This week on Sinica, veteran reporter Jane Perlez, who served as bureau chief for the New York Times in Beijing until 2019, joins to discuss her new podcast series Face-Off, which explores different facets of the U.S.-China relationship. We also talk about the state of Western journalism in China in the wake of tit-for-tat expulsions of reporters from the U.S. and China that took place during the Trump administration, and the challenges of covering China well without people on the ground in country.

5:16 – How Jane Perlez got into podcasting

7:59 – The challenge of understanding Xi Jinping

12:44 – The Face-Off podcast and appealing to a general audience

19:00 – Face-Off’s interview with Zhao Tong on the nuclear issue; the importance of quality diplomacy; and debating the efficacy of the S&ED

30:48 – The pleasure of meeting Yo-Yo Ma

36:52 – The state of Western journalists in China, and how the situation may eventually play out

48:44 – The difficulty of covering China from the outside

53:52 – What’s next for Jane Perlez and the Face-Off podcast

Recommendations:

Jane: Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia by Gary Bass

Kaiser: The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History by Serhii Plokhy

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This week on Sinica, Iza Ding, associate professor of political science at Northwestern University and author of The Performative State: Public Scrutiny and Environmental Governance in China, joins to share her ideas on how American academia has framed and problematized authoritarianism, especially when it comes to China. A deep and subtle thinker, she offers thought-provoking critiques of some of the assumptions that have become nearly axiomatic in political science and other social sciences in their approach to understanding politics in China.

3:13 – Iza Ding’s concept of “authoritarian teleology”

15:31 – The concept of authoritarian resilience

19:58 – The question of regime legitimacy

24:09 – The question of whether authoritarianism is an ideology

26:24 – The China model?

30:58 – Finding a balance between generalizability and the sui generis, and striving toward cognitive empathy and “Verstehen”

42:04 – The state of area studies and avoiding essentialism

49:32 – Iza Ding’s advice on how to become a better writer

Recommendations:

Iza: The Wife of Bath: A Biography by Marion Turner — the story of Alison, the Wife of Bath in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales

Kaiser: the guitarist Kent Nishimura, especially his recordings of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears, “Sir Duke” by Stevie Wonder, “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” by The Police, and “Hey Nineteen” by Steely Dan

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