Sinica Podcast

This week on Sinica, recorded at Yale University, I speak with Michael Brenes and Van Jackson, coauthors of The Rivalry Peril: How Great-Power Competition Threatens Peace and Weakens Democracy. Their argument is that framing the U.S.-China relationship as geopolitical rivalry has become more than just a foreign policy orientation — it's a domestic political project that reshapes budgets, norms, and coalitions in ways that actively harm American democracy and the American people. Rivalry narrows political possibility, makes dissent suspect, encourages neo-McCarthyism (the China Initiative, profiling of Chinese Americans), produces anti-AAPI hate, and redirects public investment away from social welfare and into defense spending through what they call "national security Keynesianism."Mike is interim director of the Brady Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale, while Van is a senior lecturer in international relations at Victoria University of Wellington and host of the Un-Diplomatic Podcast. We discuss the genesis of their collaboration during the Biden administration, how they navigate China as a puzzle for the American left, canonical misrememberings of the Cold War that distort current China policy, the security dilemma feedback loop between Washington and Beijing, why defense-heavy stimulus is terrible at job creation, how rivalry politics weakens democracy, recent polling showing a shift toward engagement, and their vision for a "geopolitics of peace" anchored in Sino-U.S. détente 2.0.5:47 – The genesis of the book: recognizing Biden's Cold War liberalism 11:26 – How they approached writing together from different disciplinary homes 13:20 – Navigating China as a puzzle for the American left21:39 – How great power competition hardened from analytical framework into ideology 28:15 – Mike on two canonical misrememberings of the Cold War 33:18 – Van on the security dilemma and the nuclear feedback loop 39:55 – National security Keynesianism: why defense spending is bad at job creation 44:38 – How rivalry politics weakens democracy and securitizes dissent 48:09 – Building durable coalitions for restraint-oriented statecraft 51:27 – Has the post-COVID moral panic actually abated? 53:27 – The master narrative we need: a geopolitics of peace 55:29 – Associative balancing: achieving equilibrium through accommodation, not armsRecommendations:Van: The Long Twentieth Century by Giovanni Arrighi Mike: The World of the Cold War: 1945-1991 by Vladislav Zubok Kaiser: Pluribus (Apple TV series by Vince Gilligan)See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Happy holidays from Sinica! This week, I speak with Paul Triolo, Senior Vice President for China and Technology Policy Lead at DGA Albright Stonebridge Group and nonresident honorary senior fellow on technology at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis. On December 8th, Donald Trump announced via Truth Social that he would approve Nvidia H200 sales to vetted Chinese customers — a decision that immediately sparked fierce debate. Paul and I unpack why this decision was made, why it's provoked such strong reactions, and what it tells us about the future of technology export controls on China. We discuss the evolution of U.S. chip controls from the Entity List expansions under Trump's first term through the October 2022 rules and the Sullivan Doctrine, the role of David Sacks and Jensen Huang in advocating for this policy shift, whether Chinese firms will actually want to buy H200s given their heterogeneous hardware stacks and Beijing's autarky ambitions, what the Reuters report about China cracking ASML's EUV lithography code tells us about the choke point strategy, and whether selective engagement actually strengthens Taiwan's Silicon Shield or undermines it. This conversation is essential listening for understanding the strategic, technical, and political dimensions of the semiconductor competition.6:44 – What the H200 decision actually changes in the real world 9:23 – The evolution of U.S. chip controls: from Entity Lists to the Sullivan Doctrine 18:28 – How Jensen Huang and David Sacks convinced Trump 25:21 – The good-faith case for why export control advocates see H200 approval as a strategic mistake 32:12 – What H200s practically enable: training, inference, or stabilizing existing clusters 38:49 – Will Chinese companies actually buy H200s? The heterogeneous hardware reality 46:06 – The strategic contradiction: exporting 5nm GPUs while freezing tool controls at 16/14nm 51:01 – The Reuters EUV report and what it reveals about choke point technologies 58:43 – How Taiwan fits into this: does selective engagement strengthen the Silicon Shield? 1:07:26 – Looking ahead: broader rethinking of export controls or patchwork exceptions? 1:12:49 – What would have to be true in 2-3 years for critics to have been right about H200?Paying it forward: Poe Zhao and his Substack Hello China TechRecommendations: Paul: Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Amerca's Great Power Propheti by Ed Luce; Hyperdimensional Substack by Dean Ball Kaiser: Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green; The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green; So Very Small by Thomas LevensonSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, I speak with Mark Sidel, the Doyle Bascom Professor of Law and Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a senior fellow at the International Center for Not for Profit Law. Mark has written extensively on law and philanthropy in China and across Asia, including widely cited analyses of how the Chinese security state came to play a central role in managing foreign civil society organizations. Since the Law on the Management of Domestic Activities of Overseas NGOs took effect on January 1, 2017, China has introduced a remarkably comprehensive, vertically integrated system of oversight for foreign NGOs, foundations, and nonprofits.We