Loading summary
Transcript133 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
- [00:09]
B
Welcome to the Seneca Podcast, the weekly discussion of current affairs in China. In this program we'll get books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural trends that can help us better understand what's happening in China's politics, foreign relations, economics and society. Join me each week for in depth conversations that shed more light and bring less heat to how we think and talk about China. I'm Kaiser Guo, coming to you this week from Beijing, where it is just great to be back. Sinica is supported this year by the center for East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a national resource center for the study of East Asia. The Seneca Podcast will remain, as always, free. But if you work for an organization that believes in what I'm doing, and boy do I need you to work for an organization that believes in what I am doing. Lend your support. You can get me@cinecopodmail.com I've lost my Title 6 grant funding via the University of Wisconsin, Madison that will dry up by the end of the year, so I'm really in the market for new institutional support. Reach out listeners. You, meanwhile, can support my work by becoming a paying subscriber@senecapodcast.com you will enjoy, in addition to the podcast, the complete transcript of the show, essays from me, as well as writings and podcasts from some of your favorite China focused columnists and commentators. And of course, the knowledge that you are helping me do what I still honestly believe is important work. So do check out the page to see all that's on offer and consider helping out. I've been thinking a lot about what my friend and Synica co founder Jeremy Goldkorn and I called back in February on the show, a vibe shift in how America talks about China, the steady drumbeat of deep seek moments, the exodus of TikTok creators finding a new home on RedNote, and that endless stream of China infrastructure and EV porn on social feeds. All that is reshaping the conversation. On parts of the American left you hear a renewed, sometimes giddy talk of abundance. Of course looking very favorably at China Dan Wang's book Breakneck. And you know Dan's been interviewed now on every damn podcast, including this one. I mean, the book feels super zeitgeist y right now, however you feel about it, especially for the left. And regrettably, of course on parts of the American right, you see some similar technocratic fetishism among, you know, not just the Silicon Valley type bros. But surprisingly, maybe not surprisingly, you also see it in the MAGA crowd, where China's successes are misread as proof of the virtues of ethnic or cultural homogeneity and closed borders. So you add to that the kind of notable change in tone from the White House bully pulpit, and you can kind of feel it. Maybe sometimes in the national mood, it feels like things are changing. Obviously, it's not just perception of China's successes either, but also of, you know, America's deepening crisis. However you want to read that. Anyway, all this is my way of explaining why I have been eager to hear from Americans in different corners of our society who are connecting or reconnecting with China right now. People, you know, thinking hard about the country as it actually is and what that means for where America or the west more broadly is actually headed. One of those voices is Jasmine Sun. She's a Stanford grad who worked at Substack and now writes an excellent substack of her own. She recently traveled in China with a group of friends whose experience with the country ranged from, you know, deep to totally first time, some with ethnic Chinese backgrounds, others with, you know, who were actually raised there. Full disclosure, before we go further, I made a couple of introductions to a company I consult for Tencent, so we're going to actually avoid talking about that specifically. You can read her piece. She wrote about that piece, you know, a vivid, thoughtful essay called America Against China Against America, an allusion to a famous short book written like 35 years ago now by, you know, the guy who's now the Graham, and it's the Politburo standing committee member, chief party ideologue Wang Huning. Jasmine's essay, which I highly, highly recommend. You might even actually want to hit pause and click the link in the show notes and read the thing before we go on. Anyway, Jasmine's essay isn't just what I, you know, what I saw in China Chronicle, but actually a really profound meditation on, you know, how she thought about things and what she talked about with her companions. And it's a really beautiful piece of writing to boot. So, Jasmine sun, welcome to Seneca.
- [04:34]
A
Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here. I did another trip to China with friends one year ago, and when I was that was the first time I had really gone as a thinking adult, I. E. Not just hanging out with my grandparents and stuffing myself with food. And last year, one of the things I tried to do when I was there was really listen to a lot of the voices on modern China. And Seneca was a podcast I found during that time and I've continued keeping up with since.
- [04:57]
B
Wow. Hey, awesome. I'm glad to hear it. So today I'm really thrilled because I'm joined by a co host that I'd really like everyone to meet. Tianyu. Fang Tianyi has just embarked on a history Ph.D. at Harvard after finishing his undergraduate studies at Stanford. And actually he and Jasmine know one another. Many of you may remember his byline from the days when the China Project was actually still called Sup China. Embarrassingly, he started writing for us at the tender age of 16. You'll be hearing actually a lot more from him and from occasional other co hosts and even substitute hosts as I take on more commitments with my band in the coming years. You know, I got to do this before I keel over. Folks like Issa Ding, she's going to be joining me in this chair from time to time. And Tianyu, if he's able to manage, will actually hopefully be taking on an even bigger role once you finish up.
- [05:45]
A
No pressure.
- [05:46]
B
Tien Tianyu, man, greet the people.
- [05:49]
C
You know, Kai. So I've been a listener to Seneca since I was in middle school. And I remember in 2016, I even went to a talk that you and Jeremy did back then before you both went to the U.S. so what an honor to be here. And I should also mention that at one point I was Jasmin's intern at Substack. So, you know, also that is part of my disclosure.
- [06:10]
B
The man is moving up in the world. Moving up the world. So, I mean, actually, you know, listeners are meeting you for the first time. Before we get into it with Jasmine, give us a little quick sketch. I mean, what do they need to know about you? What's the thing that fascinates you? What makes you tick?
- [06:24]
C
Well, so I've just started my PhD at Harvard here in the Department of the History of Science, and my project is very much on the computing history in China during the economic reform period, when Chinese policymakers and intellectuals were very much interested in a scientific approach to understanding and. And, you know, understanding and also managing society. As many crises in the 1980s. So I sort of wanted to trace the history of what we now understand as the Chinese technocracy, or you might say what in Dan Wang's book he calls the engineering state. Where does that even come from? But before that, I was living in San Francisco. I did my undergrad at Stanford. I was very much interested in the relationship of technology and how we produce it. So Jasmine and I knew each other from those days. So it's great to have this crossover here at Celica today.
- [07:15]
B
Fantastic, fantastic.
- [07:17]
C
So Jasmine Maybe a quick intro from you as well. What should our listener know about you that Kaiser didn't get to?
- [07:23]
A
Yeah, so these days I'm mostly an independent writer and emerging beginning podcaster, still trying to learn from y'. All. Tien was actually on my podcast in February where he mentioned that meeting you and Jeremy Goldkorn at that fated 2015 or whatever event. But I mostly cover what I call the quote unquote anthropology of disruption. What I'm super interested in is sort of the cultural elements of tech, how technology is built, tech industries. I mostly focus on Silicon Valley since that's where I live in San Francisco. I went to school at Stanford. In Silicon Valley, I've worked in the tech industry. But increasingly I've become interested in understanding what cultures of technology look like beyond. Which is one of the reasons that my friends and I decided to take this trip to China and to meet with a bunch of Chinese technologists to understand how their culture and approach differs. I'm basically very interested in how emerging technologies interface with pre existing cultures, communities, institutions, what those frictions look like, what the adaptation looks like. And that's part of why, in addition to simply just being a Chinese American, I've become much more interested in understanding China over the past couple years is because I think like China's modernization is one of the greatest, fastest technological projects of our time. And it's really fascinating to me to get another lens that isn't just the San Francisco one on how tech is built and what it can look like.
