even bought a new url for you: chinatalk.media.
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8/16/2022 • 1 hour, 9 minutes, 29 seconds
CHIPS Act + The Future of Microelectronics
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A few weeks back, Congress actually did something, passing the Chips and Science Act. Most of you have probably heard of the billions going toward subsidizing domestic manufacturing, but a far less-heralded part of the bill may end up matting more in the long run. The Act created the ‘National Semiconductor Technology Center.’ What is it and why does it matter?
To discuss, Eric Breckenfeld of the Semiconductor Industry Association and Hassan Khan, who holds a PhD in engineering and public policy, join the show.
Outtro music: 发现美的耳朵 by 马思唯 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaJHDriJGPE
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8/13/2022 • 1 hour, 25 minutes, 36 seconds
What Happens Without Taiwan's Chips?
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To discuss, Eric Breckenfeld of the Semiconductor Industry Association and Hassan Khan, who holds a PhD in engineering and public policy,
Outtro Music: Leo王 - 陪妳過假日 feat. 9m88 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DS89Vb07C-U
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8/9/2022 • 20 minutes, 26 seconds
Bo Xilai: Ten Years On
This year marks ten years since Wang Lijun's fateful flight to the US Embassy in Chengdu, a decision which set in motion a chain of events that ultimately brought down one of China's most powerful politicians, Xi's most credible rival for power in 2012, Bo Xilai.
The former mayor of Chongqing remains in prison to this day for bribery, embezzlement and abuse of office, along with his wife Gu Kailai, who is serving life imprisonment for the murder of a British businessman. But a decade later, how much of an impact does Bo's story have in the halls of power?
New York Times reporter Chris Buckley joins the show this episode to discuss Bo's legacy and share anecdotes about his encounters with him prior to his arrest, along with formerly Chongqing-based author Xujun Eberlein. Former ChinaTalk producer Alex Boyd co-hosts.
We discuss
Bo's rise to power in Dalian and his move to Chongqing
How Chongqing's man-on-the-street viewed Bo during his tenure - and after
The similarities and differences between Bo and Xi Jinping
Where is Bo now?
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8/1/2022 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 55 seconds
Elite Power Struggles in the CCP and USSR
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Joseph Torigian’s “Prestige, Manipulation and Coercion, Elite Power Struggles in The Soviet Union and China After Stalin and Mao” is in pole position for my best China book of 2022. Books that deeply engage with both Soviet and CCP primary sources around elite politics basically never come out nowadays. I for one am deeply grateful that Joe, one of the few folks on the planet with the training, language skills, and motivation to this sort of work, was able to produce this book.
Joe puts forward convincing revisionist interpretations of Khrushchev’s triumph after Stalin’s death, had me reconsider my conception of the Gang of 4 after Mao’s death, and made me feel for Hua Guofeng getting done dirty by Deng. His new model of how power transitions really work in authoritarian countries with weak institutions left me more scared than hopeful for whatever happens once Xi exits stage left.
Cohosting with me is Lizzi, a video journalist at Wall Street TV, a New York-based independent Chinese language media outlet focusing on Chinese politics and economics.
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7/22/2022 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 55 seconds
Lessons from American Sovietology
When Churchill announced in 1946 that an iron curtain had descended over Europe, the US government only employed two dozen experts on the Soviet Union. Two years later, with the cold war well underway, the CIA only had 12 Russian speakers.
Over the following decades, philanthropists and the US government started an intellectual mobilization that had profound effects on the course of the cold war. To talk about this, David Engerman, author of Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America's Soviet Experts, joins the show along with cohosts Chris Miller, a professor at Tufts, and Sam George, who just finished a masters in East Asian studies at Stanford.
We discuss:
How America created a cadre of Sovietologists.
What their impact was on US policy.
Why the experiment ultimately failed.
What lessons the story has for contemporary area studies and China studies in particular.
Outro music: We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g
Check out David's book here: https://www.amazon.com/Know-Your-Enemy-Americas-Experts/dp/0199832471
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7/15/2022 • 1 hour, 9 minutes, 18 seconds
How Abe Reshaped Japan (Repost)
In light of Abe's assassination, I thought it would be worthwhile to reflect on the man and his legacy.
Last year I recorded an episode discussing Abe Shinzo, second only to Xi as the most consequential East Asian politician of the 21st century. Tobias Harris of the Center for American Progress joined to discuss his new biography of Abe, The Iconoclast.
Tobias and I discussed
His dramatic rise, fall, and rise again to power
How he reshaped governance in Japan through bureaucratic reform
How he managed relations with the US and China
How tasty his wife's Izakaya is
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://glow.fm/chinatalk/
Outtro Music: あそびたりない by Pop Art Town
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icqfJx_0_W0&list=PL0Lwt5eNBHLmL8zP03KbqekrRbje8FCbu&index=92
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7/8/2022 • 1 hour, 20 minutes, 26 seconds
How corruption works in China
I'm off getting married/honeymooning for the next couple of weeks so in my absence please enjoy this fine ChinaTalk vintage.
How can China be so corrupt and yet grow so fast? What's the relationship between corruption and competent governance? How does 'access money' at the higher levels differ from the "profit-sharing" you see lower down in the bureaucracy? How does China in the 21st century compare with America's gilded age? And why won't anyone give me dinosaur eggs?
To discuss, Prof. Yuen Yuen Ang joins the show to talk about her fantastic new book, China's Gilded Age.
The incredible propaganda rap song feat. Xi Jinping here.
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6/16/2022 • 1 hour, 6 minutes, 36 seconds
The rise and fall of a Suzhou soft serve baron
Mister Softee, the famed northeastern American ice cream brand, in Suzhou, China? Yes, that was a thing. Turner Sparks, rising from humble beginnings as just another English teacher making his way in the world, achieved fame and fortune thanks to a catchy jingle and some tasty mango-flavored soft serve. Yet his vision of China-wide ice cream domination dissolved amid a deluge of backstabbing regulators, slashed tires, and stolen cones. Listen here to learn about the circumstances that finally melted Turner’s ice cream dream.
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6/10/2022 • 1 hour, 2 minutes, 32 seconds
Beijing to Britain: China in the UK's halls of power
From then-PM David Cameron knocking back pints with Xi at the local pub to the Chinese ambassador being banned from Parliament: how has China's relationship with the UK changed since the so-called Golden Era?
This week we have on Sam Hogg (@BeijingToBrit), the recently unmasked writer behind the Substack Beijing to Britain. Co-hosted by ChinaTalk's editor and crypto journalist Callan Quinn (@Quinnishvili).
We discuss
The decline of the UK-China relationship
UK attitudes and policy towards Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan
The building up of Chinese expertise within Parliament and the government
Confucius Institutes, higher education and Liu Xiaoming's foot fetish
Outro music: Shook Ones Part 2 by Mobb Deep https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTKpYJ80OVQ
Check out Beijing to Britain here: https://beijingtobritain.substack.com
ChinaTalk substack: https://chinatalk.substack.com
ChinaTalk Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/jugurtha656
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6/2/2022 • 55 minutes, 56 seconds
US-China Tech Relations: A Guide for the Perplexed
Where should US-China tech relations go? What should “Competitive when it should be. Collaborative when it can be. Adversarial when it must be” actually mean in practice?
To discuss, on this episode we have John Bateman, a newly minted senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and my Rhodium colleague Charlie Vest as co-host.
We get into
- Analyzing the China tech threat and current tech policy
- US public strategy on China and tech and why it’s not very clear.
- How LCD panels made it onto the list of critical tech in mid-nineties but mobile phones didn’t.
- Why it’s so difficult for intelligence analysts to assess and predict the behavior of a foreign leader.
John's report: https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/04/25/u.s.-china-technological-decoupling-strategy-and-policy-framework-pub-86897
What American policymakers read: https://scholars-stage.org/american-policy-makers-do-not-read-books/
Outro music: Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues by Bob Dylan, live at Carnegie Hall 1963
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5Xn9YOKPcQ
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5/27/2022 • 1 hour, 29 minutes, 45 seconds
Xinjiang and US Imports: The UFLPA's Regulatory Revolution
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act will come into force in the US on June, 21, 2022. On this episode, John Foote, a partner and the head of the customs practice at Kelley Drye & Warren, discusses the ins and out of what it will mean for companies importing to the US.
We also get into:
- The legal history of preventing goods produced by forced labor from being imported to the US.
- How companies could run into supply chain issues if any of their raw materials for goods come from Xinjiang.
- What it means for Chinese entities.
- The difficult appeals process for disputing customs seizures.
Outro music: Alenurkhan performed by Ayshemgul Memet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvVJrSXiwOI
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5/22/2022 • 1 hour, 3 minutes, 58 seconds
China + Hollywood: are we heading for a divorce?
China is now the largest market for movies globally, and there have long been whispers about exactly how this impacts Hollywood decisions when it comes to scripts and casting.
This episode I’m joined by Erich Schwartzel, author of Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy, for a deep dive into the world of Chinese cinema, Chinese movies abroad and China in Hollywood.
Along with co-host Irene Liu, a research analyst at Rhodium Group, we get into:
Why the director of Seven Years in Tibet apologized to China 15 years after its release
Which tech giant has a minority stake in Steven Spielberg’s production company
Whether Richard Gere is unhireable
Why the Kenyan official responsible for importing films loves Chinese ones
The American movies makers involved in Wolf Warriors
Irina Nistor, the Romanian translator of Rambo: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/18/opinion/vhs-vs-communism.html.
Chuck Norris vs Communism was a fantastic movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znp1dNaPp3k
Outro music: My New Swag (我的新衣) by VAVA feat. Ty. and Nina Wang
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aknkofx2bHg
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5/13/2022 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 54 seconds
Twilight Struggle: Cold War Lessons for US-China Today
Hal Brands (@HalBrands), professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, is the author of The Twilight Struggle: What the Cold War Teaches Us about Great-Power Rivalry Today. Along with co-host Emily Jin @ew_jin) of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), we discuss:
How the US capitalized on Soviet heavy-handedness in the developing world
How technology impacted the broader trajectory of the Cold War
The US’s never-ending cycles of self-confidence and self-doubt
Today’s Sinologists versus Cold War Sovietologists
Why the only person who can stop the war in Ukraine is the one who started it
Outro music: Nancy by Ak Benjamin ft. Marz23 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agIvGYMA7Cw
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5/7/2022 • 1 hour, 26 minutes, 37 seconds
How Chinese Ink Painting Survived the CCP
How did Chinese painting, arguably the elitist of arts, fare during the Cultural Revolution? To discuss ink paintings, socialist realism, oil paintings and the political upheavals that formed their backdrop, I’m joined by artist Arnold Chang and Curator of Chinese Paintings at the MET in NY, Joe Scheier-Dawlberg.
We discuss:
Whether chaotic periods produce the best art
The role of escapism in the creation of Chinese paintings
Painting, the CCP and the four olds
Why so many Chinese paintings have writing on them
Which university exhibited a 12 by 20 foot oil painting of yours truly without prior permission
Check out the newsletter at https://chinatalk.substack.com/
James Cahill lecture series: https://ieas.berkeley.edu/publications/ieas-publications/james-cahill-video-lectures/pure-and-remote-view-all-lectures
Cover art is the random giant painting of me.
Check out my teacher's paintings here! https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/KnvizfUxkr6TDlZk6sf6_Q
Outtro music: 良宵引, a Ming dynasty banger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s99gDVECTro
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5/1/2022 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 55 seconds
Global Standards: What's the Deal?
Standards. Who has them? From shipping containers to screws to tech gadgets, how is it that something made in China can have certain attributes identical to another product made by another company half a world away? And why does it matter?
MIT professor and business history JoAnne Yates and Wellesley professor of political science Craig Murphy are the authors of Engineering Rules: Global Standard Setting since 1880. Together with co-host Jacob Feldgoise, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, we talk about how international standards were established at the impact this had on China’s development.
We also discuss
How standardized shipping containers made China’s rise possible
Why Tim Berners Lee is a benevolent overlord
Who has the most influence in setting international standards
Why Europe might be more annoying than China from a US standards perspective
Outro music: Gonna Be An Engineer by Peggy Seeger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IGVxBb5uYk
CHECK OUT THE CHINATALK SUBSTACK! https://chinatalk.substack.com
Support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ChinaTalk
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4/25/2022 • 1 hour, 9 minutes, 49 seconds
Shanghai Lockdown + Wang Huning's Unhappy Travels in America + Classics in China
In 1991, a young Chinese academic published America against America, a look at the contradictions and paradoxes he observed while traveling there. His book was largely forgotten until last year when it went viral for its observations on US cultural decline, becoming a hot topic on Chinese-language forums.
It was no less fascinating for who its author was. Wang Huning is today one of the top leaders in the CCP and a member of the Politburo Standing Committee. Freelance journalist Chang Che (@Changxche) sat down to talk with me about the book and what it tells us about Chinese interpretations of US - and Western - culture.
We also discuss
The Shanghai lockdown
Why the teaching of Western classical civilization took off in China...
...But also makes very little mention of religion
The CCP take on the US culture wars and rewriting curriculums
CHECK OUT THE CHINATALK SUBSTACK! https://chinatalk.substack.com
Support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ChinaTalk
Chang’s Wang Huning Article: https://www.newyorker.com/books/second-read/how-a-book-about-americas-history-foretold-chinas-future
Chang’s western classics education article: https://supchina.com/2022/01/13/china-looks-to-the-western-classics/
Outro Music: 锦上添花 FREESTYLE by 盛宇 Damnshine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRaoDr1Cbbg
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4/15/2022 • 1 hour, 6 minutes, 32 seconds
China/Russia + Why China's Making More Nukes
Is a nuclear arms race inevitable? China has been building up its nuclear arsenal over the past few years. While it remains significantly smaller than the US and Russia’s, what does this mean for geopolitics against the backdrop of US-China tensions and the Russian invasion of Ukraine?
Tong Zhao (@zhaot2005) is a fellow at the Carnegie Center in Beijing who focuses on China’s nuclear program. Co-hosting is Schwarzmann Scholar Raven Witherspoon.
We also discuss
Why China sees NATO as the aggressor and Russia as the victim
Why policy experts’ lack of technical literacy is a big problem
How China understands nuclear deterrence
China’s argument for Putin being a rational actor
Whether there is any hope
Outro music: 七里香 Remix (original version by Jay Chou) by MACOVASEAS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVvpgNG0giM
ChinaTalk is on Substack! See, share, subscribe: https://chinatalk.substack.com
Also now on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXOtILmQEo3pL_1bJfUOFWw
And please consider supporting ChinaTalk on Patreon so we can eat more Haidilao before the world ends: https://www.patreon.com/ChinaTalk
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4/7/2022 • 58 minutes, 58 seconds
How will Beijing Respond to the War in Ukraine?
CSIS' Bonny Lin joins to discuss how Beijing is responding to the war in Ukraine, potential future paths for Chinese policy, whether the IC could pull the same intelligence coups in Beijing as they did in Moscow, how the PLA may adapt to lessons from in theater, and what Biden should do if Putin drops a tactical nuclear weapon.
This show was recorded on March 31st.
Bonny's testimony on Beijing and the war in Ukraine https://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA05/20220330/114573/HHRG-117-FA05-Wstate-LinB-20220330.pdf
Check out Bonny's piece on military blunders https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR768.html
Subscribe to the ChinaTalk feed! https://chinatalk.substack.com/
And consider supporting the show at https://patreon.com/chinatalk
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4/1/2022 • 45 minutes, 5 seconds
Taiwan indie music 101, the Taipei underground and tankie rappers
Taipei-based DJ and New Bloom editor Brian Hioe (@brianhioe) takes us on a tour of the local indie music scene and explains what some of last year’s top tunes can tell us about Taiwanese politics and culture, from the influence of indigenous communities to attitudes towards China.
We also discuss
Earning a living making music in Taiwan v China
Brian’s twitter fights with tankie rappers
Taiwan’s indie music dating app
How Wang Leehom’s divorce drama overshadowed a national referendum
Song links"
拍謝少年 Sorry Youth - 歹勢中年 Sorry No Youth
TALACOWA - Collage
ABAO阿爆(阿仍仍)【tjakudain 無奈】 feat. 李英宏 aka Dj Didilong
Sonia Calico - Mukbang Roller
無妄合作社 No-nonsense Collective - 平靜的告別 Quiet Farewell
鍾翔宇 Xiangyu - 流言蜚語 Rumors and Slanders
Rainbow Chan - Stanley
Outro Music: The Moon Represents My Heart by Teresa Teng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk3VQoAKMUI
CHECK OUT THE CHINATALK SUBSTACK! https://chinatalk.substack.com
Support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ChinaTalk
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3/31/2022 • 59 minutes, 33 seconds
Orgies, US Navy Corruption and The Fall of Fat Leonard
In the 2010s, US Navy officers took cash, prostitutes and more from a Malaysian defense contractor known as Fat Leonard. To tell a story that bears more than a hint of resemblance to the Jho Low 1MDB scandal, award-winning journalist Tom Wright (@tomwrightasia) joins me to discuss Fat Leonard’s relationship with the military and how it all came crashing down.
Tom is the host of the podcast series FAT LEONARD, and previously wrote a New York Times bestseller on Jho Low titled Billion Dollar Whale.
We discuss
How Fat Leonard managed to earn millions through US Navy contracts
The fate of the Navy officers who got mixed up with him
The secret orgy recordings now in China’s possession
Which Chinese historical events deserve the Death of Stalin treatment
Support ChinaTalk on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ChinaTalk
Check out the Substack: https://chinatalk.substack.com/
Outtro music: V - Swizz Beats by Lil Jon feat. Jho Low (unreleased)
Bonus: The song Tom mentions about Jho Low and Leonardo DiCaprio is Check My Steezo by Blind Scuba Divers, from the 22 Jump Street official soundtrack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcnMvZC6pb0
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3/22/2022 • 58 minutes, 25 seconds
UkraineTalk: The View from Berlin
Will Germany’s policy changes towards Russia have a knock-on effect on its attitude towards China? To get the view from Germany, I’m joined by Berlin-based Noah Barkin (@noahbarkin), the managing editor of Rhodium Group’s China practice.
We discuss
Whether Europe is pushing China to exercise its influence over Russia
How Ukraine has changed Germany’s attitude towards the military
Why the Polish president had to give new Chancellor Olaf Scholz a shake
The new “democracies versus authoritarians” paradigm
Consider applying to intern at Rhodium! https://rhg.com/job/research-interns-china-practice/
Outro music: 99 Luftballons by Nena https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpu5a0Bl8eY
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3/11/2022 • 34 minutes, 29 seconds
Xi-Putin Relations and the view from Riga
Una Aleksandra Bērziņa-Čerenkova, Head of Riga Stradins University China Studies Centre, Head of the Asia program at the Latvian Institute of International Affairs, and a member of the European Think tank Network on China, joins to discuss.
Outtro music: Stefania (Kalush Orchestra) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nRQWc4YKGU
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3/7/2022 • 30 minutes, 25 seconds
How Eastern Europe Sees China and The War in Ukraine
Matej Šimalčík, Executive Director of the Central European Institute of Asian Studies, joins from Bratislava to discuss:
The reception of BRI in Eastern and Central Europe 10 years on
How the war will accelerate changes in opinion towards China
Jordan and Matej reminiscing about Pohoda, the greatest music festival on the planet (my writeup from 2015 https://medium.com/@jordanschneider/pohoda-the-world-s-greatest-music-festival-675f3da2ae24)
This conversation was recorded Feb 27th.
Outtro music (a slovak banger): gleb - Zešlach Crunk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMxLdOQns_o
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3/7/2022 • 40 minutes, 56 seconds
Emergency Pod: Tooze and Klein on Nuclear War, The EU's Future, and What's Next
Adam Tooze and Matt Klein return to ChinaTalk to discuss the war in Ukraine.
We get into
Why Adam is as scared as he's ever been
What caused the EU to rally together
'NATO for Trade' for sanctions
What this means for Taiwan
Recorded on Sunday Feb 27th at 4pm est.
