This week on Sinica, in a show recorded at Syracuse University on September 30, I chat with my old pal Bryce Whitwam about the remarkable rise of live-streaming e-commerce — and how it's already making its way to the U.S.

4:28 – Why Bryce chose to leave Shanghai and pursue a doctorate in the States

8:08 – How big livestream e-commerce has gotten and its predicted trajectory 

9:37 – E-commerce livestreaming and the pursuit of celebrity 

14:08 – The different types of livestream commerce

17:30 – Xiaohongshu 

20:45 – Why Taobao has lost its dominance 

22:07 – The value-add of an influencer’s pitch 

27:00 – The demographics of Chinese livestream e-commerce consumers 

29:09 – Insights from Bryce’s 25 interviews

36:36 – Buying food on livestream e-commerce and how agribusinesses are getting involved in the trend 

41:21 – Livestream commerce in the United States

44:34 – How livestream e-commerce has changed the retail experience in China 

46:43 – Potential future disruptions in the industry

Recommendations:

Bryce: Jeffree Star on TikTok as an American livestream commerce example and Omar Nok’s “Egypt to Japan Without Flying” TikTok stream 

Kaiser: The album True by Jon Anderson and The Band Geeks 

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This week, a show taped live at Syracuse University on September 30 with Associate Professor Dimitar Gueorguiev, author of the excellent Retrofitting Leninism: Participation Without Democracy in China. We discuss his book, his recent paper exploring hawkishness in Chinese public opinion, and his thoughts about the upcoming U.S. presidential election.

1:59 Syracuse University’s MAX 132 class ("the globalization class")

4:10 Dimitar’s background and how he became interested in China 

7:44 How the genre of authoritarian resilience took off 

14:26 China’s understanding of democracy (whole-process democracy)

17:40 Features of Leninism that have allowed the Chinese Communist Party to survive

21:21 Why China in the 1980s and '90s admired Singaporea's authoritarian PAP 

23:37 The idea of the mass line

27:16 China’s sentiment analysis through technology, and using bottom-up information as performance evaluation 

34:03 The COVID-19 pandemic and the confirmation bias of the regime-type explanation

37:37 The National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC)

40:14 Dimitar’s research on hawkishness in China: how he got the data, what drives Chinese hawkishness, and the national security vs. economic lens 

51:08 Why those who are dissatisfied with the government lean more hawkish and those who are satisfied with the government lean more dovish 

56:30 The upcoming U.S. election: how things may play out under the two different administrations, and understanding Chinese preferences 

Recommendations:

Dimitar: The TV series The Expanse (2015-2022)

Kaiser: Anthea Roberts’ Six Faces of Globalization: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why It Matters; and the documentary Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos (2024)

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This week on the Sinica Podcast, I chat with my dear friend David Moser, a longtime resident of Beijing, formerly an occasional co-host of Sinica and associate professor at Beijing Capital Normal University. We have a long history of exploring the underlying issues in our approach to China, and this week, we unpack some of those, focusing on the role of outsiders in Chinese society and their role in "changing China," drawing on David's response to an essay I recently published.

3:46 —David’s thoughts on Kaiser’s essay (“Priority Pluralism: Rethinking Universal Values in U.S.-China Relations”)

5:18 —How David thinks about going on state media and the reasons he does so

10:37 —How David’s engagement with state media has changed over time 

15:04 —Conscience, moral intuition, drawing lines, and whataboutism 

26:35 —The outsider urge to change China: the differences between the U.S. and Chinese governments and COVID as a test of the two systems; the role of American policy in working toward positive change and the importance of continuing engagement; and so-called Enlightenment values and priority pluralism 

50:46 —The debate over cultural differences

57:09 —China’s notion of whole-process democracy versus American democracy  

1:05:55 — “Give them time:” Anticipating when we will see big changes in China’s political culture 

Recommendations:

David: Richard Nisbett’s The Geography of Thought; and his own article, “A Fearful Asymmetry: COVID-19 and America’s Information Deficit with China”

Kaiser: The “Open Database for China Studies Resource Guide” published by ACLS 

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This week on Sinica, I chat with Jessica Chen Weiss, until recently at Cornell University but now the David M. Lampton Professor of China Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, SAIS, in Washington D.C. Jessica, to those of you familiar with her work, has been at the forefront of the fight for a less strident, diplomacy-first approach to China, balancing threats with assurances to find a modus vivendi with China. She has challenged prevailing notions about China's intentions, and has called for the U.S. to advance an affirmative vision of how it wants to live in the world with China. We focus in this conversation about a recent piece in Foreign Affairs in which she challenges both the solidity and the logic of the "bipartisan consensus" on China, and holds out hope that a next administration might approach the relationship differently.