- [08:48]
B
Amen. Amen. I mean that sounds, I mean you're really just like right there in that same intersection of culture, tech and politics that I'm fascinated by. But I really like how you say the anthropology of disruption and stuff. Fantastic phrase. Maybe before we plunge forward and talk about the piece, I mean I made a lot of sort of assumptions in the intro that I probably check your reactions to. I mean it sounds like you're sort of on board, but this whole business of an American and maybe even more broadly a western vibe shift on China and how real that feels to you from where you sit and how much of it you've actually felt. I mean, actually, I know, Tanya, you're supposed to be wearing the co host hat today, but I do want you to weigh in on this. But let's start with Jasmine. Not long ago in the Valley it was think people were pretty down on China. All the VCs weren't coming here. The VCs that were there were sort of spinning off, you know, like Sequoia and Hongshot, you know, people were talking about China as being uninvestable and there was this, you know, this belief that all entrepreneurial activity had sort of fallen off a cliff and had completely dried up. Or, you know, there was this sense in America that, hey, you know, national security has made China something you don't want to touch. Am I wrong to see this as having changed really recently?
- [10:00]
A
I think you're right about that shift for sure. I think that vibe shift, as you describe it, is something that I've observed as well from Silicon Valley. When I was in undergrad around 2017 or so, it was still the case that people were interested in expanding into China. I actually remember AI superpowers came out. That was a big deal. Kai Fu Lee was doing talks on campus. Connie Chan made GP at a 16Z. Yeah, I remember I emailed her like an hour after that happened and I was like, I might be interested in Chinese tech stuff. Will you speak to me? And she was very kind and did so and gave me some advice. But by the Biden administration in 2020, I think that talk of decoupling had really strengthened again. Talk of export controls, supply chain independence, increasing worries around AI, around TikTok, other sort of like critical technologies. But as you, as you mentioned, I think in the past, probably one to two years, probably one year even, I think the attitude towards China has been less pure fear and derision and now maybe fear mixed with envy. I use the phrase China envy a lot. I think that one thing that I notice a lot in the way that both U.S. technological and political elites, their attitudes seem to reflect this. Peering over at China across the Pacific and thinking they have fast trains, why can't we have fast trains? They have tall skyscrapers. Why can't we have tall skyscrapers? Why can't we have open source AI or widespread surveillance? That means that there's no crime ever. And so these comparisons start to pop up even during, you know, abundance mania, as you mentioned to me, it felt as if China was the sort of like shadow lurking behind that movement that, you know, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson didn't necessarily want to draw the comparison to. But that actually made me quite happy to see breakneck as in some sense a follow up to the abundance movement. Because I do think that China was always the comparison that was driving again, American tech and political elites to say, it is possible to do this. Why can't we have it too?
- [11:59]
B
The tacit poster child. So what about you, Tangyu? How do you feel about this? I Mean, are you reading it the same way?
- [12:05]
C
Well, I think I still have fond memories of the good old days of Mark Zuckerberg jogging in Beijing's air pollution at Tiananmen Square. That seems like a lifetime ago, but it was only a few years ago. But yes, I definitely are jumping off the point of China envy. The idea that China is uninvestable for American investors and the idea that American investors are now, or American tech elites are very much interested and envious of China's development. Both things are happening more or less at the same time. Right. I think China did not become much more attractive necessarily to people in American tech or in Silicon Valley per se, but there is much more appeal to the Chinese system, the China model, if you will. I think it's probably a time that it's necessary to revive the debate of what a China model really is. Remembering that as a cliched argument back in 2016, 2017. I think a lot of those if the US won't beat China, then what does the future of a Chinese century look like? I think those questions are still very much in the air.
- [13:11]
B
Right, right, right.
- [13:13]
A
Yeah. And I guess it is also now that it makes me think of, like, it's impossible, I think, to continue in good faith, even for people who are hawks, it's impossible to continue the narrative that China cannot innovate. Right. Like the fact that before the idea was China was copying everything the US does, and now every US consumer social company wants to copy TikTok's UI straight up. They are all creating their own TikToks, their own cap cuts, their own Temu's, their own Sheins. Like, the dominance of Chinese consumer tech on the American app store charts is something that VCs certainly take notice of. That does not necessarily mean that they now want to invest in Chinese companies, but it means that they see that there is a domestic innovation ecosystem that is real. And then of course, to say nothing of solar batteries, EVs, all that.
- [13:56]
B
Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Absolutely. Oh, you're good. So I wasn't completely off then. I haven't been to Valley much recently, but I. That was the sort of vibe I picked up off of, you know, eavesdropping on conversations. So. So let's jump into your piece, Jasmine. You begin with your grandmother's 1953 voyage. She's in Indonesia. She was an Indonesian Chinese huachow. She was kind of coming back, as it were, to China to help build new China. And then you kind of end with your own return as a visitor. Among friends, I couldn't help but notice that there's this kind of interesting evocation of personal family history. And I actually, before I even got to it, to the direct allusions to Leslie Chang's Factory Girls, I sort of saw that as maybe a template for what you were doing. So when you hold those two crossings sort of side by side, holding up next to each other, a young student joining a national project and a cohort like, you know, yours and your friends trying to understand a national project also, what do you see, maybe more clearly about the stories that China tells itself and maybe the story that America tells itself?
- [15:04]
A
Yeah, I mean, so the way that I write is I just have, like, a single notes app that has, like, 200 bullet points in it. And when I'm walking around, I just add more fragments and add more fragments. So I don't start with a narrative, I guess. And when I was sitting down after my trip, after I got back to San Francisco, and sitting with my notes and everything I had observed, I think that that theme of crossings actually was what stood out to me the most. This sense, this question of migrations, this question of Indonesia, the U.S. china, these hard choices that people make about where they believe their future lies. I think, like, it was a very hard choice for my grandmother as a high schooler to leave her family of, like, nine people behind to go. Yeah, she had, I think, six siblings, a mother and a father. She took a boat by herself to Fujian province to go to high school, and two years later, her mother passed away. And so she actually was the eldest daughter. And that was really challenging for her to have, in a sense, felt like she left her family behind. And then during the Cultural Revolution and the violence in Indonesia, she lost contact with all of them for, like, two decades. And so there's this sense of, like, migration as both opportunity and sacrifice. Right. That I was reflecting a lot on, because I spent some time learning my family history while I was in Shanghai this year. And I also got to talk to my mother about her own experience choosing to, after she graduated from her college in Fudan, Shanghai, to immigrate to the US and how did she make that decision? What did she expect? She mentioned her mother. My grandmother was actually one of her biggest supporters of making a similar journey. And yet one of the sort of ironies that my mother and I have talked about is that, yes, that made complete sense at the time. And yet, in the past 30, 40 years, since my mom arrived in the US where she still lives, the trajectories of the two countries have really diverged in a way, or at least it sometimes feels this way. Like in 1991, when my mom and dad arrived in Duluth, Minnesota. Not even like, you know, like a US Tier one city. There's nothing going on in Duluth, Minnesota. It was so clear that the US had better consumer goods, that it had a better education system, that it was cleaner, more prosperous, that there were more jobs, there was more opportunity. When I asked my mom, I was like, was it a hard decision to stay in the US Away from your family? She was like, no, of course not. It was like, so obvious that that was what to do. And when I was reading Wang Huning's travelogue, the same things, he points out, the same things. They have pencil sharpeners, they have science museums. It's amazing, you know. And then year by year, as my mom and my dad continue to, you know, return to Shanghai every few years to see their parents and to see their extended family, Shanghai has gotten richer, more developed, safer, cleaner. Whereas I think there is a sense that the US has stagnated in some respects and in other respects gotten worse. And sometime in the past 10 or 15 years, I would even go as far as to say for an middle class person in Shanghai versus a middle class person in Seattle, where my parents live, it is a better life in Shanghai. And China has surpassed and become the more developed country. And I just think that psychology of being someone who takes that sacrifice, takes that risk to move across the country and noticing your home country actually surpass the place that you move to in certain respects, I think that's just like a crazy experience psychologically. And so I became very interested in these migrant narratives as a result.
