A ‘China Watcher’s China Watcher’ Decamps
from Sinica PodcastAs anyone who reads the Sinocism newsletter knows, Bill Bishop is among the most plugged-in people in Beijing with an uncanny ability to figure out what is actually happening in the halls of power. But as casual readers may not be aware, he is...
The Tianjin Explosion
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Beijing’s Great Leap Forward: Microbrew in China
from Sinica PodcastGreat Leap Brewing is an institution. As one of the earliest American-style microbreweries in China, not only has the company rescued us from endless nights of Snow and Yanjing...
Good Riddance, Monsieur Epstein
from Sinica PodcastThe hosts of the Sinica Podcast are not surprised that Gady Epstein is moving on. We used to buy the papers for his “Telegrams from the Orient”, but then he took that Economist gig and his productivity plummeted and it has become hard to even...
Who Will Save Us from the Self-help Revolution?
Someone desperately needs to call a fumigator, because China’s self-help bug is eating up the woodwork. Train station bookstores may always have served the genre’s trite pablum to bored businessmen legging it cross-country, but in recent months...
The Brother Orange Saga
from Sinica PodcastThe story started when a Buzzfeed editor lost his iPhone in an East Village bar in February of last year and blossomed into the Sino-American romance of the century, and probably the most up-lifting and altogether unlikely China story that we can...
The People’s Republic of Cruiseland
from Sinica PodcastWe have enough favorite writers on China that we’ve had to develop a sophisticated classification system just to keep track of everyone. That said, one of our hardest to place within the long-form taxonomy is Chris Beam, who you may have heard on...
Writers: Heroes in China?
from Sinica PodcastIf you happen to live in the anglophone world and aren’t closely tied to China by blood or professional ties, chances are that what you believe to be true about this country is heavily influenced by the opinions of perhaps one hundred other...
Earthquake in Nepal!
from Sinica Podcast[Note: This podcast was first recorded on May 13.—The Editors]
On April 25, an 8.1 magnitude earthquake shook the Katmandu...
Identity, Race, and Civilization
from Sinica PodcastIt doesn't take much exposure to China to realize the pervasiveness of identity politics here. Indeed, whether in the Chinese government’s occasionally hamfisted efforts to micromanage ethnic minority cultures or the Foreign Ministry’s soft-power...
Leonard Bernstein and China
from Sinica PodcastThis week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and David Moser are delighted to host Alexander Bernstein, son of Leonard Berstein and director of the Bernstein Family Foundation, who is now in China on part of a cultural tour. Accompanied by Alison Friedman of...
India Comes to China
from Sinica PodcastThis week’s Sincia Podcast is about the upcoming visit to China of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who served from 2001 to 2014 as Chief Minister of Gujarat and was sworn into office almost one year ago this month. Modi’s visit comes at an...
The Furor and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
from Sinica PodcastA total of 57 countries have now joined the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, China’s newly-launched competitor to the Asian Development Bank (AIIB) that has sparked a flurry of objections from the United States, even culminating in a failed...
Nationalism and Censorship
from Sinica PodcastChristopher Cairns joins the hosts of Sinica for a discussion of his forthcoming paper, co-authored with Allen Carlson, scheduled for publication in ...
China’s Ideological Spectrum
from Sinica PodcastLast week, Harvard doctoral student Jennifer Pan and MIT graduate student Yiqing Xu co-released a paper, “China’s Ideological Spectrum,” that has garnered a tremendous...
Styling It in China
from Sinica PodcastSociologist Ben Ross, a doctoral student at the University of Chicago, focuses on Chinese labor migration and related issues. He first got noticed by Sinica in 2007 while writing...
Cyber Leninism and the Political Culture of the Chinese Internet
from Sinica PodcastKaiser Kuo and David Moser speak with Rogier Creemers, post-doctoral fellow at Oxford with a focus on Chinese Internet governance and author of the China Copyright and Media...
Comfort Women and the Struggle for Reparations
from Sinica PodcastKaiser talks with Lucy Hornby, China correspondent for the Financial Times and author of a recent piece on China’s last surviving Chinese...
In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland
from Sinica PodcastKaiser Kuo and David Moser are joined by Michael Meyer, the author of The Last Days of Old Beijing and now...
Under the Dome
from Sinica PodcastUnder the Dome, Chai Jing's breakout documentary on China's catastrophic air pollution problem, finally hit insurmountable political opposition last Friday after seven days in which the video racked up over 200 million views. The eventual...
