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- [00:01]
Audible Narrator
Audible's Romance Collection has something to satisfy every side of you when it comes to what kind of romance you're into. You don't have to choose just one fancy a dalliance with a duke or maybe a steamy billionaire. You could find a book boyfriend in the city and another one tearing it up on the hockey field. And if nothing on this earth satisfies, you can always find love in another realm. Discover modern rom coms from authors like Lily Chu and Ali Hazelwood, the latest romantasy series from Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros, plus Regency favorites like Bridgerton and Outlander, and of course, all the really steamy stuff. Your first great love story is free when you sign up for a free 30 day trial at audible.com wondery that's audible.com wondery welcome everyone to the Cynical.
- [00:55]
Kaiser Kuo
Podcast Special 10 Year Anniversary Interactive Podcast. We began life in April 2010 in Beijing, and for the first six years it was just something that Jeremy and me did for fun. It's no less fun now, of course, but as you probably know, for the last four years we've been powered by our friends at Sup China. And while we're delighted to have you all here, if you aren't already signed up for our Sup China Access newsletter, go sign up right now and use the Sinica 10 discount code for 25% off off on your subscription. Whether a month or a full year, it is a feast, as we say, of business, political and cultural news about a nation that is reshaping the world. I am Kaiser Guo. I'm coming to you today from as some of you can see from my home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Joining me from the Oval Office is Jeremy Goldkorn, who's still trying to get that pesky rule about natural born Americans. You know, his qualifications for the presidency change so he has a shot. Sorry man, I. You know, you have my vote. If it's any consolation, you would have my vote.
- [02:02]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Gold corn 2024.
- [02:06]
Kaiser Kuo
You guys all in. All right, so we're just gonna wing things here today. Let's go basically off script, riff on things if the spirit moves us and take questions from the feed as they pop up. But there are a couple of things that I wanted to do with you, Jeremy, and maybe one of them is just to talk through a little bit about, you know, what it's been like for the last 10 years just doing the podcast. What has changed for us from those boozy evenings that we so enjoyed back at Pop Up Chinese compared to this ultra Slick, you know, media startup from New York that we now work for. What has been lost, what has been gained for the show, and then maybe we'll talk a little bit about the big picture in China. You know, what's changed in China over the last decade, 10 years. What did we get right? What did we get wrong?
- [02:53]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Okay, well, do you want to kick us off with a specific question?
- [02:57]
Kaiser Kuo
Well, no. I mean, let's just riff. I mean, talk about those boozy evenings back in. I mean, we used to record in a decidedly grotty studio that was opened by this guy named Dave Lancashire, who was running a service called Pop Up Chinese. And many of you probably remember that they were teaching Chinese language. And so Jeremy was the one actually had the brilliant idea of approaching Dave and seeing whether we could sort of piggyback on the work that he was already doing. And he was extremely generous about that. You know, no money had to change hands, so we just had to show up with a guest and with some ideas for what to talk about. And he usually had the refrigerator stocked with beer, and we just went to it. Right? I mean.
- [03:37]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Yeah, that's right. And he generously also produced the podcast for many years. You know, he did the audio editing. So it was very easy for us to start the podcast and to continue doing it. And, you know, David is. Was very generous. I think we got more out of him than we gave to him. But the idea was that we would help promote his Chinese language learning service, which we did. But it was. Yeah, it was strictly an amateur affair at the time, both of us. Well, actually, you hadn't quite started at Baidu, right?
- [04:18]
Kaiser Kuo
No, I was just weeks away from starting.
- [04:20]
Jeremy Goldkorn
You were weeks away from starting at Baidu? I was extremely poor, running my old company, dunway.org off the sniff of an oil rag and basically living off instant noodles. And it was a. I mean, 2010 was. It was a big year for people who follow stuff in China like us, because we had. Our first episode was the Google pullout, and we discussed that with Bill Bishop. And in some ways, looking back, it seems to me that that is one of the moments you could almost say was epoch defining. It was the end of hope for Western Internet companies in China. After the Google pullout, there were no tech companies that did anything that involved free expression. I guess that's right.
- [05:25]
Kaiser Kuo
That was definitely a defining moment. Back then, our format, we tended to invite mostly journalists on the show, remember? I mean, if you think about who our regulars were, I mean, there were people like Gotti Epstein, Shannon Van Sant, who I've just seen, has joined us, who's now at npr, and she's just doing fantastically well. A lot of the people who were on with us early on, Kathleen McLaughlin, Tanya Brannigan, a lot of them were fantastically good journalists who've gone on to do things both in China and outside of China. We also had a bunch of blogger types who were fantastic, like Jeremiah Jenny, who's still just one of my favorite people to chat China with, and Will Moss, who ran that fantastic blog Image Thief back then. But it's changed, hasn't it? I mean, it's different now. The whole approach to it. How did that happen?
- [06:17]
Jeremy Goldkorn
I think some of it is the broader environment. You know, 2010, the big media companies didn't have quite such a big China focus as they. Well, I guess that started, you know, before the Olympics. But it. It feels to me like the China, the foreign correspondent, the foreign correspondence in China. It has got a lot more professional in many ways in the last 10 years. It was a much smaller circle, and the world was starting to figure out that China was important, I think, in 2010, but not quite to the extent that it is now, where everybody, everywhere has an opinion on China, from Nairobi to, you know, kinshasa to Washington, D.C. everybody has an opinion on China. In 2010, I don't think it was that case. You had people who were impressed by the Olympics. You had business people who were impressed. But it wasn't like the average schmo in Nashville, Tennessee, knew anything about China. And schmo in Nashville, Tennessee, still doesn't know anything about China. But they're curious, more curious now than they were. And some of them are better informed.
- [07:39]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah, for sure. For sure. I'd say that overall, the quality of journalism has just improved vastly. Well, it did until they started kicking out American journalists. But so many more of them now are formally trained in Chinese language. So many more of them are able to actually do direct interviews with Chinese speakers. It's fantastic. I'm a big fan. And that's actually one of the themes I think, that this show has talked about. We started off interviewing a lot of journalists, and all along the way, one of the late motifs running through the show has been English language coverage of China. And that's something that we've talked about directly and is also always there, lurking in the background whenever we're talking about stories about China. Give us. Give me your thoughts. I mean, how is I. You know, I think we're both pretty big fans of many of the ways in which the US and the UK and Australian press has covered China. But I think both of us also have some criticisms. So what's give me Your sort of 30,000 foot view on China English language journalism in China?
- [08:55]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Jeremy Well, I, I think the essential problem with it is still something that Jamil Andolini, the FT correspondent, one of his more memorable phrases was that there are three, three China stories that people are interested in. Big China, scary China and weird China.
- [09:17]
Kaiser Kuo
Big shot of bad China.
- [09:19]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Bad China. Sorry, Bad China, no big China, Bad China. And, and weird China. And to some extent, unfortunately, that's still the case. And this is not the fault of the journalists writing it, and not even necessarily the fault of editors who in New York or London or Sydney are seeking to please their readers or interest their readers. But it is China to this day still remains something that I think for a lot of Westerners is an other. It's exotic, it's someplace else where other bad things happen to other people.
- [10:03]
Kaiser Kuo
Right.
- [10:04]
Jeremy Goldkorn
I think this is this flaw, and I'm not blaming this on the media. I don't know if you can blame this on anyone. But this problem, I think is part of the reason why we're in such shit in the United States and in other western countries with COVID 19, because from the beginning we didn't see this as something that could affect the rest of the world. This seemed to be a China problem. And I, Maya Culpa, I'm guilty of it. You know, I listened to a podcast, that interview I did in sometime in February where I was comparing COVID 19 to SARS, and I was kind of saying, well, you know, based on my experience with sars, probably it's going to kind of die down in the spring. And, you know, probably it's not going to. I don't think I actually said it won't spread outside of China, but I was probably thinking that. And this disease has revealed very much the shortcoming of that way of thinking, of sort of the othering of China, of thinking of China as a place where things happen that couldn't happen elsewhere.
- [11:21]
Kaiser Kuo
I think part of the reason for that is because, look, for obvious reasons, most of the journalists that we have covering in China from major American media organizations, their focus is on politics, right? Right. If not on domestic Chinese politics, then on China's international relations. But there's always sort of a political slant to a lot of the coverage, and that is basically as it should be. But having these same journalists then turn to cover the emergence of a crisis. There was Again, understandably, a lot of focus on the political dimensions of the emergence of COVID 19. There was a lot of focus on regime type as an explanatory variable in why it is that this happened in China and why it was that it was able to slip the leash in China. My sense is that that focus on regime type was a contributing factor to that kind of cavalier attitude that so many of us had. We don't have that regime type. We in the United States or in other countries, we are developed liberal democracies. We're open, we're pluralistic, and therefore we're immune to the ravages of a disease like this. Do you think that that was part of the thinking too?
- [12:46]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Yeah, I think that is certainly part of the thinking. It's difficult, though, because I don't know how far you can go with that because obviously regime type and the way the Communist Party handled the early days of the crisis is a key, key part of the story. And I think the story will continue to be investigated and told, you know, in the coming months many times. And looking at how the Communist Party governs China, I think is a very valid way of trying to understand the origins of, of, of the pandemic. But you're right that perhaps not, perhaps, how to put it, we didn't focus enough on the, the, on the science, on, on the science of disease. I think that is true. I think the media, you know, including us at sub China, under my direction, so I'm not blaming other people. We didn't focus enough on, on the science. And if we had perhaps put more attention into the science and less into the politics, perhaps America, Europe, other countries would have been better prepared.