- [18:25]
B
Fantastic. Fantastic.
- [18:26]
C
Let's talk about the title you gave the piece, right, because you mentioned that Wang Huning's book was a source of inspiration in many ways. And I first encountered this book some years ago and I did not expect it to be so popular in the United States. Sort of imagination of China. And I suppose what you're doing is coming at China in sort of the same way that Wang did in America to compile observations from a relatively short time in the great author. But your essay is really about Americans in many ways. In many ways, I would say that Wang holdings book was not really just about. Really about America. In many ways. In ways, I would say that Wang's book was not really quite about as much as much about China. Can you talk a little bit about the choice of your title and what you meant to say with that?
- [19:15]
A
So, I mean, I had read excerpts, translated excerpts of America Against America months before writing this essay or going to China. I had come across it probably through Tanner Greer's American Nightmares essay is, I think, how I found it. And so I actually didn't make the connection at first, but I was sort of just working through the last stage of revising my essay, feeling like I wanted some sense of connective tissue. And I was rereading old materials, revisiting America Against America. And then I think it was actually the resonances about him being a Fudan professor and also him visiting America at basically the same time that my parents immigrated, and then also rereading those passages about that period, which was about 1990, and noticing how his sense of future shock of being in America resembled so closely me and some of my friends experience of future shock at particular aspects of being in China in 2025. And I think it was that resonance that I wanted to bridge with the essay. As for why my essay is more about America in many ways than it is about China, I definitely agree with that. I think partly this is just that I tend to feel that most American writing on China is about Americans anyway, even if they don't say that. And I am very much an American. I grew up here. I've never lived in China for an extended period of time. I just visit occasionally. I feel very much like a visitor, a visitor with roots, a visitor who tries to do my best to, like, understand what's going on. But, like, I understand that I'm a visitor. China is a very big, complex place with a lot of history. And so I think almost like, I feel more comfortable acknowledging that I am really writing about myself and my community here and very much sort of emphasizing, like, this is my experience as a visitor and as a member of the diaspora, rather than trying to say, like, hey, guys, I'm a China analyst now. I know what's going on because I really don't want to project that.
- [21:06]
B
There's a long, proud history of using China as sort of, you know, a mirror you can hold up to reflect on American or Western society. You know, Voltaire did it and done every. You know, everyone's done it. So I. It's interesting that you talked about, you know, the. The way that you read Long huning up, because I. I definitely picked up on that in your. In your essay. Reading him, you sense both awe at invention as you were talking about future shock, and also unease, though, about how technology governs private life, which is very interesting. A parallel that you now see in China. 30 odd years later, you know, you moved through these companies, through these cities, through these daily conveniences. But sometimes technology felt emancipating, other times it felt like, you know, nanny state supervision. What tipped the balance in either direction for you?
- [21:57]
A
Yeah, I think that's also something that was interesting to reflect on because again, you have consumer abundance and that feels. It's pretty great. I like clothes and good food and all that stuff. And it is simultaneously, at least for me, it felt quite difficult to forget that China is a surveillance state. Like, there are, there's like riot gear everywhere. It looks exactly the same, it's everywhere. You have to do facial recognition just to buy bottled water at the vending machines. Which I know is not strictly part of the surveillance state. But, you know, it's all woven in in a way. I remember when I was boarding the Shenzhen subway, I had a bottle of water in my bag and they made me drink a sip, not give it to them, but drink a sip to prove it wasn't like an explosive. And I was like, it's just like the level of, I guess monitoring was impossible to forget. And then not to say nothing of, you know, VPNs and speech stuff. And for me, like, I'm a writer and I touch on politics in my writing. And so I remember at one point I like wanted to share something about my time there while I was there. And I was like, oh, wait, I should probably do this once I'm back in the US and I've like crossed the border again. And so I definitely sort of felt this balance again of like marveling at some of the technological advancements, also marveling just that, like a lot of parts of life are pretty great for a lot of people in China right now. At the same time, like, I do experience unease, I think, at knowing that there is this much surveillance and monitoring going on. And I think, like, for me personally, that's, it's pretty important to the way that I live my life as a writer or even just, you know, like when I talk to Chinese startup founders, since we spent a lot of time talking to tech folks, like, the government policy plays such a big role in what kinds of companies you can start, what kinds of companies you can't start. How companies like, interact with government policy, the risks. And so like, it is very hard to forget that the state does play like an extremely powerful role. And maybe like, while Wang Huning's unease was about, like the way that. But he certainly felt an unease about the sort of like, materialism of American Society that he witnessed. For me, maybe like my unease was actually about the way that the state wielded technological power to control people.
- [24:06]
B
Well, in China we have both, both, you know, the materialism and the state control. So certainly, yeah, I mean, it's too bad I have to edit out that part about making you drink the, the water because you've completely ruined. Kenny and I have this, this plan. We're creating a line of potable explosives. I was completely ruined that I was.
- [24:27]
C
Not a part of that plan. Just for clarity.
- [24:29]
A
Yes, you were.
- [24:31]
B
It's funny, I mean, the double edged sword of surveillance, tiny, you and I. Last time I saw you was at a particular favorite drinking hall of mine in Beijing. And the summer before there was like the perfect story of the double edged sword of the Chinese surveillance state. So, you know, this phenomenon of pengzi, it's like people will pretend to be hit by a car or they'll flop, basically, you know, fake an injury to sort of make somebody agree to pay them 500 Yuan just to avoid having the cops involved and everything like that. So he tries to do this outside of this bar that Tanning and I were at. I wasn't there at the time, but I had this story related to me by the owner. And a guy rides up, starts wobbling his bicycle and then crashes it and then insists that a foreigner sitting out front had tripped him. And then says, you need to give me 500 yuan or I'm going to call the cops. You have to fix my bicycle. I'm injured, I'm injured. So the owner comes out and then he says, I'm going to call the cops. I'm going to call the cops. Well, please do call the cops. Go ahead. I will. I wasn't really going to call the cops. And he does. The police show up a couple of minutes later and the owner just sort of smugly says, can you pull the surveillance footage from that camera, that camera and that camera in the last 10 minutes? And then the cop smiles and says, no need, we were watching already.
- [25:50]
A
Oh, wow.
- [25:51]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they haul the guy off, but that's it right there. I think I've told the story maybe even on the show before, I feel like it, but I thought it was just really appropriate.
- [26:01]
C
I want to bring this conversation back to a place where this kind of surveillance doesn't really happen. This kind of policing also doesn't happen. In your piece, you compare China's pace of change to San Francisco's. And like San Francisco, you know, you wrote China is a Place where things actually happen. Can you sort of elaborate on this comparison? Where it works and where it doesn't work?
- [26:21]
A
Yeah, I was challenged on this note because if you look outside, nothing happens in San Francisco. Nothing happens in the physical world of San Francisco whatsoever. Like, I live in a old Victorian with like butter yellow walls that. Where the things are always breaking randomly, doorknobs are falling off, and you just like walk around the streets of sf, you would never realize that like this state has a GDP that's like, I don't know, I don't remember what it is, like the third largest or the eighth largest in the world or whatever, because it looks exactly the same as I imagine that it did 30 years ago ago. And Shanghai, if I come back in two years, skylines completely changed. I think what I mean by that is one is that yes, San Francisco, the city as a material place does not change. I would say the city's culture changes very rapidly. Like the simplest way to think about that is like, oh, the techies have invaded the city and really changed its culture. But I would say, like, that is certainly one facet of it. Tech has a lot of its own internal battles and ideologies going on. But even long before tech, you know, you had the beats and you had the hippies and you had the NIMBY and the YIMBY movement originated in San Francisco. The New left and the new communalists originated in the Bay Area. It's just like kind of this like, interesting ground that new weird ideas and political movements and technologies, psychedelics, computers, AI have all just like emerged at an incredibly rapid pace.
