Sinica Podcast Podcast Por Kaiser Kuo arte de portada

Sinica Podcast

Sinica Podcast

De: Kaiser Kuo
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A weekly discussion of current affairs in China with journalists, writers, academics, policymakers, business people and anyone with something compelling to say about the country that's reshaping the world. Hosted by Kaiser Kuo.

 Ciencia Política Economía Política y Gobierno
Episodios
  • "The China Debate We're Not Having" | Part 1: What China Wants

    "The China Debate We're Not Having" | Part 1: What China Wants
    Apr 9 2026
    Opening Remarks & Session 1: What China WantsJohns Hopkins SAIS ACF Conference, April 3, 2026This week's episode features audio from a day-long conference hosted by the Institute for America, China, and the Future of Global Affairs (ACF) at Johns Hopkins SAIS, held on April 3rd in Washington, DC. The conference, titled "The China Debate We're Not Having: Politics, Technology, and the Road Ahead," brought together a wide range of scholars, former officials, and analysts to interrogate some of the foundational assumptions underlying US policy toward China — a conversation I found compelling enough to share directly with Sinica listeners, with the full blessing of the organizers.You'll hear two segments in this episode.Opening Remarks — Jessica Chen WeissACF's inaugural faculty director Jessica Chen Weiss opens the conference by framing its central provocation: that much of the prevailing US policy discourse assumes an intrinsically zero-sum competition with China, and that this assumption has not been adequately examined. She argues for a more rigorous, evidence-based conversation — one that takes seriously the possibility that American and Chinese interests are competitive but not necessarily adversarial, and that may even leave room for complementarity in some domains. She previews the day's three thematic sessions — on what China wants, what the United States wants, and the stakes of technological and AI rivalry — and situates the whole enterprise in what she describes as a hinge moment in world history.Session 1: What China WantsModerated by Demetri Sevastopulo of the Financial Times, the first panel takes up the deceptively simple question of what China is actually trying to achieve on the world stage — and whether its ambitions are as expansive as much US policy discourse assumes.Jessica Chen Weiss argues that China's core objectives remain relatively modest and sovereignty-focused: security, development, and legitimacy within an order long dominated by the United States. She pushes back on the idea that China is eager to assume the burdens of global leadership, noting that Chinese interlocutors are acutely aware of the domestic overextension that has constrained American power. Sevastopulo coins — with Weiss's amusement — the term "China-first" to describe Beijing's orientation.Dan Taylor, drawing on his decades in the Defense Intelligence Agency, urges the audience to take Chinese leadership statements seriously rather than projecting worst-case intentions onto them. He notes that Beijing still sees itself as a developing nation with enormous domestic work ahead, and that its articulated goals leave considerable room for interpretation before one arrives at the conclusion that China seeks to displace the United States as global hegemon.Arthur Kroeber adds an economic dimension, tracing how China's export-driven model has generated massive global surpluses — and why the resulting tensions with trading partners are, in his view, a structural problem rather than evidence of strategic malice. He argues that much of what looks like geopolitical aggression is better understood as the consequence of an economic model operating at enormous scale with insufficient domestic demand to absorb its own output.Shao Yuqun, speaking from her perch at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, offers the most pointed challenge to the panel's relatively sanguine framing. She argues that the United States' own behavior — erratic policy, withdrawal from multilateral commitments, and the disruptions of the Trump era — has itself destabilized the order that American strategists claim to be defending. She is measured but direct, and her presence gives the conversation a texture that too many Washington panels lack.The discussion ranges across China's Iran diplomacy, the prospects for a US-China summit, the question of whether Beijing is exploiting Trump-era tensions to deepen ties with traditional US allies, and — in a lively closing exchange — who the next generation of Chinese leadership looks like (with Kroeber's deadpan answer, "Xi Jinping," getting the biggest laugh of the session).Guests:Jessica Chen Weiss, David M. Lampton Professor of China Studies, Johns Hopkins SAIS; Inaugural Faculty Director, ACFDan Taylor, Adjunct Researcher, Institute for Defense Analyses; Senior Fellow, Johns Hopkins SAIS ACFArthur Kroeber, Founding Partner, Gavekal DragonomicsShao Yuqun, Director, Institute for Taiwan, Hong Kong & Macao Studies, Shanghai Institutes for International StudiesModerator: Demetri Sevastopulo, US-China Correspondent, Financial TimesRemaining sessions from the conference — on what the United States wants, tech rivalry and competing visions of the future, and a fireside chat between Henry Farrell and Alondra Nelson on the AI race reconsidered — will be released over the coming weeks.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://...
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    1 h y 8 m
  • Adam Tooze is Chinamaxxing!

    Adam Tooze is Chinamaxxing!
    Apr 2 2026

    Economic historian Adam Tooze returns to Sinica fresh from the China Development Forum and his second extended visit to Beijing in under a year. In this wide-ranging conversation, Adam and I cover the 15th Five-Year Plan — what it signals about Beijing’s development priorities and whether it represents a genuine shift away from investment-led growth — and the extraordinary scale of China’s renewable energy buildout, which Adam argues may be bringing us to the global peak of CO2 emissions right now.