Please consider making a donation to https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/ukraine-crisis-relief-fund/faq/#menu
Outtro Music: As Chumaks Rode to Crimea for Salt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1j9t7Bd_fg
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2/28/2022 • 1 hour, 10 minutes, 41 seconds
Emergency Pod: The View From Prague + Future of the EU
Ivana Karásková, China Research Fellow and a Project Coordinator at the Association for International Affairs (AMO), shares her view from Central Europe.
We discuss
Why so many Europeans came out in the streets today
The German political about-face in favor of supporting Ukraine
What this means for the future of the EU
What Xi thinks about all of this
My half-baked sleep-deprived Biden hottakes
This podcast was recorded midday US time on Sunday the 27th.
Please consider making a donation to https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/ukraine-crisis-relief-fund/faq/#menu
Outtro music: DakhaBrakha - Sho z-pod duba - ДахаБраха - Шо з-под дуба https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2VihbgWGF8
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Chris Miller of Tufts joins to discuss
Why Putin invaded
Why he humiliated his security council
If Putin is on drugs
US public opinion and the politics of sanctions
Sanctions' impact on the Russian economy
Russia/China tech trade in the context of global sanctions
The far-reaching implications of Ukrainian heroism
This show was recorded on Feb 26.
Please consider making a donation to https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/ukraine-crisis-relief-fund/faq/#menu
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2/26/2022 • 46 minutes, 12 seconds
Emergency Pod: Russia and Cyber Operations
Justin Sherman of the Atlantic Council joins to discuss
Putin's history of cyber operations
How he sees the current state of play
What is Putin thinking about as he considers escalating in the cyber domain
The tradeoffs of various policy choices facing American and Europeans leaders thinking about more aggressive offensive cyber operations
Please consider making a donation at https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/ukraine-crisis-relief-fund/faq/#menu
Outtro music: KALUSH - Не маринуй https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqG2pkbRgr8&list=PLQCynOki8DRB9hWY1WiAV03bXcjrV3Txd
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2/26/2022 • 25 minutes, 48 seconds
Space Industry Literacy, NASA, and Elon versus the Taliban
What’s the point of NASA? Will Starlink end up funding Elon’s Mars dreams? To discuss the US space ecosystem in both the private and public sector, I am joined by Casey Handmer (@CJHandmer), former NASA Jet Propulsion Lab system architect and founder of Terraform Industries.
We also talk about
The potential for Starlink to improve internet access in developing countries
Whether the US immigration system is hurting its ability to attract the best scientists
Making electricity from air
How much it would cost to send me into space
Check out Casey’s blog here: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com
Outtro music: To The Moon by Jnr Choi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzrbpG6UI7c
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2/21/2022 • 57 minutes, 10 seconds
Rainbow Farts: Chinese Internet Slang You Need to Know
Do you know your breaking porcelain from your eating human-blood-soaked steam buns? Slow Chinese author Andrew Methven (@AndrewMethven) joins me to talk about some of the newest and most interesting Chinese internet slang from the previous year and their origin stories.
We discuss new words and phrases inspired by Haidilao cockroach scams, misbehaving tech companies and 996 culture, as well as:
Which slang phrases have been co-opted into party talk
Luckin Coffee founder Charles Lu’s latest venture
Whether idioms are fortelling the fates of Chinese celebrities
The best sites Chinese-language sites and accounts for Chinese news
See Andrew’s full list here:
https://newsletter.slowchinese.net/p/china-in-2021-in-21-words
Outro Music: Hip Hop No Party MC (嘻哈沒有派對) HotDog (熱狗) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzfMegHg2tY
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2/13/2022 • 40 minutes, 33 seconds
China's Wolf Warrior Diplomacy, Part 2
Author of China's Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy Peter Martin (@PeterMartin_PCM) and Schwarzman scholar Jason Zhou return to take us from the young diplomats venturing out of China in the eighties to today’s Wolf Warriors and the adoption of more nationalist rhetoric.
We also discuss
Chinese diplomats’ and Canadian retirement homes
Xi Jinping’s father-in-law and his admiration for Thatcher
Tiananmen and rebuilding China back from diplomatic isolation
Why Chinese right-wingers send the foreign ministry calcium pills
Whether Wang Yi can handle Maotai
Check out Peter's book here: https://www.amazon.com/Chinas-Civilian-Army-Warrior-Diplomacy/dp/0197513700
Outro music: I Am the Wife of Mao Tse-tung from Nixon in China by John Adams, performed by Kathleen Kim https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mtMI_huRtY
Public notice: ChinaTalk's editor Callan is currently in London and planning an informal meetup up on February 24th. Details here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/china-nerds-meetup-tickets-261114549647
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2/4/2022 • 1 hour, 17 seconds
China's Wolf Warrior Diplomacy, Part 1
Why has China and its foreign ministry struggled to communicate with the world? In his book, China’s Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy, Peter Martin (@PeterMartin_PCM) traces the history of China’s post-1949 diplomatic corps, from the impact of Zhou Enlai’s experiences in Paris to reluctant guerrilla-generals-turned-ambassadors trying to get to grips with manning embassies half a world away from Cultural Revolution China.
Along with Schwarzman scholar Jason Zhou, we dissect the international diplomacy up to Kissinger’s visit to China.
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://patreon.com/chinatalk
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1/26/2022 • 55 minutes, 22 seconds
Imperial Japan + Export Controls = Pearl Harbor!?
What can US-China relations learn from US-Japan relations in the leadup to WWII? To discuss, I’m joined by Stony Brook University’s Michael Barnhart, author of the 1987 Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919–1941 and the more recent Can You Beat Churchill?: Teaching History through Simulations (https://www.amazon.com/Can-You-Beat-Churchill-Simulations/dp/1501755641), with Scholar’s Stage essayist Tanner Greer (@Scholars_Stage) cohosting.
We discuss
What motivated Japan to invade China
Why FDR was particularly worried about a Japanese invasion of the USSR
Why Japan and the Nazis thought the West would be on their side
The benefits of paying attention to mid level bureaucrats
For an ad-free feed, please consider supporting ChinaTalk on Patreon or Substack!
Outro music: Bei Mir Bist Du Shein by The Andrew Sisters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe2UXccid40
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1/9/2022 • 52 minutes, 34 seconds
Year in Review + Future Plans for ChinaTalk
See here for the Year in Review in text form with lots of links: https://chinatalk.substack.com/p/2021-year-in-review-future-plans
Support ChinaTalk on Patreon at https://patreon.com/chinatalk
Fill out this form to help my 'market research' on how to construct the CCP course! https://forms.gle/dXKjzfXWyxyi2ixg9
Wanna cohost a ChinaTalk episode? Fill out this form here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe0DIG0PlM3PxRZVoBs6BZYiTgQr8945Y44llRazzqQVzwwjw/viewform
Here's how to record a voice memo. https://www.npr.org/2017/08/15/496888150/nprs-guide-to-sending-audio
Outtro music: 弹壳 Danko - 《ANYWAY》https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLcEXu4cSUA
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1/2/2022 • 37 minutes, 9 seconds
Sci-fi Mecha Wu Zetian, YouTube on China and C-drama Fails
NYT bestselling YA author Xiran Jay Zhao (@XiranJayZhao) joins me to talk about her new book, Iron Widow, a Pacific Rim meets Handmaiden's tale sci-fi retelling of the story of Wu Zetian. Co-hosting is ChinaTalk's editor Callan Quinn (@quinnishvili).
We discuss:
Chinese history Easter eggs in Iron Widow
Going viral and Youtube China content
How censorship is stifling creativity in C-dramas
Why Xiran thinks Confucius was an arsehole
Link to Iron Widow:
https://www.amazon.com/Iron-Widow-Xiran-Jay-Zhao/dp/0735269939
Rhodium' careers site: https://rhg.com/careers/
Outtro Music: Lexie Liu's Manta: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fvUnPl5_BA
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12/23/2021 • 32 minutes, 22 seconds
US-China Science Relations and the PhDs Caught in the Middle
What's it like to live across the US-China scientific divide? Yale Law School postdoc, particle physicist and essayist Yangyang Cheng (@yangyang_cheng) joins me alongside undergrad Alex Liang to talk about understanding the other, how the personal can be lost in the noise of geopolitical tension and science across borders.
We also discuss
Power hierarchies and identities
The “new red scare” and scrutiny on Chinese scientists
The Large Hadron Collider as a
Language as an instrument of state power
"Brain drain" and other phrases Yangyang doesn't like
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/ChinaTalk
Links to Yangyang’s articles:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-china-US.html
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/05/west-china-threat-real-place-domestic-agendas
https://thebulletin.org/premium/2020-12/the-edge-of-our-existence-a-particle-physicist-examines-the-architecture-of-society/
Outro music: I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free by Nina Simone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inNBpizpZkE
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12/13/2021 • 1 hour, 3 minutes, 25 seconds
CSET: How to Break the Think Tank Mold
Dewey Murdick, director of CSET, discusses how the organization has brought a new level of rigor to hot topics ranging from chips to immigration and AI safety policy.
We also discuss:
CSET's Map of Science and the fate of Google Scholar
Being beholden to the checkbooks of funders
Topics that make policymakers' eyes roll - but shouldn't
The optimal employment conditions for growing temperate, nice, low-ego, tasty fruit
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://www.patreon.com/ChinaTalk for an ad-free feed.
Outtro music that Dewey eventually got around to sending me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41U78QP8nBk Daisy Bell - the first computer to sing
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12/3/2021 • 50 minutes, 26 seconds
Son Eating and Prince-Slaying: Stratagems of the Warring States
Can eating your sons be morally justified? Stratagems of the Warring States is a collection of stories compiled during the Han dynasty about the many states that fought for control of all under heaven in the Warring States Period between the fifth and third centuries BC.
Featuring tales of hostages, statecraft, assassinations and throwing shade on princelings, in this special episode of ChinaTalk, voice actors Jacob Guenther and Chara Lin perform excerpts of Jennifer Dodgson's translation into English, while Dodgson herself discusses each piece.
Check out Jennifer's website hosting her translations here.
Performances include
Qin recruits troops and advances on Zhou to demand the nine cauldrons
East Zhou wishes to grow rice
Gong Ta defects from West Zhou
Zhang Yi runs out of money in Chu
An attack on Zhongshan
The Queen Dowager of Zhao takes over the running of state affairs
Outtro music: Prince Qin Breaking Through the Enemy Array, traditional Tang-era music performed by Hubei Chime Bells Orchestra https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvTul5_js_A&list=RDadcGeuTMmBA&index=8
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11/24/2021 • 33 minutes, 24 seconds
6th Plenum: Open Source CCP
What does the 6th Plenum communique tell us about where Xi wants to take China? What can you learn by reading the People’s Daily daily and writing a substack on it? And how would you design a course to learn how to read the CCP?
To discuss, Manoj Kewalramani (@theChinaDude) of the https://trackingpeoplesdaily.substack.com/ and https://manojkewalramani.substack.com/ newsletters, joins to discuss.
For an ad-free feed, please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://www.patreon.com/ChinaTalk
Outtro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m1Uf1hbrxU
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11/16/2021 • 52 minutes, 47 seconds
Selling China's Story
Winner of the inaugural Rhodium and China Talk essay contest, recent college grad Maggie Baughman discusses her essay on how the Chinese government uses Western social media to promote their desired image of China internationally with myself and co-host Jeff Kao, a computational journalist at ProPublica.
We discuss:
The companies offering Chinese entities access and marketing on western social media
How China's approach to western social media differs to that in Russia and Iran
Foreign influencers on Weibo
Why tourism bureaus love pandas, sunsets and happy workers
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at patreon.com/chinatalk
Outtro Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reYOZ8BrVeg
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11/7/2021 • 34 minutes, 51 seconds
Red Roulette: It Sucks to be a Chinese Billionaire
Red Roulette, Desmond Shum’s memoir of a fast life, deep in the bowels of Chinese politics, is the bombshell China book of 2021. It tells the story of his rise from an impoverished childhood in cultural revolution-era Shanghai and Hong Kong to his marriage to his social climbing wife with ties to the premier of China, and ultimate downfall as Xi’s anti-corruption push caught up with him.
New York Times reporter Mike Forsythe (@PekingMike) and Lizzi C Lee (@wstv_lizzi), a journalist at the independent Chinese outlet Wall St TV, join me to discuss. We get into:
Corruption crackdowns under Xi Jinping
Western reporters reporting on China
The not-so-well-hidden fortunes of Politburo members
The dietary habits of traveling Chinese officials
For an ad-free feed, please consider supporting ChinaTalk on Patreon at https://patreon.com/chinatalk
Outtro music: The Reform Group is Two Years Old by CCTV feat. Xi Jinping https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhU8C5RCbBs&t=3s
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10/26/2021 • 46 minutes, 31 seconds
Why Does China Have Blackouts?
China's energy problems are back in the news. Joining me to discuss them is Yan Qin, lead analyst at Refinitiv, with my Rhodium colleague Irina Liu as co-host.
We discuss
Whether China is serious about its climate pledge
Why Chinese industry is moving westwards
How "carbon neutral" became a hot topic
The importance of global cooperation on climate change
For an ad-free feed, please consider supporting ChinaTalk on Patreon here https://open.acast.com/public/patreon/fanSubscribe/1959352
check out masterworks.io/chinatalk to buy some art!
Outtro music: 020 by Tizzy T https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKqjZMA-F88
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10/17/2021 • 42 minutes, 19 seconds
Science & Technology for National Security
Lisa Porter joins me with Eric Lofgren from AcquisitionTalk as cohost to reflect on how R&D works and doesn't work `in the Pentagon.
Lisa served as was deputy director of Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering in the DoD, founding director of IARPA, and executive vice president of In-Q-Tel. We touch on:
How the error correction of free markets is absent in DoD
A round of overrated/underrated on critical S&T areas
How successful government organizations empower their staff
Why the US lost its dominance in space launch
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Outtro Music: 甜甜圈🍩 - KKLUV/WOLF GANG https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Sj0_J1KnbM
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10/12/2021 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 12 seconds
China's Space Plans for the 2020s
Hosts of the Dongfang Hour (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3UXwB0UbUIg4z4vssUHPBw), a podcast focusing on the Chinese aerospace industry, Blain Curcio and Jean Deville join me in another ChinaTalk space episode to talk about launches in China and public enthusiasm for space projects.
We discuss
The Belt and Road in space
The differences between the Starlink and Guowang networks
Europe’s dilemma on selling to the US and China
China’s ambitious space projects in the 2020s
Why the vibe in the Chinese private space industry is “smiley and optimistic”
Check out https://www.masterworks.io/chinatalk
Please consider supporting the show at https://www.patreon.com/ChinaTalk
Outtro Music: Young Thug ft Elton Jon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqIyH_9uaOQ
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10/3/2021 • 46 minutes, 53 seconds
What Evergrande Means for China
Logan Wright of the Rhodium Group returns to the pod to discuss Evergrande's implosion, how we got here, and what this week means for China's economy.
Read Credit and Credibility! https://www.csis.org/analysis/credit-and-credibility-risks-chinas-economic-resilience If you only have time for one section, start with section 6.
Check out Jon's substack here https://jonathonpsine.substack.com/
Come work for Rhodium! https://rhg.com/careers/
My email is jorschneider @ gmail or on twitter at https://twitter.com/jordanschnyc
Outtro music: 朱添澤 - 想 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfRvjlcMuoY
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9/24/2021 • 31 minutes, 35 seconds
Mao and the Monkey King
Julia Lovell, author of Maoism: A Global History and The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China, discusses translating Journey to the West (https://www.amazon.com/Monkey-King-Journey-Classics-Hardcover/dp/0143107186), for English audiences.
Joined by translator Brendan O'Kane as co-host, on this episode we discuss:
The origins of Journey to the West and the exploits of its primate protagonist Sun Wukong.
Mao's relationship to the novel and how he saw himself in the Monkey King.
Why performances of the story in the Mao era cut out more than 90% of the story
Outtro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvA78U8sWn0 Great Sage Equal to Heaven by Hua Chenyu
Want to meet up in the bay Oct 5-10th? Hit me up on twitter or at jorschneider @ gmail
Outtro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvA78U8sWn0 Great Sage Equal to Heaven by Hua Chenyu
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9/22/2021 • 39 minutes, 32 seconds
Russia's Pivot to Asia From Czars to Putin
How did Russian imperial ambitions and expansionism eastward change over time?
Joining me on this episode is Chris Miller, author of We Shall Be Masters: Russian Pivots to East Asia from Peter the Great to Putin. Chris is a history professor at the Fletcher School and Eurasia Director at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
Cohosting is independent researcher, journalist and fellow at the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute Kamil Galeev. Reach out to him on twitter if you have a place for him to live in DC!
We also look at:
How the fur trade spurred Russian interest in Alaska, California and Hawaii
Russia, the Kuomintang and the Communist Party
Why Xinjiang didn’t end up like Mongolia
Chairman Mao’s new shoes
Outtro music: Kamil's suggestion of what he tells me was a Soviet anti-Japanese war song (it slaps)
Три танкиста (three tank men) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp22_BHJDJk
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9/14/2021 • 1 hour, 8 minutes, 17 seconds
Tech Crackdown, Common Prosperity, and The Dao of ChinaTalk
I was a guest on the Compounding Curiosity podcast, a new show founded by a ChinaTalk fan that focuses on ASEAN, and we had a halfway decent conversation! Hope you enjoy.
Mentioned Content:
After Xi: Future Scenarios for Leadership Succession in Post-xi Jinping Era
China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed by Andrew G. Walder
Outtro Music: 功夫胖KUNGFU-PEN -《阿修罗》https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRAO-f6LxUI
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9/8/2021 • 44 minutes, 48 seconds
Tooze and Klein on China's Economic History and Future
How much credit can the CCP claim post-1949 for the higher level of human development relative to the level of visible capital in China? To discuss, historian Adam Tooze and Matt Klein of the Overshoot come for their third ChinaTalk appearance. We go back to the oft-forgotten hyperinflation of the 1940s to why in the 80s the World Bank believed a little bit of policy tinkering would lead China’s economy to skyrocket.
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://patreon.com/chinatalk for an ad-free feed!
For a transcript and links to the stuff we talked about, check out the newsletter at https://chinatalk.substack.com/
Wanna cohost a ChinaTalk episode? Submit ideas for shows here!
Outtro music: Capper - "牧羊少年/Ἐνδυμίων" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRQoE6dRGSo
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9/3/2021 • 1 hour, 22 minutes, 22 seconds
SpaceX, Elon and their Chinese Imitators
How did SpaceX revolutionize the global space industry? To discuss SpaceX's origin story and secret sauce, guest Eric Berger, author of Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX, joins the show. Cory Fitz, author of the TaikoNautica newsletter on China's space industry (http://taikonautica.substack.com), cohosts and shares his perspective on the Chinese launch ecosystem.
We discuss:
How SpaceX almost didn't succeed
The role of government in the commercial space industry
996 culture vs SpaceX engineers
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://www.patreon.com/ChinaTalk
Outro music: Space Oddity by David Bowie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYYRH4apXDo
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8/25/2021 • 40 minutes, 52 seconds
BadChinaTake on China Twitter
@BadChinaTake, an anonymous twitter account that combined vicious takedowns of, well, bad china takes with a blog https://wokeglobaltimes.com/ that does deep dives into everything from tankie subcultures to China’s xinjiang policy, is one of the best things to hit China twitter. BadChinaTake was recently unmasked as Jake Eberts, a young DC-based China analyst. He joins us today to talk about his journey to twitter infamy. We get into
Whether the CIA, Chinese government, or George Soros fund him
Crisis, danger and opportunity
Whether you should argue with children online
The DC think tank complex and China Twitter’s redeemable qualities
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://glow.fm/chinatalk/
Outro music: 不再是少年 by 猛虎巧克力
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0wuSbUl2gM
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8/16/2021 • 42 minutes, 2 seconds
Hot Space Summer: China's Commercial Space Boom
In 2019, Thomas Colvin, Irina Liu and Shirley Han at the Science and Technology Policy Institute (https://www.ida.org/ida-ffrdcs/science-and-technology-policy-institute) were part of a team of researchers that published what is to date the most comprehensive English-language overview (https://www.ida.org/research-and-publications/publications/all/e/ev/evaluation-of-chinas-commercial-space-sector) of China’s growing space industry.