- [27:39]
B
Don't forget thrash metal.
- [27:40]
A
Thrash metal. I. I'm not an expert on the history of metal, but I'm glad you are. But somehow I think San Francisco's innovations all tend to be in the cultural and technological sphere and not in the physical world. Don't really know why that is, but I do think creates a sense of momentum and things happening where like, I think for me personally, I just like places that feel dynamic. I like places where you can see that like clash and friction between, I guess like new cultural movements, new technologies and existing communities, societies, institutions. I just find it like fascinating. I think, like my like socio sociology anthro brain is just like, oh, this is so fun. But China, I think, has all of that and also the material stuff going on.
- [28:20]
B
For sure, for sure. Speaking of China and sort of disruptive innovation and change, you know, Deepseek appears in your essay as kind of lodestar. I mean, for me, these Days when I talk about Deepseek, half the time I'm not actually talking about the specific Hangzhou based company. I mean, it's become kind of a metonym for Chinese tech's ability to surprise and disrupt and stun people. So do you see Deep Seek itself as an outlier or a signpost more? I mean, so if the wind shifts, you know, it goes from blessing to burden, from, you know, darling to like the chief suspect. You know, what do you expect you're going to notice first among conversations in, in the Valley, you know, among your China observant valley types. And what do you think, you know, Deep Seek has come to mean for them?
- [29:07]
A
I think you're right that Deep Seek is a metonym for Chinese technology and for its strength, its surprise. I think most folks in AI in the Valley know that Deep Seq is not the only Chinese AI lab producing great models right now. Like, people know about Kimmy and Quinn and all of the different model companies. But I think the Deep Seq moment has like, incredible resonances. I don't think that American labs took open source seriously until Deep Seq happened. I don't think that they thought that China was. I think now the estimates tend to BE China's about six months behind the U.S. frontier before, I think American analysts would estimate two to three years. That was a big surprise. I think it changed people's thinking on expert controls. And there's a very active debate on this in the US tech policy world about whether Deep Seq means we need to make our expert controls much stronger because actually they got their chips via smuggling and stuff, or whether Deep Seq actually means that our expert controls are the wrong approach and we actually need to get Chinese AI companies, quote, unquote, addicted to American chips. But either way, it sort of really made people question our expert control policy because a sense was like, is there a world in which stronger decoupling simply makes Chinese companies more resourceful and strengthens the domestic ecosystem? I do think that both US Tech policymakers and Silicon Valley and the AI labs themselves look to Deep Seat continually and use it similarly as a symbol of China's capacity to innovate at or near the frontier. And I think it. Yeah, I think it really changed strategy for both policymakers and the labs, for sure.
- [30:46]
B
Can you skip the next two questions. Yeah. And go down to your Apple Beijing elementary school and then wait for that? Because she's just preemptively answered wonderfully.
- [30:59]
C
Yeah, so I think a lot of that is a matter of perception, right? That, that the reason that there was such a surprise when Deep Sea came out was that precisely two years ago, American tech leaders were talking about how because of censorship, China will not have its own large language model, because that would simply not be possible. You know, one thing I'm thinking about is the reverse of that perception problem. You know, when I was in elementary school in Beijing, I remember following the Apple product releases which were, you know, still, you know, live stream from Cupertino. And I was watching them with greater enthusiasm. It was sort of one of the bigger things in Chinese tech. And now, of course, China has its own great tech companies and people care less about Apple product releases. But, but what's in your, in your sort of trips? What's the attitude towards US tech in China and what are people curious about these days? And I think, most importantly, what do they get wrong about US Tech in Silicon Valley?
- [31:56]
A
Yeah, interesting. Good question. I think that the folks working in AI and software who we met in China were probably the people who had the most Silicon Valley envy, who were spending the most time looking at what Silicon Valley was doing, talking about Elon Musk, talking about Alexander Wang, talking about, like, even the way that people designed their offices to look like startup offices that folks told me were like, directly inspired by their experience working in Silicon Valley or accelerators directly inspired the Aeon chairs, right? Yes, literally.
- [32:36]
C
You know, one tidbit I always talk about is Zhang Yiming's office, the founder of ByteDance, his original office had a copy of Eric Schmidt's book framed on the wall.
- [32:47]
A
Oh, God, that's so good. Yeah, yeah, I could totally see just like literally in the physical design of these spaces that I would say among the software and AI crowd, there still is both a felt sense and like an explicit sense when I ask that the US was still leading in AI and consumer software and that the models of how to build a successful startup, how investment should work, et cetera, were still primarily focus on the us. So, like, for example, I think I heard several times people say along the lines of the frontier researchers, or the top researchers, or the top 1% of researchers and engineers and design talent are still in the us. Or one consumer founder was talking to me about the Chuhai strategy, where everyone wishes they were heijin and they could like, move their company to LA somehow so that they could get US investment and build in the US market before sort of bringing it back domestically to China, which is in many ways a more difficult and also a more capital, thin revenue, thin market. And so I do think that there is still a lot of respect for Silicon Valley. I don't know if people got that much wrong, I guess. I mean, it's hard to say with the talent comparisons, like whether that's right or wrong. I don't really know, to be honest. But I think that Chinese technologists have a better perception of US tech than the US does of Chinese technologists. This is mostly because the folks who we're spoken speaking to, most of them had experience living, studying and working in the Bay Area tech communities. And so that was one of the things that really distinguished this trip. And part of why I thought about the theme of migration or these haikui so much was because I'd been speaking to so many people who could have had full professional careers in Silicon Valley. Some of them did for some number of years and yet chose to move back to China. And that was a choice I found really interesting.
- [34:34]
B
So, you know, I wanted to follow up with you because you had a lot of conversations with these engineers that struck you as very practical people. They were very cheerful, even in the face of that infamous kind of 996 pressure. I'm curious what you think is really driving them, if you got a sense of that at all. Did you ever see something like a acidic ethic beneath the talk of shipping product and fast iteration? Was it pride in making things work? Was it just the exit that they were looking at, the big payday? Or was there also maybe a sense of, I don't know, of service, maybe to family, to city, even to nation, something larger behind it?
- [35:12]
A
Yeah, I think among some of the folks I spoke with, I certainly noticed that, like one of the AI researchers who I spoke with, as well as the manufacturing executive I spoke with in particular, I think of having a bit of sort of patriotic element underlying their spirit. I'm actually curious. I'll give my take. And then I'm curious to actually hear Tianyu's take on this because we've talked a lot ourselves about sort of how ideology and the role of ideology and technology differs between China and Silicon Valley. My sense was something like there are four people working in, especially in these strategic industries, right? Like industries that the government had designated as important. Whether it's AI, whether it's manufacturing sort of new materials, et cetera, there was a sense of national pride. It felt less like a political kind of thing and it felt more like a team China type thing. I don't know if I'm like stating it correctly, but people seem to feel motivated by the fact that The US was clearly trying so hard to decouple and to cut China off. So things like export controls, tariffs. The sense of bullying is a word that I heard used a couple times by people. Chinese technologists are very aware that America is trying to slow China's technological advancement down. I think that's an accurate description. And that creates a sort of fiery, like, screw you, I'm going to prove myself. And the way that I'm going to prove myself is by working harder, building better. Because like, I think even for Chinese technologists we spoke to, they see that when Deep Seek was able to, in the face of expert controls, build a really great open source model, that did get America to sort of like wake up. And I think maybe there's a sense that they too, by working hard and building something amazing, could get America to wake up. I would say there's something civic pride in that that I notice in addition to the more practical elements. But again, I'm very curious what Chen Yu thinks, because in another sense, I don't think Chinese technologists are as ideological as American technologists.