Keep in Touch, Nightman
from Sinica PodcastIn 1997, Beijing was smaller city, and Keep in Touch, Jamhouse, and Nightman were the hippest venues around. There was no traffic on the ring roads, and if you got tired of Chinese food you might take a trip to Fangzhuang to visit this Italian...
Business and F*cking in China
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The Changing Look of China, Myanmar, and Visual Journalism—A Chat With Jonah Kessel
from Sinica PodcastThis week on Sinica, Jeremy and Kaiser are joined by Jonah M. Kessel, former freelance photographer and now full-time videographer for The New York Times who has covered a wide range of China stories, traveled widely through the country...
Shanghai and the Future Now
from Sinica PodcastExpats in Beijing may be partial to our rugged smogtropolis, but even the most diehard northerner will admit that Shanghai is the more romantic of the two cities, with its very name conjuring up images of 19th century opium dens, jazz bars in the...
Inside the Property Revolution
from Sinica PodcastLuigi Tomba, expert on municipal government in China, fellow at the Australian Centre on China and the World, and author of the book ...
China and Charlie
from Sinica PodcastFirst there were the terrorist attacks in Paris. And then there was the global reaction to the attacks, with its spate of frenzied free-speech cartooning. And then there was the counter-reaction to the initial reaction, which played out mostly on...
From the Interpreter’s Booth
from Sinica PodcastThis week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy are joined by Lynette Shi and William White, two globe-trotting adventurers who've found unconventional careers navigating the shoals of the professional interpretation circuit in China. So whether you’re...
The Sinica Podcast’s Second Annual Call-In Show
from Sinica PodcastIf you’ve been following all of the news and gossip involving China for the last year, join Kaiser and Jeremy as they take call-in questions and talk insider politics on everything from the ongoing anti-corruption campaign to the question of...
Regulating the Fourth Estate in China
from Sinica PodcastThe explosion of the commercial media sphere in China over the last decade hasn't been particularly subtle, especially if you're anything like us and walk past multiple Chinese newsstands in the morning. But let's look beyond the way kiosks have...
Cooperation or Exploitation
from Sinica PodcastExactly how exploitative are Chinese development activities on the African continent? What exactly is motivating the various resources-for-development deals inked by African governments over the last decade, and what strategies are these...
Band of Brothers: China and South Africa
from Sinica PodcastPomp and ritual surrounded South African President Jacob Zuma's recent state visit to China, a trip that saw China roll out the red carpet in a very uncritical fashion, not often seen these days, with even Xinhua getting into the spirit of...
Domestic Abuse in China
from Sinica PodcastIt doesn’t take a lot of time in China to see household violence play out in supermarkets, in schools, or even in the streets. But exactly how common is domestic violence in China? In the face of recent evidence from Peking University that more...
Internet Wrangling in Wuzhen
from Sinica PodcastKaiser Kuo hosts alone this week as we turn our attention to the World Internet Conference (English site) last week, when a...
Banned but Booming: Golf in China
from Sinica PodcastDespite China's legal moratorium on the development of the golf industry, a policy driven by concerns over illegal farmland seizures and the potential misallocation of agricultural land and water resources, the golf industry has experienced an...
Behind the Curtain at APEC
from Sinica PodcastWith tensions between the West and Russia running high over Ukraine, China and Japan still wrangling over the Diaoyu islands, and America and China fighting over pretty much the same old petty stuff, it's easy to be cynical about APEC. But this...
Damned Lies, Statistics, and China
from Sinica PodcastIn a country where every single province frequently reports annual growth rates exceeding the national average, and the country’s premier is applauded for publicly ignoring his own National Bureau of Statistics, it isn't hard to take Mark Twain’s...
David Walker on China in the Australian Mind
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This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy are delighted to be joined by Professor David Walker, Chair of the Australian Studies department at Peking University and historian with a special focus on Australian immigration...
China Daddy Issues
from Sinica PodcastWe’ve all heard about the difficulty of finding good schools in China, and know first hand about the food and air safety problems. But what about the terrors of pedestrian crossings, the dilemmas of how much trust you should inculcate in your...
The Sounds of Old Beijing
from Sinica PodcastThis week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy are joined by Colin Chinnery from the Beijing Sound History Project, a recording project that aims to preserve the distinctive clangs, songs, and shouts of traditional Beijing life. In addition to sampling...