We discuss
Why Chinese space startups say business acumen is one of their biggest weaknesses
How ITAR actually helped China’s space industry grow
The space market in the developing world
The state of my internet cables
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://glow.fm/chinatalk/
Outro Music: Mi fai impassire by BLANCO ft. Sfera Ebbasta https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJNOkLCIg5Y
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8/8/2021 • 32 minutes, 38 seconds
Tough Tech, Roombas, Valleys of Death, and Woolly Mammoths
How do Roombas illustrate the promise and peril of translational research? Which valley of death is really the worst valley of death? And how can woolly mammoths save the planet from climate change?
To discuss, I have on:
Andrew Sosanya, Policy Analyst for the Day One Project
Adam Marblestone of Schmidt Futures (his policy proposal: https://www.dayoneproject.org/post/focused-research-organizations-to-accelerate-science-technology-and-medicine, his blog https://longitudinal.blog/, geo-engineering https://longitudinal.blog/co2-series-part-3-other-interventions/)
Orin Hoffman at The Engine (his policy proposal: https://www.engine.xyz/news-item/a-unified-government-vc-approach-to-crossing-the-valleys-of-death/)
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://glow.fm/chinatalk/
Outtro Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIh4GFUKaSE
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7/20/2021 • 42 minutes, 35 seconds
Labs over Fabs: Why the US and EU Should Invest in the Future of Semiconductors
Chris Miller of Tufts and I discuss our report Labs over Fabs, our case for the US to be spending money more broadly than currently conceived by the CHIPS act. (https://chinatalk.substack.com/p/labs-over-fabs-risc-vs-promise)
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk! https://glow.fm/chinatalk/
JP Kleinhans (@JPKleinhans) joins to cohost and discuss his April 2021 report that argues it's dumb for Europe to drop billions on some shiny new fabs. https://www.stiftung-nv.de/sites/default/files/eu-semiconductor-manufacturing.april_.2021.pdf
The BIS filings we were talking about: https://www.regulations.gov/document/BIS-2021-0011-0001/comment
Outtro music: Masiwei of Higher Brothers' Dark Horse sessions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qymY1YezhTY
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7/15/2021 • 46 minutes, 36 seconds
Xi: Failed Reformer?
Why does Xi govern like he's running out of time? Rhodium's Dan Rosen and CSIS' Jude Blanchette discuss their recent Foreign Affairs pieces recapping the past years of Xi's rule from an economic and political perspective. We get into failed financial liberalization, anti-corruption, the prospects for war over Taiwan, lessons from Sputnik, and vertical farming.
Dan's FA piece: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2021-06-22/chinas-economic-reckoning
Jude's FA Piece: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2021-06-22/xis-gamble
Outtro music (for my money the best propaganda song ever rapped!) PG One 破晓 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5JKHP0DtNc
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7/10/2021 • 47 minutes, 18 seconds
China's Solar Industry
How did Chinese firms come to dominate the global solar industry? Now that the Biden administration has banned imports for some key components of solar panels made in Xinjiang, how will global solar buyers adapt? Andy Klump, CEO of Clean Energy Associates, a firm tasked with monitoring Chinese solar supply chains, joins the podcast to discuss.
Outtro Music: 星球坠落(FALLING)by 艾热, a rapper from Xinjiang https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN8lxL1gvOE&list=OLAK5uy_mxe6tOdJnF3FcOOYFaBPPW2wKbrE7mKwU&index=2
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7/7/2021 • 51 minutes, 34 seconds
Larry Summers on China
Is China different? Does secular stagnation apply? How have Chinese economic policymakers changed over time? Should industrial policy be a thing? What should American academia navigate its relationship with China?
To discuss, ChinaTalk welcomes its first former cabinet secretary to the show! Larry Summers is a professor at Harvard, who previously served as Clinton’s Secretary of the Treasury and Obama’s NEC Director.
Cohosting with me is Logan Wright, Director for China Markets Research at Rhodium.
Outtro Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FNtQth4yX4
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7/1/2021 • 40 minutes, 55 seconds
After Xi: How Past CCP Successions Can Teach Us What Happens Next
Xi Jinping will not rule China forever. What have CCP leadership transitions looked like in the past, and what can we expect when Xi exits stage left? To discuss we have today Richard McGregor, an Aussie journalist with decades of experience in East Asia and author of three absolutely mandatory China books The Party, Asia’s Reckoning, and Xi: The Backlash, and Peter Vanderslice, a recent college grad who just wrote a fantastic thesis on CCP leadership transitions.
I'm hiring a new editor for ChinaTalk! Please apply at: https://forms.gle/NNmY2vpm1fXibGYP7
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://glow.fm/chinatalk/ so I can pay said editor!
Richard's report on Xi transition: https://www.csis.org/analysis/after-xi-future-scenarios-leadership-succession-post-xi-jinping-era
Peter's favorite Liu Shoaqi speeches: https://file.io/ODncJdbhCC7d
Outtro Songs:
Whitesnake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyF8RHM1OCg
Moody Blues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2L3UzM_FfE
Rosemary Clooney: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGeMWB41maM
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6/27/2021 • 1 hour, 1 minute, 52 seconds
China's Cyber Strengths + How to Analyze Policy
Dave Aitel, who started his career at NSA and spent the past twenty years in offensive cybersecurity, comes on ChinaTalk to discuss
What he's learned in his quest to read every cyber policy paper
What blindspots remain in the field
How China ranks in offensive and defensive cyber ceapabilities relative to the US and what we can all learn from the Tianfu Cup (http://www.tianfucup.com/)
Why Cyberpunk 2077 is a masterpiece
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://glow.fm/chinatalk/
Apply to be an intern at Rhodium! https://rhg.com/careers/
Graded China Policy Papers: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1D88loPVPBgGYj53lroS05rB1LJ2kA5DnbfRJIXghST0/edit?usp=sharing
Graded Cyber Policy Papers: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pnISykZe1nn1wwWBJRiaxYaqDoj4ADeBtsoUL41Hw2Y/edit?usp=sharing
Outtro Music: ICE-PROUD 🏴 🏴 🏴 CAPITALIST-ZIBENJIA feat. 李尔新- & FendigheeRicch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NFP2r6TcMU
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6/19/2021 • 52 minutes, 16 seconds
DARPA and How to R&D Right
Ben Reinhardt, an independent researcher and robotics PhD, discusses
Why DARPA has so many hits to its name
Why NASA wasted the past two decades
What needs to be subtracted from the US research ecosystem
Sci-fi book recommendations
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://glow.fm/chinatalk/
Intro Music: Mura Masa, Messy Love https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwXuBAd7Hh4
Outtro Music: 贝贝 / Melo - backbone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26EDDCQcPEQ
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6/9/2021 • 41 minutes, 25 seconds
In-Q-Tel on Chips, CFIUS, and The Valley of Death
Dr. Yan Zheng, senior technical staff specializing in microelectronics at In-Q-Tel, discusses
What it's like to invest in startups for the CIA and the rest of the US intelligence community
What's broken in the early stage chip ecosystem and how to fix it
Why the US government should consider expanding its direct investments in hard tech companies
How the US needs to counterbalance CFIUS with carrots
How anti-Asian violence has influenced the research community
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk! https://glow.fm/chinatalk/
Outtro music: ICE - 随便玩玩 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RIS09dQjSQ
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6/4/2021 • 56 minutes, 37 seconds
How to Solve America's R&D Bottlenecks
Bell Labs is dead, long live Bell Labs! This week's guest, Ilan Gur, the CEO of Activate.org, has a plan to improve America's R&D apparatus: fund start-ups that allow entrepreneurial researchers to pursue the practical applications of their world-class basic research. We discuss why we're lucky to have Moderna and BioNTech (beyond the obvious reasons), the impact of research moving from corporations to universities, the Endless Frontier Act, why patents don't equal innovation, and more.
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at glow.fm/chinatalk
Outtro Music:
עטר מיינר - זמן לדיכאון : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwSj4egHxvE (god that violin)
Peled - Sababa 5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1Pe0Gxbx5c
טדי נגוסה ויסמין מועלם - Teddy Neguse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajN_M2k_STM&t=98s
Photo of Bell Labs, abandoned.
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5/29/2021 • 53 minutes, 11 seconds
Emergency Pod! Endless Frontier Act Butchered!
The Endless Frontier Act, the most important piece of legislation no one's heard of, got blown to bits in committee this week. Sam Hammond of the Niskanen Center joins to discuss.
My recent coverage in the ChinaTalk newsletter https://chinatalk.substack.com/p/endless-frontier-the-most-important
Sam's coverage: https://www.niskanencenter.org/how-congress-ruined-the-endless-frontier-act/
Outtro Music: Live As You Like by (my new favorite artist) Takayan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85NA-prJZJE
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5/21/2021 • 18 minutes, 23 seconds
How Beijing Sees Korea
Why hasn’t North Korea emulated Deng’s Opening & Reform? Are China’s wealthy, educated, urbane youth liberals? Could the PLA cooperate with the U.S. military in the event of Korean reunification?
Dr. Sungmin Cho of the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies joins ChinaTalk for a discussion of the Korean Peninsula as viewed by Beijing. This episode is a companion to this week’s ChinaTalk with Odd Arne Westad. Ainikki Riikonen, a research assistant at Center for a New American Security, joins as today’s co-host. Thanks to CNAS for sponsoring this episode.
Read Dr. Cho’s recent article on the joint recovery of fallen soldiers on the Korean Peninsula as a “guardrail to prevent the worsening of” any potential military crisis in the region: https://apcss.org/nexus_articles/the-joint-recovery-of-fallen-soldiers-from-the-korean-war-one-way-for-american-chinese-north-and-south-korean-soldiers-to-cooperate-and-reconcile/
Outtro Music: Dean - D (Half Moon) ft. Gaeko
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eelfrHtmk68
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5/19/2021 • 42 minutes, 37 seconds
600 Years Of Sino-Korean Relations
Odd Arne Westad joins ChinaTalk to discuss his latest book Empire and Righteous Nation: 600 Years of China-Korea Relations. Westad’s work is a diplomat’s handbook that connects the sweeping currents of history to the geopolitics of today. Co-hosting today is Danny Crichton of Techcrunch. We explore how Korea, past and present, navigates its relationship with the powerful empires on its doorstep.
Korea’s unique Confucianism serves as a launching point into a discussion on empire and nation-state that takes us from the Joseon Dynasty’s navigation of the Ming Dynasty’s collapse all the way up to the present day (with snippets on espionage in Qing China, Korea’s own version of the Taiping Rebellion, and Japanese imperialism).
We end on K-drama’s popularity in Zhongnanhai and how the flow of South Korean pop culture into China might complicate Chinese leaders’ decision to intervene on behalf of the DPRK in a conflict on the peninsula.
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://glow.fm/chinatalk/
Outtro music (which really is fire this time, stick around for three Korean bangers):
Ash Island, Melody https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8L2OLu6JZo
Sooljalee (술자리) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJAKYX8A_WM
NO:EL _ 00 (DOUBLE O) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sALhYkA-ij4
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5/16/2021 • 51 minutes, 15 seconds
Industrial Policy: How the Green New Deal's Architects Would Do IP
For Part Three of ChinaTalk's industrial policy series, we are joined by two leading lights of the American left: Saikat Chakrabarti, AOC's former Chief of Staff, and Zack Exley of the 2016 Bernie campaign. (Don't forget to check out Part One with Rob Atkinson and Part Two with José Fernandez.) Co-hosting is Vishnu Kannan, a junior fellow in Carnegie's Technology and International Affairs Program. Saikat and Zack take us inside the creation of the Green New Deal, lay out how bold leadership can change a nation's economic trajectory, lament Democrats' lukewarm appetite for industrial policy, and offer up their vision for an American developmental program that harnesses the full potential of its people and capital. We discuss everything from how Harvard teaches economics wrong to what CIA Director Bill Burn's declassified Iraq War cables have to do with the classic film Casablanca.
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://glow.fm/chinatalk/
Outtro music: https://youtu.be/DuVJeJcMod0
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5/14/2021 • 1 hour, 27 minutes, 31 seconds
Elon Musk, TSMC, Open Source, Endless Frontier and Zhang Yiming
Kevin Xu of the fantastic Interconnected newsletter, and formerly of Commerce and the Obama White House, ran through a grab bag of some of the hottest topics in US-China tech.
We got into the politics of Tesla in China, what Morris Chang of TSMC thinks about the future of the semiconductor industry, how open source is key to the future of American industrial policy, why the Endless Frontier Act (which I wrote about in the most recent edition of the ChinaTalk newsletter) is the most important bill you've never heard of, and why Bytedance's Zhang Yiming deserves his own biopic.
Student Research Symposium: https://forms.gle/FYoSeHS7t3ZLLwEh9
Work with me! https://rhg.com/job/research-assistant-china-technology-and-industry-research/
Outtro Music: Soft Lipa - An Epic | Warrior OST https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAOTdpEeZ6s
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5/11/2021 • 51 minutes, 1 second
Can China Win a War Over Taiwan? Plus Eve Online
Student Research Symposium: https://forms.gle/FYoSeHS7t3ZLLwEh9
Work with me! https://rhg.com/job/research-assistant-china-technology-and-industry-research/
Thomas Shugart joined me and Eric Lofgren on another cross-over episode of ChinaAcquisitionTalk. Thomas spent 25 years in the US Navy and is currently an adjunct senior fellow at CNAS.
This possibility is made more dangerous considering the rise of China’s military, particularly in long-range missiles, bombers, and navy. The expansion of the PLA Navy over the last five years as been nearly identical to the legendary 1980s Reagan build-up. “For all the talk of them being next generation swarming and unmanned,” Thomas said, “they sure are bending a lot of iron building ships.”
You can find some of Tom's writing on his CNAS page, including his War on the Rocks article, All about EVE: What virtual forever wars can teach us about the future of combat. His statement to the US-China economic and security review commission is here. He's on Twitter at tshugart3.
Intro Music:
PLA Rocket Force theme song! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG1J8R3kweU
Outtro Music: 当地人— Ansrj 李尔新Lilshin 孟子 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqFgUFwxHiY
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5/7/2021 • 55 minutes, 35 seconds
China's Anti-Monopoly Moment
Fascinated (or stunned) by China’s recent anti-monopoly moves against tech giants Ant and Meituan? Want to get inside the head of Chinese regulators as they plan their moves against the globe’s largest corporations? ChinaTalk has you covered. This week I’m joined by Dr. Angela Zhang, a professor at The University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Law, to discuss her new book “Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism: How The Rise of China Challenges Global Regulation”. Yvonne Yu, my colleague at Rhodium, cohosts. Together we dig deep into the past, present, and future of the Chinese regulatory state.
Dr. Zhang tweets at @AngelaZhangHK and you can read her work in Nikkei Asia as well: https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/China-s-Alibaba-probe-is-not-all-bad-news
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://glow.fm/chinatalk/
Outtro Music:
艾志恒Asen - 错意 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV1aEYpeteM
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5/1/2021 • 47 minutes, 38 seconds
China's Booming Podcast Ecosystem
Enzo Chen, author of the Substack 推播助栏The Podcast Pick, and Caiwei Chen, the host of 定向跳转 The Redirect Podcast and the superb newsletter Chaoyang Trap, discuss all things podcasting in China and Taiwan. We get into the best Chinese-language shows, what makes China's leading podcast app so special, the demographics of podcast listeners, censors efforts to control the newly popular medium, and Jordan's auditory forays into classic Chinese literature.
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://glow.fm/chinatalk/
Outtro music: PGONE X H3R3 都是你 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLe3ksDaX1k
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4/27/2021 • 39 minutes, 40 seconds
Why Are Chinese TV Dramas So Bad?
What as the rise of streaming, idols, and increased censorship done to Chinese TV?
Co-hosting is Ina Yang, one of the founders of the Chinese-language podcast Loud Murmurs. We discuss Chinese dramas with AvenueX, the intrepid YouTuber who has an encyclopedic knowledge of the Chinese TV scene. AvenueX explains how the internet changed Chinese dramas (and not always for the better), why China’s censorship system leads to stilted plots (it’s not quite what you’d think), and why Zi Jinchen is the luckiest novelist in China (it’s not his books that made him famous) We also discuss our favorite shows of the past year, and our recommendations for those looking to get started in the world of C-dramas.
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://glow.fm/chinatalk/
Links:
The bad kids eng sub: https://www.iq.com/play/2ffkwrzp4tg
The Long Night eng subs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqODiKTH8a4
Minning Town eng subs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8dv_IepPWg
Outtro Music: Mercy, 'Wubba lubba dub dub' a Rick and Morty-inspired rap song! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjvTke77240
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4/20/2021 • 42 minutes, 11 seconds
How Huarong Explains China's Creaky Financial System
What is Huarong and why do its struggles explain the central contradictions of China's financial system?
To discuss, Logan Wright of Rhodium joins the show. In the first ten minutes, Logan catches us up on the news of the week. Then in the following hour, I rerun an episode we recorded together in late 2018 discussing his report Credit and Credibility, which explains why the big one hasn't hit yet.
Want to get in touch? We can be reached at clientservice@rhg.com
Outtro music: Miraie & Milkoi 『 ミユキ 』https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e66NfKGjRY
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4/17/2021 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 44 seconds
Bo Xilai and How Xi Learned from the Chongqing Model
What was the Chongqing Model and why does it still matter?
Yueran Zhang, a PhD student in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, discusses. We talk about how Bo Xilai utilized mass mobilization against his enemies in the central government and China’s labor movements, and the significance of the 2018 Jasic protests.
Zhang’s two recent articles for Made In China journal, “The Chongqing Model One Decade On” and “Leninists in a Chinese Factory: Reflections on the Jasic Labour Organizing Strategy,” serve as the basis for today’s episode.
Outtro music: some pro-Bo Xilai song written in 2009 to commemorate him taking on gangs (full story here: https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%96%84%E7%86%99%E6%9D%A5%E4%B9%8B%E6%AD%8C) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND6fOAR4MWA
While this song is hilarious, I couldn't find a good recording and didn't want to you have to listen to the whole thing. Also thought it would be funny to pair this with folks who idolize gangsters...
Outtro music #2: GOSH Music 2020 cypher (the biggest Chongqing hip hop collective) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M0axMxBSWg
The views expressed in this podcast do not reflect those of the Rhodium Group.
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4/14/2021 • 1 hour, 1 minute, 46 seconds
'Invisible China': How the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China’s Rise
Scott Rozelle (legend, Stanford professor, co-director of the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions) joins ChinaTalk to discuss his recent book Invisible China: How the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China’s Rise, co-authored with Natalie Hell. We discuss how China’s 900 million-strong low-income population will decide China’s future development path. Is China is the next Mexico? Why is it easy to solve poverty but not low income? Why don’t local governments spend enough on rural education and health? How has the relationship between academia and government changed from the Hu Jintao-era to the Xi Jinping-era?
The views expressed in this podcast are my own and do not represent those of the Rhodium Group.
Outtro music: 刘思鉴 x 李佳隆 JELLORIO - "纸上谈兵" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44nfbyjzkMg
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4/9/2021 • 54 minutes, 1 second
Japan's China Challenge
To discuss, ChinaTalk assembled two of my favorite Japanese think-tankers, Yuka Koshino, a Research Fellow at the UK think tank International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), and Akira Igata, the Executive Director at the Tama University-affiliated Center for Rule-making Strategy (CRS). Joshua Fitt of The Center for a New American Security cohosts.
Thanks to CNAS for making this show possible.
Outtro songs:
Takayan, What’s the meaning of living: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGDQQnBVUsk
Hideyoshi, Majinahanashi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a3sPzbG68I
You heard it here first, Takayan's gonna be huge.