- [37:13]
C
Yeah, I broadly agree. I think the differentiation here is ideology and sort of like civic right. That I think in America, the way that we get things done, it's so much focused on the advertising of it.
- [37:29]
B
Right?
- [37:30]
C
Everything is a PR game. The rule, the sort of the unwritten rule in Silicon Valley is who makes the best commercials, who makes the best ads. And you can see this very clearly in the recent wave of just young tech startups being very good at advertising their startups, even though they have no real product. And I think that the sort of the nationalism game plays a huge role in that. To secure funding, to secure R and D resources, to secure customers, in some cases American texts, we're so obsessed with preaching to the, say, security establishment, preaching to the patriotic resurgence in America. Whereas in Chinese context, I would assume that a lot of people are much more practical and the everyday workers are just not so excited or enthusiastic about the natural cause. The way that San Francisco conservatives are about. When you see them on Twitter.
- [38:29]
B
Interesting. I think maybe they're closer than you think. I mean, I hear a lot of what Jasmine was talking about, a lot of that kind of sense of. That's why I asked the question, because I think I recognized that in conversations, I have a lot of technologists, there is a lot of that sort of underlying. I am doing my part in a national cause. America bullying us is lit a fire and now I'm going to show them. Interesting.
- [38:55]
A
I will say that maybe there's fewer like, and I'd be again, curious for your takes, but my sense is that there might be fewer, like, micro ideologies in Chinese tech. One thing that I find fascinating and weird about Silicon Valley is that individual founders and movements like to start their own ideological movements. So, like, Biology has his network state, and Brian Johnson has his don't die movement, and OpenAI and the other AI labs are trying to build AGI, and maybe those will become our children and worthy software successors to take over from us. And there's a way in which the funding and recruiting ecosystem makes it actually quite beneficial to start your own little culty movement in order to recruit people and money to the cause. And so you get this real plethora of funny subcultures in San Francisco technology. And I wonder if there are fewer of these going on in China.
- [39:47]
C
In San Francisco, if you don't have a manifesto, are you really a real tech startup?
- [39:52]
B
It's funny you're not allowed to have manifestos in China because, you know, they don't tolerate any sort of ideological challenges to party orthodoxy. So, you know, we. We hear an awful lot about these social phenomena that emerge in China. I. I have to sense that there's an awful lot of these phenomena that are not even remotely unique to China. But, you know, they get called by a name that's easy for foreigners to latch onto, and then they seem to want to make these things all about China. I mean, I'm talking about stuff like I mentioned996 already, right. And felt a little guilty for doing so. But, you know, Nei Jian, which is a big feature in your piece, but, you know, older stuff like Guanxi or Mian's the face. You know, I'm actually inclined to agree with Lei Gong. I don't know if you guys know him, but I know Tanya. You know the guy.
- [40:40]
A
I've seen his tweets.
- [40:41]
B
Yeah, yeah. Really interesting. Really interesting thinker. You know, he's feisty. He came to a party that I threw actually, for my brother's house in the Bay Area once and was just an entertaining guy. I mean, I suggest having him at any party because he can really hold forth. But anyway, Lay said something I thought was. It really made me think. He thinks that this is a form of Orientalism, that people point to a phenomenon that's actually pretty universal, or at least, you know, that's shared between Americans and Chinese, for sure. But because there's this exotic or, you know, specific Chinese name for it, it makes it seem like some different phenomenon. So do you have thoughts on this? I mean, is there something particularly Chinese about involution that's so different from the American version? I mean, it. I don't know.
- [41:31]
A
Yeah, I mean it was something I was thinking about a lot because again, involution is the number one word that came up with anyone we spoke to. And at first like I did think like, yes, this is a Chinese thing. You look around everywhere you see involution. And then I think I started to think about how, for example, one of the craziest examples of involution that I felt like I noticed is that it is cheaper at the moment to get your Boba delivered than it is to go pick it up. Because of the price war between the delivery companies means that they're just like giving huge consumer discounts. But also when Waymo and Cruise were rolling out in San Francisco, I took free Waymos and cruises around San Francisco for literally zero costs, which can't have been making Waymo and Cruz any money. But like that there was a lot of competition. They wanted some beta testers, they wanted to create buzz, so that's what they did. Or everybody knows that like Cursor, like the AI assisted coding company is losing tons and tons of money. They tried to raise prices by a little bit recently and the whole user base revolted. And all of these AI companies because models are in some ways near commoditized because of open source, they're trying to undercut each other with these like super, super cheap prices, but losing a lot of money at the top. And so like, I think that it is true that there might be certain aspects of, you know, Chinese society that experience a lot of involution. But I think one of the things that I try to point out in my piece is that the more that I reflected on this, the more that I saw evolution as frankly a quite useful term to describe certain types of competitive dynamics in the US and I'm sure in other places as well. And it's more useful to think about like it may be a useful term but like what actually leads to this? It's when you have very, a limited pool of resources, you have like extremely intense competition and you don't have a good exit strategy. So in the US when everyone talks about the new grad jobs crisis and how a new grad software engineer will apply to 200 jobs and they'll get zero interviews and they're grinding and leetcoding harder and harder for no jobs like that feels like involution to me, just as Gao Call feels like evolution. And so I think I agree with you that some of these terms would be, they are good terms. I find them useful and I don't think that most of them are China exclusive phenomena. Nine, nine six. It's funny because San Francisco literally just discovered nine, nine, six like last week. And so everybody in San Francisco has been talking about 99 6. And I'm like, you guys are very late. And also I don't know that you all want to copy996.
- [43:51]
B
That's hilarious.
- [43:52]
C
And San Francisco now thinks that United States is a great thing because they.
- [43:56]
A
Oh they're.
- [43:56]
C
Because nobody has ever experienced it yet.
- [43:59]
A
Yeah. And they're nine, nine six. It's like oh, I'm nine nine six but I'm gonna go to yoga at 3pm like they don't understand that. Kuaishou. They were literally monitoring your bathroom breaks. Like your 996 is not the same as the old Chinese 996.
- [44:13]
C
Yeah, I remember on the point about youth unemployment. I remember when I was in college I was looking at all these Chinese conversations also happening in China. The conversation about evolution, lying flames, that sort of stuff. And I was just thinking to myself, look, a lot of these similar trends are happening here in the United States as well. And it's not much easier for American sort of a college grad referral place, like a top university to find out.
- [44:38]
A
Totally. Yeah. I mean actually one really quick thing on this is one hypothesis I have which I'm not sure if it's true, but right now you hear a lot about Chinese youth burnout in English language media in particular. So English language media in China really focuses on the burnout, the Tung Ping, the run, whatever. And I definitely think that is a real phenomenon that is being described. And also, I don't know, I wonder. I suspect that it might be slightly overrepresented among Chinese people who are writing English language long form essay articles. Because in the US media the essay writing class also tends to be disproportionately burnout, late capitalism pilled. And so I think that this might just be a characteristic of upper middle class essay writers. But I don't really know.
- [45:25]
B
Right. If you read that crowd, you believe that most, most Chinese youth do not have jobs, they're the product of a lead over production and that they're all actually going to work in these fake workplaces. Right. Because that's the thing now everyone's written that damn story.