Chinese Martial Arts
from Sinica PodcastThis week on Sinica, Jeremy Goldkorn and David Moser are pleased to be joined by Sascha Matuszak, a Chengdu-based expert on Chinese martial arts and the producer of a new documentary on Chinese MMA (mixed martial arts), a competitive tournament...
In Conversation with Mara Hvistendahl
from Sinica PodcastKaiser and Jeremy are joined this week by Mara Hvistendahl, Pulitzer Prize-nominated author and long-standing resident of Shanghai, to discuss her two main works. Along with discussing the twists and turns of her murder novel, ...
LGBT China
from Sinica PodcastThis week on Sinica, Jeremy Goldkorn and David Moser are joined by Fan Popo for a discussion of...
Ghost Cities to Luxury Malls
from Sinica PodcastRemember the good old days when people didn't talk obsessively about real estate and housing prices, and dinner parties would feature conversations about art? Well, so do we, but with those days long gone we're delighted to host two experts on...
Finding the ‘Essence’ of China
from Sinica PodcastThis week, Kaiser Kuo and David Moser are delighted to host Jeremiah Jenne, Director at the Hutong, Beijing’s premier cultural exchange center, for a conversation that picks apart China’s obsession with “Chinese characteristics” and asks whether...
In Memory of Jenkai Kuo
from Sinica PodcastThis week on Sinica, Jeremy and David welcome back Kaiser to remember the life and lessons of his father, Jenkai Kuo (Guo Jingkai) (郭倞闓). He was an upstanding man who spent much of his life dedicated to his passions, none more important than his...
The Rule of Law in China
from Sinica PodcastThis week on Sinica, Jeremy and David are joined by Donald Clarke, a professor at George Washington University where he specializes in Chinese law, for a discussion of what is happening with the Zhou Yongkang corruption scandal, as well as...
Hong Kong Protests and Suicide in China
from Sinica PodcastThis week on Sinica, we’re delighted to welcome back the stalwart Mr. Gady Epstein, Beijing correspondent for The Economist, to discuss the recent protests in Hong Kong, as well as the flux in China’s suicide rates. And specifically, we’...
Debating Societies in China
from Sinica PodcastThis week on Sinica, we’re happy to welcome back Jeremy Goldkorn in conversation with David Weeks, founder and President of the National High School Debate League of China, a debating society currently established in twenty-seven cities...
Education in China
from Sinica PodcastThis week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and David Moser are joined by Jiang Xueqin, deputy principal of Tsinghua Fuzhong Affiliated High School and author of Creative China, for a discussion of the education system in China. Specifically, we’re...
Sin and Vice
from Sinica PodcastThis week on Sinica, Jeremy Goldkorn and David Moser turn their attention to vice, in conversation with Robert Foyle Hunwick, a media consultant and editor for Beijing Cream. We talk about...
Narendra Modi and Sino-Indian Relations
from Sinica PodcastThis week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy grab Ananth Krishnanin, correspondent for India’s national newspaper The Hindu, and drag him into our studio for a discussion of the state of...
Isolda Morillo: Una Vida en China
from Sinica PodcastThis week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy are delighted to be joined by Isolda Morillo, a Peruvian journalist for the Associated Press whose life story is as interesting as they come. Growing up in Beijing in the 1980s, where she attended local...
The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China
from Sinica PodcastThis week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy are joined by David Moser and Leta Hong Fincher, newly-minted Ph.D. and author of Leftover Women...
Rice, Wheat, and Air Filters
from Sinica PodcastThis week on Sinica, we're delighted to be joined by Thomas Talhelm, Ph.D. candidate in psychology at the University of Virginia and author of a recent paper proposing a...
OMG, in Conversation With Jessica Beinecke
from Sinica PodcastKaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn interview Jessica Beinecke, host of the VOA-funded OMG Meiyu, a Chinese show on English slang that has earned Jessica hundreds of thousands of...
History of the Internet in China
from Sinica PodcastThe Internet has always been near and dear to our hearts here at Sinica. Four years ago, our very first show covered Google China and the fracas that followed their decision to pull out of China. And in the years since, we've frequently talked...
Initial Impressions: Three First Trips to China, 1970s-1990s
from Sinica PodcastIn this show: dating tips for hooking up with your Marxist-Leninist thought instructor, advice on what modern music and seasonal vegetables to smuggle in from Hong Kong, the origins of China’s somewhat unorthodox driving customs, and instructions...