discuss how this system combines securitization and political risk management with selective accommodation of service provision and technical expertise, Mark’s typology of organizational responses (survivors, hibernators, regionalizers, work-arounders, and leavers), the requirement that foreign NGOs secure professional supervisory units, the impact on China’s domestic nonprofit ecosystem, and what this tells us about the party-state’s long-term vision for controlled engagement with the outside world.4:43 – The landscape of non-state organizations before the 2016 law 7:06 – What changed: color revolutions, Arab Spring, and domestic anxieties 9:08 – Public security intellectuals and their influence on the law 11:51 – How registration and temporary activity filing systems work in practice 13:48 – Why the Ministry of Public Security, not Civil Affairs, was put in charge 19:31 – The professional supervisory unit requirement and dependency relationships22:48 – How the state shifted foreign NGO work away from advocacy without banning it26:17 – Mark’s typology: survivors, hibernators, regionalizers, work-arounders, and leavers 35:19 – What correlates with success for those who have survived 40:41 – Impact on China’s domestic nonprofit ecosystem and professional intermediaries 45:54 – What makes China’s system distinctive compared to India, Egypt, Russia, and Vietnam 50:19 – The Article 53 problem and university partnerships 55:32 – Advice for mid-sized foundations or NGOs considering work in China todayPaying it Forward: Neysun Mahboubi and the Penn Project on the Future of U.S.-China RelationsRecommendations:Mark: Everyday Democracy: Civil Society, Youth, and the Struggle Against Authoritarian Culture in China by Anthony SpiresKaiser: The music of Steve Morse (Dixie Dregs, The Dregs, Steve Morse Band)See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, I'm delighted to have Iza Ding as guest host. Iza is a professor of political science at Northwestern University and a good friend whose work on Chinese governance I greatly admire. She's joined by Deborah Seligsohn, who has been a favorite guest on this show many times. Deb is an associate professor of political science at Villanova University and was previously a science and environmental counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. This episode was recorded in three parts: the first two in Belém, Brazil during COP30 (the 30th UN Climate Change Conference), and the final segment after the conference concluded. Iza and Deb discuss China's role at the climate summit, the real story behind the famous 2007 U.S. Embassy air quality monitor in Beijing (spoiler: it wasn't China's "Silent Spring moment"), Brazil's management of the conference, why China leads on technology but not on negotiation, and what the outcomes of COP30 mean for the future of global climate cooperation. This is an insider's view of how climate diplomacy actually works, complete with unexpected fire evacuations and glut-shaming of The New York Times.3:43 – Deb's impressions of COP30 and Brazil's inclusive approach 9:21 – China's presence at COP30: technology leadership without negotiation leadership 15:34 – Xie Zhenhua's absence and the U.S.-China dynamic at previous COPs 24:46 – Inside the negotiation rooms: language, politeness, and obstruction 33:06 – BYD's presence in Brazil and Chinese EV expansion 40:54 – The real story of the 2007 U.S. Embassy air quality monitor in Beijing 45:00 – Fire evacuation at COP30 and UN territorial sovereignty 1:22:06 – What actually drove China's air pollution control: the 2003 power plant standards 1:41:27 – The dramatic final plenary and the Mutirão decision 1:55:17 – China's NDC 3.0: under-promise and over-deliver strategySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, I speak with Zhong Na, a novelist and essayist whose new piece, "Murder House," appears in the inaugural issue of Equator — a striking new magazine devoted to longform writing that crosses borders, disciplines, and cultures. In January 2024, a young couple, both Tsinghua-educated Google engineers living in a $2.5 million Silicon Valley home, became the center of a tragedy that captivated Chinese social media far more than American outlets. Zhong Na explores how the case became a collective Rorschach test — a mirror held up to contemporary Chinese society, exposing cracks in the myths of meritocracy, the prestige of global tech firms, and shifting notions of gender, class, and the Chinese dream itself. We discuss the gendered reactions online, the dimming of America's appeal, the emotional costs of the immigrant success story, and the craft of writing about tragedy with compassion but without sentimentality.5:06 – How the story first reached Zhong Na, and the Luigi Mangione comparison 7:05 – Discovering she attended the same Chengdu high school as the alleged murderer Chen Liren 8:10 – The collaboration with Equator and Joan Didion's influence 10:30 – Education, class, and the cracks in China's meritocracy myth 16:01 – Tiger mothers vs. lying flat: two responses to a rigged system 19:12 – The pandemic and the dimming of the American dream 22:49 – Chinese men as perpetrators: immigrant stress and the loss of patriarchal privilege 25:56 – The gender war online: moral autopsy and victim-blaming 30:25 – The obsession with the ex-girlfriend and attraction to the accused 34:37 – The murder house, Chinese numerology, and the rise of Gen Z metaphysics 37:08 – Geopolitics, the China Initiative, and rethinking America as a destination 39:42 – Craft and moral compass: learning from Didion and Janet Malcolm 42:31 – Zhong Na's fiction: writing Chinese experiences without catering to Western expectationsPaying it forward: Gavin Jacobson and the editorial team at EquatorRecommendations: Zhong Na: Elsewhere by Yan Ge Kaiser: Made in Ethiopia, documentary by Xinyan Yu and Max Duncan (available on PBS)See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.