- [45:41]
C
It's kind of Funny, Jasmine. Every time I go back to China, I feel like the one thing I notice is just how much more convenient my life has become. There are faster trains, there are cleaner parks. You have all these apps that deliver things to your house. And, you know, you went to China with a group of friends. Did these small comforts change any of your priors about what the government should be judged on? And did you expect that change, you know, to last back home?
- [46:12]
A
Yeah, I think actually it is challenging in a way to reflect on how much I and many of my friends are real consumers. You know, like, we all want to be noble citizens who only care about liberal values. And I certainly care a lot about liberal values, I think. But I also really like it when the trains are fast and the sidewalks are clean and I can have my Longjing osmanthus latte. And I think that all of us felt this. I remember actually our mutual friend Arjun. He was with us in Shenzhen this time, but he had also been to Shanghai for the first time earlier in the year, which was his first trip to Shanghai, and he was writing for the Economist. He spent a long time as the India correspondent. And he went to Shaha. And he was like, you know, I already knew the trains were fast before I got here. Everyone talks about the trains, but you don't actually physically, like, viscerally realize how much the public infrastructure is a quality of life boost that you would probably be like, yeah, if my infrastructure was getting this much better all the time, I probably would pay higher taxes or whatever. And I do think there's something visceral about that. I think Clara said very similar. Like, she was like, well, I already knew that China was very big, that the trains were very fast, that the life was very convenient. But I don't know that I understood as deeply how appealing and convenient this is until I am actually here. And I think a very challenging question for us to reflect on was which of these are sort of. When we then do the mirror to America and we think about why can't we have this nice stuff? Like, I think the mirror question I held up is, well, which of these things are because of mismanagement in the US and simply the US Needs to govern itself better. I don't really see any reason we can't have great lattes and slightly better trains, and which one is the result of just really low labor costs in China that will not work in a place like the US where minimum wages are much higher and there's just somewhat lower economic inequality. You don't have this giant migrant labor force that is delivering all of your food. I don't really feel the need, for example, for San Francisco to have much, much faster or negative priced delivery. But I would really like to have cleaner streets and faster trains. And I don't really see why we can't have those things. So I think separating those elements out of consumer abundance is something that we realized. The other thing that I reflected on though is that I think me and my friends tend to be relatively politically engaged and sort of philosophical types who do reflect on things like liberal values and such. And the other thought that I frankly had was I'm a writer, so I prioritize things like freedom of speech a lot. When I think about where I want to live my life, most people, my senses are not writers and not startup entrepreneurs. And I could totally see, especially as more people in the US are disillusioned with American illiberalism and rising American authoritarianism, more people might think, yeah, if I'm going to have to live in a kind of illiberal place, or like neither place seems like it's like upholding these free values, whatever, maybe I would just simply rather trade off some of my quote unquote freedoms to have more consumer abundance. And I could see that being basically a rational decision that a lot of Americans think is a good idea. And so that's also something that's a bit hard for me to sit with.
- [49:25]
B
Yeah. And I think everyone has, whether they know it or not, a sort of elasticity that they assign a kind of coefficient of elasticity with all these values. They're willing to trade down on this for more points of that. I've talked about that a lot. So I mean, related to what we were just talking about. You talked about one of your more philosophical friends, a self described liberal patriot. You quoted her just now, Clara, and you have a line in there. I was like, this isn't supposed to work, she says, but it does. I was particularly intrigued by her experience because I feel like it stands in for a lot of what Americans are or will soon be reckoning with. Even if they're not thinking about, you know, where I'm going to live, they are really reckoning with, you know, what is China maybe doing right, and what can we borrow? And that's really the upshot of the whole thing, right? I mean, walk us through the moment or moments when, when that really clicked for her, what, what experiences? You know, whether the small really kind of tactile ones that are just sort of like felt in the body like Osmanthus, you know, Lung Jing tea or whatever. But also, you know, the big ones or the tableau that she was exposed or the set pieces that she was witness to, you know, that forced her to update her priors that, you know, like, you know, how did she talk about that kind of elasticity thing that trade off as rights as process and outcomes that you can actually feel? How did you, especially after you went home, after, you know, the kind of wow, factors off, the jet lag wore off. How do you guys talk about that?
- [50:55]
A
Yeah, that was super interesting. It was Clara's first time in China. She's a white American from Los Angeles, considers herself a liberal, considers a self patriot, very smart, very knowledgeable person who I really trust to think about politics and things like that in a nuanced way. And it's funny because that after I wrote my blog post, she's several times come to me and been like, Jasmine. Like this line makes me look so innocent and so naive. But she did say it, actually, not just once, but probably three or four times throughout the trip. We would be looking at skyscrapers and she'd say it. We talked to some Chinese entrepreneurs and she'd say it. We'd drink our Long Jing tea in Hangzhou and she would, we'd be looking at the cups like, why can't we have these cups that conveniently filter out the tea leaves when you drink them? And she would say the same thing. So it was a real theme of our conversation. The way that she elaborated it to me recently when we were at a party together a few days ago where she was like, the more that I learned about China's political system and the mechanics of it, the more that I thought, wow, this is even crazier and weirder than I thought. For example, the notion that Shanghai neighborhoods can themselves invest and provide seed funding and compute resources to designated AI startups like that seems really weird and it doesn't seem like it would be very effective. On the other hand, she was able to recognize the efficiency, the kids convenience, the quality of life being very high for a great deal of Chinese people. And so it was sort of just a repeated theme. And I think it was fun for me and for Aphra, for example, who grew up in China to sort of re experience the country through the lens of a couple of friends who had spent much less time there than we had.
- [52:32]
B
Fantastic. Fantastic.
- [52:34]
C
Yes. So other than the Long Jing teacups, which I found fascinating and it's very hard to find them here in the U.S. you know, in your piece you mentioned that you're making dashboards for US cities.
- [52:46]
A
Oh yeah.
- [52:47]
C
And if you and Clara were the mayors of San Francisco or Los Angeles, which I would totally support in any case.
- [52:55]
A
Oh no.
- [52:57]
C
What kind of Chinese measures you import into these cities that ordinary people will feel weekly and sort of what are the things that you wouldn't want importance court here.
- [53:08]
A
Yeah. The dashboards conversation was fun. I think we were on route between Yuyao and Shanghai when we were having this conversation. We were going across that like 35 kilometer bridge. I don't know what it's called, but there's like an extremely long bridge just like through the. Yeah, through the, through the ocean. It's crazy. I think that was one of the things we were marveling at was like, you can build a bridge this long. Like that's crazy. But I think we were discussing the Chinese municipal local measurement stuff. I'm not again, an expert on any of this, but like our sense of it from just like reading is that a lot of local officials are measured on gdp. GDP is the simplified version. There's actually like all of these metrics like pollution levels and Xi Jinping thought and like a bunch of random things that sort of go into your aggregate metric of like how well you're doing. And this is how people get rewarded. Also, like something that I always found really funny was in Shanghai, I noticed. And then in Shenzhen this time there are parks metrics like build 1000 parks by 2025, 2000 parks by 2030. And my joke was always that I thought that Shanghai bureaucrats or Chinese bureaucrats would make excellent growth PMs because they are so good at hitting their KPIs.
- [54:19]
B
The whole country runs on KPIs is what I'm explaining to people.
