This week, my narration of a longish essay about my recently-concluded four-week trip to Dalian and, more importantly, Beijing — my first time back in the city I called home for so long since the COVID pandemic. If you prefer to read rather than listen, you can find the essay — free for everyone this week — on the Substack. I hope you enjoy this! S…

This week on Sinica, I'm in Beijing, where I spoke with my dear friend Anthony Tao, an English-language poet and a builder of community in the city where I lived for over 20 years. Anthony recently published a volume of his poetry called We Met in Beijing, and it captures the relationship that so many have with the city wherever they might come fro…

I'm trying something different: totally unscripted and very, very lightly edited recordings grabbed on the go where I happen to be. For the inaugural episode, I've got Wang Zichen, the author of the amazing Pekingnology newsletter on Substack, as well as the man behind the Center for China and Globalization's newsletter "The East is Read." Hear Zic…

This week on Sinica, I chat with University of Melbourne transnational historian Pete Millwood about his outstanding book Improbable Diplomats: How Ping-Pong Players, Musicians, and Scientists Remade U.S.-China Relations. The road to normalization is told too often with a focus only on the Nixon-Kissinger opening and official diplomatic efforts cul…

This week on Sinica, in a show recorded on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting of the New Champions, historian Adam Tooze joins to chat about what the U.S. wants from China, China's vaulting green energy ambitions, and much more. Don't miss this episode: Tooze gets pretty darn spicy! 3:13 How Adam launched Chartbook in Chines…

This week on Sinica, Part 2 of the interview with anthropologist Stevan Harrell, professor emeritus at the University of Washington, about his magnum opus, An Ecological History of China. Be sure to listen to Part 1 first, as many important framing concepts are discussed in that episode! 1:44 “– The Four Horsemen of Ecopocalypse” and ecological dis…

This week on Sinica, Part 1 of a two-part podcast with Stevan Harrell, Professor Emeritus in Anthropology at the University of Washington. Steve's groundbreaking book An Ecological History of Modern China represents the culmination of a professional lifetime of work in disparate fields. It synthesizes ideas from geography, earth science, biology, a…

This week on Sinica, the highly-regarded writer Peter Hessler joins to talk about his new book, out July 9: Other Rivers: A Chinese Education. Over 20 years after teaching with the Peace Corps in Fuling (the subject of his first book, Rivertown, Pete returns to China to teach at Sichuan University in Chengdu. He writes about the two cohorts of stud…

This week on Sinica, a conversation that I moderated on May 30th called “Assessing the Impact of US-China Rivalry on Ukraine and Taiwan,” put on by the Ukrainian Platform for Contemporary China. The main organizer was my friend Vita Golod, who is the chair of the Ukrainian Association of Sinologists. The panelists are: Dmytro Burtsev, a Junior Fell…

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Jonathan Chatwin, author of a new book about Deng Xiaoping's "Southern Tour" of early 1992 — a pivotal event that renewed a commitment to economic reforms after they'd stalled following 1989, and seized the initiative from conservatives in the Chinese leadership. The book is called The Southern Tour: Deng Xi…

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser is joined by old friend Ed Lanfranco, who lived in Beijing from 1988 to 2009. An inveterate packrat, Ed managed to accumulate an incredible trove of documents, maps, photos, and ephemera from his years there and from the decades and even centuries before his arrival. Ed talks about his collection, and invites…

This week on Sinica, I'm delighted to welcome — my brother! Jay Kuo is a Broadway writer & producer, and the man behind the terrific U.S. politics-focused Substack newsletter The Status Kuo. In a previous life, from 1996 to 2000, he was also really active in Beijing's gay community, just at the time when homosexuality was being decriminalized and w…

This week on Sinica, I chat with Sulmaan Wasif Khan, professor of history and international relations at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, about his book The Struggle for Taiwan: A History of America, China, and the Island Caught Between, which comes on May 14. 4:28 — The Cairo Agreement 6:59 — General George Marshall, George Kennan, and the…

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 f…

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,…

This week on Sinica, I'm delighted to welcome Dá Wēi (达巍), one of China’s foremost scholars of China’s foreign relations and especially relations with the U.S. Da Wei is the director of the Center for International Security and Strategy (CISS) at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and is a professor in the department of International Relations at the …

This week on Sinica, a discussion of Netflix's adaptation of Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem (or more accurately, Remembrance of Earth's Past). Joining me to chat about the big-budget show is Cindy Yu, host of The Spectator’s “Chinese Whispers” podcast, one of the very best China-focused podcasts; and Christopher T. Fan, who teaches English, Asi…