- [14:09]
Kaiser Kuo
Well, I think that's structural. I think that there's, there are few media organizations right now that have dedicated science reporters who focus on China. I mean, it's, it's very rare. In fact, you know, the two of us could only. We would only be able to name a few people who would regard that as their beat. You know, historically, I mean, we would.
- [14:32]
Jeremy Goldkorn
I can only think of two, actually.
- [14:33]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah.
- [14:34]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Mara Fistandahl and Christina Larsen. Right, right. I don't know if, you know, if anyone in the audience, others, but those are the two that do science and China consistently.
- [14:46]
Kaiser Kuo
Right, right, right, right. And, and as it happens, neither of them are now stationed in China. Both of them have repatriated to the US and they're still continuing to write about science in China, but from a distance. And so that, that's unfortunate. But as I was saying, it's structural. Not only are they not set up, but, I mean, I think a lot of the. The issues with. With reporting on China are ultimately structural. I mean, who covers the quotidian? There's just no reason to write about the bridges that don't collapse. Right. It's a really embedded thing. I'm constantly finding myself in the strange position because I think a lot of people in our circle regard me as somebody who tends to be very critical of media reporting in China. But more often, I actually find myself defending media reporting in China or trying to explain how it is that there are immutable sort of unsolvable problems that are structural and that I can only suggest that what you need to do is just understand the optical properties of this lens that we are all, for one reason or another, compelled to look through when we look at China. Understanding how it diffracts the light, understanding how it bends things, and then knowing that and adjusting, you know, mentally for that, I think we can come to a more accurate picture. I think on this show before, I've talked about that wonderful metaphor that Jaioung fan of the New Yorker used. Jeremy, I told you about this before, right? I mean, about the X ray machine. Right?
- [16:19]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Right.
- [16:20]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah. So just for those of you in the audience who haven't. Haven't heard this before, because I just think it was so brilliant.
- [16:25]
Jeremy Goldkorn
I'm going to get a cup of coffee while you talk about that.
- [16:27]
Kaiser Kuo
Okay? Do it. Yeah. So Jiayang was taking part in the New Yorker Festival, and she was being interviewed along with Peter Hessler and Evan Osnos and Orville Schell. These are all people who have covered China for the magazine before. I can't remember whether Ian Johnson was on that panel or not, but they were being interviewed by David Remnick, and Jiang was asked by Remnick as somebody who was born in China and spent the early part of her life there, when you read Western media reporting about China, what's your reaction to it? And she said, for me, it's like looking at a familiar part of my body, my foot or my hand, through an X ray, which is to say it's quite literally penetrating. And it is a very accurate representation, but it is not a realistic representation. That is, it doesn't feel organically like my hand or my foot, because it doesn't have the flesh and the blood and the soft tissue and all that that make it mine. It's not moving. I totally resonate with that. As somebody who is ethnically Chinese, who has been steeped in China from A very, very early time. I know exactly what she's talking about. And it just reminds me that accuracy does not necessarily mean realism. But, yeah, in this time right now, where we've seen some of the best reporters working in China now being shown the door, I think that it's really important to emphasize what a great job so many of them have done, including, and especially look at Chris Buckley, other New York Times correspondents like Amy Chin or Sui Wenli, the stories that they wrote in Wuhan were fantastic and humanizing and really compassionate. And I get it. It's this flaw in the human psychology that we remember the slights and the insults, the injuries, the omissions somehow much more than we do the actual good reporting.
- [18:38]
Jeremy Goldkorn
So we have a question from Rochia Krimis. Hi, Rohir. So the counterfactual would be if this had emerged in the U.S. a European country, et cetera, would things have been different, particularly given the poor response we've seen in these countries, even with months of warning? What do you say to that, Kaiser?
- [18:57]
Kaiser Kuo
Well, we do have a counterfactual. We do have a pandemic that did emerge in the United states first, the H1N1 pandemic. And while the lethality that was nothing close to what we're seeing right now, I think that there was global cooperation. The United States did a fairly good job. The Obama administration did a pretty good job with that. So I don't know. I mean, if it had emerged now, I mean, the counterfactual that I think Rohir is getting at is if it had happened during Trump's watch, having gutted the NSC's pandemic team, having dismantled all these CDC operations in other parts of the globe, would we have no, and I have to say no, I don't think it would have been handled well at all. I mean, we had a lot of time to react. Whatever China's culpability is, the hard facts of the timeline are that on December 31, they did tell the WHO, and by the 3rd, no later than the 3rd of January, China, Trump was informed about the outbreak of COVID 19. So let's not make this whole thing about the pandemic. I know that's the tendency, but I think that's what it comes down to for me.
- [20:20]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Okay, we have a couple of comments, too. Science from Audrey. Science is not separate from politics, but we do need more discussion of science in political reporting, climate change, disease spread, and also many other related topics. Yeah, Audrey, totally agree.
- [20:39]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah. And I mean, I have to say this is a theme for me. I gave a talk not so very long ago about sort of my five precepts that I think are important for good China watchers. One of them is one section that I talked about was about being bicultural or aspiring to biculturalism. And I think most people assumed that what I meant was being able to swim familiarly in both Western and Chinese, the cultural milieu there. But I also meant cultures in the way that CP Snow meant it in that lecture that he gave in 1959. He was that physical chemist who wrote.
- [21:17]
Jeremy Goldkorn
The Two Cultures about the arts, the humanities and science.
- [21:21]
Kaiser Kuo
Exactly, the humanities. And, and that's something I've always actually really admired about you, Jeremy, is that you are not a scientific illiterate and you're somebody with whom you can have a reasonable conversation about things that are actually science based. And I think a lot of, unfortunately a lot of people, including some reporters, just simply don't have enough formal training in sciences.
- [21:46]
Jeremy Goldkorn
But I think that's, I mean, sorry, this is not really anything to do with China, I guess, but I think there's a flaw in at least, maybe it's the west, but certainly English speaking cultures where we think that science and math are hard and require special abilities, whereas they don't. I mean, they're just like literature or anthropology, you just got to read stuff, right? I mean, but yeah, cultures.
- [22:16]
Kaiser Kuo
But there's most of the scientists, the people that I know, the engineers, people who are trained in the natural sciences or in engineering. I meet them at a party and they can hold forth on literature that they like. They know the bare bones at least of history. They're not, you know, but it's on us. It's on those of us who are on social sciences, humanities, end of it to make, to, you know, to cross over. I see a comment from our dear friend David Moser who deserves just a ton of shout out because he was always a rotating co host on the podcast and he's just one of the oldest and dearest friends of the show. He talks about Deb Seligson who also has been on the show. Great science scholar, she was former State Department, she's worked on epidemiology on climate change. I think she's probably best known for her work on climate change and that's what she came on the show to talk about many years ago. David, she actually, I was just talking to her yesterday, is writing a piece for us on SubChina, so look for that next week.
- [23:20]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Sorry, can I just ask a technical question? Can Everyone hear me okay?
- [23:24]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah, yeah, we can just hear you fine.
- [23:26]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Okay, so we have a question from Noah. Did you have aims for the podcast in the beginning that you feel haven't come through in these years that you either pivoted on or wish you could bring out? If I let me answer that first, is like, actually no, Noah, because when we started was just for a luck. I don't think we thought we were going to change the world. We just wanted to make a podcast about China because no one else was doing it at the time. And we wanted to get together once a week and drink a lot of beer with interesting people. And so I suppose what we are not achieving right now is drinking beer with other people. But I can't honestly say that we started it with the mission, okay, we are going to better inform the English listening community about China. I mean, we were just having fun and then it started to make sense and we, of course, I think, you know, both Kaisa and I have been involved in, you know, aside from this podcast, all kinds of media, you know, we've. Kaiser's been a reporter. I've never been a proper reporter for a proper Western media organization, but I've been some variation of a blogger or journalist or editor for my whole working life. And, you know, almost all of that has been involved with, you know, reporting on China. And I think that the idea of making the English speaking world better informed about China is probably both Kais and I have felt that this is an important thing to do from even before we started Seneca. I, you know, have we achieved that? I hope to an extent. But it would be nice if we could get bigger. You know, one of the big pains in my life, I used to say there's only 10,000 people every day interested in reading about China in English. And I used to base that on my former website, Dunway.org's web traffic, but also a bunch, you know, I worked for a listings magazine, City Weekend in Beijing for a little while as a consultant on their website. And I even did a project for the Ministry of Culture that involved setting up a website. So I've seen the back end of many, many media operations that are seeking to talk about China in English. And for the longest time it just seemed like this was always going to be a minority interest. I think we're at a point now and maybe COVID 19 might even be a tipping point where the interconnectivity of the world is undeniable and maybe more mainstream people who don't care about China, you know quiet China but care about the world are going to start caring about what's going on in China. And I hope that's the case. And I think if we failed anywhere, it's that we haven't grown mainstream enough and maybe that's not our fault. But I think, you know, that's still something that I feel we haven't achieved and I would like to achieve.
- [26:57]
Kaiser Kuo
I see a very funny recommendation about how to grow ourselves given all the food posts that I've been putting up on Facebook. Rohir, our friend suggests that we can start having cooking videos from me on.
- [27:11]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Well, we already do. We already do have one, right?
- [27:14]
Kaiser Kuo
One. Only one, right.
- [27:15]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Yeah, only one.
- [27:16]
Kaiser Kuo
It's kind of. It's kind of crap. But anyway, I have we have a great question from Jude Blanchette, who is.
- [27:22]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Whose book everybody should read, right?
