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.
A firsthand view of China's chaotic COVID re-opening, with Deborah Seligsohn
Talking China on TikTok with The China Project's Susan St. Denis
The Sinica Network presents Strangers in China S3 Episode 1
No Stranger to China: A conversation with Strangers in China creator Clay Baldo about Season 3
Author Rebecca Kuang on her novel Babel, or on the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators Revolution
The best solution for Taiwan is no solution: Jude Blanchette and Ryan Hass argue for kicking the can down the road
China's push for RMB internationalization
A familiar drumbeat: Michael Mazarr on the run-up to the Iraq invasion and parallels with China
Special episode: The COVID lockdown protests, with David Moser and Jeremiah Jenne
Financial Times reporter Yuan Yang on China-Europe relations
Evan Feigenbaum on the U.S. in the Indo-Pacific region
New America President Anne-Marie Slaughter on balancing China competition and global imperatives
The 20th Party Congress postgame show with Damien Ma and Lizzi Lee
Overreach and overreaction, with Susan Shirk
Podcasting The Prince: Sue-Lin Wong of The Economist on her Xi Jinping podcast
Legendary BBC presenter and China editor Carrie Gracie, live in London
A conversation with Minister Xu Xueyuan, Deputy Chief of Mission of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Washington
China in the Global South, with Eric Olander and Cobus van Staden
Surveillance State: Authors Josh Chin and Liza Lin on their new book on China's tech-enhanced social controls
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free