This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Deborah Seligsohn, who served as the State Department’s Environment, Science, Technology and Health Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing from 2003 to 2007. She is now an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University in Philadelphia, where she currently teaches a course on pandemics and politics. She recalls her firsthand experience with China’s SARS response in 2003, shares her views on how much China improved in the intervening years, and talks about how, when, and why China mishandled its initial response to the novel coronavirus in the winter of 2019–2020. Deborah also offers her critical perspective on the persistent “lab-leak” theory.
This show was recorded on March 12, with an addendum recorded on March 29, in which Deborah addresses some of the news relating to the search for COVID’s origins that came out in the intervening weeks.
6:50: Understanding the origins of COVID-19
34:16: Chinese scientists’ unwillingness to share data
43:54: The World Health Organization’s handling of the virus
54:36: The lab-leak theory
Recommendations:
Deborah: Coronation, by Ai Weiwei, and the podcast In The Bubble: From The Frontlines.
Kaiser: The rise of made-in-China diplomacy, Peter Hessler’s latest piece in The New Yorker.
Avoiding the China Trap, with Jessica Chen Weiss
Is China's bubble finally about to pop? A conversation with Bloomberg Chief Economist Tom Orlik
China's space program, with NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao
China and the American "great power opportunity," with Ali Wyne
Another Taiwan Straits Crisis? CIA veteran John Culver weighs in
The Sinica Network presents the Café & Seda (Coffee & Silk) Podcast
Prototype Nation: Silvia Lindtner on what drives Chinese tech innovation, and how tech drives Chinese statecraft
Semiconductors and the unspoken U.S. tech policy on China, with Paul Triolo
Historian Andrew Liu on COVID origins: Orientalism and the "Asiatic racial form"
Yale's Jing Tsu on the characters who modernized Chinese characters
Taiwan: Saber rattling, salami slicing, and strategic ambiguity, with Shelley Rigger and Simona Grano
A Comprehensive Mirror: James Carter's "This Week in China's History" column marks two years
Mental health under lockdown: A clinical psychologist in Shanghai
Covering the U.S.-China relations beat with the FT's Demetri Sevastopulo
Too much of a good thing? Connectivity and the age of "unpeace," with the ECFR's Mark Leonard
The rise and fall of U.S.-China scientific collaboration, with Deborah Seligsohn
Chinese public opinion on the Russo-Ukrainian War, with Yawei Liu and Danielle Goldfarb
China and India share a contested border and an uncomfortable neutrality in the Ukraine War — but not much else
China, Europe, and the Russo-Ukrainian War, with Marina Rudyak
Inside the Shanghai lockdown, with SupChina's own Chang Che
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