- [27:24]
Kaiser Kuo
Five time, I think alum of Seneca and hope you know we have him for five more times just this year. He's just a fantastic guy who is the Freeman Chair at csis. He writes I'd be curious for your thoughts on the rise of specialization in the China academic and analyst worlds and if that relative decline of generalists impacts positively or negatively how we understand China. No, I think that's a fantastic question. And just referring again to that talk that I gave. I think that holism is still an approach that I champion. I think that the demise of Area Studies and the rise of disciplines has been a mixed blessing, but I think if you weigh it all the scales, it's negative. I think that was a time that generation of the greats who mentored the likes of me, where it was possible to be highly regarded in the discipline of, say, political science or economics, but have touched more of the elephant and are able to embed that in a sort of a larger macro whole. There are still plenty of people in the disciplines who are able to do that, and there are programs out there that are specifically designed to encourage that. But for me, it's an absolute article of faith I encounter now all the time on Twitter. Of course, where else? A lot of people who just simply are too narrow, if not in their training, then in their framing. For example, there's this insistence on framing every goddamn thing through the lens of national security that just doesn't yield a realistic picture of China. So yeah, I think that to answer Jude's question succinctly, I think on balance it's been a bad thing, but it's not beyond salvation. I think that we just need to have an expectation that anyone who's actually in a discipline, take an anthropology class, take a class outside of. You take a lot of classes. And of course the one that weaves them all together is history. And so the study of history is absolutely paramount to anyone who wants to undertake the study of China.
- [29:43]
Jeremy Goldkorn
I'm going to let you just answer that question, Neil Thomas, on that point. How do you feel the rise of social media has changed, changed professional China watching, for better or worse, as it basically coincides with the lifetime of Seneca? Well, I would say first of all predates Seneca. I mean, I think social media lets. I. I trace the rise of China watching social media to the launch of my previous Website Dunwe In 2003, which was when we got going. Right. So the thing was, I remember when I started Dunway, this family friend who used to be the Daily Telegraph correspondent for Southern Africa looked at it and he wrote to me like, what the hell is this? You know, what are you doing? This is bullshit. And then a few years later he got laid off or early retirement. And about a month after that, the Daily Telegraph asked me to write a thousand words about the Internet in China. And he got it and he was like, oh, okay, you know, so I mean, it's been going on for a while. I think that the rise of social media in many ways is truly wonderful for in informed citizenry everywhere because, you know, we no longer have the gatekeepers, you know, people like me, editors who can stories. So, you know, 15 years ago, you know, I was an editor of, well, I don't know how many years ago I was an editor of, you know, Beijing Scene, say. And a freelancer would approach me with a story and I'd say, no, your story sucks, bugger off. And then they would be left perhaps with no venue to publish and it would become, in the wonderful Chinese phrase, you know, the, the literature that you put in your drawer because you can't publish it. Whereas now that same freelancer, if they feel really strongly about what they're talking about, they can publish. And a lot of the time that's good, you know, people are giving points of view and information that would not otherwise be available and that the mainstream media, if that is truly a thing, maybe would not pick up on. On the other hand, there's also a lot of junk out there and noise and stupid opinions and stupid people being stupid. And I don't know, to be honest, whether the stupid or the smart is winning in terms of social media about China. Right now with COVID 19, I feel that the stupid is winning out just the level of animosity on particularly Twitter, I mean, maybe that's just because that's where, you know, I'm sort of a native. The level of stupid is, Is very deep right now. You know, the, like, blame China for everything is taken over the China Twitter sphere. Like half of the China Twitter sphere is like, it's all China's fault. It's all China's fault.
- [33:15]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah. I mean, I think Twitter is just a toxic goddamn cesspool most of the time. I think that it just, it's. It's a medium that encourages hot takes that just. That rewards activating, sort of emotionally activating language rather than calm deliberation. I think people figured it out pretty early on that if I write a little milquetoast, sort of on the one hand, on the other hand, tweet, I'm just not going to get that little squirt of dopamine that comes of people liking and retweeting. But if you say something really strident and really extreme, you'll get that. And so it just develops this kind of horrible, perverse feedback system that just encourages more and more of that. I think that all social media is not made equal. Like Jeremy said, I actually spend a lot of my social media effort on Facebook, which is weird. A lot of people think it's an odd thing to do, but I have kind of a community of people who follow my stuff on Facebook and I post a lot of articles that I find either worthy of praise or of condemnation and generate quite a bit of discussion around those. So I encourage everyone who's interested just to hop on Facebook, follow me, add me as a friend or whatever. And there's a pretty likely and surprisingly civil conversation, partially because I'm pretty ruthless with deleting, you know, trolling comments and with. With just blocking people who are. Who are assholes. There's a lot of great questions on this list.
- [34:57]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Yeah, let's look at some of these questions.
- [34:59]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah.
- [34:59]
Jeremy Goldkorn
So will a comment from James Carter. History is one of the only disciplines left where it's possible to be an area study specialist. And history is under threat as as much of the academy, indeed, history, we never learn.
- [35:15]
Kaiser Kuo
Right. And so, I mean, on the subject of history, this is another sort of something that I'm always trying to hammer home. Obviously, it's important that people study the history of China. Right? I mean, if you, if you aspire to be a China watcher, that's, that's, that's just sort of, you know, of course. But there are, there are two Things I would add to that one is don't just study history as it is taught in Western academia. I mean, it's very valuable. You should obviously start there, but also understand history as it is taught and understood by the Chinese people themselves. The Chinese version of history. I'm going to recommend a book here that I just started. It's by Michael Shulman, Superpower Interrupted, which is just that, which is a. He describes it as the Chinese history of the world, which is really important to understand that Chinese history doesn't give a damn about Pericles or Aristotle, doesn't care that much about Justinian or about Constantine or about Augustine or Thomas Aquinas. Right. They have a different, an entirely different historical perspective. And you need to exercise again that empathy and step into those, into that world and understand that, that set of viewpoints. The other thing I would say about the study of history is it is not enough to study China's history or even the history of the East Asian region. You need to really understand our history, that is Western history, the history of Europe and its colonial offshoots. If you don't, then one thing that you lack. I think the most important thing that you lack is an appreciation for the utter contingency. I mean, how weird it is that we got to this place because too many people just have imbibed this teleological idea that, oh yeah, this is how it's supposed to be. Everything converges on liberal, you know, capitalist democracy. And that's just not. Just not how it goes. I mean, and you need to understand.
- [37:34]
Jeremy Goldkorn
This is the classic Kaiser shtick.
- [37:36]
Kaiser Kuo
But it's, I mean, I say it again and again and yet I encounter the same idiocy constantly out there. Okay, right. Anyway.
- [37:44]
Jeremy Goldkorn
All right, so another question from Doug Hughes. Which publications are worth reading? English, Chinese or other most helpful to keep up with commercial current events in China? Jeremy model worker blogs from Dunway were amazing. Could we bring back something similar with sub China? Well, Doug, we actually did. We haven't done it for a couple of years, but we have a page of sub China sources that I will, I think we should update. That's a very good idea. But which sources are good? You know, I think the standout media media organization in China is without a doubt Saisin. You know, most of their coverage is about business and economics. But when things happen like COVID 19, they push the envelope. It's a media company with integrity. The editor, Hu Shuli, is somebody who has, what's a non sexist way of saying big balls.
- [38:46]
Kaiser Kuo
You just, you Just came up with one chutzpah.
- [38:51]
Jeremy Goldkorn
No, yeah, more than a chutzpah. I mean, you know, there is a commitment Passover, there's a commitment to truth telling, which is extremely rare in Chinese media. So yeah, I would say Tai Sin is like. Would be. If I had to recommend one, it would be that.
- [39:09]
Kaiser Kuo
With the caveat that it's not infallible.
- [39:11]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Of course it's not infallible. And also most of their interesting articles, you know, are like 10,000 words long and they bury the lead like 5,000 words in. So it requires a certain patience to get out of it. What is interesting aside from that? I mean, I find, you know, I don't think it's possible to rely on a small number of sources anymore. Both because, you know, you have great reporting in the. It might get worse now that the correspondents have all been kicked out, but the major American newspapers and the Guardian from Britain, I mean their China coverage is, is pretty damn good right now. Much, much better than it was 10 years ago and no comparison to 20 years ago.
- [40:05]
Kaiser Kuo
SCMP, come on. SCMP.
- [40:07]
Jeremy Goldkorn
SCMP has, you know, despite the occasional dodgy editorial, they've been doing a great job and they do not seem to have been co opted by the Communist Party, which is pretty amazing.
- [40:20]
Kaiser Kuo
Indeed. No, yeah, I mean it's really impressive.
- [40:22]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Yeah. I mean people, some people say, you know, they're not trustworthy because of Jack Ma or whatever, but I mean, if you look at what they're actually doing, they're publishing great stuff. So yeah, scmp, I, I think you need to keep an eye on Chinese social media. Weibo is still a great source of understanding what Chinese people are talking about. Now, of course it's censored, so it's. Some of it is what Chinese people are allowed to talk about, but there's always a little bit of rough activity around the margins of what's acceptable. And by following Weibo, I think you can get a good sense of that. But yeah, we need to update our sub China sources, Doug. And we will do that. Thank you very much for the suggestion.
- [41:16]
Kaiser Kuo
I see a great question from Wing Kai, who's at At. My God, I can't not remember the name of the university. This is you, Bridge. Bridgewater State University.
- [41:29]
Jeremy Goldkorn
You're having a senior moment.
- [41:30]
Kaiser Kuo
I am having a senior moment. Right. Wing Kai asks, do you think superficial, negative coverage of China by politicians and pundits and TV and cable news drowns out the message of more nuanced understanding of US China relations? How can we best counter that Sinophobia and anti Americanism on both sides. Now that's a very good and very fair question.