This week on Sinica: I wandered the halls at the Association for Asian Studies Conference in Seattle and talked to 14 participants and asked them all the same question: What has become clear to you about our field recently? The fantastic diversity of areas of inquiry and of perspectives was really energizing. Hope you enjoy this as much as I did! 0…

This week on Sinica, I speak with veteran China analysts Thomas Fingar and David M. Lampton — Mike Lampton — about a paper they published in the Winter 2024 edition of the Washington Quarterly. It's an excellent overview of how and why the bilateral relationship took such a bad turn roughly 15 years ago, citing mistakes both sides made and the reas…

This week on the Sinica Podcast, a show taped in Salzburg, Austria, at the Salzburg Global Seminar with Kerry Brown of King's College, London, on the prolific author's latest book, China Incorporated: The Politics of a World Where China is Number One. 05:22 – Chinese worldview and historical perceptions 07:51 – The unease with China's rise 10:42 – …

Historian Rana Mitter joins Sinica this week in a show taped live in Salzburg, Austria at the Salzburg Global Seminar, in which he discusses efforts by Party ideologists to create a Confucian-Marxist synthesis that can serve as an enduring foundation for a modern Chinese worldview in the self-proclaimed “new era.” 01:28 – Is China a revisionist pow…

This week on Sinica, the winners of the 2023 Schwarzman Capstone Showcase. Two individuals and one team were selected as the best research projects after review of their projects and presentation of their findings. Their work is first-rate — and if you don’t factor in the very young age of the Schwarzman Scholars in competition. You’ll meet Shawn H…

This week on Sinica, a special taping of an online event I moderated on February 22, just two days shy of the second anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The session was titled “The Ukrainian Factor in China’s Strategy,” and it was organized by the Ukrainian Association of Sinologists, and featured that organiza…

This week on Sinica I'm delighted to bring you a live conversation with writer Peter Hessler, recorded at Duke University's Nasher Auditorium in Durham, North Carolina on November 10, 2023. The event was sponsored by the Duke Middle East Studies Center and the Asian Pacific Studies Institute, and was titled "Modern Revolutions in Ancient Civilizati…

Sinica is proud to present historian James Carter's column "This Week in China's History," one of the most popular offerings from the late great China Project. I'm delighted to be able to bring this back and to narrate it. You can expect a new column every other week, and we'll be publishing on Fridays. This week, Jay looks at the last Qing emperor…

Sinica is back, and on this first post-China Project show, Kaiser chats with TCP’s ex-editor-in-chief and Sinica’s co-founder and former co-host, Jeremy Goldkorn. They chat about the Beijing that was, their theories as to why things changed as they did, and share some of their favorite precepts for understanding contemporary China. 03:15 – What’s n…

This week on Sinica, a live recording from New York on the eve of the 2023 NEXTChina Conference. Jeremy Goldkorn joins Kaiser as co-host, with guests Maria Repnikova of Georgia State University, who specializes in Chinese soft power in Africa and on Sino-Russian relations, and Eric Olander, co-founder of the China Global South Project and co-host o…

This week on Sinica, a live recording from New York on the eve of the 2023 NEXTChina Conference. Jeremy Goldkorn joins Kaiser as co-host, with guests Maria Repnikova of Georgia State University, who specializes in Chinese soft power in Africa and on Sino-Russian relations, and Eric Olander, co-founder of the China Global South Project and co-host o…

This week on Sinica, we're running an interview with Jeffrey Bader from early last year. We learned on Monday morning that Jeff had died, and we dedicate this interview to his memory. ___ This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Jeff Bader, who served as senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council during the first years of the …

This week on Sinica, I'm re-running an interview with Jeffrey Bader from early last year. I learned on Monday morning that Jeff had died, and I dedicate this interview to his memory. ___ This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Jeff Bader, who served as senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council during the first years of the O…

This week on Sinica, a live recording from October 10 in Chicago, Kaiser asks Chang-Tai Hsieh of the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, Damien Ma of the Paulson Institute’s think tank MacroPolo, and our own Lizzi Lee, host of The Signal with Lizzi Lee, to right-size the peril that the Chinese economy now faces from slow consumer…

This week on Sinica, a live recording from October 10 in Chicago, Kaiser asks Chang-Tai Hsieh of the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, Damien Ma of the Paulson Institute’s think tank MacroPolo, and our own Lizzi Lee, host of The Signal with Lizzi Lee, to right-size the peril that the Chinese economy now faces from slow consumer…

This week on the Sinica Podcast: a lecture by Robert Daly, director of the Wilson Center's Kissinger Institute, delivered last year to D.C.-based Faith & Law at their Friday Forum. The lecture, titled "Is Our Foreign Policy Good? American Moral Absolutism and the China Challenge," is a powerful and thought-provoking talk. Kaiser follows up with a l…

