The Sinica Network proudly presents a new podcast: China Talking Points, featuring Kaiser Kuo (host of the Sinica Podcast), Eric Olander (host of the China-Global South Podcast and China In Africa Podcast) and Andrew Polk, co-founder of Trivium China and host of its podcast. We'll be joined regularly by Lizzi Lee, Fellow on Chinese Economy at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s (ASPI) Center for China Analysis. Tune in live every other week for unscripted thoughts on the major China-related news of the week.

This week, we focused on the truce in the trade war that Donald Trump launched with the so-called "Liberation Day" tariffs of April 9. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer met with top Chinese trade negotiator He Lifeng and his team in Geneva over the weekend, and we look at what came out of those meetings and what we can expect to happen next. We also discussed the dogfight that took place between India and Pakistan last week, in which the Pakistani air force claims to have downed as many as five Indian planes, significant for China because the Pakistani planes were Chinese-made J10-C fighters. Eric, who wrote about the Chinese reaction to this and offered his take on the reasons for their success, managed to incur a lot of online Indian wrath — an occupational hazard — but presents a compelling case for why the fully integrated Chinese military systems gave Pakistan the edge.

Watch us live on YouTube starting May 28th. Check out the new Sinica Network YouTube channel here!

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I had scheduled a show to record while I was in Providence last week, but it fell through and had to be rescheduled, so please give this talk I delivered at Carnegie Mellon last month a listen!

Hope you enjoy.

Kaiser

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This week on Sinica, I chat with SCMP Senior Europe Correspondent Finbarr Bermingham, who joins from Brussels where he's been covering the EU-China relationship in fantastic depth and with great insight.

3:17 – EU-China relations in early 2025: the effect of the 2021 sanctions, who advocated for engagement versus confrontation with China, and the importance of the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI)

13:49 – How Brussels initially reacted to the rupture in the transatlantic alliance

17:14 – China’s so-called charm offensive

21:03 – The idea of de-risking from Washington

23:10 – The impact of the Oval Office meeting with Zelensky

24:55 – Europe’s dual-track approach with China and shift toward pragmatism

29:35 – National interests versus EU unity regarding Chinese investment, and whether Brussels could extract concessions

35:20 – Brussels’ worry over Trump cutting a deal with China

38:06 – Possible signs of China’s flexibility on different issues

40:25 – The lifting of the sanctions on European parliamentarians

42:21 – The decrease in calls for values-based diplomacy, and whether securitization is happening in Europe

47:05 – How the EU might address tensions over China’s industrial overcapacity

50:17 – The possible future of EU-China relations, and whether the transatlantic relationship could go back to normal

55:50 – The knee-jerk element of looking past Europe

Paying It Forward: Ji Siqi at SCMP, Cissy Zhou at Nikkei, and Kinling Lo and Viola Zhou at Rest of World

Recommendations:

Finbarr: The Stakeknife podcast series; Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe; and the 20th anniversary edition of Wilco’s album, A Ghost Is Born

Kaiser: The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs by Marc David Baer

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This week on Sinica, in a show recorded at the University of Pittsburgh, I speak with Benno Weiner, Associate Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University, about how China's policy toward its minority nationalities (or minzu) have shifted from their older, Soviet-inspired form to the policies of assimilation we now see.

2:29 – How the so-called second-generation minzu policy evolved, and its shift away from the first-generation policy

17:15 – China’s language policy, comparisons to other historical cases, and the difficulty in striking a balance between language autonomy and the state interest of economic equality

25:26 – Debating the assumption of Uyghur forced labor

28:20 – How the minzu policy shift is driven by economic and political stability concerns

30:07 – The limited ability of minzus to make themselves heard

32:01 – The difficulty of advocacy in the face of accusations of U.S. hypocrisy

37:30 – Han guilt as a galvanizing idea

40:21 – Whether the shift in minzu policy is reversible, and the effect of external pressure