- [41:50]
Jeremy Goldkorn
And it's also connected to the question just before that from Paul Fox, which is, given the present negativity in the media in the U.S. what strategies might we recommend to present a more positive or at least balanced view of China to our kids going now and going forward? And let me just take up on the idea of kids because I'm finding myself, I mean, my children are half Chinese and they're right now very proud of being Chinese. I, you know, it's very difficult because I know that there's going to come a day when suddenly they might think, oh my God, I'm Chinese. You know, look at these horrible communists or, you know, they're harvesting organs from Falun Gong and they're, you know, there's concentration camps in Xinjiang. And you know, I, I don't, I think this is a great question because balance is really tough, right? We know, I think probably everybody on this call has some kind of fairly deep connection to China. And we know that people in China are the same as everywhere. There's a lot of decent people. And we also know that under Xi Jinping, the Communist Party is getting more and more repressive and scarier and scarier. And that's not, that's not fake news. That's true. I don't know the answer. Kaiser, maybe you have an answer.
- [43:24]
Kaiser Kuo
Well, I think the easiest answer from the American side, and I think that this will actually change things appreciably on the Chinese side as well, is to elect Joe Biden in November. We really need to do that. I think that whatever you may think of him when it comes to the China issue, look at the people who will be advising him on China. These are people like Ryan Haas, these are people like Jake Sullivan, people like Jeff Prescott. These are all people with deep knowledge and nuance on China and who are not knee jerk hawks by any stretch of the imagination. They will oppose Sinophobia. They will. And the moral tone that's set in the White House, in the nsc, at the State Department will have a tremendous effect. And I think that whatever you think of Xi Jinping, I honestly believe that so much of the illiberalism that we've seen, not just under Xi, but even before that, has been reactive to Chinese perceptions of increased American hostility, that when we do less, we get more. So I think that that is the most practical answer to this question, particularly now.
- [44:47]
Jeremy Goldkorn
I think the Communist Party is actually very receptive to friendliness right now because they know they're potentially in the sh T despite the very well publicized mask donation programs, medical supplies, etc. I mean, the other day in our newsletter, I just did a summary of around the world, how pissed off people are with China, from Nigeria to India to America to Italy, you know, so I think the party is going to be receptive to friendliness, but we'll see. You know, America, unfortunately is perhaps, you know, proving Mencken right. You know, at some point we are going to elect a complete idiot. And, and yeah.
- [45:36]
Kaiser Kuo
So we're on the subject of nationalism, of xenophobia and all of that stuff, and there's a couple of questions that are related to that. Let's just sort of, you know, put them all together and talk just basically about this issue of xenophobia in China of, you know, from Miranda.
- [45:53]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Right, sure.
- [45:54]
Kaiser Kuo
But also, Natasha Locke asks, do you think Xi Jinping is the cause or the effect of rising nationalism within Chinese society? Which is a very, very good question, Jeremy, why don't you take a crack at that first?
- [46:08]
Jeremy Goldkorn
I think to a certain extent he is the cause because he has a very clear agenda of essentially making China great again. And that's been very clear from the early days of his rule. And in some ways it's understandable, I think, that the essay by the former party school director Deng Yuwen that was published in. When was it? 2011, I think the 10 grave problems left behind by the Huwen Administration, I think is a really wonderful insight into, into the problems that Xi Jinping inherited. If you haven't read this essay, there's a translation on the china story.org that I had a part in. And it was, you know, this was a party guy, a party scholar, a fairly critical, intelligent guy. But I mean, coming from inside the party, looking at what happened in the decade of Hu Jinta and Wen Jiabao, and essentially there were so many problems left unsolved from, you know, the inequities, economic inequities, environments, the lack of political direction, etc. And I think that one of the reasons why I see even was able to become the top leader was because many people inside the leadership, inside the, the top echelons of the Communist Party felt that things were spinning out of control in China and it needed a heart, an iron fist, or it needed somebody who was a very strong leader to come along and sort these out. So in some ways much of this is sort of understandable, the sense that the country was kind of not coping with the late stage of reform in an adequate way, and that things were spinning out of control. And one of the tools Xi Jinping had at his disposal was nationalism, the China dream. You know, things have a way to rally people around the cause of staying loyal to the party and keeping the party in power, but also to try and solve some of the very real problems that were left behind by Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabao. So, I mean, I think Xi is, is. Is to blame for the increased nationalism, but I don't know that if there was another leader, it would have been different.
- [49:07]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah, I agree with that last point. I don't think that it would have been different. That being the case, I don't know that it's then fair to lay that at the feet of C. No, I think you can.
- [49:17]
Jeremy Goldkorn
I mean, come on. He's the leader.
- [49:21]
Kaiser Kuo
First of all, let me distinguish between nationalism on the one hand, which I take to mean I use it as a pejorative. When I say the word nationalistic, I truly intend it to be a pejorative. The maybe innocuous version of it, the less pejorative, the more neutral, is simply patriotic. Some of the things that you've described.
- [49:49]
Jeremy Goldkorn
You know what, that's very negative. Outside of China and the United States, like in England or South Africa, Africa or Australia, people don't use patriarchal. Sure.
- [49:57]
Kaiser Kuo
Okay, so there isn't a good word for it in English. There isn't a good word for it in English. But, you know, so I think that there's. There is, however, a distinction to be made between kind of assertive nationalism, which usually has an enemy and identifies either an internal or an external enemy. We're starting to see that. I mean, you know, the ugly nationalism with a xenophobic component to it and that I think. Sure, let's put that at Xi's feet. I mean, he's been on. It's him who allowed people like Zhao Lijian to spew the sorts of nonsense that they've been spewing recently. But if we go back a little, if we go back to, as I think you rightly pointed out to the early years of the Xi administration, and we look at why it is that there was a kind of convergence around the idea that there was a need for leadership. You put your finger on it. There was a deliberately collective leadership during the Hu and Wen years, and as you say, a lot spun out of control. There were these unbridled power centers based around large industries and interest groups. You had Zhou Yongkang, for example, in the petroleum sector. A lot of these family nepotistic networks. This was dangerous. And I think a lot of people recognized that. Now what I think we get wrong though, I mean, a lot of people wonder why it is that so many of us were fairly optimistic about xi Jinping in 2007 when he was named, and then even as late as 2011, 2012, when it looked like he was about to take power. And we wonder how we got him so wrong. Because after all, he comes into power and he immediately becomes this unbridled autocrat and doesn't seem at all committed to liberalizing reforms in even the economic sector, let alone politics. I don't think that gets it right at all. I think that it's not that we got it wrong, it's that we did not anticipate the events of 2012, the sort of near coup conditions that prevailed. We did not anticipate that there would be. That he would have such a dangerous internal threat environment and a really dangerous external threat environment, which of course he ginned up a bit to justify his draconian internal rule. But I don't think it says that we. I don't think there's evidence that we got him wrong. I think that we just did not see and nobody saw what was going to happen in 2012.
- [52:38]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Well, I'm not sure about that. I mean, I started to get very negative on the party in 2009. Some of that was because my website was blocked. Yeah, yeah, but it wasn't just that. I mean, the change, I think became evident after the Olympics and the financial crisis. There was a new political wind in China. And, you know, it's not just Xi. Right.
- [53:09]
Kaiser Kuo
This has been one of the themes that we've talked about a lot on this show. You know, this, what we used to call the new truculence until it became, you know, the old and long lasting truckulence.
- [53:18]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Right, right. Can we just get back to Miranda's specific question? Is there a way to Compare and contrast COVID 19 propaganda with the response to the Chinese embassy bombings in Belgrade? Which of course you, I, Kaiser, were in Beijing for.
- [53:36]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah, I was. Right. At the embassy there.
- [53:37]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Right, right. And I, Yeah, my, our offices of Beijing scene at the time was just around the corner. But you know, I was a. Not an American citizen at that time. I was like, ha, well.
- [53:52]
Kaiser Kuo
Too late now.
- [53:53]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Yeah, but what's different about that? The embassy bombings in Belgrade in 99. I mean. 99.
- [54:07]
Kaiser Kuo
99. Right. Well, neither of us is on the ground now there. Right. So all we can do is sort of Hear it second hand about these instances of anti American xenophobia.
- [54:16]
Jeremy Goldkorn
But one thing that is very different I think is the information environment.
- [54:20]
Kaiser Kuo
Right.
- [54:21]
Jeremy Goldkorn
You know, everybody has a modem and everyone has an opinion now. And that wasn't the case back then.
- [54:28]
Kaiser Kuo
No. There's about 1.2 million people online at the time of the embassy bombing in China. Only 1.2 million.
- [54:34]
Jeremy Goldkorn
And so this sort of response from the Chinese citizenry I think was much more limited because they had much less information. And you know, although they were sort of propagandistic, broadcast from CCTV etc, they didn't really let out a lot of information. Whereas now it's impossible for the Chinese state to completely hide world events. Although it, you know, they're very good at shaping people's perception of them. So I think that that's very different. There's just a lot more people who the party can engineer political engagement with now. And that makes it much more dangerous essentially because when they turn on the taps, the propaganda taps, they can literally reach the entire population. You know, everybody has a mobile phone.