This week on the Sinica Podcast: a lecture by Robert Daly, director of the Wilson Center's Kissinger Institute, delivered last year to D.C.-based Faith & Law at their Friday Forum. The lecture, titled "Is Our Foreign Policy Good? American Moral Absolutism and the China Challenge," is a powerful and thought-provoking talk. Kaiser follows up with a l…

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Jason McLure, a correspondent for a new investigative reporting outfit called The Examination, and reporter Jude Chan, who writes for Initium Media. The two worked with two other reporters on a fascinating expose, funded by the Pulitzer Center, of China's tobacco monopoly, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administ…

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Jason McLure, a correspondent for a new investigative reporting outfit called The Examination, and reporter Jude Chan, who writes for Initium Media. The two worked with two other reporters on a fascinating expose, funded by the Pulitzer Center, of China's tobacco monopoly, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administ…

This week on Sinica, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the 1950 concert tour of China by the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1973, Kaiser chats with Matías Tarnopolsky, the orchestra’s president and chief executive; Alison Friedman, executive and creative director of Carolina Performing Arts; and virtuoso guzheng player and composer Wu Fei about…

This week on Sinica, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the 1950 concert tour of China by the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1973, Kaiser chats with Matías Tarnopolsky, the orchestra’s president and chief executive; Alison Friedman, executive and creative director of Carolina Performing Arts; and virtuoso guzheng player and composer Wu Fei about…

This week on Sinica, Pulitzer Prize-winning veteran journalist Ian Johnson, now a senior China fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, joins Kaiser to discuss his new book, Sparks" China's Underground HIstorians and their Battle for the Future. Profiling both prominent and lesser-known individuals working to expose dark truths about some of the…

This week on Sinica, Pulitzer Prize-winning veteran journalist Ian Johnson, now a senior China fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, joins Kaiser to discuss his new book, Sparks" China's Underground HIstorians and their Battle for the Future. Profiling both prominent and lesser-known individuals working to expose dark truths about some of the…

This week on Sinica, Kaiser speaks with Representative Rick Larsen of the Washington 2nd District, the co-founder and continuously serving Democratic co-chair of the bipartisan U.S.-China Working Group. Last month, he published a white paper outlining his recommendations for how the U.S. can more effectively compete. That paper and its recommendati…

This week on Sinica, Kaiser speaks with Representative Rick Larsen of the Washington 2nd District, the co-founder and continuously serving Democratic co-chair of the bipartisan U.S.-China Working Group. Last month, he published a white paper outlining his recommendations for how the U.S. can more effectively compete. That paper and its recommendati…

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Karen Hao, a reporter recently with the Wall Street Journal whose previous work with the MIT Technology Review has been featured on Sinica; and by Deborah Seligsohn, assistant professor of political science at Villanova University, who has been on the show many times just in the last three years. Both Karen …

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Karen Hao, a reporter recently with the Wall Street Journal whose previous work with the MIT Technology Review has been featured on Sinica; and by Deborah Seligsohn, assistant professor of political science at Villanova University, who has been on the show many times just in the last three years. Both Karen …

This week on Sinica, MIT professor Yasheng Huang joins Kaiser to talk about his brand new book The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why they Might Lead to its Decline. This ambitious and thought-provoking book is bound to stir up quite a bit of controversy. It’s a long conversatio…

This week on Sinica, MIT professor Yasheng Huang joins Kaiser to talk about his brand new book The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why they Might Lead to its Decline. This ambitious and thought-provoking book is bound to stir up quite a bit of controversy. It’s a long conversatio…

Something different this week on Sinica: A selection of "This Week in China's History" columns by James Carter, all narrated by Kaiser with a little interstitial music by Chunqiu (Spring & Autumn). The columns: Not just a metaphor: Dragons of imperial China show us how people lived (1517) The ‘Empress of China’ and the beginning of U.S.-China trade…

Something different this week on Sinica: A selection of "This Week in China's History" columns by James Carter, all narrated by Kaiser with a little interstitial music by Chunqiu (Spring & Autumn). The columns: Not just a metaphor: Dragons of imperial China show us how people lived (1517) The ‘Empress of China’ and the beginning of U.S.-China trade…

This week on Sinica, Kaiser welcomes back Lyle Goldstein, director for China engagement at the think tank Defense Priorities and previously a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, where he taught for 20 years. Lyle offers his perspectives on an extensive wargaming exercise focusing on a Chinese amphibious assault on Taiwan, conducted under the a…

This week on Sinica, Kaiser welcomes back Lyle Goldstein, director for China engagement at the think tank Defense Priorities and previously a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, where he taught for 20 years. Lyle offers his perspectives on an extensive wargaming exercise focusing on a Chinese amphibious assault on Taiwan, conducted under the a…