43:46 – Why Xinjiang has received greater global attention than other places

45:50 – How future historians may view minzu policy under Xi Jinping

Paying It Forward: Guldana Salimjan, at the University of Toronto

Recommendations:

Benno: The Red Wind Howls by Tsering Döndrup, translated by Christopher Peacock

Kaiser: The Six: The Untold Story of the Titanic’s Chinese Survivors by Steven Schwankert

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This week on the Sinica Podcast, I chat with Yawei Liu, Senior Advisor for China at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia, and Yukon Huang, former China country head of the World Bank and now Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The show was taped live at the 2025 Columbia China Summit at Columbia University, put on by the Columbia University Greater China Society, on April 13,. Special thanks to them for inviting us to attend!

3:53 – Columbia University’s history with China

7:52 – How Beijing views the current trade war

11:32 – Yawei’s idea of “the clash of misperceptions”

18:18 – The actual origins of America’s trade deficits and China’s trade surpluses

23:14 – How the inevitable talk between Trump and Xi Jinping may play out

32:04 – Sinophobia versus changing attitudes toward China

35:43 – How the current trade war is related to innovation in China

45:31 – How we can wage peace

Paying It Forward: Nicholas Zeller and his Substack newsletter, The U.S.-China Perception Monitor

Recommendations:

Yawei: Americans in China: Encounters with the People’s Republic ed. by Terry Lautz, and Chinese Encounters with America: Journeys That Shaped the Future of China ed. by Terry Lautz and Deborah Davis

Yukon: David Brooks’ April 2022 article, “The End of Globalization: The Dominance of Global Cultural Wars”

Kaiser: The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918-1933 by Frank McDonough

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This week on Sinica, I chat with Hazza Harding, a young Australian who began learning Chinese and made his way to China where he became a pop singer with hits on Chinese pop charts and a state media newscaster — and also lost his husband tragically, suffered through the COVID lockdowns while grieving for his loss. Yet he remains committed to furthering understanding and engagement, and has shown admirable resilience. Read his remarkable essay on his experiences here.

6:51 – How Hazza started in China, and how his career changed throughout his time there

19:27 – Hazza’s experiences feeling alienated in China

27:00 – Hazza’s experience working in Chinese state media

34:04 – How China shaped Hazza and Wayne’s love story, and how grief has shaped Hazza’s perspective on life

56:08 – The loveliness of everyday interactions

58:43 – Hazza’s advice on giving oneself time and leniency

1:02:38 – How Hazza may find his way back to China in the future

Paying It Forward: James Laurenceson at UTS Sydney

Recommendations:

Hazza: China Blonde: How a newsreader’s search for adventure led to friendship, acceptance… and peroxide pandemonium in China by Nicole Webb

Kaiser: The TV series Xi Bei Sui Yue (Into the Great Northwest) (2024 - )

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This week on Sinica, I chat with Jeffrey Ding, author of Technology and the Rise of Great Powers, a book that argues that a nation's ability to invent foundational technologies matters ultimately less in its overall national power than its ability to diffuse those "general purpose technologies," like electricity, digital technology, the internet, and — in the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution — Artificial Intelligence. I ask Jeff whether he thinks that China, with its powerful tech companies and its new enthusiasm for open source, may at last be closing what his book identifies as a diffusion deficit.

2:19 – Jeff’s argument for the power of diffusion in technological leadership

6:07 – China’s diffusion deficit

12:09 – Institutional factors that affect technology diffusion, and how culture can also play a role

19:49 – China’s successes in (non-GPT) diffusion

24:29 – China’s open source push

29:55 – Discussing He Pengyu’s piece on semiconductors

32:19 – How Jeff might tweak his chapter on China in a second edition of Technology and the Rise of Great Powers

Paying It Forward: Matt Sheehan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Recommendations:

Jeff: The TV series The Pitt (2025 - ); and James Islington’s The Will of the Many

Kaiser: The album Perpetual Change by Jon Anderson and The Band Geeks; and Steven Wilson’s new album, The Overview

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