- [55:35]
Kaiser Kuo
In 99, there were deep reservoirs of pro American sentiment that were ballast that. You know, one thing that strikes me about 99 is how short it was. By the middle of the summer we didn't feel that anymore. It was over. There were no longer fistfights, there was no longer any sort of anti Americanism. It went back to normal. It was okay to fly the flag again. I don't know how much of that reservoir of sort of friendly feeling toward the Americans is left now. I don't know. I think there is still some in there. I think that it's clear that it's possible that once again it'll go back to how it was, where there'll be always a sort of seething resentment to some extent, but also tremendous admiration. Hard to say, I don't know ultimately what's going to happen. So that's another major difference. The other thing is the embassy bombing was one thing it was about. There were only a handful of people killed. It didn't have the same direct impact that the COVID 19 has had. You've got to be able to put yourself in the shoes of somebody living in Wuhan or in Hubei or even in any other city in China that was undergoing lockdown. They honestly felt like they were the ones who were enduring this as the rest of the world sat spectator watching this, picking apart what they had done wrong. And again, without a real feeling that there was a whole ton of sympathy being extended to them. I understand what that feels like and I understand the urge. I don't support it at all. To do a little bit of a victory dance to indulge that schadenfreude now that the shoe's on the other foot.
- [57:33]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Indeed. So I don't know. How much time have we got left?
- [57:37]
Kaiser Kuo
We're only at one o' clock right now, so another hour if we want it. Let's go back to some questions.
- [57:43]
Jeremy Goldkorn
All right?
- [57:45]
Kaiser Kuo
You know, why don't we, you know, hear from some of the people who've got questions.
- [57:50]
Jeremy Goldkorn
You know, does anyone want to go on video?
- [57:53]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah, if somebody wants to put their video on and ask a question, let's, let's do that.
- [57:59]
Jeremy Goldkorn
But while we're waiting for that. Noah, a comment from Noah. That's pretty funny. How do we point out all that scary stuff Jeremy is talking about without getting retweeted by freaky American hawks? You know, that is the problem that I wake up every day thinking about, right? Because I don't want to stop pointing out the scary stuff about Xi Jinping and his party. But, you know, then you get these people like, you know, the, this so called trader Kyle Bass and Gordon Chang who will seize on anything to, you know, really bash China. I don't know. You know, it's pretty tough, I think. You know what? I don't have an answer to that question.
- [58:53]
Kaiser Kuo
Okay, Somebody named Zhang or Chang put their hand up, go ahead and turn your video on. Don't know where you are on here, but let me see if I can find you. Yeah, go for it.
- [59:07]
Chuang (Audience Member)
Hey. Hey, Kaiser. Hey, Jeremy. Thanks for doing this. So I'm Chuang. I work in tech in San Francisco. Data scientist. See, trying to scroll it back to my question.
- [59:25]
Kaiser Kuo
Right.
- [59:26]
Chuang (Audience Member)
So my question was kind of centered around this idea of like, what Chinese people actually think about things. And we all know that, like, public opinion polling is not really a thing in China. And so that leads to a lot of people with a lot of various different takes about, you know, oh, Chinese people think this. No, they actually think that. And I'm just wondering, given the total lack of opinion polling or any rigorously scientific means of getting actual opinion data. Opinion data, what is the best way to try and approximate what Chinese people actually think about certain issues?
- [60:08]
Kaiser Kuo
We did a whole episode on this with Neil Thomas from Marco Polo, the Paulson Institute. I would just.
- [60:14]
Jeremy Goldkorn
I think he's on the call, actually.
- [60:16]
Kaiser Kuo
Neil's actually on the call. Neil, if you want to unmute yourself and answer that question, that would be great. You there, Neil.
- [60:24]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Oh, maybe he's dropped off.
- [60:26]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah, yeah, here he is.
- [60:28]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Yeah.
- [60:29]
Chuang (Audience Member)
I think the answer is that, yeah, there is a lot of opinion polling that's happened in China and there's a pretty robust debate that's actually been getting much more robust over the last few months, actually in academia about the reliability of various polls. But I think there's enough consistency in some of those results that you can get some reasonably reliable general thoughts. And there is a relatively strong degree of support for many of the policies, particularly on the domestic front. And Jessica Chen bias and others have done great stuff on nationalism and foreign policy front. So there is some research out there and definitely look it up. A lot of it can be found publicly outside of the academic paywalls. And yeah, I listen to Seneca every week.
- [61:19]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah. This is a question that, again, this is one of the big themes and this is one of the reasons why we did this show. It was a lot, of course, easier to do when we were in China, but I always wanted to try so to channel that voice. I think that this is another one of the problems, again, a structural one with media coverage of China is we hear an awful lot from people with quite extreme views. We hear in the op ed pages the people who are invited to, you know, who are Chinese or ethnically Chinese are either dissidents, you know, pretty often very savage critics of the regime, or they are just rank apologists, the like of Zhang Weiwei. Those are the people that we see. I think this was put so well by Jude Blanchett when we were talking about this. He said, we need to hear from the David Brooks of China, somebody who is sort of an establishment moderate who actually represents a pretty huge swath of, of what people really think. This is, I think, one of the big problems. Now. I would, if you're interested in sort of the intellectual end of that, I would point to a website called. Oh my God, why am I spacing the name of it? Translating the China Dream, I think it's called. Or no, that's maybe the subtitle of it. Oh, my God. I, I'm.
- [62:54]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Another senior moment. Oh, dear.
- [62:56]
Kaiser Kuo
I'm having another senior moment. I, I haven't had coffee this morning. I'm just drinking, you know, weak tea here, so.
- [63:03]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Yeah, good.
- [63:08]
Kaiser Kuo
Anyway, it's, it's a fantastic. Yeah, Reading the China Dream. There we go. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Some. Somebody leapt to my, my, my rescue there, reading the China Dream. I highly recommend checking out that site that gives you a really great overview of what you know, prominent but sort of more mainstream intellectuals in China are actually thinking about political issues. All right, who's got anyone else want to put their hand up? Sure. Okay. Rohir, our good friend Rohir, jump on.
- [63:41]
Rohir (Audience Member)
Well, first of all, congratulations. You're still my favorite China podcast, and.
- [63:45]
Chuang (Audience Member)
I think for a lot of people.
- [63:46]
Rohir (Audience Member)
And, you know, here's to another 10 years.
- [63:50]
Kaiser Kuo
Thank you. But.
- [63:53]
Rohir (Audience Member)
Oh, there's a quote from.
- [63:56]
Jeremy Goldkorn
So you can stop there now.
- [63:59]
Kaiser Kuo
Can't hear you. I'm sorry. We're ahead.
- [64:02]
Rohir (Audience Member)
What I want to ask. There's a quote from the Belgian synologist Simon Leys that has always stuck with me, which is that as a Westerner, to write about oneself is to look at oneself in a mirror. And it seems that maybe there is a role here as well in terms of the anti China debate, where I'm wondering to what extent a lot of the vociferousness that we see aimed at China stems from either an inability or an unwillingness to recognize the extent to which we as Westerners or our governments have been, or our businesses have been complicit in the situation that has been generated or that we are unable to reflect on, you know, the issues in our own systems. And so to what extent, if we are discussing these questions about how to tell China stories better or to better understand what China's on, does it actually require Western audiences to take a look, long, hard look at themselves, and have to recognize that they might not be everything they're cracked up to be?
- [65:09]
Kaiser Kuo
No, I absolutely agree. I mean, this is, you know, part of what I was saying with this, urging people to sort of study their own history is one part of that. Absolutely. I couldn't have said it better.
- [65:21]
Jeremy Goldkorn
I mean, I think I would tend to kind of say that's sort of commie sympathizer bullshit. But I am forced to reevaluate that in the face of COVID 19, where it is very, very clear that both in America and now also in Britain, where of all the people calling for reparations for COVID 19, the British, oh, my gosh, open up that tap. The whole world is going to be after that. But, you know, the hypocrisy is just stunning. And the Trump and certain members of the Republican Party attempt to shift all the blame for this staying in the United States to China is completely absurd. So, you know, my, my, my sort of gut instinct to your question is, no, that's nonsense. But I'm forced to admit in current times that you're right.
- [66:25]
Kaiser Kuo
Great. I'm, I'm glad that that something good has come of the COVID 19. There's a great question by chance from Chad to everyone to us, Jeremy and Kaiser, I remember being at a conference which both I think of you called the Duke UNC Cls a few years ago on the topic of China's soft power. Are there any trends you've seen since then leading you to believe that Chinese film, music or other popular media might finally in the near future begin making the kind of worldwide splash that the same from South Korea and Japan have? If not, do you see soft power increasing via other means? I think that was probably you. I don't remember giving that talk, but I'm happy to give my opinion on this, which probably lines up pretty well with yours, which is to say, no, it ain't going to happen. Mostly because soft power is not something that comes from the top down. It's not produced by the government. At most in South Korea, it's produced by these all powerful record companies. But no, besides that, it has to come in from the margins. It has to bubble up from the bottom. The United States government did not create rock and roll, Coca Cola or Blue jeans. That's the short answer. The more China talks about soft power, the more it erodes its own soft power in the world.
- [67:46]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Yeah, I would agree with that. Although I think we are. COVID 19 again is an interesting.
- [67:53]
Kaiser Kuo
You.
- [67:53]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Know, game changer in a way. It's still not clear how China's international image will alter after this thing. It seems pretty clear that in some parts of the world, at least amongst the governing elite, China has done a very good job in promoting itself as a responsible international actor by sending medical supplies and stuff like that. But at the same time, you have, you know, as I said earlier, everywhere from India to Nigeria, people blaming China. So I don't know if it's going to work, but as you know, in terms of films, movies, music, no, it's not going to happen.
- [68:43]
Kaiser Kuo
They've gotten worse, I think, and not better. And I think that we've seen a kind of divergence in taste, the sort of aesthetic divergence right now between let's take film, Chinese film audiences and American film audiences. And we did a podcast recently with Janet Yang and Michael Berry in which we talked about that phenomenon. It's depressing to me as somebody who was actually involved in that, not in film, but in music, just to see just how little traction it stands to gain.
