Sinobabble

The newer and nimbler players in Chinese e-commerce are pushing buttons in the West. Rock-bottom prices, fast fulfilment and addictive interfaces are pushed to their limits to take China's dopamine economy global. What's going on, where does AI fit in the picture and what can we do to take on these new standards of consumption?

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In this episode we discuss Western (mainly US) think tank analysis of China in the 1990s and early 2000s and ask ourselves if they provide any value either for the public discourse or as pieces of policy advice. While experts work hard to produce piece after piece, report after report, looking at China's economic, military, political and technological developments, the actual usefulness of these works either individually or as a collective needs to be evaluated. What started off as the search for a common thread in the evolution of China analysis over a 10 year period ended up being a lambasting of a staple of the intellectual economy. Whoops. We also discuss the problem with information overload in our modern age and the dangers of trying to predict the future.
This is a big talky episode, so be prepared to strap in for a whole lot of yappin'.
Chapters
(00:00) Introduction
(02:00) What is a think tank
(06:28) Think tanks analysed
(15:00) 1991-1995 - a period of foreshadowing
(31:50) 1996-1999 - a period of chaos
(46:36) 2000-2004 - a period
(53:12) The problem with information overload and predicting the future
(58:00) Conclusions
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When Xi became General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, no one assumed he would take up that position for life. But when Presidential term limits were abolished in 2018, it was widely understood that Xi had made himself supreme leader, and would remain head of the state, party, and military indefinitely. But how did Xi manage to pull this off, and how did everyone seemingly miss the signs? According to some sources, Xi made a swift powergrab, sweeping over party consensus and using guile and manipulation to crush his foes. The truth, however, may be a lot less straightforward (or exciting). Analysis suggest Xi not only went through tried and true boring procedures to gain his position, but that he did so with the explicit support of his fellow party members.
Chapters
(00:00) Introduction
(04:29) Background on Xi
(11:40) Predicitons about Xi's leadership
(19:50) The state of China in 2012
(34:50) Xi will be a weak leader
(40:30) How Xi managed to turn the tide
(47:45) The consensus of the Party as deciding factor
(54:15) Conclusions

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Much has been made in Western media about the Chinese social credit system. It's been painted as a totalitarian form of surveillance akin to 1984, where all citizens are tracked, monitored and ranked according to an arbitrary set of rules set up by the state. It's seen as something to be feared, something that could be coming to your country and taking over your life sooner than you think. But the truth of the real social credit system may be a lot more banal. From mistranslations to misunderstandings, let's delve into why the social credit system may be the thing the west has got wrong about China the most in the past 100 years, and why Chinese people might even welcome such an overbearing measure into their lives.
Chapters
(00:00) Introduction
(04:25) What's in a name?
(07:04) Historical precedents and inspiration for the social credit system
(17:25) The Social Credit System[s]
(42:42) Emergent problems
(50:00) The problem of perverse incentives
(56:47) Public reception to the SCS
(1:01:11) Final Thoughts
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What is the origin of the Chinese writing system? Where did Chinese characters come from, and how did they evolve over time? Are they pictographs? Ideogographs? Logographs? Phonographs? Or all of the above? This is the nature of one of the most famous debates in Sinology, which took place in the 1930s between historian Herrlee Creel and linguist Peter Boodberg. The debate not only reveals the complexity of including many diverse fields under the single umbrella of 'Chinese studies', but also reveals a deeper controversy about the way Chinese history, language, and thought is understood and interpreted in the Western canon.
Chapters
(00:00) Introduction
(04:10) Sinology, Chinese characters, and the Shang Oracle Bones
(08:00) Origins of the debate
(10:33) Creel's argument
(26:56) Boodberg's response
(40:55) Back and forth
(48:03) The end of the debate
(50:07) Sinology and Sinologism
Characters mentioned:
牛(niu, 'cow') was originally drawn like the top of a stick man with a U shape for horns; similarly sheep 羊(yang) was a stick figure with 'M' shaped horns
见 (complex character 見), was written on oracle bones as a man with an eye for a head, and evolved over time so the eye was turned on its side and the man's body simplified into just legs
鲜 (xian, 'fresh') Creel argues is a compound of fish 鱼 and sheep 羊, but Boodberg argues 羊(yang) was originally the phonetic element of the word
里 (li, 'village'); 俚(li, 'rustic', 'vulgar') has the radical for man in front, changing the meaning ffrom noun to adjective
集(ji, 'to gather') according to Creel was originally 3 birds gathered on top of a tree, but over time evolved to be just one bird on a tree for simplicity (隹 zhuī short-tailed bird + 木 mù tree)
東(dong, 'east') is interpreted by Creel to be the sun behind a tree, 杲(gao, 'bright') is the sun above the tree, and 杳(yao, 'dim, dusky') is the sun below the treeline
圕 (tushuguan, 'library'), one of the few standardised polysyllabic Chinese characters used in Mandarin, but no longer in use. sometimes pronounced 'tuan' as a contraction
自(zi, 'self') could originally have meant 'self' or 'nose', and been read alternatively 'zi' or 'bi'. Over time, the signifier was added to the word for nose to make it 鼻,(bi, 'nose'), the bottom part 畀(bi, 'confer', 'give') being the phonetic determinate
名 (ming, 'name'), in Boodberg's argument made up of 夕(xi 'dark, night') and 口(kou, 'mouth, to utter'). However, he argues that 夕(xi) should be read as ming when used to mean 'dark', as it's the same meaning as 冥 (ming, 'dark, dim').
他,她,它 meaning he, she and it are all pronounced 'ta' (there is also 祂, meaning 'He' like a god, also pronounced 'ta')
夜(ye,'night'), which has been interpreted to be a man (人) with the moon (夕) tucked under his arm under a roof, is dismissed by Boodberg as a ridiculous interpretation

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