Shortly after Deborah Seligsohn was last on Sinica, in April, the lab leak hypothesis seemed suddenly to gain traction — at least in American media. This week, Kaiser invites Deborah back to the show to talk about why the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a notion long regarded by virologists as less probable than zoonotic transmission, has burst back into the conversation. Deborah served as the State Department’s Environment, Science, Technology and Health Counselor in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing from 2003 to 2007. She is an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University in Philadelphia.
3:00: The persistence of the lab leak theory
11:40: Navigating the political and institutional landscape within China
25:36: A view from Beijing’s perspective
31:02: Eliciting cooperation from Beijing, and what should our priorities be
Recommendations:
Deborah: The podcast This Week in Virology, particularly episodes 760 and 762, which touch on the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kaiser: Richard L. Watkins, a candidate running for the U.S. Senate in North Carolina.
Legendary diplomat Chas W. Freeman, Jr., on U.S.-China strategy and history: Part 2
Legendary diplomat Chas W. Freeman, Jr., on U.S.-China strategy and history: Part 1
Introducing the NüVoices Podcast
City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir
Australia's Beijing problem
Poisonous pandas: Cigarette smoking in China
China's hydro dam ambitions and their consequences
China’s growing hacking power, with Kevin Collier and Priscilla Moriuchi
Kurt Campbell on U.S.-China diplomacy
The saga of CEFC and China's push into Central and Eastern Europe
Andrew Chubb on Chinese nationalism and its influence on maritime behavior
China’s security picture, from North Korea to the South China Sea
Talking trade and tech with Yasheng Huang
China's international relations, with Jiang Changjian, Ira Kasoff, and Anthony Saich
Virginia Tan on women and work in China
Introducing TechBuzz China by Pandaily, plus Joanna Chiu on Hong Kong’s illicit wildlife trade
Gao Yutong on the Chinese student experience in America
Live from Beijing: David Moser and Jess Meider on jazz in China
All sorts of swindles in the late Ming society, with Christopher Rea and Bruce Rusk
Why China and North Korea are not as close as you think: Ma Zhao and John Delury talk history
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