On this week's show, recorded live in New York on April 3, Kaiser and Jeremy have a wide-ranging chat with former New York Times China correspondent Howard French, now a professor at Columbia University's School of Journalism. We talk about his book Everything Under the Heavens and China's ambitions and anxieties in the world today.
What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast:
7:31: How do Chinese people react to Western reporting about China? Howard has noticed a shift in his students from the People’s Republic of China and suggests, “Because of the changing climate in China, [Chinese students] have a greater appreciation of some of the liberties that go into being able to express criticism about China or being able to think off the beaten path about China.”
23:48: The three discuss Howard’s book, Everything Under The Heavens, and some of the themes in it. Howard: “So the argument that runs through the book is that, if not DNA, then these two realities of [China’s] longevity and continuity on the one hand, and size on the other hand, have created habits of language and habits of mind and patterns of diplomacy that are fairly consistent, but we can see them repeating themselves in variations over a very, very long period of time.”
32:56: Is China a revisionist power or a status quo power? Before Jeremy can finish asking this question, Howard replies, “It’s both.” Howard explains how this could be possible: “There is an insistent notion in China that I admire. I don’t think it’s always to China’s benefit, but I admire the instinct, if instinct is the right world. ‘For every problem we should find a Chinese way to answer it.’ And so, if international relations can be construed as a problem…then finding a Chinese way alongside of accepting incumbent arrangements is a reflex that one is likely to continue to see in China.”
44:46: The relationship between the United States and China appears to have arrived at a critical juncture. In response to Kaiser’s request to provide a prognosis for U.S.-China relations, Howard contests that “most of the liability of the present moment is actually bound up in the present moment.” He continues, “There will be consequences to pay even if Trump goes [in 2020]…and that the United States, I think, no matter what happens in the succession year after Trump, in the best of scenarios, will still have surrendered some not inconsiderable part of its prestige and power in the world.”
Recommendations:
Jeremy: The Idle Parent: Why Laid-Back Parents Raise Happier and Healthy Kids, by Tom Hodgkinson, a case for laissez-faire parenting.
Howard: Empires of the Weak: The Real Story of European Expansion and the Creation of the New World Order, by J.C. Sharman, and River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom, by Walter Johnson.
Kaiser: An article in the London Review of Books, Is this the end of the American century?, by Adam Tooze.
Trade war economics, with Andy Rothman
Making the world safe for autocracy: Jessica Chen Weiss on what Beijing wants
Matt Sheehan on California's role in U.S.-China relations
The world according to Jeremy Goldkorn
Wealth and Power: Intellectuals in China
China correspondent Emily Feng: From the FT to NPR
Michael Swaine on the ‘China is not an enemy’ open letter
An update on the Hong Kong protests
Searching for roots in China
Military Strategy and Politics in the PRC: A Conversation with Taylor Fravel
Umbrella Revolution 2.0 – or something else? Antony Dapiran on the Hong Kong demonstrations
A voice of reason within the Beltway: Ryan Hass vs. the so-called bipartisan consensus
A student leader 30 years after Tiananmen: Wu’er Kaixi reflects on the movement
China's New Red Guards: Jude Blanchette on China's Far Left
Charlene Barshefsky on Trump’s Trade War
Chinese Investment: Beyond the USA
‘Haunted by Chaos: China’s Grand Strategy,’ with Sulmaan Wasif Khan
Strength in Numbers: USTR veteran Wendy Cutler on managing trade with China
An American Futurist in China: Alvin Toffler and Reform & Opening
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free