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 Studie

Searching for roots in China

1 Jul 11th, 2019 1h 7m

This week, Kaiser chats with Huihan Lie, founder of the genealogical research startup MyChinaRoots, and with two of his colleagues, Clotilde Yap and Chrislyn Choo. The three have fascinating things to say about why a growing number of people ar

The View from China: Leading IR scholar Da Wei of Tsinghua's CISS

4 days ago 1h 26m

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)

Did Netflix's Adaptation Ruin The Three-Body Problem?

11 days ago 1h 9m

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 Whispe

Live from AAS in Seattle: What has become clear to you recently?

19 days ago 49m 19s

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 divers

Back to the Future: David M. Lampton and Thomas Fingar on What Went Wrong and How to Fix It

26 days ago 1h 25m

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 bila

Kerry Brown: on What does the West Wants from China, and the Exercise of Chinese Power

Mar 21st, 2024 1h 31m

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 Numb

Historian Rana Mitter on ideology in China's "New Era" — live from Salzburg, Austria

Mar 14th, 2024 1h 8m

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 foun

Schwarzman Scholars Capstone Showcase: The 2023 Winners

Mar 7th, 2024 1h 24m

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 — an

The Ukrainian Factor in China's Strategy: a roundtable

Feb 29th, 2024 1h 27m

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

Bonus

This Week in China's History: The Qing Abdication — February 12, 1912

Feb 16th, 2024 12m 16s

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

Sinica comes roaring back in the Year of the Dragon: A chat with Jeremy Goldkorn

Feb 15th, 2024 1h 26m

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

Live from New York: China and the Global South, with Maria Repnikova and Eric Olander

Nov 9th, 2023 1h 2m

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 a

In Memoriam: Jeffrey A. Bader, from February 2022

Oct 26th, 2023 1h 29m

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 ser

Live from Chicago: Decoding China — China’s economic miracle interrupted?

Oct 19th, 2023 56m 30s

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 o

Robert Daly of the Kissinger Institute on the morality of U.S. China policy

Oct 12th, 2023 2h 9m

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

China Tobacco: How China's tobacco monopoly also has ensured that China keeps smoking

Oct 5th, 2023 1h 17m

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 fascinati

The Philadelphia Orchestra commemorates the 50th anniversary of its groundbreaking China tour

Sep 28th, 2023 56m 24s

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, executiv

Ian Johnson on "Sparks," his new book on China's underground historians

Sep 21st, 2023 1h 7m

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 Fut

U.S. Congressman Rick Larsen (D-WA) on his new U.S.-China policy white paper

Sep 14th, 2023 45m 11s

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 ou

The case for the U.S.-China Science and Technology Agreement

Sep 7th, 2023 1h 5m

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 scie

The Rise and Fall of the EAST: MIT's Yasheng Huang on his new book

Aug 31st, 2023 2h 8m

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 am

China Stories summer special: The best of This Week in China's HIstory

Aug 24th, 2023 1h 5m

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 imp

Wargaming a Taiwan invasion scenario: Lyle Goldstein on the CSIS wargame “The First Battle of the Next War"

Aug 17th, 2023 1h 5m

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

The state of play of generative AI in China, with Paul Triolo

Aug 10th, 2023 1h 5m

This week on Sinica, Paul Triolo returns to the show to give us a rundown on what’s happening in the exciting arena of generative AI in China. The veteran China tech watcher, who is now Senior VP for China and Technology Policy Lead at Dentons