This week on Sinica, Jeremy and Kaiser chat with Jackson Miller, a master’s candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School’s public policy program. Jackson’s research of illegal trade in Malagasy hardwood led him to discover the bizarre story of Gao Jose Ramaherison — an unemployed man from Liaoning, China, who parlayed his kung-fu skills into political prominence in Madagascar.
Recommendations:
Jeremy: Recommends that everyone should visit Madagascar, especially for its beautiful and diverse natural environment. He recommends Ile Sainte Marie, an island off the east coast of Madagascar. Jeremy also recommends visiting a bunch of islands near Madagascar before they are all underwater: Comoro Islands, to the northwest of Madagascar, along with Mauritius and the Seychelles.
Jeremy also likes the weird Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch and his painting The Garden of Earthly Delights. The Twitter account @artistbosch highlights particular parts of this and other paintings by Bosch in bite-sized pieces.
Jackson: Joe Studwell’s Asian Godfathers: Money and Power in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. Also, the Quartz Africa Weekly Brief, a fantastic weekly newsletter that gives you a rundown of the big stories from all across Africa every Sunday morning, as well as a schedule of events for tech conferences and more, plus music recommendations.
Kaiser: Recommends taking up a new instrument in middle age. With Youtube, there’s no shortage of convenient ways to learn the basics — Kaiser picked up a used drum kit and has been bashing away at it for a while now.
China's draft regulations on generative AI, with Kendra Schaefer and Jeremy Daum
Xiong'an: Techno-natural utopia or authoritarian folly?
Earth Day episode: How can the U.S. and China cooperate on climate in this era of competition?
Legendary CNN reporter Mike Chinoy on his book and documentary series "Assignment China"
As the U.S. and China part ways, the Global South finds its own path, with Kishore Mahbubani
Sinica at the Association for Asian Studies Conference, Boston 2023: Capsule interviews
The Maoist legacy in Chinese private enterprise, with Chris Marquis
Beijing brokers a Saudi-Iranian rapprochement, with Tuvia Gering
The Xi-Putin meetings, with Maria Repnikova
The expansion of China's administrative state during COVID, with Yale Law's Taisu Zhang
Jude Blanchette on the Select Committee and the American moral panic over China
Inside Tencent's "Influence Empire," with Bloomberg's Lulu Chen
China and the electric vehicle battery supply chain, with Henry Sanderson
China and the Ukraine War one year after the invasion, with Evan Feigenbaum and Alexander Gabuev
Sinostan: Raffaello Pantucci on China's inadvertent empire in Central Asia
CSIS analyst Gerard DiPippo deflates the balloon hype and brings the discussion back to earth
Live in New York City with veteran China journalist Ian Johnson
Is China's demography China's destiny? A chat with former World Bank economist Bert Hofman
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
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free