And if for whatever reason you want to get depressed listening to AR's propaganda rap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmAkYGQXv5Q
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4/4/2021 • 48 minutes, 54 seconds
Baijiu!
Derek Sandhaus is the author of Drunk in China: Baijiu and the World's Oldest Drinking Culture and part of the team behind Ming River Baijiu, the first (good) Baijiu created especially for the international market. We discuss AA in china, Baijiu's origins, different varieties of Baijiu, the drink's evolving role in modern China, as well as the challenge of bringing such a polarizing drink to Europe and the US.
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://glow.fm/chinatalk/
Outtro music: Hiperson, Spring Breeze https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHe1OrbuW5g&list=PL0Lwt5eNBHLmL8zP03KbqekrRbje8FCbu&index=48
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4/2/2021 • 49 minutes, 32 seconds
US-China Ideological Competition
Are the US and China in ideological competition? How does one go about answering that question? Dan Tobin of the US Intelligence Community's National Intelligence University and Ryan Manuel of Official China have a dangerous amount of fun debating guiding ideologies and what they mean for geopolitics.
Dan's 2020 congressional testimony on CCP ideology: https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/testimonies/SFR%20for%20USCC%20TobinD%2020200313.pdf
Ryan's PhD thesis on CCP bureaucracy (which really is fantastic, chapter 3 is an absolute must-read): https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:84ec884b-9bd7-46d7-a395-f6bf9ba501e0/download_file?safe_filename=RManuel%2BDPhil%2BFINAL.pdf&file_format=application%2Fpdf&type_of_work=Thesis
This episode was recorded in late 2020. Dan's views are his own and do not reflect those of the US Government or the NIU.
The only way I can hope to keep up this two-show/week pace is to pay my fantastic editors to clean up these episodes for you all. Please consider supporting the show at glow.fm/chinatalk.
Outtro Music: 我的祖国 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB3abtW9qrc
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3/30/2021 • 1 hour, 28 minutes, 46 seconds
China's Chip Dreams
John Verwey of the Substack “Semi-Literate" (and formerly of Commerce’s BIS, USITC, and USTR) talks the history and future of China's chip industry. We get into government guidance funds, the CHIPS Act, “Fabs not Labs,” export controls, and more.
John's substack: https://semiliterate.substack.com/
Outtro Music: Justice‘s Genesis (Live Version) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdsEaSx7u90
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3/27/2021 • 1 hour, 1 minute, 12 seconds
Michèle Flournoy on "Affecting the Strategic Calculus"
Michèle Flournoy joined AcquisitionTalk's Eric Lofgren and me for another crossover episode of China-AcquisitionTalk. Flournoy is a former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, co-founder and new board chair of CNAS (where I'm a fellow), and currently the founder and managing partner of WestExec Advisors. I dove deep into the archive, digging up copies of Flournoy's undergraduate and master's theses to discuss "psycho-social approaches to international relations" and 1980s nuclear policy. We also covered:
China’s approach to systems destruction warfare
How to make a compelling case for technologists to join DoD
Nuclear policy and affecting the strategic calculus
Whether “legacy” weapons need divestment
A “Manhattan Project” for AI/ML
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Outtro music: O.WEN《官方回答》 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXT3zITsydQ
The views expressed in this podcast do not reflect those of the Rhodium Group.
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3/24/2021 • 42 minutes, 47 seconds
Te-Ping Chen's Short Stories of Modern China
In her years as a Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent in Hong Kong and Beijing, Te-Ping Chen came across a lifetime of remarkable characters and events. Most of these didn’t make her newspaper articles, so she began collecting them in short stories, which were collected in a book published just last month, Land of Big Numbers. Mara Hvistendahl guest hosts an interview with Te-Ping, where we discuss her writing process, journalism versus fiction writing, and some of the stories behind the stories. Outtro Music: Pocketful of Stars - Shanghai Rainbow Chambers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui3z7-1rUYI&t=1s "For those people sometimes cannot be understood well by others but still have strong willingness to be understood. Surely, we can also regard that the song is written for everyone. We truly believe that we all have our own zone where we place our little secrets and childlike thoughts and we wish all the goodliness in hearts can sparkle permanently like twinkling stars in the sky." Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at glow.fm/chinatalk Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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3/20/2021 • 34 minutes, 37 seconds
Rhodium's Dan Rosen on Hiring Me, 30 Years of China-Watching, Decoupling, and Debt
Dan Rosen is the founding partner of the Rhodium Group and leads the China team. He is also my boss!
We talk about our plans for China tech coverage, lessons from thirty years of China-watching, how he thinks about decoupling, China's debt situation. We also play underrated/overrated on whether track two dialogues are a waste of time, PDF length, and talking to government officials.
Want to work with me? Please get in touch at jschneider@rhg.com.
Outtro Music: YTH Chopie ft YOUNG13DBABY -《Best Friend》 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwDu2VScBW0
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3/16/2021 • 42 minutes, 8 seconds
To The Quad! The Origins of "Indo-Pacific"
Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at Australia National University discusses his new book 'Indo-Pacific Empire.'
We talk 15th-century Korean maps, the promise of the 1947 Asian Relations Conference, Australia and India's shifting conceptions of their place in the region, the origins of the Quad, China-Australia relations, and advice Rory has for the Quad countries as they try to figure out what this 'minilateral' should amount to.
Megan Lamberth of CNAS cohosts. Also discussed is Martijn Rasser's report on Tech, Australia and the Quad (https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/networked-techno-democratic-statecraft-for-australia-and-the-quad).
Thanks to CNAS for sponsoring this episode.
Outtro music, perhaps the most beautiful song featured on ChinaTalk, comes to us via Rory's suggestion. His intro:
"Bayini, by Australian indigenous singer Gurrumul (who sadly is no longer with us). Gurrumul performed in New Delhi in 2012 alongside Anoushka Shankar in a concert to celebrate Australia-India relations. Bayini is a song in an indigenous Australian language, about mythological spirits visiting Northern Australia from across the sea, and is believed to reflect folklore about contact with fishermen from the Indonesian archipelago in pre-colonial times. So it has a certain Indo-Pacific character to it, of friendship and connection." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoGt1bH20fM
Alternate outtro music I was going to put on before Rory pitched this one....two Indian rappers and a Chinese-Australian pop star (Wengie & Shalmali - Thing You Want ft. Ikka)
https://rollingstoneindia.com/k-pop-meets-bollywood-wengie-collabs-with-shalmali-and-ikka/
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3/13/2021 • 53 minutes, 56 seconds
Adam Tooze and Matt Klein Return!
Adam Tooze (now on Substack!) and Matt Klein, author of Trade Wars Are Class Wars, return to ChinaTalk and pick up right where they left off in September.
We discuss whether Ricardo’s theories of comparative advantage actually work in a globalized age, why Stalin’s embrace of “socialism in one country” was a response to the hegemonic power of British (and American) capital, whether a Bolshevik Revolution is the best way to solve global inequality, how intra-elite conflict drives sovereignty-limiting engagement in international organizations, vaccines, Europe’s carbon markets, Keynes' "bancor", the Strategic Shiraz Reserve, and a whole lot more.
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://glow.fm/chinatalk/
Outtro: 大傻 Damnshine【天才病】https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu-RNICSIec
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3/11/2021 • 55 minutes, 44 seconds
Clubhouse and Feminism in China with Shen Lu
Shen Lu of Protocol discusses the magical world of Mandarin language Clubhouse before diving into the feminist movement in China. We cover the Xianzi case, Bilibili's misogynist content, and the challenges that women face working in China's highest-flying tech firms.
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Outtro Music: 賽文&GOD - 努力工作吧
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYSncvx4txE
We mentioned https://www.freshgogo.com/ and https://www.yamibuy.com/en as Chinese grocery delivery options in the show. https://www.hungrypanda.co/ is the 'seamless' for Asian food, which also in 10 different countries! They really should sponsor me...
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3/4/2021 • 31 minutes, 16 seconds
故事FM (China's "This American Life") Founder Talks Storytelling in Modern China
Aizhe, 故事FM's founder, runs the leading Chinese language podcast. His show gives a platform for everyday Chinese to tell their stories. We talked about his show and the state of journalism in modern China. Aizhe is a personal hero of mine and I'm so grateful I had this opportunity to record this episode.
Aizhe would love to get in touch with American podcast producers, so if you are one, please don't be shy. Reach out to me and I'll put you in touch!
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at www.glow.fm/chinatalk
Outtro music: Haze by OBO3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abjvaYqMUw4
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2/27/2021 • 37 minutes, 7 seconds
Beyond Espionage: China's Quest for Foreign Technology
Four contributors to the recent book China's Quest for Foreign Technology: Beyond Espionage discuss China’s foreign technology acquisition. Is it nefarious, or just typical behavior of an upwardly mobile nation? Is the myth of a stateless global society dead? And why does such a pressing issue seem invisible in the West?
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Outtro music: AR [for my money the hottest lyricist in the game] - ABC (feat Buzzy, Cee) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_polATUel0
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I have a newsletter! If you listen to this podcast I can say with high confidence you'll enjoy it! Do subscribe at https://chinatalk.substack.com/.
Jose Luis Ricón Fernández de la Puente, an independent researcher who runs the blog nintil.com, complicates our previous week's ChinaTalk on US industrial policy with Rob Atkinson. We discuss whether the state invented the iPhone, if the trends of history are pointing Taiwan’s direction, why the way we fund science is broken, what mass conversions to Mormonism would mean for the American economy, and, if you stick around to the end, how to live forever.
This episode was brought to you by the Korea Foundation, which has sponsored a series of ChinaTalk episodes supplementing my forthcoming paper coming out next month entitled ‘Labs not Fabs: How the U.S. Should Invest in the Future of Semiconductors’. This research was hosted by the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
Outtro music: AR - ABC (feat Buzzy, Cee) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_polATUel0
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2/17/2021 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 57 seconds
Chinese Cooking Demystified
Chinese Cooking Demystified is my favorite English language Youtube cooking channel. I chat with creators Chris and Steph about how they create their recipes, who watches their videos, whether Chinese food is soft power, bilibili vs youtube cooking channels, and why everyone in China wants to learn to bake.
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://glow.fm/chinatalk/
春节快乐!
Outtro music, Doubanjiang by Masiwei https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HxkMKb_EQs
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2/11/2021 • 45 minutes, 57 seconds
Richard Fontaine on CNAS and US-China
Richard Fontaine, CEO of CNAS, discusses what it's like to run what very well may be the hottest think tank in the Asia policy game (full disclosure: I'm a CNAS adjunct).
We get into Biden and Asia and how the new president's foreign policy team will prioritize what they want to get out of the US-China relationship. We also touch on the biggest argument Richard's had with current senior DoD official and former CNAS VP Ely Ratner, what he's learned from looking at China questions with Silicon Valley luminaries, why he'd like to do more faith-centered studies of foreign policy, what fiction he's reading...and if you stick around until the end of the show we get into export controls!
Subscribe to https://www.thewirechina.com/ and use the code ChinaTalk21 for 25% off.
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at www.glow.fm/chinatalk
Ad music: Oddissee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx4FrSkuPsE
Outtro music (after all the complaints about Bruce Springsteen you get two tracks this week...)
爆音BOOM《变》https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKjmqMAlmhk
PG One 不可说 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kw0cnP4fbo
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2/8/2021 • 1 hour, 29 minutes, 28 seconds
Taiwan! Pigs, Politics, and Pop Music
Maggie Lewis (Seton Hall) and Lev Nachman (UC Irvine) talk Biden's Taiwan policy, pork trade politics, the future of the KMT, third parties, academic freedom, gay marriage, and asylum from Hong Kong.
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Outtro Music: ABAO阿爆(阿仍仍)【Kinakaian 母親的舌頭】feat. 林宜瑾, 丁立芬 共創 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tsh4lMH1fA8)
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1/29/2021 • 59 minutes, 20 seconds
A User's Guide to US Industrial Policy
I have a newsletter! If you listen to this podcast I can say with high confidence you'll enjoy it! Do subscribe at https://chinatalk.substack.com/.
Rob Atkinson is the president of ITIF, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a non-partisan DC-based think tank. We’re going to discuss US industrial policy grand strategy in light of China’s rise, what the US can expect from its allies on tech policy, as well as the “power trader” paradigm and how Albert Hirschmann’s analysis of 20th century Kaiser and Nazi trade policy helps explain China today.
This episode was brought to you by the Korea Foundation, which has sponsored a series of ChinaTalk episodes supplementing my forthcoming paper coming out next month entitled ‘Labs not Fabs: How the U.S. Should Invest in the Future of Semiconductors’. This research was hosted by the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://glow.fm/chinatalk/
Outtro Music: My Hometown by Bruce Springsteen
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1/22/2021 • 1 hour, 3 minutes, 8 seconds
WWII's Legacy in China with Rana Mitter
Rana Mitter, professor of Chinese history at Oxford University, discusses his book from earlier this year, China’s Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism.
Now seventy-five years after China’s victory over Japan, China is rethinking how it grapples with the legacy of WWII (see, for example, The Eight Hundred, the highest-grossing film of 2020, discussed towards the end of the show). Mitter argues that this growing emphasis on World War II is evidence of a subtle rewriting of history, where 1945 takes on a significance comparable to 1949, and the CCP adopts historical victories of the Kuomintang.
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at www.glow.fm/chinatalk Intro music: 赴戰, 'To Battle,‘ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB9TmKdo0qU&feature=youtu.be Outtro music: 大刀进行曲, or "Sword March," written in honor of the poorly armed Chinese fighters at the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. See here for more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sword_March. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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1/17/2021 • 1 hour, 4 minutes, 38 seconds
China's Spies
Matt Brazil discusses his new book co-written with Peter Mattis, 'Chinese Communist Espionage, An Intelligence Primer.' We talk about the role spies played in the creation and evolution of the CCP, run through some Zhou Enlai conspiracy theories, and discuss the role of espionage in today's China.
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://glow.fm/chinatalk/
Intro Music: Wong Chia Chi's theme from Lust, Caution
Outtro Music: Player's Ball by Outkast (Thank you Georgia!)
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1/7/2021 • 1 hour, 1 minute, 35 seconds
Great Power Competition with Richard Danzig
On the second joint episode of Acquisition Talk and ChinaTalk, Richard Danzig, a Secretary of the Navy under Clinton, discusses US-China relations and military innovation. Richard is a Senior Fellow at Johns Hopkins APL, a former Secretary of the Navy, and a fiction guy. We traverse a number of subjects, including:
How the risk of war with China is reflected in trade policy
The problems regulators face in high-tech industries
Views on growing the US Navy to 500 ships
How US prime contracts differ from state-owned enterprises
Whether the Chinese are more risk-tolerant than the US
His book recs include:
Woman of the Dunes
The Door
The Lonely Polygamist
Outtro music "LL Cool J" by Ansr J
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1/2/2021 • 58 minutes, 24 seconds
DIU's Michael Brown on US-China Tech Competition
Kicking off a series on US-China defense-related issues with Eric Lofgren of the podcast AcquisitionTalk, we host Defense Innovation Unit head Michael Brown.
We touch on a number of topics, including:
Industrial espionage and foreign investment
The debate over basic vs. applied research
China starting to determine technical standards
Coordinating with allies on semiconductors
Transitioning tech in the DoD
Before taking the helm of DIU in 2018, Michael co-authored a study with Pravneet Singh showing how Chinese participation in the US venture/tech ecosystem had surged from $300 million in 2010 to $11.52 billion in 2015. Chinese capital comprised 16 percent of all deals in 2016. That work launched the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA) which strengthened the government's ability to block Chinese investments.
Do note we recorded this episode in early Nov before the election.
Outtro music by Higher Brothers, 'Empire'
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1/2/2021 • 48 minutes, 11 seconds
KFC, The Toilet Revolution, and the Business of Propaganda
Why is KFC so big in China? What is the “Toilet Revolution” and why does it matter? How does Chinese propaganda work? How have bicycles’ role in Chinese society evolved over time? Neil Thomas of MacroPolo takes on this grab bag.
Note this is a rebroadcast from November 2018. Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at glow.fm/chinatalk. Outtro music is a KFC vs McDonalds rap battle.
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12/26/2020 • 1 hour, 7 minutes, 11 seconds
Chinese Hip Hop in 2020 Radio Show
Duoduodiliao walks us through his favorite Chinese rap songs of 2020, taking us everywhere from soul rap and R&B to drill and Caribbean-inspired beats.
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at www.glow.fm/chinatalk
Songs in order played in the show, all available on YouTube
PO8 - 霓虹 李爾新 lil shin《CN DRILL》官方微博完整版 慕斯塔法 / JELLORIO 李佳隆 - Falling 八口8uck/KnowKnow -《Map》 Lexie Liu 刘柏辛 - 佳人 "站着亲吻子弹"艾热派克特组淘汰Athree后,发作品《Punch》发表感想《说唱听我的》 艾福杰尼 - 葡萄架下的篝火 Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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12/22/2020 • 37 minutes, 9 seconds
America's New Tools of Coercion
Peter Harrell and Liz Rosenberg, both CNAS fellows, joined ChinaTalk in May to talk about their report authored with Ashley Fung, 'A New Arsenal for Competition: Coercive Economic Measures in the U.S.-China Relationship.'
We discuss how the Trump administration has refined the use of these policy tools since Liz and Peter served under Obama, do a round overrated/underrated for international economic policy tools, and hear their best tv pilot pitches with sanctions themes.
Please consider contributing to ChinaTalk at glow.fm/chinatalk. Your support makes this show possible.
Music is some pro-Putin, anti-US sanctions song that has an awful ratio on youtube.
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12/17/2020 • 1 hour, 3 minutes, 37 seconds
Wendy Cutler on US-China Trade Policy
Wendy Culter, who served 28 years in the Office of the US Trade Representative, discusses how Biden should address Beijing on trade. We talk about how he could leverage allies' frustration with Chinese behavior and speculate about the future of the WTO. We also debate the merits of a number of my hair-brained trade ideas including the Strategic Shiraz Reserve and a Mutual Trade Defense Pact.
If ChinaTalk is worth $1 an episode to you, please consider becoming a supporter of ChinaTalk at https://glow.fm/chinatalk/
I spelled out my trade policy ideas in more detail in my newsletter here. https://chinatalk.substack.com/p/a-strategic-shiraz-reserve-to-help
Music by Indigo Jam Unit and the 1896 William Jennings Bryan campaign!
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12/13/2020 • 43 minutes, 40 seconds
Blockchain Chicken Farm: How Tech Changed Rural China
Xiaowei Wang discusses her new book. She explores Taobao villages where Snow White Halloween costumes get made, how one police station is sputtering towards digitization, parallels between Silicon Valley and Chinese tech culture, and pearl farming #distrupt.
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://glow.fm/chinatalk
Pick up a Smart Air Filter for the holidays (https://smartairfilters.com/) and be sure to use the promo code 'ChinaTalk' for a 5% discount.
Music by Collage and Mondo Grosso
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12/8/2020 • 55 minutes, 28 seconds
How to Research China, Talent Programs, and Military-Civil Fusion
Emily Weinstein of CSET talks open source China research. We also sort truth from fact and fiction on Chinese talent programs and MCF.
Buy an air filter at https://smartairfilters.com/ and use the code 'ChinaTalk' for a discount!
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://glow.fm/chinatalk/.
Music by Nujabes and 珂拉琪 Collage
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12/5/2020 • 51 minutes, 58 seconds
The Blunder Down Under? How China-Australia Relations Fell Off a Cliff
Yun Jiang walks step by step through the past three years of deteriorating Australia-China relations.
I haven't sold an ad this calendar year. Please consider supporting ChinaTalk financially: https://glow.fm/chinatalk
Music by Taiwanese-Australian artist Kim Yang, song entitled Garden of Eden is about the brushfires. For more, check out her website at www.kimyangmusic.com
Photo of Xi in 2014 in Tasmania receiving a lavender bear.
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12/2/2020 • 56 minutes, 3 seconds
5G in the Caribbean, Open Source Tech, CCP Twitter Bots, Chinese TV and Rap
I chatted this week with Rasheed Griffith of the China in the Caribbean Podcast. I highly recommend you check out his channel!