- [54:22]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. And whereas, you know, I think about the US and maybe it's just because I'm like, maybe I'm just not informed enough or whatever. But like, I don't think our bureaucrats are setting KPIs. And when they say they're going to do things, we certainly do not believe they will meet the KPIs. Like almost if someone thought that Bernie Sanders says Medicare for all, and if Bernie had become president and someone actually thought he was going to do it, I'd be like, you're being naive. No one ever does what they say. And so but that made us think like a, why don't we have more transparent KPIs? And also why can't we at least measure and understand as a Public as a citizenry, as a democratic citizenry, how our leaders are doing. Right? And so, like, we were imagining a dashboard that would say things like, what is the GDP of San Francisco? To be able to look at that over, you know, months, years, decades. How are we doing, for example, on number of homeless, homeless people on the streets? Like, every mayor of San Francisco says they're going to make reducing homelessness a priority. I would like to know how we are doing on that. I have no idea, frankly, how to find out. It would be really nice if we knew that. I would like to know the median home price. There are all these issues that the public cares about, and there's really no way for us to know how it's going. And that doesn't mean that the US needs to, for example, install its mayors by these KPI metrics and promote and demote and reelect based on hitting the metrics. But to me, it feels like those should be inputs for democratic decision making. When I vote, I would really love to be able to see this kind of data or to read articles by journalists who have parsed that data. And so I do think that the US could take certainly a more technocratic approach to some of its policymaking authoritarianism.
- [56:06]
B
Without the good parts. As you said. That's the problem.
- [56:09]
A
That's a Dan line. But he really. I was thinking about that one.
- [56:14]
B
Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. So I think we want to move to wrap up here. I just have really kind of like one more big question for you guys, and that is, like, if you wanted thoughtful Americans to experience the same kind of productive dissonance that you and your friends felt, what's an itinerary you would design? What places, what kinds of encounters with people do you think would help just sort of spark that reckoning that we've been going on about?
- [56:43]
A
Yeah. I'm curious for both of your suggestions as well as people who have spent more time in China than I have, because one critique that I did get on my blog post, or maybe not critique, but response, was like, you spent time in these tier one cities talking to tech people. And I'm like, that's true. That's exactly what I did. And most of China certainly is not AI founders in Shanghai. I'm very aware of that. But I will say that I have really gotten a lot of value, I felt, out of doing this kind of more intentional travel approaches, by which I mean not just trying to hit all of the tourist hotspots, which, you know, we'll go to Westlake and Whatever and we'll go to Dong Hwa Mingju. But also trying to meet people, whoever is willing, who actually lives in the place that you are visiting and has lived there for a long time and can show you around and tell you very honestly about their experience. Experience. So of course like some of us had contacts like Kaiser, you were kind enough to make a couple intros, a couple others, also new people in China. But also I've met a lot of people through Dming, people on subsec and Twitter. There's a very vibrant China subset ecosystem and I have found that many people are willing to say hello if you simply send them a note on substack and you're nice about it. There's an urban anthropologist, Marianne o', Donnell, who we met in Shenzhen, who I sent a cold email to just because I was like, like I read your blog. I think it's cool. Would love to meet people. Are just very kind and down to me and I think like spending time with folks who are living in the place is always really important. I think that I really enjoyed going on the factory tours both this year I did the materials factory in Yuyal. Last year we went to a small airplane factory in Shaoxing. And these were both, I think really fascinating because again, America does not have a very strong manufacturing ecosystem system right now. So I think that was some of the stuff that is most impressive and most surprising to us relative to consumer software, which we do have pretty good consumer software in the US as well. So I think if people are able to see, you know, the manufacturing stuff, I think that's pretty great. And then also one of my goals for next year because I think I'm going to basically keep bringing a small group of friends to a different place in China every year for the foreseeable future is I would like to spend some time in some more rural areas of China. I'm curious if you guys have recommendations of some think of road tripping around Guizhou or something like that. But I would like to get a fuller picture of not just the tier one cities that I tend to spend the most time in.
- [59:00]
B
Yeah, I mean, but come to Beijing, of course I will make you feel right at home.
- [59:07]
C
I've been being trained as a historian now, so one thing I would add to that is that I really enjoyed in the past few months picking up China history books and I've been reading a lot of memoirs that are written Chinese by people from that were mostly published in the 90s and 2000s. You know, it gives you a Different perspective on life in China before I was there. Right. The achievements in China, also the mistakes that the Chinese government makes and the problems with China today. A lot of that requires a comparison now with the United States or Silicon Valley. It requires a comparison with China 40 years ago. And that was a very different China. And I think very few of us would have imagined what China would have been like today from that perspective.
- [59:52]
A
Yeah, that actually reminds me, I think the reading component was also really big. I think last year when I went, I read all the Peter Hessler books. I think I was planning to read other books, but then I got so into his writing style that I just read all of the Peter Hessler books in a row. And then I also read all the Chaoyong Trapp archives and all the Dan letters last year, I think that was. And listened to like, 40 Sinika episodes. So that was my last year's curriculum. This year I did Breakneck, I did Factory Girls, and I did the Rise and Fall of the east by Yashang Huang. I also. I'm still halfway through, but I'm also in the middle of Tian's favorite, the End of History and the Last man by Frank Fukuyama, which is not a China book, but I think is actually a very useful book to read while being in China. I think it's interesting to see. I mean, yeah, I just think it's like a very interesting frame alongside everything else. And I did notice that the reading I was doing framed the way that I experience life. Like, seeing sort of some of the attitudinal resonances between the Factory Girls and Leslie's book and the technologists who we met, where again, there's this assumption from the west sometimes that if someone is working in these very intense conditions, if you're working996, if you face these, like, adversarial labor conditions, that you are being exploited in some way, which is, like, maybe sometimes true. And however, like, I find that very, very much denies the agency and the real sense of courage and drive that people have. And so I think, like, Factory Girls is definitely something that framed my understanding. I think the rise and Fall of the east, sort of seeing the legacy of, like, Keju and just like, this intense competition that pervades society. But also, like, competition is a sort of rigid sense. So I definitely find the value of like. Like reading alongside experiencing and weighing both of those things highly. I think if you only read versus if you only travel, like, neither of those are going to get you a very good picture.
- [61:45]
B
Yeah, I Think your reading selection was fantastic. I mean the things, you know, besides the kudjui stuff from Yasha in this book, I mean the scale and scope, framing was so, so, so useful to me. And then of course, you know, Leslie's great book, a much needed subversion of the old sweatshop narrative. I think, you know, that's that you, you, you picked up on that very, very, very well. This is kind of building lives and, and teaching yourself a skill and you know, betting on your own hustle and all that stuff. I mean that was great. And then yeah, Dan's book, I mean, obviously I talked to him recently, but it's like I said, super zeitgeisty. Since we're on books, let's, let's move on to recommendations. They don't need to be books. And mine actually will be an anti book recommendation that's based on something of Dan from. But let's start with you, Chenyu, and then we'll go to you Jasmine, and then I'll finish up.
- [62:36]
C
My recommendation has been my guilty pleasure for the last few months, which is I watched Mad Men for the first time.
- [62:43]
B
Oh really?
- [62:43]
C
It made me think about the rise of America as a post industrial creative society where the social elite of that show were people who sit in a room, take a nap at work and then just had a great idea and put it on a board and present it to a client. That is sort of the social elite that we've cultivated in America in the last few decades. And in China you kind of have the opposite sort of social elite. Right. It's not the person who talks good. It's not the person who is able to present things well or have great sort of idea that just comes out of nowhere. It's someone who has a lot of experience, who has a lot of, of energy, who's put in the work. Right. I think it's a very sharp contrast if you think about sort of now we're in this decline of creative work. Right. The kind of creative jobs that used to be there for college grads are no longer there or with artificial intelligence and other new technologies. That year is going away. So I think there's more perspective there. So I really recommend watching Mad Men if you haven't and re watching it, it if you have.