- [69:19]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Yeah, it's very depressing. Yeah, let's change the subject. So I see Neil Thomas put In a link to Simon lay's or Pierre Rexman's work. This is essential reading if you're interested in China. Simon Lays was the, I mean, I think the. How to put it, I mean, he is the Western Sinologist who first got the People's Republic of China a long time ago and in an environment, an interesting thing about him, he started writing critically about the Cultural Revolution at a time when European leftists which had taken over the academy, you know, the French Maoists were still in their prime and people thought the Cultural Revolution was wonderful. And he was writing very critically about it and got a lot of trouble for it. But very, very clear, clear thinking. Speaking of how to understand Chinese people, you know, what do we know about what they really think? One of the interesting things he said, I think was like, imagine if you're an ichthyologist, you know, somebody who studies fish and suddenly the fish learn to talk. Excuse me. And we are now, he was comparing this to, you know, what will happen when Chinese people start being able to, to explain themselves to the outside world. And we are now in an era when, you know, the Chinese fish are talking, Chinese people are explaining themselves to the outside world. And it's a very, very different information environment from the 70s and 80s when it was, you know, mostly like middle aged white dudes explaining China to the rest of the world. That's no longer the case. Which makes me also think in terms of understanding what Chinese people think. There's a great crew of young Chinese journalists writing in English and what's the collective called, Chinese Storytellers, where they send an email every couple of weeks summarizing basically what has been published in English by Chinese born journalists. And I think that's, that's another good way of trying to get a little more accurate picture of what's going on in people's heads.
- [72:02]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Simone Lewis is terrific and I think that everyone who aspires to be a China watcher should be familiar with his work. But it's of a time, and I am not somebody who believes that there is perfect continuity between the Chinese Communist Party of Mao and that from Deng onward, or even between the Chinese Communists of the Deng and Jiang years and the CCP under Xi. A lot has obviously changed. And so I would caution people not to take too to heart some of the more sort of temporally contingent observations that Simone Lewes makes.
- [72:45]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Yeah, I would probably disagree with you there and say that he's identified some of the real problems with the Communist Party that haven't gone away but we can differ.
- [72:56]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah, we can. Absolutely.
- [73:00]
Jeremy Goldkorn
So he has a question from our own. Jesse, working with someone for 10 years is not easy. What are the things you disagree on? Everything.
- [73:09]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah, yeah, we don't. We don't have a ton of agreement. There's a lot. There's a lot we differ on.
- [73:14]
Jeremy Goldkorn
I think we both like alcohol. I guess we agree on that.
- [73:20]
Kaiser Kuo
I mean, some one knows more than the other, maybe, but no, no, I think that part of why this show has been fun to do and why it's worked and why I'm so glad that Jeremy's on more of the shows now, I mean, he has had, let's just be very clear, he, as editor in chief of Sub China, had a lot of work to do that did not allow him to travel with me all the time, did not allow him to be involved in preparing and recording and getting involved in the podcast. And it's really good now that he's sort of more back in the mix because I think one of the valuable things was having the two of us often in tension and not agreeing on a lot of these things. I think that's too, you know, having it too dominated by one perspective is not good for the show.
- [74:13]
Jeremy Goldkorn
I think we have a question from Grace for video, hopefully.
- [74:17]
Kaiser Kuo
Oh, great.
- [74:18]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Grace, are you there?
- [74:19]
Kaiser Kuo
Take it away. Grace.
- [74:21]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Hi.
- [74:22]
Chuang (Audience Member)
Thank you so much. I'm Grace. I'm a freshman at Georgetown University. And one of the questions I had was to what extent can increasing tensions over the past few years be attributed to failures in diplomacy? And then kind of going forward, what factors think will contribute most to fostering truly effective dialogue between two countries?
- [74:42]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah, of course it could be attributed to diplomacy because there is no diplomacy. There hasn't been anything that you could call real diplomacy. Foreign policy, yes, but diplomacy, no, diplomacy is a gentle art of compromise and conversation. It has been signally absent in the Trump administration, and not just with respect to China. I think the whole foreign policy approach of the Trump administration, and he's made no secret of this, is anti diplomatic. So, yeah, I absolutely think that's a huge factor in this as to what we can do going forward again, I mean, I'll come back to this. Let's put the right guy in the White House. That will be an important start. But also, I think the people on the other side, the people who insist on framing everything through the lens of national security, the people who truly do demonize China, I mean, I'm not exaggerating here. The people who are unapologetic sinophobes, they are louder. They know how to use that activating emotion. They know how to get out there on social media and bring along with them people, for example, who for unrelated reasons have their beefs with the Chinese Communist Party and are willing to amplify their voices and give them some sort of imprimatur of somebody with a Chinese surname and writing in Chinese characters and then hashtagging all their posts, Chinese Nazi or whatever. These people need to be countered. Those of us who are more in the central century, and I would even include Jeremy, need to get out there and counter it. Jeremy says he wakes up every morning and thinks about how the very valid criticisms he so often makes about the party are being used for the other side. I think that it's great that he's thinking about that and would encourage everyone to try to move the conversation back to a sensible one that talks about what realistic guardrails, that's clear eyed, that looks at China and doesn't see rainbows and unicorns, but understands that there are very, very serious problems. There are very, very serious issues that we have and we will always have with the People's Republic of China, but that understands that cooperation is, is deadly necessary right now.
- [77:22]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Which brings us to a question Audrey just posted. Do you believe that everyday people to people diplomacy, China, US could exist or the barricades too long? Maybe we can even extend this, I think beyond the US because I think Europe is. Many countries in Europe are starting to resemble the United States in the sense of there's a growing public suspicion of the People's Republic and I think people to people exchanges are vital. It's only when things become human, when it's your friends and relatives and business contacts involved, that you can start to see beyond the nasty headlines. So I don't think the barricades are too large for people to people diplomacy, but it's much, much more difficult than it ever was.
- [78:21]
Kaiser Kuo
That's right.
- [78:22]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Particularly in the case of the US where we have a government that is, you know, keen to blame China for everything.
- [78:33]
Kaiser Kuo
Look, it's not just the US government that's causing this either, right? I mean, I'm going to sound like Jeremy here for a second, but let's be clear eyed about people diplomacy too. Jeremy is right in saying it's not easy. I mean it's not just not easy. We can't be naive about this. Look, prior to 2007, 2008, when there were not a lot of look, there was barely any people to people diplomacy. The encounters between Chinese and Americans took place under the very polite auspices of sister city exchanges and, you know, gubernatorial delegations for trade between this state and another state, and then, you know, just a handful of expatriates or whatever living in one country, you know, in China. And Jeremy probably knew most of them. Look, when we started to be able to, like, you know, stand nose to nose, really, with Chinese people, it turns out we don't see eye to eye. It was just, if you look at the history of online relationships between Chinese and the United Americans, I had a phrase I borrowed from Rebecca McKinnon that it was the War of the Rednecks versus the Red Guards all the time. I mean, it was just. There isn't a lot of common ground. I mean, we have to be clear about how much hard work there is in doing this.
- [80:02]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Yeah, I think that's true. Here's a question from hsg. What role does SEA play in that diplomacy? Will anything really change until he steps away from leadership? Well, firstly, I don't see him stepping away from leadership. So, you know, I think that's a theoretical question.
- [80:30]
Kaiser Kuo
Look, look, I think that for, for all, you know, my, my complaints about him, he's clearly, he's capable of diplomacy. I mean, we've seen it before. I mean, you know, look at what's happened recently between China and Japan, for example. This wasn't all Abe reaching out with the knowledge branch, actually. Really, since Trump declared a simultaneous trade war against both of the East Asian powers, they've moved very close to one another. I think they have Trump to thank for that. Look at right now, since COVID 19 broke out, public opinion polling, if you were to do it on, attitudes toward Japan are vastly improved. So it's not just the United States that I think is a country that China needs to manage carefully its foreign relations with. And Xi is not always a spoiler in these things. So let's keep that in mind.
- [81:33]
Jeremy Goldkorn
He's not a comment from James Carter. What Kaiser says about people to people diplomacy is true, but they used to be a lot of academic and journalistic exchange in China that for all its limitations, has been shut down. And that I think we can certainly put the blame on. See, you know, the much more repressive environment for NGOs, for, for media, for any kind of exchange. So that's very sad.
- [82:01]
Kaiser Kuo
And, and as Sylvia Frank points out, there still are an awful lot of students, Chinese students in the US Although that is likely to change. Right now. There were 350,000 Chinese students each year studying in the United States as of last Year. Jeremy, do you think COVID 19 is going to knock that number back a lot?
- [82:20]
Jeremy Goldkorn
I guess it's got it right. Not only COVID 19, but the increasingly strict visa.
- [82:29]
Kaiser Kuo
Requirements by the United States and by China.
- [82:33]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Yeah.
- [82:35]
Kaiser Kuo
Look, I mean, the whole 10 years, this 10 years that we've been doing this podcast is like watching my parents fight for 10 goddamn years. I mean, I'm really somebody who feels quite an attachment to both of these countries. And at the time when we started doing this podcast, Barack Obama was the President of the United States and. And Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao were in charge of China. And I felt no hatred toward either of them. In fact, I was, on balance, pretty pleased with both of them. What has happened since, my God, I mean, it's been psychological torment for somebody like me. I freaking need therapy is what I need.
- [83:21]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Okay, well, I think we have medical insurance in our company.
- [83:29]
Kaiser Kuo
So anyone want to volunteer to be my therapist here?