We discuss:
The possible future of US-China tech competition under the incoming Biden Administration
The nature of China's Twitter influence campaigns and what we can learn about making viral memes from Russian disinformation operators. See here for my deep dive.
Why open-source software should be the basis for a new US industrial policy and why China is looking to push that same strategy
What we can learn from good Chinese tv shows
Why we should all be listening to Chinese rap
Recommendations: Jordan
American Mandarin Society 'China Syllabi Project'
隐秘的角落 (Chinese TV show about the drama that ensues after a group of young kids accidentally film a murder.)
令人心动的offer (Chinese reality show about legal interns. Season 2 is particularly recommended.)
棋魂 (Chinese TV drama about a Fairy godfather who guides a kid in the ways of Weiqi/Go)
Rasheed
猎狐 (Chinese police drama about the anti-corruption campaign in China around 2014-2015 to prosecute financial criminals. The official Chinese campaign was called "Operation Fox Hunting".)
中国新说唱 (Chinese rap/hip content competition show)
Caribbean Soca Music
Twitter links Jordan @jordanschnyc Rasheed @rasheedguo Intro Music: Chronixx - Here Comes Trouble Outro Music: Farmer Nappy - Big People Party
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11/28/2020 • 31 minutes, 18 seconds
Incoming NSA Jake Sullivan on an Alternative Vision for US-China Relations
President-Elect Joe Biden just tapped Jake Sullivan to serve as his first National Security Advisor, the most important foreign policy role in the White House. In light of this announcement, I'm rerunning an episode we recorded in late 2019. Jake Sullivan previously served in the Obama administration as National Security Advisor to Vice President Joe Biden and Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department.
Check out my newsletter at https://chinatalk.substack.com/. In the most recent edition, I do a deep dive comparing the HR McMaster and Sullivan interviews.
Do consider supporting this show at https://glow.fm/chinatalk/ if you're enjoying the two episode/week pace I'm currently keeping up.
Outtro music by Kafe.Hu
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11/24/2020 • 53 minutes, 45 seconds
HR McMaster on His Time as NSA, China, and History's Role in Policymaking
HR McMaster was Trump's National Security Advisor and, it seems, a ChinaTalk superfan. We talk about his time in government, what the US missed about China and what to do about it, and which Seinfeld character would make the best NSA.
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://glow.fm/chinatalk/
Sign up for the weekly ChinaTalk newsletter at https://chinatalk.substack.com/
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11/22/2020 • 52 minutes, 7 seconds
Biden's Foreign Policy
What will a Biden administration foreign policy look like? What’s going to happen on tech and trade? How will debates within the democratic party on what to do about china shake out? Where will congress be on the issue? How will Biden the man impact foreign policy?
To discuss, we have on the person who has taught me most about American politics, David F. Gordon, currently a senior advisor at IISS. Previously, he was my boss at the Eurasia Group, served as the director of policy planning under Condoleezza Rice at the State Department, acting chairman of the National Intelligence Council, among many other positions in a multi-decade career in the IC.
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk at https://glow.fm/chinatalk/
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11/16/2020 • 43 minutes, 48 seconds
Is a Chinese Financial Crisis Looming?
The Chinese economy is perhaps the world's only economic bright spot. So that means we can stop worrying about a financial crisis, right?
Think again, according to Lauren Gloudeman and Logan Wright of the Rhodium Group, who join to discuss their new paper mapping out the weak points in China's financial system.
That this report is a follow-up to Logan's 2018 paper entitled Credit and Credibility. Our past show on the topic you can find here on Apple Podcasts and here on Spotify.
Cohosting is Byrne Hobart of the diff newsletter.
If you appreciate the fact that I've been doing two shows a week this month, please consider supporting ChinaTalk financially at https://glow.fm/chinatalk
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11/12/2020 • 57 minutes, 23 seconds
Trains!
David Feng talks Chinese trains and subways. We get into the history and evolution of China's trains, the impact of industrial policy, and the role of foreign technology.
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11/8/2020 • 42 minutes, 13 seconds
Swing State Appreciation Hip Hop Minimix
A thank you to everyone out there who helped make yesterday possible.
"With full hearts and steady hands, with faith in America and in each other, with a love of country — and a thirst for justice — let us be the nation that we know we can be.
A nation united.
A nation strengthened.
A nation healed."
From Atlanta: Ray Charles, Ludacris, Killer Mike, Andre 3000, Quavo, Childish Gambino
From Philly: Beanie Sigel, Lil Uzi Vert (Tried to fit in Dreams and Nightmares but the lyrics are just too offensive...)
From Detroit: Eminem, Dej Loaf
From Minnesota: Justin Vernon
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11/8/2020 • 17 minutes, 59 seconds
What To Do About Xinjiang
How should the US respond to the human rights crisis in Xinjiang? I was a guest on the Lawfare podcast this week, discussing my recent essay outlining how the U.S. can respond and push back on the Chinese government's abuses in the region. For the first fifteen minutes, I interviewed Sheena Greitens, an associate professor at UT Austin's LBJ School of Public Affairs, on the origins of the camps and Xi's motivation for the current policy. In the second half, Lawfare editor Jacob Schulz and I discuss what the US government should do from legislative, executive and diplomatic angles.
Google calendar invite to Saturday 5 pm EST zoom phonebanking.
Google calendar invite to Sunday 5 pm EST zoom phonebanking.
My email is jorschneider@gmail.com or I'm on twitter here if those links don't work for you. Thanks.
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10/28/2020 • 44 minutes, 46 seconds
Why Xi Is All In On Climate Change
Xi wants China to reach peak emissions by 2030 and go carbon neutral by 2060. Why now? Can he do it? Lauri Myllyvirta comes on to discuss.
RSVP for live Xinjiang discussion at 2:30pm est here. See here for my Xinjiang policy proposal.
Google calendar invite to Saturday 5 pm EST zoom phonebanking.
Google calendar invite to Sunday 5 pm EST zoom phonebanking.
My email is jorschneider@gmail.com or I'm on twitter here if those links don't work for you. Thanks.
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10/27/2020 • 28 minutes, 47 seconds
CCP Influence Ops in Japan: Everywhere Yet Nowhere in Particular
'Everywhere Yet Nowhere in Particular' is the title of Devin Stewart's latest report. We discuss China's tactics in trying to influence Japanese politics and society as well as what makes Japan uniquely resistant to the CCP's charms.
Refer 10 friends to get yourself a ChinaTalk mug!
I made a 20-minute megamix of Japanese city pop and trap for you all at the end! If you want the tracklist in the form of a top-secret ChinaTalk YouTube playlist, just start supporting ChinaTalk!
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10/24/2020 • 52 minutes, 9 seconds
What Does US-China Corruption Really Look Like? Also, iFlyTek
Refer your friends ChinaTalk! If you get 10 people to sign up using your referral link, you'll get a free ChinaTalk mug!
Mara Hvistendahl is a staff writer at The Intercept. In this bitesize edition of ChinaTalk, we discuss pieces of hers on the US Ambassador to China's son and ZTE (The Intercept) and AI voice recognition giant iFlyTek (Wired).
Intro and outtro music liner notes available exclusively to ChinaTalk supporters. Become one here.
And more importantly, vote.
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10/22/2020 • 21 minutes, 24 seconds
China and the NBA
Why, aside from Yao, have Chinese players had no success in the NBA? Post-NBA, what has Yao done to reform and professionalize the Chinese Basketball Association? One year on, how does the NBA's response to Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey's tweet look in retrospect, and why has the Chinese government responded so differently to NBA and Premier League stars making noise about Xinjiang?
Hunter Shi of the podcast 翻转体育 and Nate Duncan of the Dunk'd On Podcast join to discuss.
Please refer your friends to ChinaTalk to win a ChinaTalk mug or hand-drawn postcard of your favorite Chinese politician! Click here to get a referral code and then text your friends the show.
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk.
I'm at jorschneider@gmail.com and twitter if you want to reach out.
Outtro Music: I've got good news and other news. Now each ChinaTalk episode will have two outtro songs (!!), but I'll be paywalling the tracklist. If you subscribe to ChinaTalk, I'll invite you to a private YouTube playlist which will feature all the music ever heard on the podcast.
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10/16/2020 • 48 minutes, 53 seconds
China's True Tech Ambitions
How does the Chinese government's S&T spending differ fundamentally from America's and what does that tell us about the nature of their industrial policy? What is China Standards 2035 and what implications could it have? Will China pull the rare earth card? And is there any chance that America doesn't overcorrect?
Emily de La Bruyere of Horizon Advisory joins ChinaTalk to discuss.
Do reach out to me on twitter or at jorschneider@gmail.com.
I have a newsletter!
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Outtro Music: 0-100Records: NINEONE乃万, ICE, 刘炫廷, 新秀, Doooboi- “新人王” OFFICAL MUSIC VIDEO "THAT‘S HOW WE PLAY"
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10/8/2020 • 57 minutes, 8 seconds
Liberalism: The Light That Failed
In his memoir The World as It Is, Ben Rhodes, Barack Obama’s closest national security aide, confides that, on the day Obama left the White House, the worry that haunted him most was: ‘What if we were wrong?’ That is, what if liberals had misinterpreted the nature of the post-Cold War period?
‘What if we were wrong?’ is the question Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes set out to explain in their recent The Light That Failed: A Reckoning, which takes Eastern Europe as exhibit A. The book meditates on how liberalism lost its appeal and its themes have clear echoes in East Asia.
Guest hosting today is Eddie Fishman.
Do reach out to me on twitter or at jorschneider@gmail.com.
I have a newsletter!
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk.
Intro Music: HAYA乐团《迁徙》 全员战士风尝试突破
Outtro Music (thanks Stephen for the suggestion, very thematic!): Basement Tapes: Kansas City. Marcus Mumford on vocals and Johnny Depp (!) playing guitar.
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10/2/2020 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 42 seconds
TikTok, WeChat and Trump
It's been a wild few weeks with President Trump threatening to shut WeChat and TikTok out of the U.S. market and rip them out of the app stores. There have been lawsuits, a preliminary injunction—and a sudden deal to purchase TikTok and moot the issue out. To chew it all over, Benjamin Wittes hosted a discussion with Lawfare co-founder Bobby Chesney, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin Law School, and me, Jordan, the voice behind ChinaTalk. We talked about how we got here, whether the threat from these companies is real or whether this is more Trump nonsense, and whether the deal to save TikTok will actually work.
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk.
Outtro Music: 淡 水 鱼 - Yowaii & 徐奇 Feat. 袁子安
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9/29/2020 • 45 minutes, 40 seconds
War in Taiwan
Why would Xi invade and is the Taiwanese military up to the challenge? Paul Huang, freelance journalist, Fletcher School grad and fellow at the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation joins to discuss.
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk and/or offering me gainful employment! If you want to get in touch, just email at jorschneider@gmail.com or message me on twitter.
Intro Music: 【青春不留白】莒光園地 (Taiwanese military broadcast music)
Outtro Music: 陳嫺靜 - 輕輕 (Taiwanese R&B artist)
Check out some more here: https://www.bandwagon.asia/articles/the-next-wave-of-taiwanese-hip-hop-artists
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9/25/2020 • 38 minutes, 26 seconds
Adam Tooze on World Order, Then and Now
Adam Tooze is my favorite economic historian. After writing a handful of books on the 1920s and Nazi economics, he's now turned his eye to the present day, taking on the financial crisis and US-China relations. In this conversation, we get into
What we can learn from the diplomatic and economic modes of 1920s and 30s
Why Nazi legal theory resonates so well in China today
How modes of understanding Nazi Germany can help illustrate China
How Xinjiang camps echo the logic of Soviet gulags
Whether the US in fact lost the Cold War
Adam's dream bureaucracies to work it
Matt Klein, author of the recent Trade Wars are Class Wars, guest hosts.
Intro and outtro music are both hit songs from 1928, the year of the Kellogg-Briand Pact which tried to outlaw war.
Intro music: Pine Top's Boogie Woogie
Outtro music: Blind Willie McTell, Statesboro Blues
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9/18/2020 • 1 hour, 17 minutes, 36 seconds
The Mulan Debacle
Turning a beloved movie of female empowerment into a dull endorsement of the patriarchy, autocracy and mass forced labor is no easy feat, but Disney Magic is one hell of a drug. Think tanker Rui Zhong and novelist/meme goddess Xiran Jay Zhao join to discuss.
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk
Intro music: Reflections by Christina Aguilera (Tojou Remix)
Outtro music: I'd be impressed if you made it to the end of this podcast and didn't know this song, but here's the link
If you're looking for more Disney remixes, this one of the Lion King's Circle of Life is perfect.
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9/11/2020 • 34 minutes, 11 seconds
Rise and Fall of a Suzhou Soft Serve Baron
Mister Softee, the famed northeastern American ice cream brand, in Suzhou, China? Yes, that was a thing. Turner Sparks, rising from humble beginnings as just another English teacher making his way in the world, achieved fame and fortune thanks to a catchy jingle and some tasty mango-flavored soft serve. Yet his vision of China-wide ice cream domination dissolved amid a deluge of backstabbing regulators, slashed tires, and stolen cones. Listen here to learn about the circumstances that finally melted Turner’s ice cream dream.
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9/2/2020 • 1 hour, 7 minutes, 33 seconds
Land Wars: China's Agrarian Revolution
In 1927, Mao wrote that "In a very short time...several hundred million peasants will rise like a mighty storm, like a hurricane, a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to hold it back." During the 40s and 50s, he was able to realize this vision to disastrous effect. On this show, Tulane Professor Brian DeMare joins the show to discuss the history and legacy of the land reform movement, including forays into the role of Xi's father and William Hinton's Fanshen.
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk.
Also, do reach out if you're interested in running ads on the show!
Intro Music: 没有共产党没有新中国
Outtro Music: 听妈妈讲过去的故事
(hip hop felt out of place this week...not to worry we'll be back with more in the next episode)
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8/26/2020 • 1 hour, 6 minutes, 53 seconds
Scholarstage on Xi, War in Taiwan, the CCP Toolkit, and the Chinese Tradition
Tanner Greer of the blog Scholarstage joins the show in a wide-ranging discussion touching on Xi's ideology, incentives in western China-watching, Mormons in China, why it's worth studying classical Chinese history, and AI-assisted writing.
ChinaTalk has hit its 100th episode! That's two and a half full workweeks of informed, respectful, and hopefully entertaining conversation on everything China. As the media industry has cratered, spaces for intelligent and open discussion on China that live outside of paywalls basically don't exist anymore. Since COVID has locked me out of China and forced me to move to the US, my living expenses have gone up, and spending dozens of hours on this podcast is looking increasingly unsustainable. Right now, I make less than $5 an hour producing this show. If you'd like to see ChinaTalk continue to come out weekly,
Please consider supporting me at glow.fm/chinatalk
I'm also thinking about launching some member rewards, like live zoom, tapings of episodes where audience members can ask questions as well as a book club. Thanks so much!
Outtro music: 功夫胖 KUNGFUPEN 🔥🔥🔥 热得冒烟
Jordan
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8/18/2020 • 1 hour, 15 minutes, 20 seconds
What China Wants
How do you even go about answering that question? Is there a consensus in Washington on how to confront China and does that consensus make any sense? Ali Wyne and Jessica Chen Weiss come on to discuss.
Currently, I make $4/hr from donations adding up all the time it takes to prep, record, and edit the show. This is the 99th episode of ChinaTalk. If you'd like to see the show continue production at the same frequency of one episode per week, please consider donating to support ChinaTalk at https://glow.fm/chinatalk.
Intro music: Oddisee - Skipping Rocks
Outtro music, what mumble rap sounds like in Mandarin in 2020: JelloRio 李佳隆 :还没离开
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8/10/2020 • 43 minutes, 57 seconds
Superpower Showdown: Tale of a Trade War
Lingling Wei and Bob Davis of the WSJ discuss their new book Superpower Showdown. We dive deep into the personal dynamics within the Xi and Trump administrations as well as what the twists and turns over the past few years reveal about the US-China relationship.
Please consider supporting ChinaTalk. This show took me 10 hours of reading, 2 hours of script-writing, an hour of recording, and four hours of editing. Right now, I receive $50 in donations per episode, meaning my work on this podcast earns me $3/hr. I'm coming up on my 100th episode and of late have been reflecting on how much time I'm spending on something that brings in so little financially. If you have the means and would like to put ChinaTalk on more stable footing, do consider showing your support.
Donate at https://glow.fm/chinatalk/
Intro music: Madlib, Distant Land
Outtro music: Senior PRC official Liao Min recording back in the early 1990s during his days as a PKU grad student, 流动的青春
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7/31/2020 • 1 hour, 1 minute, 20 seconds
TikTok, Tesla, Kanye and Open Source
Should the US ban TikTok? What role does open source play in the tech ecosystem and the Chinese government's plans for self-reliance? Why does tech occupy such a unique role in the US-China tech cold war? And what can Kanye teach us about foreign policy?
Today's guest is Kevin Xu, author of the interconnected newsletter.
Click this link to support ChinaTalk.
Intro Music: Kanye's Runaway.
Exit Music: 2019 New Blood DBC Cypher.
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7/24/2020 • 12 minutes, 22 seconds
How Sanctions Fail US Policymakers
Eddie Fishman, who worked in Obama's State Department's Policy Planning Staff, joins to discuss his recent articles on sanctions and the world order.
If you know of any job opportunities (or just wanna say hi!) do reach out. I'm at Jorschneider@gmail.com or @jordanschnyc on twitter.
And as always, the newsletter and Patreon!
Intro music: 一丢丢 by AR
Outtro music: selection from the 说唱听我的 cypher
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7/17/2020 • 36 minutes, 20 seconds
How Corruption Works in China
How can China be so corrupt and yet grow so fast? What's the relationship between corruption and competent governance? How does 'access money' at the higher levels differ from the 'profit-sharing' you see lower down in the bureaucracy? How does China in the 21st century compare with America's gilded age? And why won't anyone give me dinosaur eggs?
To discuss, Prof. Yuen Yuen Ang joins the show to talk about her fantastic new book, China's Gilded Age.
Please subscribe to my Patreon! Or better yet, a full-time job offer as your humble host is very much unemployed! Patreon will suffice though.
The incredible propaganda rap song feat. Xi Jinping here.
And the best Chinese tv show of the decade.
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7/10/2020 • 1 hour, 5 minutes, 24 seconds
The H1B Ban and National Security
This week Trump banned valid H1B holders from entering the country. What are the broader implications for America's technological ecosystem and national security? To discuss, Tina Huang and Remco Zwetsloot from CSET talk about their recent research on tech and immigration. We discuss the potential lasting impacts of the, for now, temporary ban, how the US immigration process compares to other nations' policies, what China is doing to bolster their homegrown talent as well as the threat of corporate espionage.
Please consider donating to the ChinaTalk Patreon.
Here is the paper I mentioned on corporate espionage. See here for the CSET research discussed.
Intro Music: 胜利就在前方了 by KaKa.
Outtro Music: Hamilton Mixtape, Immigrants, We Get the Job Done
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6/27/2020 • 45 minutes, 9 seconds
China-India Clashes: What Happens Next?
On June 15th, dozens of soldiers died in clashes on the China-India border. What exactly happened up in the Himalayas? What's the historical background? What does this mean for the trajectory of China-India and US-India relations?
We also get into development policy, water rights, and some improv featuring terrible Trump and Modi accents (I didn't even try when doing Xi).
Thanks to Akhil Bery and Sasha Riser Kositsky for coming on the show. Please consider donating to the ChinaTalk Patreon.
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6/24/2020 • 43 minutes, 39 seconds
Hong Kong's Protests One Year On
This week’s ChinaTalk featured Antony Dapiran going deep with me on the origin, meaning, and legacy of the 2019 Hong Kong protests. We drew parallels and contrasts throughout between HK and Black Lives Matter.
If you'd like to help keep the show going, please consider subscribing to my Patreon.
