Historian Adam Tooze on why China’s modern history should matter to Americans
08/19/21 • 62 min
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This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with the Columbia historian Adam Tooze, who returns to the program a year after his first appearance. A prolific writer and wide-ranging public intellectual, Adam was trained as a Germanist and has focused, in his writings, largely on economic history. His books include The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916–1931, and Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crisis Changed the World. In July, Adam published an ambitious essay titled “Why there is no solution to our age of crisis without China” in The New Statesman, in which he lays out a brief history of China from the crisis of the Qing Empire in the 19th century through China’s “Century of Humiliation” up to the project of national rejuvenation, which has been the focus of Xí Jìnpíng’s 习近平 time in office. Adam talks about why he feels it’s important to occasionally venture outside one’s own field of specialization, as he did in writing on China as a non-specialist; the folly of two oft-cited historical analogies, comparing China with both Wilhelmine and Hitlerian Germany; the importance of comparative history in making sense of contemporary international relations; and America’s difficulty, when it comes to China, in accepting pluralism from anything but a position of dominance.
16:02: What we get wrong about the Thucydides Trap and other historical analogies about China
21:17: Why the modern P.R.C. is not a mature fascist state
28:58: The iterative nature of China’s economic modernization
46:59: China as a civilization vs. China as a nation state
A transcript of this episode is available on SupChina.com.
Recommendations:
Adam: Stalingrad, by Vasily Grossman.
Kaiser: The Spanish-language television series The Legend of El Cid.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with the Columbia historian Adam Tooze, who returns to the program a year after his first appearance. A prolific writer and wide-ranging public intellectual, Adam was trained as a Germanist and has focused, in his writings, largely on economic history. His books include The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916–1931, and Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crisis Changed the World. In July, Adam published an ambitious essay titled “Why there is no solution to our age of crisis without China” in The New Statesman, in which he lays out a brief history of China from the crisis of the Qing Empire in the 19th century through China’s “Century of Humiliation” up to the project of national rejuvenation, which has been the focus of Xí Jìnpíng’s 习近平 time in office. Adam talks about why he feels it’s important to occasionally venture outside one’s own field of specialization, as he did in writing on China as a non-specialist; the folly of two oft-cited historical analogies, comparing China with both Wilhelmine and Hitlerian Germany; the importance of comparative history in making sense of contemporary international relations; and America’s difficulty, when it comes to China, in accepting pluralism from anything but a position of dominance.
16:02: What we get wrong about the Thucydides Trap and other historical analogies about China
21:17: Why the modern P.R.C. is not a mature fascist state
28:58: The iterative nature of China’s economic modernization
46:59: China as a civilization vs. China as a nation state
A transcript of this episode is available on SupChina.com.
Recommendations:
Adam: Stalingrad, by Vasily Grossman.
Kaiser: The Spanish-language television series The Legend of El Cid.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Previous Episode
Peter Martin on ‘China's Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy’
This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy chat with Peter Martin, a correspondent for Bloomberg based in Washington, D.C., about his book, China’s Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy. This highly readable and informative book tells the story of China’s diplomatic corps from its creation ex nihilo under the guidance of Zhōu Ēnlái 周恩来 during the Communist Party’s years in Yan’an in the 1930s and 1940s through the foundation of the P.R.C., the vicissitudes of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and the period of reform and opening up to the current, more assertive, and often pugilistic present under Xí Jìnpíng 习近平. Peter also offers his take on last week’s interview on Sinica with Ambassador Huáng Píng 黄屏, the consul general of China’s New York consulate.
7:48: The centrality of the national humiliation narrative to the institutional foundations of China’s Foreign Ministry
15:02: The contributions and diplomatic styles of prominent contemporaries such as Qián Qíchēn 钱其琛, Dài Bǐngguó 戴秉国, Yáng Jiéchí 杨洁篪, and Wáng Yì 王毅
24:46: The rise of Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhào Lìjiān 赵立坚
47:28: Understanding Chinese diplomacy’s hard turn amidst a culture of discipline
A transcript of this episode is available on SupChina.com.
Recommendations:
Jeremy: Hummingbird feeders with homemade sugar water nectar.
Peter: The podcast series Dolly Parton's America.
Kaiser: The movie The Green Knight, based on the Arthurian legend, by David Lowery.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Next Episode
Harvard’s William Overholt on Esquel, cotton sanctions, and forced Uyghur labor
This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with William (Bill) Overholt, senior research fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a veteran China-watcher whose career has run the gamut from investment banking to academia to the leading think tanks. Bill recently weighed in on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s decision to place Esquel, a leading textile manufacturer headquartered in Hong Kong, on its entity list of companies alleged to be using forced labor from Xinjiang, lamenting that “it’s quite possible that the U.S. government has imposed sanctions on the world’s most socially responsible company and one that has been particularly beneficial to the Uyghurs.” Bill also discusses recent essays on other problems in American China policy.
7:17: First impressions of Esquel, its technology, and its working conditions for Uyghurs
21:47: Targeted sanctions vs. blanket sanctions
35:06: Lack of China expertise in the highest ranks of the Biden administration’s foreign policy team
44:43: Why the United States should return to an economic strategy
A transcript of this episode is available on SupChina.com.
Recommendations:
Bill: Newsletters and podcasts from SupChina; articles from The Wire China; and the article “The Chinese Debt Trap is a Myth” published in The Atlantic, by Deborah Brautigam and Meg Rithmire.
Kaiser: The novel The Lions of al-Rassan, by Guy Gavriel Kay.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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