    They discuss the concept of the “big green state,” why Western analysts keep dancing around the role of the CPC in driving China’s environmental transformation, and what the “Chinamaxxing” phenomenon says about a slow but real reckoning in Western public consciousness. From Europe’s evolving posture toward China — caught between EV anxieties and transatlantic rupture — to China’s role in the Global South’s energy future, the conversation moves through coal transitions, Indonesian nickel zones, African microgrids, and the collapse of the flying geese model.

    The episode closes with a frank exchange on the Iran war, the postponed Trump-Xi summit, the stunning political silence on American campuses, and what Beijing is most likely doing: sitting pretty and waiting it out. Adam also offers a preview of his forthcoming book on the energy transition — which turns out to be another massive one — and recommends Tim Sahay and Wang Hui as essential reading.

    02:44 – Adam’s Chinese language study: HSK3, the Confucius Institute curriculum, and the joys of chasing characters

    09:41 – The jìhuà/guīhuà distinction and what the shift in nomenclature from the 11th Five-Year Plan onward actually signals

    12:01 – The 15th Five-Year Plan: green energy tinkering, sci-tech ambitions, and the human development dimension

    18:10 – Does Beijing genuinely mean to shift from investment-led growth? Reading “high quality development” and “common prosperity”

    22:38 – The Great Reckoning: has Western intellectual and policy consciousness actually moved on China?

    29:45 – Environmental authoritarianism, the CPC as mobilizing institution, and why Xi’s “petty bourgeois environmentalism” deserves to be taken seriously

    33:39 – Persistent misperceptions of China in Western discourse; the “jaundiced American” trench perspective

    39:16 – European neuralgia: EV overcapacity, Ukraine, and whether transatlantic rupture opens a window for China

    45:02 – China and the Global South: the end of the flying geese model, African microgrids, Indonesian nickel zones, and BRI record lending

    59:32 – Mark Carney’s “age of rupture”: does the framing capture something real, or does it flatter the West?

    01:05:18 – What Beijing sees from its windows: Iran, Venezuela, the postponed Trump-Xi summit, and a five-point plan for Chinese hegemony (that won’t happen)

    01:14:55 – Preview of Adam’s forthcoming book on the energy transition and the “second world” thesis

    Paying It Forward: Tim Sahay (PolyCrisis / Phenomenal World)

    Recommendations:

    Adam: Wang Hui’s The End of the Revolution

    Kaiser: The Chinese series Shēng mìng shù (Born to Be Alive)

    See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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    1 h y 26 m
  • Is China Trying to Sever Plato from NATO? Chang Che on Beijing's Embrace of the Greco-Roman Classics

    Is China Trying to Sever Plato from NATO? Chang Che on Beijing's Embrace of the Greco-Roman Classics
    Mar 26 2026

    This week on Sinica, I welcome journalist and former colleague Chang Che. His recent New Yorker piece "How China Learned to Love the Classics" generated enormous attention. We explore one of the more surprising cultural phenomena in contemporary China: a growing, state-backed enthusiasm for the Greco-Roman classics. We dig into what's actually driving this revival, from the genuine intellectual curiosity of scholars like He Yanxiao, who fell in love with the Odyssey as a Chinese high school student and went on to earn a Chicago PhD, to what might be the more deliberate strategic ambitions of figures like Politburo member Li Shulei and the shadow of philosopher Liu Xiaofeng's Straussianism. We also compare Chang's warmly enchanted 2022 China Project piece on Austrian classicist Leopold Lieb to the politically sharper New Yorker piece four years later — and ask what that shift in tone tells us about what's actually changed. This is an episode about civilizational discourse, soft power, and the strange fate of scholarship when the state decides it finds your obscure passion useful.

    00:32 – Kaiser introduces the episode from Beijing and reflects on the asymmetry in how the West covers Chinese intellectual curiosity

    04:08 – Civilizationist discourse: Spengler, Huntington, and The Civilization Trap

    10:56 – Introducing Chang Che and the evolution from his 2022 China Project piece to the New Yorker

    15:38 – How Chang first got drawn into the subject: Latin classes, Charlottesville, and young Chinese classicists returning from American PhDs

    21:38 – What changed in four years: the state moves from background to foreground

    25:28 – Inside the institutional push: what China's "classics departments" actually look like, and who controls the definition of "classics"

    31:13 – Xi Jinping's letter to Greek scholars and the move, perhaps, to sever ancient Greece from the modern West

    39:57 – Liu Xiaofeng, Leo Strauss, and why Strauss fever gripped Chinese intellectuals after 1989

    47:03 – The Padilla Peralta "incident" and the strange porousness between American and Chinese discourse communities on the classics

    52:13 – Chenchen Zhang's framework: civilizationist discourse claims difference internationally while enforcing homogeneity domestically

    57:30 – He Yanxiao, K-pop, and the idea of "Chinatown classics"

    01:07:13 – Where will China's classics revival be in ten years?

    Paying It Forward: Dongxian Jiang (Fordham) and Simon Luo (Nanyang Technological University)

    Recommendations: Chang recommends House of the Dragon; Kaiser recommends the Ah-Q Arkestra, led by trombonist Matt Roberts, whose latest album Méiyǒu yìjiàn is on Spotify.

    See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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    1 h y 18 m
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