An excerpt:
What continues to be most tragic for Hong Kong is that the government really has demonized and made enemies of the people who support the protesters and the protesters themselves.
Indeed, Carrie Lam, herself has described them as enemies of the people just yesterday. And so the government has made an enemy of an entire generation of its youth and also the engine of its service-led economy, the professional middle class.
It’s obviously against the economic self-interest of Hong Kong, but also it's just a tragedy for a government, to divide its own community in that way and to treat the best and brightest of the community as enemies, effectively forcing them either to leave or condemning them to a lifetime of being marginalized and feeling, undervalued and, and, and not, not an accepted part of their own society.
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6/17/2020 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 5 seconds
Evan Osnos on Tiananmen, Protests in America and Political Leadership
Evan Osnos is a correspondent for the New Yorker. We discussed his pieces on the protests in DC and coverage of US-China.
See here for video of the MLK speech.
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6/8/2020 • 44 minutes, 45 seconds
GM Corn Smuggled in Popcorn Bags: An Industrial Espionage Parable
What do you get when you take a Chinese national, a rental car, rural Iowa, and a $52 billion seed business hanging in the balance? Said one review, "not since Alfred Hitchcock's in North by Northwest has a cornfield produced so much excitement."
Mara Hvistendahl's recent book, "The Scientist and the Spy," delivers a compelling narrative diving deep into the nature of Chinese industrial espionage and America's response.
Do consider donating to the ChinaTalk Patreon.
I also write a weekly newsletter translating and analyzing Chinese new media. This past week's edition focused on how US anti-Huawei measures are leading to calls to invade Taiwan and take TSMC.
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5/28/2020 • 48 minutes, 36 seconds
AI Basic Research in China and the US
Who's spending big? Does it matter? Zach Arnold and Ashwin Acharya join the show to discuss their reports on Chinese public sector AI R&D spending and strengthening America's AI workforce.
Do note this episode was recorded in late February.
Exit music Tricky Tricky by NINEONE / CREAM D / Yoken_Official / YYKBZ / WR/OC
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5/22/2020 • 30 minutes, 6 seconds
Health QR Codes and the rise of a 'Digital Leviathan'
Dan Grover joins the show to discuss his recent piece on how Chinese tech firms have handled coronavirus, I read from a recent ChinaTalk newsletter on how some mainland commentators fear that QR Health Codes will create a 'digital leviathan,' and Ravish Bhatia of the Use Case podcast shares his coronastory from India.
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5/15/2020 • 42 minutes, 12 seconds
Coronastories 3: Nanjing, Nepal, and Singapore
The legendary Yangyang Cheng discusses how Coronavirus played out in cross-continent conversations with her mother. We'll also hear from Asmod in Nepal and Lambert in Singapore.
In case you haven't heard, I write a newsletter. Recent posts are on US-China and AI chips.
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The closing song was from James Brown's legendary Live at the Apollo Theater, 1962.
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5/6/2020 • 49 minutes, 57 seconds
Forging an Innovation Base Alliance
America has allies with solid tech. But can the US leverage these relationships to help preserve its technological edge over China? In this conversation, building off a recent CNAS report, Dan Kliman, Kristine Lee and Joshua Hitt dive deep into international defense innovation, Japan-China relations, and China's international tech ambitions.
Please consider donating to my Patreon and absolutely subscribe to my newsletter. I just published a two-part series on China's health QR codes and have a great piece on US-China relations coming out next week.
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4/30/2020 • 40 minutes, 5 seconds
Coronastories 2: Philippines, Russia, Taiwan
We're continuing our Coronastories series this week with personal reflections and analysis from friends of ChinaTalk on the current situations in the Philippines, Russia, and Taiwan.
Oh and by the way I have a patreon and newsletter.
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4/23/2020 • 47 minutes, 54 seconds
Coronastories: Dispatches from Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong
This week I'm trying something different. I've been interviewing my friends across China about their Coronavirus experiences, 故事FM style. We start off with Dev from Shanghai who lived through the entire lockdown and has interesting reflections on the lasting effects of social distancing on interpersonal relationships.
Next, I talked with Jen about how Hong Kong has navigated the crisis. Finally, Tianyu, who flew back mid-March to Beijing, discusses mandatory self-quarantine and the process of navigating the bureaucratic mess of QR health codes.
I'm planning on potentially doing a few more of these so do reach out if you feel you have a story you'd like to share, not just about China but Asia more generally. I'm JordanSchneider on wechat, jorschneider@gmail.com or on twitter.
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4/16/2020 • 37 minutes, 23 seconds
Domestic Coronavirus Propaganda and China-Australia Relations
Adam Ni and Yun Jiang are two former Australian government officials who together write Neican(内参), a fantastic new newsletter on Chinese policy and China-Australia relations.
We talk about how the CCP is trying to convince its population that post-coronavirus all is still well on the mainland. We also go into the main flashpoints from an Aussie perspective, focusing in particular on influence campaigns.
I've got a newsletter too!
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4/9/2020 • 42 minutes, 4 seconds
How the Party Takes its Propaganda Global
What are the CCP's international propaganda goals? How is it faring in the battle to define COVID-19's winners and losers? Matt Schrader of the German Marshall Fund's Alliance for Securing Democracy brings the mirth in these dark times. We also go into tech and discrimination, stories from time working at China Daily and SmartAir, as well as Matt's favorite Overwatch characters.
The audio gets better in the second half I promise.
ChinaTalk fans now have a Discord! Please consider donating to my Patreon. And yes, I'm still cranking out issues of the ChinaTalk newsletter.
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4/3/2020 • 54 minutes, 30 seconds
Sinocism's Bill Bishop on the Politics of Coronavirus
Bill Bishop, author of the Sinocism newsletter, comes on the show to discuss the new low in US-China relations. We start off talking about what China's response to coronavirus has taught us about the CCP and then go into the deeper forces behind why the Chinese government has started to blame America for creating the virus. We also touch on China-Taiwan relations, the role Sinocim plays in agenda-setting, as well as binge-able Chinese tv.
Please consider donating to my show's Patreon.
TV shows discussed:
Da Jiang Da He: ENG SUB | Like A Flowing River - EP 01 [Wang Kai, Yang Shuo,Dong Zi Jian]
The Longest Day in Chang An: 【ENG SUB】《长安十二时辰》第1集(易烊千玺 / 雷佳音 / 周一围)| 加入Caravan中文剧场会员,抢先独享全季内容!
Xiao Huan Xi: 小歡喜 01 | A Little Reunion 01(黃磊、海清、陶虹等主演)
Story of Yanxi Palace 延禧攻略 01 | Story of Yanxi Palace 01(秦岚、聂远、佘诗曼、吴谨言等主演)
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3/25/2020 • 43 minutes, 9 seconds
How Chinese Governance Fundamentals Impact Health Care and National Security
How has the distinct nature of local-central relations in the Chinese system impacted its response to coronavirus? To discuss, we have on Ryan Manuel, managing director of Official China, a consultancy that goes deep into CCP regulations and policy.
Ryan previously taught at KHU and ANU as well as worked for the Australian government. Our wide-ranging conversation filled with dashes of dark Aussie humor starts with COVID-19 and SARS and then broadens out into how the history of rural healthcare in China explains dynamics that impeded the initial Chinese response. Next, we focus on how Hu Jintao created a model of managing local central relations that Xi studied and took to the next level by scrapping collective responsibility and working through Party as opposed to government channels.
Also, we're on the Lawfare Network now! Thanks to everyone at SupChina who has contributed to this show over the past years.
SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEWSLETTER! Patreon here.
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3/13/2020 • 1 hour, 27 minutes, 57 seconds
Outraged by the outbreak: Citizen journalism and coronavirus censorship
Tony Lin is a producer at Quartz for the web series Because China and an avid observer of Chinese online communities, such as Weibo. After the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, Tony noticed commentary being widely shared that, in other times, would have been censored immediately.
In this episode, Jordan and Tony create a timeline of the coronavirus, analyze the strikingly candid nature of online discussion in the early days of the outbreak, and explore broader themes of censorship and the role of media in Chinese society.
If you’d like to support ChinaEconTalk, please consider donating to Jordan’s Patreon here.
You can also subscribe to his newsletter at chinaecontalk.substack.com.
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2/5/2020 • 32 minutes, 6 seconds
Tesla’s future in China, technology tensions, and the trade war on ‘pause’
Gordon Orr is a senior adviser at McKinsey & Company and a non-executive board member at both Lenovo and Meituan-Dianping. In this week’s episode of China EconTalk, he and Jordan examine collateral economic damages as a result of the trade war, take a look at the role of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and how it could change in an era of increasing U.S.-China tensions, and forecast Tesla’s future in China, which could be tied to Huawei telecommunications infrastructure in Germany.
4:16: The economic consequences of the trade war
16:42: Industrial policy in China
24:08: Hong Kong financial markets
29:02: Electronic vehicles and Tesla’s Chinese dream
37:26: Chinese consumers don’t want to buy houses
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1/31/2020 • 57 minutes, 41 seconds
Out of the Gobi: Weijian Shan on the Cultural Revolution, economic reform, and U.S.-China ties
How does a bookish Beijing teenager, who found himself stuck for six years planting potatoes in the Gobi Desert, grow up to study with former chair of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen, teach at Wharton, and now lead one of Asia's most successful investment firms? In this episode, Shàn Wěijiàn 单伟建, the chairman and CEO of investment firm PAG Group, and the author of Out of the Gobi: My Story of China and America, tells his personal story of exile during the Cultural Revolution and provides his view on China’s economic transformation.
7:53: Looking back at the Cultural Revolution
23:53: The government’s role in China’s economic development
25:22: Challenges that state-run companies face
42:11: What to make of the protests in Hong Kong
In addition, you can subscribe to the ChinaEconTalk newsletter at chinaecontalk.substack.com.
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1/15/2020 • 53 minutes, 21 seconds
The changing nature of U.S.-China tech competition
Adam Segal, director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), joins Jordan to talk about technology competition between the United States and China. In this episode, they discuss a recent report by CFR titled Innovation and National Security: Keeping Our Edge, which examines the increasingly vexed technology ties between the two countries and the implications of tech nationalism worldwide.
11:44: Undue pressure on Chinese scientists
16:39: Does it matter who invests in research and development?
21:26: Would antitrust regulation impact industry research and development?
30:21: The civil-military divide and Silicon Valley culture
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1/9/2020 • 40 minutes, 35 seconds
Online discourse and censorship in China
Jane Li, a Chongqing native and a technology reporter for Quartz, talks through some of the differences between Twitter and its Chinese equivalent, Weibo. She also discusses the website Douban, the lively and open discussion among its young users, and the threat that looming censorship poses to it. In addition, she provides details on why some Chinese internet users have turned their backs on Huawei in the wake of an extended jail term served by one of its employees.
4:10: Twitter vs. Weibo — what’s the difference?
6:52: The “China Twitter” maelstrom
11:06: Online discourse regarding the Hong Kong protests
14:23: What is “251” and how does it relate to Huawei?
20:04: The Douban online ecosystem
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12/11/2019 • 38 minutes, 26 seconds
A walk down Chang’an Avenue, with Jonathan Chatwin
Can one street tell China’s story? Jonathan Chatwin, author of Long Peace Street: A Walk in Modern China, takes listeners on a tour of Chang’an Avenue, a major artery for traffic in central Beijing, which was also the scene of several critical moments in China’s modern history. Jordan and Jonathan discuss the symbolism of national buildings and monuments along it, and the role of the street as a place of protest and a part of China’s revolutionary history.
11:05: Baobaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery
20:22: The Beijing Museum
32:26: The Forbidden City
44:51: Chang’an Avenue, the sterile highway
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11/27/2019 • 1 hour, 9 minutes, 9 seconds
China tech policy and competition, with Paul Triolo
Paul Triolo, practice head of geotechnology at the Eurasia Group, sat down with Jordan to address some of the questions at the center of the U.S.-China tech relationship: the future of 5G research and innovation, persecutions of researchers and scientists from China based in the U.S., security concerns surrounding Huawei and Chinese-funded communications infrastructure, and more.
6:38: Current blind spots in Chinese tech policy
18:30: What does a “good” tech policy look like?
32:09: Is change possible under Xi Jinping?
42:16: What makes Huawei competitive?
The Eurasia Group has no clients in the People's Republic of China.
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11/20/2019 • 58 minutes, 5 seconds
Reinterpreting Beijing and its history
Jeremiah Jenne, history teacher, writer, and the man behind Beijing by Foot, is in the guest seat this week. He speaks with Jordan about the changes — both tangible and intangible — that Beijing has undergone in the last few decades. They chat about how Chinese history is reinterpreted through the lenses of different regimes, the ways in which this new history is presented to the world, and Beijing’s modernizing cityscape and the varied reactions it is met with.
10:57: Out with the old, in with the new
15:17: What to make of the Qing dynasty, with help from the CCP
27:40: An age of censorship
29:37: History is different in Beijing and Taipei
Use promo code ChinaEconTalk for 20% off at https://www.outlier-linguistics.com/
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11/13/2019 • 49 minutes, 23 seconds
Chasing the dragon: Fentanyl, China, and the opioid crisis
Puzzled by rising drug deaths at raves in the United States, author and investigative journalist Ben Westhoff set out to find answers. A Google search for “Buy fentanyl in China” took him down a rabbit hole that led to a face-to-face meeting with the CEO of a company selling fentanyl on Skype “all day long” and a drug lab in Shanghai. Ben tells Jordan the remarkable story.
5:06: The digital rabbit hole
9:20: Want to make fentanyl? Just Google it.
13:57: Between Heisenberg and Pfizer
22:17: How suppliers dodge U.S. Customs
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10/23/2019 • 52 minutes, 4 seconds
Hashing out China tech with Lulu Chen
Bloomberg technology reporter Lulu Chen gives the scoop on the tech world in China: what’s to come for Alibaba under newly minted CEO Daniel Zhang, the long-standing grudge Meituan CEO Wang Xing holds against Jack Ma, the Communist Party’s growing presence within technology companies, and her own views on reporting on tech in China.
2:07: Hong Kong protests
24:03: Daniel Zhang’s new venture
28:11: Meituan drama
36:22: International expansion of Chinese tech
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10/16/2019 • 41 minutes, 25 seconds
An Alternative Vision of U.S.-China Relations with Jake Sullivan
Jake Sullivan served in the Obama administration as National Security Advisor to Vice President Joe Biden and Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department. He currently teaches at Yale Law School. In this episode, Sullivan discusses his perspectives on the current U.S.-China relationship, his experiences working in the Obama administration and on the campaign trail with Hillary Clinton campaign, and the ways our relationships with other governments around the world are changing under Trump.
What to listen for on this week's ChinaEconTalk:
5:05: Reflections on the Obama years
19:03: A case for internationalism
27:46: Doing more to achieve less with China
45:20: The direction of U.S. foreign policy
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10/9/2019 • 51 minutes, 28 seconds
U.S. Foreign Policy in Asia
Mira Rapp-Hooper, senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, provides an overview of the history of U.S. foreign policy from Washington’s farewell address to the modern day. She also discusses the implications of a rising China for the future of U.S. alliances.
3:20: The costs of going it alone
10:41: Cold War “Great Power” competition
36:32: The Taiwan Strait crisis
41:47: Trump and the future of U.S. alliances
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10/2/2019 • 52 minutes, 37 seconds
ChinaEconTalk, Live from Washington, D.C.
ChinaEconTalk is live from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C., with Martijn Rasser, a senior fellow in the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. Host Jordan Schneider sits down with Martijn to discuss a few of the more contentious topics surrounding the ongoing friction between the United States and China, including rare earths, the strategic implications of 5G, concerns about Huawei software and security, and global ICT standard setting. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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9/25/2019 • 52 minutes, 49 seconds
Tarriffs, taxes, and trade: Doug Irwin on ChinaEconTalk
Douglas Irwin is the John French Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College and the author of Clashing Over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy. On this episode, Irwin provides an overview to the history of U.S. trade policy from the 18th century to the modern day, highlighting significant legislation as well as the formation of important intergovernmental organizations that have sprung up along the way.
19:53: On the flawed logic behind the Tariff Act of 1930, and the parallels with similarly problematic thinking in the modern day: “There’s absolutely a parallel there because some Democrats in Congress said, ‘You know, we ought to really think about this carefully, and not just our domestic interest but also our export interests, and other countries might retaliate.’ And basically, the reaction of most members of Congress was, Republicans at the time, ‘No, we don’t have to worry about that. This is a domestic piece of legislation, it doesn’t really concern other countries. They’re not going to retaliate.’ And, of course, they did.”
39:40: Doug discusses the tips and tricks behind one example of “tariff engineering”: “The tariffs applied to motorcycles with piston displacements of 700cc and above. What Honda started doing is producing a 699cc version. Now the difference [between the two] is imperceptible, but just by changing that one cubic centimeter, it changed the whole tariff treatment and you avoided a 45 percent tariff and were assessed at a much, much lower rate.”
Jordan will be hosting his first-ever live recording of ChinaEconTalk at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, D.C., at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, September 19. Be sure to drop by Mission Dupont afterward for dinner or drinks!
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9/12/2019 • 1 hour, 9 minutes, 11 seconds
How China Can Take Over Tech
Douglas Fuller is an associate professor in the Department of Asian and International Studies at the City University of Hong Kong and the author of Paper Tiger, Hidden Dragons: Firms and the Political Economy of China’s Technological Development. In his book, Fuller explores a question that has hounded heads of state around the world for decades: How can a developing country get ahead in the tech sector? Drawing on the results of 499 interviews from experts over the course of 15 years, Fuller discusses China’s answer to this question in the context of its attempts to dominate the global semiconductor industry. Fuller and Jordan also touch on the transformative impact of the trade war and the concept of technology transfer and their implications for the immediate future of the Chinese tech sector.
Jordan’s newsletter is now available for sign-ups: chinaecontalk.substack.com. In the past few weeks, he’s translated articles on topics like the troubled future of VPNs in China, the role of “operations” in Chinese internet companies, and the rise of a cheese tea Starbucks slayer.
What to listen for in this week’s ChinaEconTalk:
27:38: Chinese tech companies are often portrayed as monolithic, but in reality, the financial decisions that brought companies like ZTE and Huawei to the international stage are significantly different: “[Huawei CEO and founder] Ren Zhengfei — there was a method to his madness. He decided to forgo what were these rational incentive structures to just embrace state procurement and instead took a very high risk strategy of very early on looking abroad for contracts, for markets because he really wanted to hone Huawei’s capabilities by competing against the best… In contrast, a firm like ZTE was more than happy to be much more reliant on the Chinese marketplace when it went abroad. It sort of very much followed this [path of taking] China Development Bank subsidized loans to sell equipment in African countries where the leading foreign firms were not interested because the price points were so low.”
41:16: What should U.S. policy look like in regards to Chinese tech policy? In considering this question, Fuller notes: “Investment binges [by China] have wrecked certain markets… Now the United States is extrapolating forward. What if they do this in memory chips or other semiconductor products? Those two areas are of high concern, particularly when thinking about, ‘Well, are these natural outcomes, or not?’ And I would say the investment binges and the levels of subsidization of a lot of industrial investment in China, this obviously didn’t just happen because the market dictated it.”
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9/4/2019 • 56 minutes, 1 second
Tech triangles and AI ethics: Danit Gal on Chinese AI
Danit Gal is a former Yenching Scholar and coauthor of a recent paper, “Perspectives and Approaches to AI Ethics: East Asia.” On this episode, Gal discusses how Japanese, South Korean, and Chinese experts are forging new paths in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), exploring societal applications — and the unexpected drawbacks of “female” virtual assistants. Gal also explains the tech connections between China and Israel, and the possible impact of the U.S.-China trade war on this relationship.
What to listen for on this week’s ChinaEconTalk:
15:56: Gal on her trip to Longquan Monastery in Beijing: “They basically have a Chinese robot monk, named Xian’er. I spoke to him and he gives you all these responses and talks to you about the deep meaning of Buddhist ceremonies… And then I asked him, ‘Who is your master?’ And then he answered to me very clearly, ‘The data is my master.’ And the monks freaked out — they [said] ‘No, no, no. We give him the data. We are the data. We feed him the ceremonies, and everything he has to say!’”