- [83:32]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Absolutely not. Oh, my God, what a nightmare. So Noah says, I'm an international student advisor in the us we're expecting drastically lower numbers in the fall, but not sure about the long term. And then Wing Kai says, as someone in international education, I think the damage of COVID 19 for international student enrollment and cultural exchan exchanges will last for years. That makes sense to me. I mean, I. I kind of, you know, the whole world is in lockdown. I was supposed to go to New Zealand in May for my father's 80th birthday, and that's not going to happen. New Zealand isn't letting anybody in. You know, I think everybody's plans are being disrupted. And I mean, it's not just international students, travel, everything. I mean, I think this is going to last a long, long time. I don't think we should kid ourselves that anything is going to kick back to normal anytime soon.
- [84:38]
Kaiser Kuo
We've got a question about China's role in the environment first. I would go ahead and point people to two podcasts that we've done recently, one with Alex Wong at UCLA and another that just went up yesterday, that is on the 9th of April with Barbara Finnemore, who was at the Natural Resources Defense, who still is at the Natural Resources Defense Council. We talked about a book that she had written called Will China Save the Planet? If you want a bit of good news about China, I highly suggest that you read that book or listen to the podcast, because, I mean, we started off with just some pretty frankly stunning statistics about what China has actually done toward lowering the price of renewable energy globally. Right? Now, two thirds of the people in this world live in countries where the price of renewable energy is cheaper than the price of fossil fuel, and that isn't even including hydro. So the price of wind and solar is cheaper than the price of fossil fuel. That is entirely because of China and its economies of scale, its massive production of solar panels and wind turbines. So there's a lot. But I recommend that you listen to that podcast and those two podcasts.
- [86:03]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Did we miss any questions up above? I kind of lost track.
- [86:06]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's too much on here. Yeah. A lot of comments. And then.
- [86:15]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Okay, well, he has a new one. What are your thoughts on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post being kicked out of China? How is the situation going to play out? It's definitely going to worsen the quality of the reporting Americans get. Yeah, absolutely. Second you on that. It's a. It's very sad for those of us who like to be informed, not just Americans, but the whole world, because for better or worse, the big American newspapers have the biggest. Had the biggest bureaus in China and were doing a lot of the solid groundwork that's necessary for understanding the country. I don't know. I can't see. Well, certainly as long as Trump is in office, I can't see any kind of improvement in that. I think it's going to be a kind of a tit for tat game. And unfortunately, the Trump administration doesn't really care about journalism, so they're not being very careful about how they approach responses to the Chinese government's actions.
- [87:25]
Kaiser Kuo
That's right.
- [87:26]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Which is sort of creating a vicious cycle. You know, I think that the Western media, particularly the American media in China, is going to much more closely resemble the way it was 15, 20 years ago. Fewer people on the ground, less information.
- [87:49]
Kaiser Kuo
But we have the FT still. We have scmp. We have a lot of other.
- [87:53]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Yeah, there are a lot of other.
- [87:55]
Kaiser Kuo
It's absolutely tragic. I mean, I fully denounce this retaliatory move by China. I think it's just a terrible, terrible idea. And obviously, Donald Trump is not going to leap to the defense of the failing New York Times or whatever. He's not going to lift a finger to help. You know, none of these three media organizations that were targeted are exactly favorites. Now, if Murdoch was kicked out, maybe Trump would do something about it, but that ain't gonna happen.
- [88:32]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Well, I mean, Murdoch owns the Wall Street Journal.
- [88:34]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah, yeah. But I mean, Fox. Right, Is what I mean.
- [88:36]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Right, right. Yeah, it's a Tough one. I, it's, I don't know where we're going with this. It's not.
- [88:49]
Kaiser Kuo
What is the likelihood, Jeremy, that either of us moves back to China? Oh, we got a question from HSG.
- [88:54]
Jeremy Goldkorn
On that I will not move back to China.
- [88:58]
Kaiser Kuo
I, I probably will at some point. I mean, I think it depends on, on the political situation there between China and the United States right now. I mean, it's a choice between competence. I mean, I think a lot depends on what happens in November too. If we continue to slide down this slope of xenophobia, of racism, of petulant petty nationalism and populism here, I would take the oppressive competence of China over this. So I'm certainly considering it. My wife certainly wants to move back. I mean, to her this is just sort of a temporary sojourn while the kids are in school.
- [89:51]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Yeah, yeah. The second part of that question was how different would your lives be then compared to, to your time before in China? I mean, China is a very different place from the place it was for most of the time I was living there. And you know, I don't particularly like the way it's become, to be honest. So I think it would be very different. Some of the nice parts of Levin it were perhaps because it was less developed and poorer, to be honest, that, you know, China was very receptive to foreigners and foreign ideas. So I mean, certainly for me, as somebody who's not ethnically Chinese, it was a more welcoming environment than there is now. So. Yeah, I don't know, I'm just kind of, why, Jeremy, why wouldn't I move back to China?
- [91:04]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah, I think you just, you just, you just answered that.
- [91:08]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Okay. And somebody says come back. Kaiser.
- [91:12]
Kaiser Kuo
So yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I very well might. One of the problems, of course, is that when I was living in China, you know, for maybe the first 10 years, even as somebody who was just sort of scraping by American standards, I was still pretty well off. For the last 10 years I had fairly good paying jobs. In my last six years at Baidu, I had a very well paying job. So I could live a decent life. Now, if I went back to China, unless I were to have a significant cost of living adjustment, it would be pretty tough to get by. I would certainly never be able to afford to buy property there now. I mean, it's just, it's unbelievable. I've been trying to talk Fanfan into if we do go back to not living in Beijing or Shanghai, but maybe going Chengdu. Yeah, that's what I'm Pushing for Chengdu.
- [92:08]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Chengdu is where you want to be.
- [92:10]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah, absolutely.
- [92:11]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Yeah. If we move back to China, it would be Chengdu. Actually, that started to sound quite appealing. Maybe I will move back to China. Doug says a lot of complaints on China. I'm with you on seeing the negative developments for the last 10 years, especially for foreigners living here. But what gives you hope and what do you think has changed for the positive?
- [92:34]
Kaiser Kuo
Oh, yeah. I mean, I have a long list of. For that. I mean. But Jeremy, I think it's more interesting to hear from you. Are there things that you still think are positive? Oh, surely.
- [92:55]
Jeremy Goldkorn
I mean, I think one of the things that always gives me a lot of energy is the entrepreneurial energy of people in China and the ability to maintain a kind of optimistic worldview no matter what, you know, is hitting the farm.
- [93:18]
Kaiser Kuo
Right.
- [93:19]
Jeremy Goldkorn
And I, I think that perhaps, you know, gives me hope. Chinese people, I don't, you know, my, my parents in law who are Chinese live with us now. And everybody in America is freaking out about this quarantine. And my mother in law was like, you know what? I was in the countryside for six years in the Cultural Revolution and we were eating bark, like, it's cool, we'll be fine. I think that aspect of Chinese people, they're not, you know, Nang Shiku, you know, you can eat bitterness, you can tolerate hardship, and you can still, amazingly, even though the world is completely kicking you in the head all the time, maintain some kind of optimism and hope for the future. I would say perhaps that would be my greatest hope and joy in China, is that this is a country with a culture that is in some ways set up for success in adversity.
- [94:30]
Kaiser Kuo
That's very well put. And I think I would totally share that buoyancy, that optimism that they get from that. Also the relationship, I think, with technology, I kind of like that better in China than I do here.
- [94:44]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Why? What's better about it?
- [94:46]
Kaiser Kuo
Well, I think that there's sort of this still unembarrassed embrace of the idea of Taiwan technologically driven, better futures. I think that they put their money where their mouth is on this. That there are a lot of people who go to work every day believing that they're going to solve real world problems. And we've seen that happening in China over the last 20 years. It's been phenomenal. This is directly related to what you said about the culture of entrepreneurship. I also, I think that there's the lack of partisan rancor would be, at least for a little while, really welcome. I mean, just oh no, give me.
- [95:35]
Jeremy Goldkorn
The partisan rancor anytime.
- [95:38]
Kaiser Kuo
I don't know, I mean, maybe you're not into it, but I feel like China has sort of an admirable asabiyya. China has like this still this sort of connectedness to a sense of national purpose, which I sometimes find refreshing. And what comes with that are some of the, you know, it comes up tied to a lot of things that you just, you talked about this, you know, ability to eat bitterness. People are not a bunch of whingers. Right? You don't these. There isn't as much just.
- [96:12]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Yeah, America is a very whingy country. I have to agree with that. Now that I've lived here for a few years. People whinge about nonsense.
- [96:21]
Kaiser Kuo
I take mental health issues seriously and I was just talking about getting therapy for my superpower conflict dilemma. But I think that I don't encounter people in China who are constantly talking about, you know, depression or anxiety. It's a very different kind of people are made of maybe different sterner stuff. And sometimes I do miss that.
- [96:51]
Jeremy Goldkorn
So here's a question or comment from two weird leaders. Xi and Trump are leading the biggest two powers of the world. Low income white workers got trusted Trump elected and Trump blames China for taking work from those white lower classes as a result of globalization. This is a global trend. I get it. But she is in Xi in power and acting the way he is. Why? Sure, coincidences like Boise Lai's attempted coup. But what are the more systemic and broader reasons for Xi's authoritarianism? I guess. Plus, even if we get rid of C and Trump, are we looking to go back to the old ways or are there some new directions? What direction?
