Sinica Podcast - The 20th Party Congress postgame show with Damien Ma and Lizzi Lee

The 20th Party Congress postgame show with Damien Ma and Lizzi Lee

11/02/22 • 61 min

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This week on Sinica, our friends at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs invited us for a live show taping before a small group. Kaiser is joined by Lizzi Lee, MIT-trained economist-turned-reporter who hosts the Chinese-language show "Wall Street Today" as well as The China Project's "Live with Lizzi Lee," both on Youtube; and by Damien Ma, who heads the Paulson Institute's in-house think tank MacroPolo. These two top-shelf analysts of Chinese politics break down what was important — and what was just a sideshow — at the 20th Party Congress, and offer their knowledgeable perspectives on the individuals named to key posts and what this likely means for China's direction. Don't miss this one!

2:40 – Findings from MacroPolo’s “fantasy PBSC” experiment

8:18 – Did China watchers overemphasize Xi Jinping’s political constraints?

12:31 – Support for Li Qiang across different political factions

17:23 – The changing factional composition of Chinese elite politics

20:20 – Return of the technocrats

23:27 – “Generation-skipping” in China’s recent political promotions

28:26 – The selection of Cai Qi

32:46 – Li Shulei as a successor to Wang Huning

37:07 – The future of China’s economic leadership

39:52 – Selection of the vice premiers

41:18 – The future of China’s diplomatic core

45:28 – The Hu Jintao episode

49:22 – Revising the “Zero-COVID” policy

51:17 – Reassessing China’s intentions vis-à-vis Taiwan

A transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com.

Recommendations:

Lizzi: Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao by Joseph Torigian

Damien: Slouching Towards Utopia by Brad DeLong

Kaiser: "Taiwan, the World-Class Puzzle," a Radio Open Source podcast hosted by Christopher Lydon

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

2:40 – Findings from MacroPolo’s “fantasy PBSC” experiment

8:18 – Did China watchers overemphasize Xi Jinping’s political constraints?

12:31 – Support for Li Qiang across different political factions

17:23 – The changing factional composition of Chinese elite politics

20:20 – Return of the technocrats

23:27 – “Generation-skipping” in China’s recent political promotions

28:26 – The selection of Cai Qi

32:46 – Li Shulei as a successor to Wang Huning

37:07 – The future of China’s economic leadership

39:52 – Selection of the vice premiers

41:18 – The future of China’s diplomatic core

45:28 – The Hu Jintao episode

49:22 – Revising the “Zero-COVID” policy

51:17 – Reassessing China’s intentions vis-à-vis Taiwan

A transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com.

Recommendations:

Lizzi: Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao by Joseph Torigian

Damien: Slouching Towards Utopia by Brad DeLong

Kaiser: "Taiwan, the World-Class Puzzle," a Radio Open Source podcast hosted by Christopher Lydon

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Previous Episode

Grifter, chaos agent, or CCP spy? The New Yorker's Evan Osnos on Guo Wengui

This week on Sinica, Evan Osnos, staff writer for The New Yorker, joins hosts Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn to talk about his new piece on one of the most puzzling figures to come out of China: Guo Wengui, a.k.a. Miles Kwok, who took what he learned about dealing with power and money in China and applied those lessons to the U.S., insinuating himself with leading figures of the American right. Who is this mysterious man, and what is he really after? In an unscripted episode that will bring some listeners back to the grotty apartment in Beijing where Sinica recorded in its very early days, Evan, Kaiser, and Jeremy parse the mysteries of the strange phenomenon of Guo Wengui.

03:37 – Who is Guo Wengui?

10:07 – Orville Schell’s experience with Guo Wengui

14:48 – Steve Bannon’s comparison between Guo and Trump

17:40 – The process of fact-checking this piece

23:03 – Guo’s potential ties to the pro-Xi Jinping clique

26:02 – VOA’s interview with Guo

30:06 – Guo’s campaign against Teng Biao and other Chinese dissidents

33:57 – Guo’s role as an interlocutor on behalf of the MSS

39:00 – Steve Wynn’s efforts to extradite Guo

42:10 – Guo’s impact on the Chinese diaspora community

45:11 – Guo’s influence on US-China relations

A transcript of this interview is available at TheChinaProject.com.

Recommendations:

Jeremy: "President Trump's First Term," by Evan Osnos, a New Yorker article written in 2016 predicting what would happen to the U.S. if Donald Trump won in 2016. (Spoiler: he did. And Evan was right).

Evan: An audio tribute to legendary New Yorker editor John Bennet: https://www.cjr.org/special_report/johnbennet.php

Kaiser: The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet, a forgivably melodramatic historical fiction novel with an emphasis on architecture

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Next Episode

New America President Anne-Marie Slaughter on balancing China competition and global imperatives

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Anne-Marie Slaughter, a leading American public intellectual who serves as president of New America and was Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department during the first Obama administration. Anne-Marie talks about how collaboration on issues of global concern — pandemics, global warming, and more — requires the U.S. to deprioritize some aspects of its competition with China.

1:59 – Contradictions of the Biden doctrine

5:18 – Reconciling Biden’s China policy and the possibility of climate cooperation

13:43 – Deemphasizing national security on the American foreign policy agenda

20:23 – Potential for “positive competition”

21:50 – The concept of networked governance

36:04 – The dynamics of groupthink in US decision-making

43:05 – Hope for the younger generation’s prospective policy shift

47:38 – Does race factor into our hostility towards China?

50:19 – Potential for an affirmative vision on Biden’s China policy

54:52 – How revisionist are China’s ambitions?

59:49 – American tolerance for a diminished global role

A transcript of this interview is available at TheChinaProject.com.