42:15: In a recent piece, Gal wrote that trade and technology tensions between the U.S. and China present both challenges and opportunities for Israel: “One clear way is that it’s really disrupting supply chains in that you would have to choose your alliances in order to get certain components at a good price and time. We’re getting to the point where a lot of companies are not allowed to trade directly and that significantly adds costs and uncertainty… An upside to that is actually that because American companies are not allowed to directly trade with China, they go through technical middlemen.”
Jordan will be in New York and Washington, D.C., this September and October, so reach out if you want to meet up! Email him at jorschneider@gmail.com or connect on WeChat using his WeChat ID, jordanschneider.
Oh, and don’t forget to subscribe to chinaecontalk.substack.com!
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8/28/2019 • 52 minutes, 1 second
The View from Chengdu: Freelance Reporting Outside First-Tier Cities
On this episode of ChinaEconTalk, Jordan interviews Lauren Teixeira, a freelance reporter based in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. After what has been a jam-packed few months of China news, Lauren discusses a wide range of topics, from engaging with mainlanders about the anti-Extradition Bill protests in Hong Kong to the downsides of Chinese superblock urban planning. Lauren finishes the interview with a wide-ranging introduction to contemporary pop culture artists in China whose innovation and creativity are helping people to stay inspired at a challenging time.
What to listen for on this week’s ChinaEconTalk:
6:59: Lauren recalls Ian Johnson’s comments to her during their conversation on engaging in political discussions in China: “He said to me, ‘There’s a ceiling for your rhetoric because at some point you can’t tell someone to “look it up” because they can’t look it up.’ Epistemologically you’re not on even ground. And so, if you want to really get into a real discussion with someone, you basically have to redpill them.”
14:41: On K-pop and geopolitics, as China tries to develop its own pop music industry: “It’s half import substitution and half, I think, just a concerted effort to build your own idol industry that you can better control. For example, there would be all these geopolitical conflicts. If something happened in the South China Sea, the Chinese idols would have to go on Korean television and be like, ‘F*** this, I’m a patriot.’ There was once a Taiwanese idol who waved a Taiwanese flag on a Korean reality show and she had to absolutely bend the knee to get back into the good graces of China, which was putting pressure on her agency.”
Jordan will be in New York and Washington, D.C. this September and October so reach out if you want to meet up! Email him at jorschneider@gmail.com or connect on WeChat using his WeChat ID, jordanschneider.
Oh, and don’t forget to subscribe to chinaecontalk.substack.com! You've all signed up already, haven't you?
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8/21/2019 • 44 minutes, 4 seconds
Reform and Opening with Soviet Characteristics: Russian Perspectives on China’s Rise
This week on ChinaEconTalk, Jordan interviews Chris Miller, associate professor of international history at Tufts University and a specialist on Russian politics, economics, and foreign policy. Drawing on some of his recent publications, Miller discusses topics ranging from Sino-Soviet collaboration and competition to their respective economic and political reform programs in the 1970s and 80s. Miller concludes by exploring the significance of the collapse of the USSR in terms of the impression it made on Chinese officials, including Xi Jinping, and what this may suggest about the future of Chinese politics and the ongoing Sino-Russian relationship. As Xi himself is reported to have said during a closed-door meeting in 2012: “Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Soviet Communist Party collapse? … Finally, all it took was one quiet word from Gorbachev to declare the dissolution of the Soviet Communist Party, and a great party was gone. In the end nobody was a real man, nobody came out to resist.”
What to listen for on this week’s ChinaEconTalk:
34:17: On the Soviet origins of Deng’s Reform and Opening strategy: “There was a period of learning [by China] from the Soviet Union in the 1950s right after the revolution...Deng picked that back up to a certain extent in the late 1970s...the goal was to give space to private enterprises in the countryside and to give space to farmers to operate without central Party control...Deng saw this and said, ‘I wonder if we can try something like this at home in China, and we can use Lenin to justify it.’”
52:15: “The CCP interpretation, which is also the interpretation of many in Russia today, is that it’s plausible to have had a strong man reform the economy but keep the party and the state as they were, and in my research that just seems extraordinarily implausible…in some ways the Xi Jinping view is the ‘have your cake and eat it too’ version, and the reality is the history doesn’t support that counterfactual.”
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8/15/2019 • 1 hour, 4 minutes, 6 seconds
East Asian AI: Researching Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Tech in Canada
This week on ChinaEconTalk, Jordan speaks with Dongwoo Kim, a postgraduate research fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada who specializes in AI. Dongwoo discusses his research on the progress of AI development in Japan, Korea, and China, including the challenges faced by Chinese AI researchers overseas, and the need for greater tech literacy in general. What to listen for on this week’s ChinaEconTalk: 4:49: Misconceptions abound when it comes to AI, as do references to “Skynet” from the Terminator movies. “Strictly speaking, that’s not what we’re talking about,” Dongwoo says. “People have such a misunderstanding about this, and also the way in which we’re using AI now, it’s kind of subtle, right? It’s used by Google, it’s used by Facebook. If you don’t have the tech literacy, you’re not always going to be aware of it. So I think there’s a potential that if we don’t educate people about what AI really is and why this matters, we might get to a situation where people don’t really have a clear conception of what this AI thing is when it will be affecting so many aspects of their lives.” 32:36: On Chinese AI researchers in Canada: “[Problems are] not as overt as in the U.S. I think, if anything, the concerns that have materialized are if there’s funding within a Canadian postsecondary institution that is tied to an American partner, that may compromise their ability to continue working on that research project for a researcher of Chinese ethnicity. But there has been no concrete move to do that in Canada.” Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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8/9/2019 • 38 minutes, 18 seconds
The Party in Cyberspace: China’s Digital Ecosystem
This week, Jordan speaks with Graham Webster, a China digital economy fellow and coordinating editor of the DigiChina project at New America. He was previously a senior fellow and lecturer at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center. The two talked about Graham’s work at DigiChina, artificial intelligence in China and its complex legal infrastructure, the facts (and fiction) behind China’s controversial social credit system, and the potential for a new cold war between the U.S. and China. What to listen for on this week’s ChinaEconTalk: 10:23: “If the Chinese government wants to step on Huawei or somebody to get access to data, they’re not going to need this particular provision of law to do it. I think it’s a similar case with VPNs and these cross-border data rules. The pretty clear intent behind these rules is to expand on an increasingly detailed regime for protecting Chinese peoples’ data from abuse by companies or cyber criminals or just breaches due to bad security practices. It could be read in a way that would make VPNs problematic, but there are already other sets of regulations that make VPNs kind of problematic under Chinese law… From my perspective, this would be a very strange way for the Chinese government to try to cut down on VPNs, when they could just go at it directly and say it’s a violation of the principle of cybersovereignty.” 32:59: “In the end, we’re having this global discussion and people around the world are realizing how unaccountable various institutions and businesses are when they use automation. And there’s both real things going on in China, especially in Xinjiang, and a bunch of maybe slightly exaggerated or imagined things going on that capture people's imaginations about what could go wrong… I really would like it for people to be better informed about the realities of, for example, social credit because — my [former] colleague Jeremy Daum likes to say sometimes: ‘There are plenty of actual Chinese government offenses against human rights and against the dignity and well-being of Chinese citizens; we don’t need to invent other ones. We should focus on what’s actually happening.’” Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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7/31/2019 • 53 minutes, 36 seconds
Little Red Book, Big Red Ideas: Part 2 of A Global History of Maoism
This week, in part 2 of a special two-part edition of ChinaEconTalk, Jordan interviews Professor Julia Lovell, author of the recently published book on Mao’s international legacy entitled Maoism: A Global History. In this episode, Lovell recounts the ways in which Maoism truly started going global in the 1950s and 1960s. With some prompting courtesy of the Chinese government’s propaganda machine, self-described Maoist groups sprang up in Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Western Europe, and even the U.S. Lovell explains how groups around the world interpreted the works and words of Mao in various ways and with varying results — from Black Panthers hosting study sessions of Mao’s Little Red Book in the U.S. to members of the Shining Path who espoused a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology as they committed acts of guerilla warfare in Peru. Sign up here for the ChinaEconTalk newsletter. Learn more about CLI here and use the promo code 'jordan' for $100 off any program. Quotes to listen for on this week’s episode: 21:19: Lovell describes the “counterculture craze” of the 1960s in Western Europe and the U.S., and the appeal of Maoism to such groups. “Student protestors, for example, who were dissatisfied with their universities and with their governments identified — or misidentified — Mao’s Cultural Revolution as a youth protest, and adopted its slogans such as ‘To rebel is justified’ (造反有理 zàofǎn yǒulǐ) or ‘Bombard the headquarters’ (炮打司令部 pàodǎ sīlìngbù) in their own revolts and demonstrations… Many Western radicals felt solidarity with Mao’s China, which was America’s number one detractor through this time. And this really followed the logic of ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend.’” 34:13: Lovell tells the story of one of Mao Zedong’s generals, operating under the pseudonym of Mafaxian, who was sent to Zambia in an effort to recruit and indoctrinate lieutenants loyal to the political and militaristic precepts of Maoism. His mission was ultimately a failure, with Mafaxian feeling “embittered” toward the end of his years-long tenure. Lovell explains how this oral history is a “perfect grassroots example of how limited the possibilities of China’s ability to export its model were, despite the huge amounts of generosity and largesse.” Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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7/23/2019 • 1 hour, 5 minutes, 59 seconds
Little Red Book, Big Red Ideas: Part 1 of A Global History of Maoism
This week, in part 1 of a special two-part edition of ChinaEconTalk, Jordan interviews Professor Julia Lovell, author of the recently published book on Mao’s international legacy entitled Maoism: A Global History. In this episode, Lovell introduces the core tenets of Maoist thought and its complex impact on both the Chinese Communist Party and other, offshoot devotees around the world. She outlines the key events in Mao’s life, the events that helped shaped his ideology, his idea of “violent, tumultuous world revolution,” and the friction during the Cold War that eventually culminated in the Sino-Soviet split. Sign up here for the ChinaEconTalk newsletter. Learn more about CLI here and use the promo code 'jordan' for $100 off any program. Quotes to listen for in this episode: 15:10: “Maoism, although it has this singular name, it doesn’t actually correspond to a single, unitary phenomenon...it’s a set of ideas and practices that is living and breathing that has been translated and mistranslated across different decades and across many different regions. And above all, it’s a set of often very contradictory ideas. And this is no coincidence because Mao himself was a great admirer of the idea of contradiction. He saw contradictions as possessing a kind of primal energy. He saw them as something that drove history on. So when there were contradictions in his own ideas or when he perceived them around him, he tended to embrace them. Inconsistency didn’t bother him.” 43:48: “The intellectual, political nub of it is that Mao feels that after Stalin’s death, Khrushchev is losing the Soviet Union, losing their revolutionary bite. They’re making nice with the United States and they’re turning their backs on the idea of a violent, tumultuous world revolution.” 46:03: “Throughout his career and particularly toward the end of his life, he consistently saw himself as a rebel, as an outlier, as someone who made trouble. You see this very strongly in the Cultural Revolution, but you also see this in the way he tries and often succeeds to provoke the Soviets.” Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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7/17/2019 • 1 hour, 1 minute, 26 seconds
Learning to listen: China's billion-dollar podcast industry
While it may be a pipe dream for ChinaEconTalk to ever merit a billion-dollar price tag, in China, podcast “unicorns” are everywhere. Companies like Ximalaya and Yudao have multibillion-dollar valuations, but feature startlingly different content from what consumers expect in the West. What drives these differences, and what does the future hold for spoken audio in China? To answer these questions, Yi Yang, a young podcast host and founder of the Mandarin-language podcast startup JustPod 播客一下, joins Jordan to explain how, after the advent of podcasts in China, people are finally “learning to listen.” Yi Yang's original podcast is called LeftRight 忽左忽右. His two branded podcasts are Startup Insider 创业内幕 and Bessie’s Notes 贝望录. ChinaEconTalk's newsletter is dope. Sign up here at www.chinaecontalk.substack.com. The latest issues include an analysis of why Amazon lost in China and learn about the bane of China’s automobile industry. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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7/10/2019 • 50 minutes
Of cell phones and seed prices: The Chinese legal system in theory and practice
This week on ChinaEconTalk, Jordan speaks with Donald Clarke, a specialist in Chinese law and the David Weaver Research Professor at George Washington University. Following a thorough introduction to the structure of the Chinese legal system starting from the Qing dynasty, Clarke discusses a provocative article he recently co-authored, Who owns Huawei?, which discusses in detail the legal ownership of Huawei Technology Co., Ltd. Clarke also deconstructs Huawei’s own legal arguments regarding whether its products (and, by extension, customers’ data) is subject to the Cybersecurity Law of the PRC and the National Intelligence Law of the PRC. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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6/21/2019 • 57 minutes, 18 seconds
The Future of U.S.-China Relations: Is ‘Collective Pressure' the Answer?
This week, in the second installment of the series “The Future of U.S.-China Relations” on ChinaEconTalk, Jordan speaks with Professor Hal Brands of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Zack Cooper, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. In addition to offering some prescriptions for relieving some of the tension points in the U.S.-China relationship more generally, the pair discuss the major takeaways from their co-published paper in the Texas National Security Review, “After Responsible Stakeholder, What? Debating America’s China Policy.” Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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6/14/2019 • 53 minutes, 20 seconds
From Beijing to Cairo: Peter Hessler on What Makes a Real Revolution
This week on ChinaEconTalk, Jordan speaks with veteran journalist Peter Hessler. Peter spent seven years in China as a correspondent for The New Yorker, followed by five years in Egypt. In this episode, Peter discusses his long and prolific career reporting on the society, politics, and culture of these two dynamic nations; he also considers the similarities and differences in the ways the Chinese and Egyptian people make sense of their respective places in the world based on their rich historical and cultural legacies. In addition, Peter reflects on the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and contrasts it with the 2013 mass protests and eventual coup d'état in Cairo. Check out the ChinaEconTalk newsletter here, and please leave us a review on iTunes! Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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6/7/2019 • 1 hour, 18 minutes, 36 seconds
How Local Bureaucrats Helped Create Chinese Tech Giants
Why did Shenzhen, a backwater fishing village, spawn the likes of industry leaders ZTE, Huawei, and Lenovo, while Suzhou, which previously scored massive investments from top “dragon head” foreign firms like Samsung and Philips, failed to spawn domestic innovation? What role did FDI and the local bureaucrats in charge of economic development play? And what lessons does this story hold for today's Chinese industrial policy as well as development and innovation economics more broadly? For answers, we turn to Ling Chen, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and the author of the recent book Manipulating Globalization: The Influence of Bureaucrats on Business in China. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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5/30/2019 • 1 hour, 5 minutes, 23 seconds
The Future of U.S.-China Economic Relations: The Case for Change
This week, ChinaEconTalk launches its “Future of U.S.-China Economic Relations” miniseries with an interview featuring Melanie Hart, a senior fellow and the director of China Policy at the Center for American Progress. At the Center, Melanie specializes in U.S.-China foreign policy and explores new opportunities for bilateral cooperation on topics such as energy, climate change, and cross-border investment. In this episode, she discusses the central arguments in two of her recent articles, "Mapping China's global governance ambitions" and "Limit, leverage, and compete: A new strategy on China,” and lays out her vision for what progressive U.S. policy making in response to new political trends in China might look like. Check out the ChinaEconTalk newsletter here, and please leave us a review on iTunes! Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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5/22/2019 • 55 minutes, 4 seconds
Harnessing the Educational Power of AI
Over 100 million Chinese adults have used the Liulishuo (流利说 liúlì shuō) app to learn English through AI-powered tutoring. This week on ChinaEconTalk, host Jordan Schneider interviews Liulishuo co-founder and CTO Ben Hu about the company’s journey from its early days to its recent listing on NASDAQ. Along the way, they discuss the current state of development of Liulishuo’s speech-recognition capabilities, general strategies for Chinese companies seeking to succeed abroad, and the motivational stories of some of the app’s users. Please take a moment to review ChinaEconTalk on iTunes. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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5/17/2019 • 28 minutes, 10 seconds
Huawei May, But How?: China's Role in Global IT Infrastructure
Is Huawei unfairly maligned or rightly feared? Are the tech supply chains running through China a marvel of 21st-century globalization, or dangerous oversight on the part of U.S. tech firms and the federal government? Today’s guest on ChinaEconTalk — Nick Weaver, a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute and a lecturer at UC Berkeley — provides some clarity. Huawei and other Chinese tech titans have found themselves on the defensive, pushing back against allegations of system backdoors and Chinese government influence. In layman’s terms, Nick explains some of the technical aspects behind the fears that have arisen around China’s role in tech supply chains and information technology infrastructure around the world. Please take a moment to review ChinaEconTalk on iTunes! Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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5/8/2019 • 47 minutes, 2 seconds
Aerial Acrobatics: China's Aviation Industry
This week on ChinaEconTalk, host Jordan Schneider discusses China’s aviation industry with Neil Thomas, Research Associate at the Paulson Institute’s in-house think tank, MacroPolo. Focusing on Boeing’s long history in China, they explore how the company’s interactions with the state have actually proven to be a microcosm of the larger U.S.-China relationship — from early involvement navigating business in the Mao era to the more recent period of strategic competition. Jordan and Neil reflect on this remarkable evolution, and debate whether China’s dependence on U.S. aviation technology is sustainable or even desirable from a Chinese perspective. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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5/1/2019 • 55 minutes, 42 seconds
Red Guards to Red Entrepreneurs: How Mao Era Thought Seeps Into Modern Chinese Business
In this episode of ChinaEconTalk, host Jordan Schneider interviews Professor Christopher Marquis, professor at Cornell’s SC Johnson College of Business. Christopher discusses a few of his recent publications, which focus primarily on how Chinese communist ideology impacts thinking within private sector firms and policy implementation by Chinese politicians. Recommended reading: Also by Christopher Marquis: Waking from Mao’s Dream: Communist Ideological Imprinting and the Internationalization of Entrepreneurial Ventures in China Defending Mao’s Dream: How Politicians’ Ideological Imprinting Affects Firms’ Political Appointment in China. You can subscribe to the ChinaEconTalk newsletter here: chinaecontalk.substack.com. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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4/24/2019 • 41 minutes, 40 seconds
ChinaEconTalk Crossover Episode: China Tech Investor Podcast
This week’s episode is a crossover with the China Tech Investor podcast. Join Jordan in conversation with China Tech Investor co-hosts James Hull and Elliot Zaagman as they discuss their perspectives on Chinese ecommerce, live streaming, fashion, the lessons Facebook is learning from WeChat, and emerging investment opportunities. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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4/18/2019 • 59 minutes, 46 seconds
China's exploited tech workers fight back
This episode of ChinaEconTalk features a discussion with two of the people behind recent, high-profile efforts to mobilize Chinese programmers against labor exploitation via GitHub, the world’s leading software development platform: Suji Yan, CEO of Dimension, and Katt Gu, J.D., Advisor at Asian-Pacific Blockchain Development Association and PhD candidate in informatics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Suji and Katt are on the front lines of a growing movement of thousands protesting working conditions for Chinese tech workers, which are characterized by outrageously long working hours — a practice widely referred to as “996,” shorthand for shops that require staff to work “from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.” In response, Suji and Katt developed and published the “Anti-996 License,” which allows developers to prohibit the use of their code by entities that do not adhere to basic labor standards. The license has been adopted by over 2,000 software projects to date and “liked” over 200,000 times. In addition to discussion their advocacy efforts, in this episode Suji and Katt share their views on the ever-evolving Chinese tech sector, including the history of Linux and the ongoing importance of open-source software development tools. You can subscribe the ChinaEconTalk newsletter at: chinaecontalk.substack.com. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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4/10/2019 • 54 minutes, 54 seconds
Building – and Selling – the Great Firewall
This week on ChinaEconTalk, host Jordan Schneider speaks with James Griffiths, senior producer for CNN International, to discuss his new book, The Great Firewall of China: How to Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet. Together, they trace the history of the internet in China, from the early, heady days of relative freedom through the slow but steady tightening of government controls, and discuss China’s recent efforts to export its comprehensive model of internet censorship. Along the way, they consider questions on a range of issues including the impact of Google and the tireless efforts of netizens to work around online restrictions. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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3/20/2019 • 46 minutes, 39 seconds