- [97:37]
Kaiser Kuo
First of all, the answer, the last part of that no, there's no going back. Right. The best we can do is sort of scramble what's left of Humpty Dumpty into a different kind of an omelette or something that, that, that ship is sailed. It's not going to be restored to what it was like. I think I maybe clung to a hope that it might go Back to pre 2008 for a brief moment there, but I've disabused myself of that. But the question that is at the heart of this is something that has centrally preoccupied me for the whole last 10 years since we've been doing this. Why did the illiberal turn happen? And it's not just C. As Jeremy rightly pointed out, this happened. He recognized this in 2008, 2009. I think some people would go Even earlier. And look at the crackdown on rights defenders in 2006 and say that it began even earlier.
- [98:39]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Yeah, 2006 was the year of Wenming Ban Wang, the first real international Internet cleanup campaign.
- [98:48]
Kaiser Kuo
Sure, sure. So what brought this about? So I would take the real. I really think that it happened around the time of the crisis. And I have a long, elaborate theory that I don't have time to go into right now. But I think that we cannot ignore what American action, whether it was coordinated or not, and I tend to think that it was not. But what it looked like from Beijing. We have a terrible inability to exercise what's called security dilemma sensibility. We don't understand what our behavior looks like from across the table. And what it looked like from Beijing was threatening. It did look like America had quite hostile designs, especially after 2008. And in spite of Obama saying repeatedly that it is in the American interest to have a strong, wealthy, prosperous and stable China, it did not look like that for most people in Beijing. And this has been a recurrent theme on the show. You can hear me talk about this on a dozen different episodes. But I think that to lay the feet. To lay all the blame for this entirely at Beijing's feet is just simply. I think that that's hubristic and simply wrong.
- [100:19]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Yeah, I mean, I think I disagree with you about the extent of that, but fair enough. So, hsg, any chance of bringing back the Dunway Hard Hat show, talking to folks in Tennessee about China? That's a good idea. Thank you. I will consider that it's. Although, I don't know. You know, talking to people in Tennessee about China is.
- [100:42]
Kaiser Kuo
Doing youth.
- [100:43]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Hanshin, Georgia. Anyway, can either of you think of anything positive to say about the future of the US China relationship?
- [100:52]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah, absolutely. I think that. I think there's a very plausible scenario in which we hit bottom. Look, right now we've had a preview into what the decoupling that so many people are clamoring for will actually look like. And what does it look like? It looks like a precipitous economic decline. It looks like disruption in our supply chains that damages uncountable numbers of industries in the United States. So we might get we wished for and then realize that that's not sustainable. And so I think that we might hit bottom and begin the road to recovery.
- [101:39]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Yeah. So, Roger, how's Souffe these days? Souffe is in la. In Los Angeles. Yes.
- [101:49]
Kaiser Kuo
Three. Two kids.
- [101:50]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Three kids. If we could find marker again, that would be a really great show. Can you say anything about the New Left in China? Is Jude Blanchette still on the call? Because if anyone can talk about the New Left in China, I think it would be him.
- [102:08]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah, I mean, he did great on it. I don't see him on here, so.
- [102:12]
Jeremy Goldkorn
I think he slipped off. Okay.
- [102:14]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah, he's a busy guy. He's got stuff to do. Look, I can talk a little bit about the New Left. I mean, it's not an easy and.
- [102:21]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Person to person diplomacy between leftists. Audrey, I'm not sure if you mean internationally.
- [102:28]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah, that I don't know anything about. I don't know. There are plenty of people I can point you to who can talk to you about that, but the New Left is. First of all, I would say it's not what most people think it is. The New Left sort of grew out of a lot of people who were sort of simultaneously disillusioned with a lot of what was happening in terms of imbalances in the Chinese economy and in the environmental damage that was happening during the Jiang and Wen and Hu era. Some of the principles of this people, like Wang Hui were actually themselves dissidents. At one point they were. He was a participant in the 89 protests and then studied abroad. And their leftism is sort of more akin to leftism as we understand it in the United States than leftism in a Chinese context. That's maybe the easiest way I could say it. They're really interested actually in the rights of the working class, in income inequality, in environmental issues. Their critique is not so much of the statist pieces of part of China, which they're often quite supportive of, but of the neoliberal aspects of China in the reform era. That's probably a pretty succinct explanation of their ideology. Yeah, they're great. Again, reading the China Dream has a lot on them, and you can read that. I would also point you to works by Mark Leonard from the European Council on Foreign Relations, who's written quite a bit about China's New Left. All right, should we get to recommendations, Jeremy? Should we move to recommendations?
- [104:30]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Okay.
- [104:33]
Kaiser Kuo
Let me first say thank you, Jeremy, for 10 years of a fabulous partnership, man. I mean, yeah, thank you. I've really enjoyed this. And, you know, somebody was asking, Jesse was asking earlier about working with you and whether that's been hard. I gotta say, you know, I'm sure.
- [104:48]
Jeremy Goldkorn
It'S been very hard. Nobody who works with me finds it easy.
- [104:53]
Kaiser Kuo
Nothing's easy. But, you know, Jeremy, you're one of my best friends and I've always You know, loved and respected everything that you've done. And it's just been a total joy working with you.
- [105:06]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Likewise. Likewise. Thank you.
- [105:08]
Kaiser Kuo
Here's the 10 more.
- [105:09]
Jeremy Goldkorn
So my recommendation then is an interview on NPR with Terry Gross, who I don't usually like very much, actually, as an interviewer, but it's with Stephen King, the novelist. And it's called Stephen King is sorry you feel like you're stuck in a Stephen King novel. It's basically his take on, you know, the times we're living in and other stuff. And it's about 40 minutes long. It's on the NPR website.
- [105:41]
Kaiser Kuo
That's a great recommendation. We'll check it out. I'm going to recommend two essays, very different, but both about COVID 19. One is in the New York Review of Books. It's by a literature professor at Fairfield University in Connecticut. The essay is called Fearing for My Mother in Wuhan Facing a New Sinophobia in the US and it really touched me. Her name is Xiao. You know what? I suddenly spaced her name. Xiao. I almost said Xiao Li Jian, but that's not right.
- [106:18]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Ji Wei, I think.
- [106:21]
Kaiser Kuo
Yes, right. Xiao Jiwei. I don't know the tones. It's probably Xiao. And the essay is just great. It's personal, very deeply personal, about her mother, who is in the lockdown city of Wuhan, and about the experience of being a Chinese person in America as the ravages of COVID 19American shores. And that response. And it was just. It's so familiar to me, even though I had no mother living in lockdown in China. It's just fantastic. I highly recommend it to absolutely everyone. The Other is an essay by Adam Tooze, who is one of the people, I think, who understands the global economy best and writes about it most lucidly. I just can't recommend it more highly. It's in the London Review. I'm sorry. Yeah, it's in the London Review of Books. I think that it's probably the clearest explanation of how the economic situations have been impacted by COVID 19 in the three centers of production, of finance, of economic power, that is the United States, China and the Eurozone. Each of them have their own particular pathologies. Each of them have their own comorbidities that left them susceptible in their own way. But he ends up basically saying that given that choice between trying to stave off the pain, extend it and wait it out, or taking all the pain up front, as China did, the obviously better choice was to take the pain up front in the most draconian fashion to squash the disease and then build the economy back to take the economic pain up front. It's just a very compelling article. It's around 4,500 words long. Take you half an hour to read, but you'll not spend a better half an hour if you really want to educate yourself on the economic impact of this.
- [108:33]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Sorry. David Moser just commented in the chat. My wife just saw Jeremy on the screen with the Oval Office backdrop and said, oh, have the terrorists taken over the White House, man?
- [108:50]
Kaiser Kuo
That's funny. That's funny.
- [108:52]
Jeremy Goldkorn
All right, one more recommendation before we go. Like, on the theme of, like, you know, being in China, being in the US and watching China, we published a short piece by a gentleman named Yang Zi or Zoe Young. My family survived the lockdown in Wuhan. Now it's my turn in New York, which is also a pretty good read on Sub China. It's on the homepage right now.
- [109:17]
Kaiser Kuo
All right. Hey, thank you for not speaking French too much on this. I don't think I swore once, a couple of times.
- [109:25]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Okay.
- [109:27]
Kaiser Kuo
Anyway, congrats, man. We made it 10 years.
- [109:29]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Yeah, we did. What is that, a paper anniversary or.
- [109:36]
Kaiser Kuo
It's the Twitter anniversary. Thanks. Thanks, everyone for joining us on Zoom. And thank you all listeners for tuning in. And, you know, we'll make, we're going to keep making these shows.
- [109:49]
Jeremy Goldkorn
We're going to try and make a kind of a, an edited version of this. We'll see how that goes. A kind of video podcast thing. Okay, so, but thank you very much. And there's a bunch of links and stuff in the chat channel and we will try to post this with all the links at some point very soon indeed indeed.
- [110:15]
Kaiser Kuo
All right, folks, the Cineca podcast is powered by Supchina and is a proud part of the Syneca Network. Our show is produced by me, Kaiser Guo and that guy Jeremy Goldkorn, with editing help by Jason Macronold. Drop us an email@cinecatsubchina.com, follow us on Twitter or on Facebook @subchina news, and make sure to check out all the other shows in our network. Thank you for listening, everyone. Stay safe. Wash your hands, don't touch your face, and we will see you next week.
- [110:41]
Jeremy Goldkorn
And if you hated what we did today, please email me and tell me what you hated.
- [110:47]
Kaiser Kuo
Yeah, don't, don't, don't email me. I'm more thin skinned than Jeremy the rhinoceros. All right, folks, adios.
- [110:55]
Jeremy Goldkorn
Adios.
- [111:09]
Kaiser Kuo
It.