- [63:49]
B
Okay, yeah, I only made it through the first season. I just lost interest in it for some reason. But maybe I'll revisit it. No, no shortage of good stuff to watch. But Jasmine, what do you have for us recommendation wise?
- [64:00]
A
I guess since I sort of did my, like, here are the three China books that I just read and all really liked. I will actually go for a non intellectual recommendation, which is, of course, when you go to China, the food is one of the best parts. And I think people in the US are familiar with Xiao Long Ball and they're familiar with Sichuan food. Two things that I always miss a lot. One is Yungnan noodles. I mean, Yungnan food in general is incredible.
- [64:25]
B
Yeah, that kind of thing.
- [64:26]
A
Yeah. I got to spend a few days there last time. But I think just like the amount of herbs, like mint, the freshness, the mushrooms, it's very different from, I think, what people expect Chinese food to be like. And I really enjoyed it. The acidity, the spice. So I think that people, if they live near a Yunnan restaurant, should try some. And then also, I think it's going.
- [64:45]
B
To be the next big thing in America.
- [64:47]
A
I hope so.
- [64:48]
B
Yeah. No, I really, I think so.
- [64:49]
C
There's been quite a few Yunnan food restaurants popping up in the Bay Area.
- [64:53]
A
Yeah, there's a one called Oodle in like the Outer Richmond that's kind of near Cafe La Promenade and the Dumpling place. You like? That I think is quite good, at least.
- [65:04]
C
I'm excited to try it out next time.
- [65:05]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The other one that I haven't found a good Bay Area replacement for is jianbing. Like, I, One of my favorite things is getting jianbing from like the little stands for like 6, 6 yuan, you know, and I cannot find a good jianping here. I've tried.
- [65:21]
C
There's one in Oakland and there's the, there's another one in Sunnyvale, but they're both very hard to get to.
- [65:28]
A
I think the Oakland one is also only open from 9am to 3pm because I asked Stephen once, because I was like, Stephen would know.
- [65:35]
B
It's so funny. I mean, we take them so for granted here. I mean, chimney are on every damn corner.
- [65:39]
A
I know.
- [65:40]
B
Yeah, it's, it's great. They are good. They're very carby, though. And it's, it's got a rock in your stomach for, you know, hours afterwards. So I, I, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm not eating them these days, but there they are with their, their like creepy temptation constantly. Hey, so I'm going to do a. Those are great recommendations and. Oh, Jasmine, what was that phrase you used in your piece about Yunnan food? Vietnamese food, something cousin. Was it?
- [66:08]
A
Oh, I don't remember. But okay, this is last year's piece, I think.
- [66:14]
B
Was it? Okay.
- [66:16]
C
I also remember reading this.
- [66:17]
A
Yeah. Because I. Yeah, because I went to Yungnan last year, and I didn't this year, so it definitely was last year.
- [66:23]
B
You know, I spent the summer where I spent, you know, all the whole month of July in Yuna, and it was just fantastic.
- [66:28]
A
Oh, man, I bet. I. I really want to go back. I just. I. I had such a good time there. It's beautiful. Going hiking. The vibes are just so different.
- [66:36]
B
Yeah, it's an amazing place. Absolutely amazing place.
- [66:39]
C
I find you're not overrated amount among. Among foreigners. So I feel like it's the next big thing that people will be talking about, because I asked Tyler Cowan, I was like. He's like, I really like Yunan food. I was like, oh, it's over now. Like, everybody. Yeah, everybody's gonna jump on this train.
- [66:53]
A
Wait, where do you think. Where do you think is underrated? Tien?
- [66:56]
C
No, I mean, obviously, Dong BEI food.
- [66:58]
B
Oh, okay.
- [66:59]
C
I'm partial.
- [67:00]
B
I tell you. I mean, eating it for a month did get pretty tiresome, I have to say.
- [67:05]
A
That might be true.
- [67:06]
B
There's just not enough variety. And plus, you know, I had the sort of no carbs thing, so the mishian was off limits to me, so.
- [67:13]
A
Oh. Yeah. I don't eat meat, so Dong BEI food is hard for me.
- [67:18]
B
Oh.
- [67:18]
C
Oh, I'm sorry.
- [67:19]
A
I know. I'm pescatarian. It's.
- [67:21]
B
It's.
- [67:21]
A
I mean, I'm loose pescatarian in China because no one understands pescatarian. So if I'm a don't ask, don't tell pescatarian, like, if there's. If there's pork fat in the. In the pastry, just don't tell me. It's okay.
- [67:32]
B
Right, Right, Right. Good. Good policy. Good policy. Okay, so my recommendation is an anti recommendation, and then I'll do a positive recommendation. And my anti. Recommendation is the Red and the Black by Stendahl, because Dan, you know, number seven among his favorite books. And, you know, it's been gnawing at me for a long time that I hadn't read it. So I finally picked it up, and I just can't. I just can't really. My God, It's. It's so. It's just. It's another. It's another world. But, I mean, I was looking forward to, you know, just deep psychological explorations, but I got a lot of sort of women fainting and swooning and having these preposterously childish ideas about love and romance, and it was just so. Just melodramatic and just Kind of silly. I mean, I hadn't been able to make it more than like 20 chapters into it. And I'm ready to give up, basically.
- [68:28]
A
Okay. And that's actually useful because it's actually both one of Dan and Clara's favorite books. And so they talked about it at the thing I hosted and so I was like, should I pick it up? But now I'm. I'll say mixed reviews.
- [68:41]
B
It ain't no Middlemarch, I'll tell you that. Middlemarch is a million times about it. If you want, you know, the literature written of that time, I'd say, yeah, yeah, just go for your George Eliot. Yeah. Okay. So my positive recommendation, just, you know, inspired by your. Your name check of Fukuyama just now is his two volume book, which I think is actually more useful if you're a person. Yeah, it's. Yeah. The Origins of Political Order and. Political Order and Political Decay. Those two, I honestly believe they were his effort to explain China. It's never too explicit, but that's what it's really all about. And I find them to be, you know, I keep going back to them because I think there are some really, some enduring ideas in them and they've really helped shape my own thinking about the way the world works. So, yeah, those two more than the much vilified history in the last film, which I think unfairly vilified by the way. But hey guys, so much fun to have you on. I mean, tangy. Welcome to the show and we'll have you on a lot more often. Jasmine, once again, I mean that essay was just terrific. I want everyone to make sure to read it and I would look forward to more of your writing. Become a paying subscriber to Jasmine's thing. I mean, she's supporting herself doing this now, so. Yeah.
- [70:01]
A
Thank you so much for having me on. This has been so great.
- [70:03]
C
Thank you.
- [70:04]
A
Kaiser to talk to both of you. Kaiser to chat for the first time. Tien, always. Always a pleasure.
- [70:08]
C
Always a pleasure. Always a pleasure.
- [70:10]
B
Jasmine, I think there's lots more. We left half our questions on the cutting room floor and we will end up revisiting you maybe next year for.
- [70:18]
A
Your next trip or next year. Yeah, let's do it next year.
- [70:22]
B
Yeah, yeah, we'll check in with you again. You've been listening to the Seneca podcast. The show is produced, recorded, engineered, edited and mastered by me. Kaiser Gua support the show through substack@www.cynicalpodcast.com where there is a growing offering of terrific original China related writing. And audio. Email me@cinecopodmail.com got ideas on how you can help out with the show? Don't forget to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Enormous gratitude to the University of Wisconsin Madison center for East Asian Studies for supporting the show this year. Huge thanks to our guest Jasmine Sl. Thank you all for listening. We'll see you next week. Take care.