One hour, Two Sessions
One hour, Two Sessions China’s Two Sessions, the national annual gathering of the leadership of the People’s Republic of China, will soon be coming to a close. This week on ChinaEconTalk, Jordan sat down with Chris Beddor, a columnist for Reuters Breakingviews, to discuss highlights from this year’s gathering, including state-owned enterprise reform, implications for Made in China 2025, the evolving role of Li Keqiang, and more. Subscribe to the ChinaEconTalk newsletter here. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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3/14/2019 • 51 minutes, 42 seconds
ChinaEconTalk with special guest Russ Roberts
This week's guest is Russ Roberts. He's a research fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and the host of the EconTalk podcast, a weekly interview-based show that’s vaguely about economics but that has, over time, evolved into an extended meditation on the human condition. Its diverse topics in the last few weeks have included Solzhenitsyn, the 2008 financial crisis, and gratitude. Even though this conversation will have little or nothing to do with China, seeing as Russ served as the inspiration for the ChinaEconTalk podcast, I hope you all find it interesting. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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3/6/2019 • 54 minutes, 53 seconds
Rubber ducks and semiconductors: Navigating China’s legal system
“The champagne days are over,” writes Dan Harris, reflecting on how the tone of his China Law Blog has evolved since its creation in 2006. As the founder of Harris Bricken, an international law firm with a major China presence, Dan has a unique window into how macro changes in China’s economy and trade relations play out within a law firm. In this conversation, Jordan and Dan discuss common misconceptions about the law in China; memorable Chinese legal scams; joint ventures in China; day-to-day operations of an international law firm in the country; intellectual property cases and enforcement within the Chinese legal system on the mainland. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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2/27/2019 • 1 hour
Diplomatic bookkeeping with Ryan Hass
This week’s guest on ChinaEconTalk is Ryan Hass, a David M. Rubenstein Fellow in the Brookings Institution’s Foreign Policy program, who is jointly appointed to the John L. Thornton China Center and the Center for East Asia Policy Studies. From 2013 to 2017, he served as the director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia at the National Security Council (NSC) during President Obama’s second term. Ryan offers reflections on his time at the NSC; the diplomatic strategies and objectives regarding U.S.-China relations during his time in the White House; elaboration on an article he co-authored at Brookings titled “Assessing U.S.-China relations 2 years into the Trump presidency”; and thoughts on the trajectory of the bilateral relationship under the current administration. Check out our newsletter at www.chinaecontalk.substack.com. Also, join the fan club and rate ChinaEconTalk on iTunes! Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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2/20/2019 • 34 minutes, 50 seconds
China’s foothold in India’s tech ecosystem
Today, nearly half of the top 100 apps in India's Google Play store are made by Chinese companies. After past failures to enter the Indian tech market, what's driving China tech's sudden success on the subcontinent? How have new Chinese companies like Bytedance and Xiaomi been able to localize more successfully than the likes of Tencent in the early 2010s? And just how seriously do Chinese firms take issues like child porn and fake news in India? To explore these topics, we spoke with Shadma Shaikh, a writer at Factor Daily. She and Jordan examine the multiple different aspects of China’s growing presence in India’s technology space. They also discuss the successes and failures of Chinese tech companies in India, the strategies that helped those companies find success, and the unique features of Indian culture (such as multiple languages), which have created difficulties for Western and Chinese tech companies that are eager to gain access to the Indian tech market. ChinaEconTalk is open for sponsorships! Reach out on Twitter or LinkedIn for opportunities to connect with over 2,000 listeners who are passionate about China’s economy. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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2/15/2019 • 35 minutes, 52 seconds
The Obama era of U.S.-China economic relations
How did the U.S.-China economic relationship evolve during the Obama administration? Are the economic tensions we see today between the two countries a product of inevitable forces, or more contingent on the choices of the Trump and Xi administrations? To discuss these topics and more, we have on today’s show Caroline Atkinson, who served as President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser for international economics. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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2/6/2019 • 32 minutes, 14 seconds
A ‘Qianlong’ look back at China’s economic history
How does autocratic repression impact societies? Can the legacy of political repression ripple out across centuries, creating a vicious autocratic cycle? Today, on ChinaEconTalk, we're going back to the Qing dynasty — the time of the Qianlong Emperor, and before — to find out. Our guest is Melanie Meng Xue, a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Economics and the Center for Economic History at Northwestern University, whose recent paper on the topic can be found here. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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1/30/2019 • 45 minutes, 56 seconds
Changing tides in 2019, with Gordon Orr
“The U.S.-China equilibrium of the past 20 years has gone,” declares Gordon Orr in his recent piece on what to expect in China in 2019. So what will replace it? What impact will the increasingly activist Chinese government have on the broader economy? And what broader reflections does a 30-year China veteran have about recent changes in China? Orr is currently a director emeritus at McKinsey, having previously helped open the firm’s Beijing office and led its Greater China practice. He is also a board member of Lenovo and Meituan Dianping. Check out the new ChinaEconTalk newsletter here. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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1/23/2019 • 49 minutes, 54 seconds
The world’s largest video game industry
China’s video game market is the world’s largest. Over 600 million people play video games in China, and collectively, they spend over $40 billion a year on games. This episode, featuring Abacus reporter Josh Ye and localization expert Frankie Huang, explores the market as well as gaming culture in China. Check out our newsletter exploring the best long-form Chinese reporting on tech and business at chinaecontalk.substack.com. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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1/16/2019 • 48 minutes, 51 seconds
Chinese Policymaking Made Easy with Trivium China
Chinese politics is boring and confusing. Or is it? This week Jordan speaks with Andrew Polk and Trey McArver, economics and politics specialists at Trivium China. The three discuss the size of the Chinese bureaucracy, how policy is formed and implemented, and the Chinese economy. Check out the Trivium China's daily tip sheet for "a cheeky dose of China analysis" each morning. Sign up to the recently launched ChinaEconTalk newsletter, a weekly look into Chinese-language sources on business, tech, and the broader economy. Feel free to out to Jordan directly on Twitter, LinkedIn, or on wechat at jordanschneider. And lastly, scan here to join the ChinaEconTalk wechat group: Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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1/3/2019 • 43 minutes, 20 seconds
The Chinese Financial Crisis That Never Came, with Logan Wright
Foreign investors have lost billions expecting a Chinese financial crisis that hasn't come yet. So what gives? According to the Rhodium Group's Logan Wright, it's not China's domestic savings rate or RMB-denominated debt that’s keeping the economy afloat, but rather the government's credibility. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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12/13/2018 • 1 hour, 5 minutes, 18 seconds
Daniel Kurtz-Phelan on George Marshall’s China Mission
Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, the executive editor of Foreign Affairs, is the author of the recent book The China Mission: George Marshall's Unfinished War, 1945–1947. George Marshall, World War II hero and creator of the Marshall Plan, spent 1945-47 drinking baijiu with Mao and playing croquet with Chiang Kai-shek, fighting to stave off a civil war. Was the “loss of China” to the CCP inevitable? Did Marshall, with his strategy of forcing reconciliation on the Nationalists and Communists, in any way contribute to it? And what can we learn from Marshall's expedition to China about the limits of American influence abroad? If you have a professional opportunity you think Jordan might be a good fit for, please reach out to him at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jorschneider/, jorschneider@gmail.com, or JordanSchneider on WeChat. Thanks so much! Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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12/5/2018 • 56 minutes, 44 seconds
China's Domestic Sports Market With Mark Dreyer
China's government aims to create a $500 billion sports industry by 2020. But how are those ambitions playing out on the ground in the Chinese basketball and soccer leagues? There's more to sports in China than the well-known problems of exorbitant transfer fees and match fixing, but with the government apparently unable to resist interfering in private leagues, does China have much hope for ever developing world-class teams? SupChina columnist and longtime China sports watcher Mark Dreyer gives his take. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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11/20/2018 • 46 minutes, 17 seconds
How Chinese Firms Succeed and Fail at Internationalizing (Featuring Bytedance)
What is Bytedance and how does it make its money? How do politics and culture get in the way of Chinese firms' internationalization efforts? What can Chinese phones in Africa and electric buses in LA teach us about localization challenges? Elliott Zaagman, co-host of TechNode's China Tech Investor podcast, takes on these issues for the latest episode of ChinaEconTalk. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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11/13/2018 • 1 hour, 3 minutes, 54 seconds
KFC, the Business of Propaganda, and the 'Toilet Revolution'
Why is KFC so big in China? What is the “Toilet Revolution” and why does it matter? How does Chinese propaganda work? How have bicycles’ role in Chinese society evolved over time? Neil Thomas of MacroPolo takes on all this in ChinaEconTalk’s latest show. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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11/6/2018 • 1 hour, 4 minutes, 36 seconds
Matt Sheehan on Google in China
What is the history of Google in China? Does the company have any hope of bringing its search engine back into the Chinese market? How does China’s development of artificial intelligence stack up against the rest of the world’s? To answer these questions, Matt Sheehan of MacroPolo makes his triumphant return to ChinaEconTalk. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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11/1/2018 • 51 minutes, 34 seconds
When Trade Wars Turned Bloody: The Opium War with Stephen Platt
When it came to trade wars, the British didn't mess around. Four steam-powered battleships sent by the English to force China to change its trade policy in the mid-19th century changed the course of history. But how did they end up fighting the Chinese in the first place, and what are the contemporary echoes of this historical trade fight? Stephen Platt, the author of the recent Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age, answers these questions and more on the latest episode of ChinaEconTalk. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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10/24/2018 • 1 hour, 12 minutes, 48 seconds
Tencent's History and Future with Matthew Brennan
Matt Brennan, professional speaker and co-host of China Tech Talk, comes on the show to discuss the history and evolution of China's most popular app, WeChat, as well as threats on the horizon for the company that created it, Tencent. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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10/19/2018 • 52 minutes
David Dollar on U.S.-China financial friction
David Dollar is a senior fellow at the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution. He has previously served as the U.S. Treasury Department emissary to Beijing during the Obama Administration, and the World Bank's country director for China and Mongolia. He discusses his storied career and the recent history of U.S.-China financial relations, including the current trade war's origins in the 2008 financial crisis. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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10/9/2018 • 38 minutes, 36 seconds
China’s Grand AI Ambitions with Jeff Ding
Rhodes Scholar Jeff Ding breaks down how China stacks up to the rest of the world in the race to develop AI. He delves into the connections between Chinese tech companies and government AI targets, AI’s military implications, as well as the ethical considerations of AI applications in China’s police state. We discuss his recent paper “Deciphering China’s AI Dream” as well as recent articles on AI he has translated from Chinese media on his ChinAI newsletter. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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10/3/2018 • 43 minutes, 50 seconds
Trade War Tale of the Tape with Chad Bown
Chad Bown is a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC and cohost of the excellent Trade Talks, a weekly podcast on the economics of international trade policy. In this episode, we discuss the competing grand strategies of US and China as well as their different tactics for executing their trade war policies. We touch on potential internal inconsistencies in Trump's trade outlook, the implications for the USD and RMB, as well as potential endgames. Outtro music by VaVa Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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8/27/2018 • 1 hour, 7 minutes, 22 seconds
Data Policy with Samm Sacks
Guest Samm Sacks Senior Fellow, Technology Policy, Center for Strategic and International Studies @CSIS Samm Sacks | Center for Strategic and International Studies Samm Sacks (@SammSacks) | Twitter Samm Sacks, Senior Fellow at CSIS, is perhaps America's leading expert on Chinese data privacy policy. Yes, you heard that right, the world's most advanced surveillance state has a corporate data privacy policy even more stringent than what's currently on America's books. In this episode, we compare China's new law to the GDPR, what privacy policy means for Chinese tech firms with international ambitions, and the implications of the latest Facebook scandal involving Huawei. ChinaEconTalk is proud to announce that it has recently joined Sinica Podcast Network! For more information, visit SupChina.com Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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8/16/2018 • 30 minutes, 44 seconds
What China Thinks of the Trade War with Chublicopinion's Ma Tianjie
Ma Tianjie, founder of the long-running blog Chublicopinion is perhaps the leading English-language chronicler of Chinese public opinion. In this episode, he discusses the official and popular responses to the trade war, ranging from hard right nationalists calling for a return to Maoist autarchy to liberals thanking Trump for pushing China to open its markets. In his day job, he works for ChinaDialogue, a site that covers Chinese environmental issues. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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5/13/2018 • 53 minutes, 7 seconds
Trump's Trade War Tactics with Chris Balding
(The audio stops beeping after 1 minute I promise!) Chris Balding as a Bloomberg Views contributor and professor based in Shenzhen. In this interview, we discuss two recent posts on his blog Baldingsworld which both make the case for America's hard line stance toward China's economic policies as well as decry Trump's lack of skill in tactical execution. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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5/9/2018 • 1 hour, 11 minutes, 15 seconds
Made in China 2025 and Bytedance with Lorand Laskai
Lorand Laskai is a researcher at a prominent American think tank who recently wrote a piece on the Trump administration's animosity to Xi's Made in China 2025 program. In this episode, we discuss what exactly ticks American policymakers off about the initiative, why Chinese unicorn CEOs related to content have had to issue apologies, what moral calculations foreigners make when deciding to work for firms caught up in these sorts of issues, and the Chinese debate scene. Athena Cao, a Beijing-based industry analyst, also joined us to guest host. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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4/23/2018 • 1 hour, 2 minutes, 41 seconds
How China Learned to WTO with Henry Cao
Guest henry gao henry gao (@henrysgao) | Twitter Prof. Henry Gao is Associate Professor of law (tenured) at Singapore Management University and Dongfang Scholar Chair Professor at Shanghai Institute of Foreign Trade. And co-author alongside Gregory Schaffer of the recent paper China's Rise: How It Took on the U.S. at the WTO. As evidenced by China’s behavior in the recent trade scuffles with the US, it’s clear that Chinese lawyers are far from rubes when it comes to trade. In this interview, we discuss what it took for the PRC to learn to speak the language of international legal trade law and the implications this develompent had both domestically and internationally, particularly in the context of the current US-China trade war. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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4/12/2018 • 41 minutes, 21 seconds
Gaming in China with Charlie Moseley and Chang Jung-Erh
Guest Charlie Moseley Washingtonian in Asia. Predisposed to wanderlust. Charlie Moseley's Personal Website charlie (@justcharlie) | Twitter China's over 600 million gamers contribute to a gaming market that generated $30 billion in 2017. ChinaEconTalk discusses this part of the Chinese economy and society with Charlie Moseley, an independent game developer and longtime resident of Chengdu, and Chang Jung-Erh (Polly), a past intern at Netease Games. Topics include the evolution of the Chinese gaming market, the impact of gaming giants Tencent and Netease, female gamers in China, and Chengdu hip hop. Mentioned in the episode: DJI university robot contest Robomasters and Chengdu-based rapper Kafe-Hu Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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3/19/2018 • 1 hour, 7 seconds
Internet Finance with Martin Chorzempa
Guest Martin Chorzempa Research Fellow, @PIIE. China Econ/Finance, FinTech, Financial Development Martin Chorzempa | PIIE Martin Chorzempa (@ChorzempaMartin) | Twitter Martin Chorzempa of the Peterson Institute is over traditional finance. Instead, spends his time analyzing the wild west of innovative consumer finance in China, a space full of unicorns, ponzi schemes, and overworked regulators desperately trying to stay up with the times. We discuss the promise and peril of social credit scores like Alibaba's Sesame Credit and the boom of Chinese peer to peer lending. Martin also explains how a digital gaming currency created by Tencent in the 2000s that developed a secondary market set the pattern that you can today see with its handling of bitcoin. Outtro song: "We are all Bitcoins" Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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3/6/2018 • 53 minutes, 8 seconds
Nick Consonery on China's Economic Reform Trajectory
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.
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2/25/2018 • 49 minutes, 19 seconds
The Chinese Rustbelt with Song Houze
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.
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1/23/2018 • 52 minutes, 42 seconds
Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro on How the World Order Evolves
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.
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1/18/2018 • 1 hour, 7 minutes, 24 seconds
Barry Eichengreen on the Rise and Fall of Global Currencies
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.
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1/14/2018 • 27 minutes, 50 seconds
Ex-Head of Mobile at Mobike Max Zhou on Dockless Bikeshares in China
Max Zhou 周喆吾 is an Uber alum who until November of 2017 was the head of Mobile at Mobike. He is currently working as the co-founder of Meta App. Max talks about his story coming to the US for an advanced degree, his experience at Uber, why Travis Kalanick is really a Chinese entrepreneur at heart, and his take on China's 'Uber Mafia.' He then turns to Mobike and Ofo, speaking to the potential monetization pathways for the firms, their global expansion plans, their strategic investors' competing goals and merger prospects. He even shares his own crackpot theory of how the initial investors in Ofo and Mobike may be the ones leaking negative stories about Ofo spending deposit money and senior leadership living lavish lifestyles. We close by talking about his new project, MetaApp, which aims to allow users access to an app's full feature-set without having to download it. Max also recently appeared on 非诚勿扰, China's leading dating show. His segment starts about twenty minutes in. Chinese words used: 道德=ethics, morality 线下流量=offline visits 阴谋=conspiracy Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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12/22/2017 • 38 minutes, 44 seconds
Keller Easterling on Free Zones and the Origins and Global Impact of SEZs
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.
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12/19/2017 • 42 minutes, 21 seconds
Peter Lorentzen on the Politics of Protest in China
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.
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12/10/2017 • 49 minutes, 47 seconds
Matt Sheehan on 'Chinafornia'
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.
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11/30/2017 • 38 minutes, 16 seconds
Jonathan Woetzel on China's Digital Economy
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.
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11/26/2017 • 24 minutes, 12 seconds
Julian Gewirtz on Unlikely Partners: Western Economists and Reform and Opening
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.
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10/31/2017 • 33 minutes, 43 seconds
The Book of Swindles: Cons from the Late Ming Dynasty
In Zhang Yingyu’s work from the late Ming Dynasty, you’ll encounter swindling concubines, clever commoners, and even eunuch cannibals trying to regrow their members. “We live in an age of deception. Words and appearances mislead. Con artists prey on the unwary. In this world of swindlers, one must rely on one’s wits to survive. How, then, to guard against the duplicity that lurks behind every smiling face? Look to your kin, keep your possessions close, and trust no one. But first, read The Book of Swindles.” Christopher Rea and Bruce Rusk, both associate professors of Asian studies at the University of British Columbia, have recently published The Book of Swindles’ first English translation. In this interview, they discuss the work's historical and cultural context as well as walk through some of the most shocking, revealing, and prurient stories The Book of Swindles has to offer. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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10/27/2017 • 44 minutes, 7 seconds
Cynthia Estlund on Labor in China
China’s massive labor surplus has been vital to its rapid economic development. For decades, China’s rural population has been migrating to take up low-wage jobs in the coastal regions, often in dire conditions. The exploitation of cheap labor has helped China become the world’s factory. However, as China’s labor surplus is running out, the position of workers is changing. In A New Deal for China’s Workers, New York University’s Cynthia Estlund examines the evolution of workers’ rights and protests in China. Drawing a comparison with the struggle of workers to attain more rights in the US, Estlund asks whether China’s workers will succeed in securing a New Deal with Chinese characteristics. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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10/26/2017 • 49 minutes, 19 seconds
Andrew Polk on the 19th Party Congress
Andrew Polk on the 19th Party Congress by Jordan Schneider Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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9/24/2017 • 33 minutes, 21 seconds
Scott Kennedy on Innovation in China
Scott Kennedy on Innovation in China by Jordan Schneider Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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