3:45 – How Jessica has settled into D.C.; her professorial namesake; and how she has become a leading voice for a less confrontational approach to China

9:30 – Where Jessica sees diverging views on China in the Republican and Democratic Parties 

12:41 – What a more durable basis for coexistence should look like

14:46 – Credible deterrence and strategic ambiguity in the context of Taiwan 

16:03 – Acknowledgements to limits on American power and the importance of being realistic 

18:09 – Assurances on Taiwan and what threatens their credibility 

21:13 – The question of engagement and the deterrent effect of economic integration

25:30 – How the U.S. can combat legitimate national security threats from China without undermining its own values, and the importance of not treating the Chinese in diaspora as a fifth column 

31:31 – Electoral politics: the importance of welcoming and inclusive policies and creating space for debate and discernment

35:07 – The importance of testing our assumptions 

38:30 – What another Trump presidency might look like 

40:30 – How a Harris administration might differ from the Biden administration

44:13 – The U.S. and China-Russia relations

Recommendations:

Jessica: Valarie Kaur’s Sage Warrior: Wake to Oneness, Practice Pleasure, Choose Courage, Become Victory 

Kaiser: BeaGo, an AI-powered search tool (download from your app store!)

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This week I continue my conversations with some of the outstanding Schwarzman Scholars who presented at the Capstone Showcase in late June. In this episode, I speak with Nainika Sudheendra about the problem of space debris and what can be done to reduce the creation of more of it or even begin removal of debris before it makes the launching of new satellites more costly or even impossible.

2:34 Nainika’s background and interest in the Schwarzman program

5:33 Why Nainika focused on space debris 

7:23 Nainika’s prior knowledge about the Chinese space program and what she learned through the Schwarzman program

10:30 How space debris is measured, the Kessler syndrome, and the hazards that space debris poses 

14:33 The obstacles Nainika encountered in her research 

16:35 How political leaders in China and the U.S. are thinking about the space debris problem

20:02 How debris mitigation might [ought to?] be incentivized, who is working on the problem now, and the role of private insurers 

24:03 The Wolf Amendment and Chinese private sector space companies 

27:22 Technologies for mitigating and remediating debris 

31:00 Lessons from another tragedy of the commons (the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer), and how the EU could take a leading role 

34:59 The importance of data standardization and opportunities to negotiate fair use and safety precautions

38:17  How redundancy prevents public perception — the difficulty in going from “outage” to “outrage” 

40:27 What Nainika has been doing since finishing at Schwarzman 

Recommendations:

Nainika: From Streets to Stalls: The History and Evolution of Hawking and Hawker Centres in Singapore by Ryan Kueh (another Schwarzman alum) 

Kaiser: Journalist Andrew Jones on Twitter; the South Indian restaurant Viks Chaat in Berkeley, California 

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I thought Sinica listeners might be interested in listening to an audio narration of my latest essay. I hope you enjoy and that it gives you some food for thought! If you prefer to read, you can find the essay — free for everyone this week — right here.

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The Chinese game studio Game Science has a hit on its hands! The game Black Myth: Wukong, an action role-playing game (ARPG) based on the Monkey King from Journey to the West, has sold extraordinarily well in China and is breaking new ground in the U.S. market as well. This week, I speak with Rui Ma, who runs Tech Buzz China and is one of the most highly-regarded China tech commentators in the U.S., and with Robert Wynne, an industry veteran with many years in China currently serving as COO of a new game start-up that's still under wraps. They share their insights into the strengths and weaknesses of Black Myth: Wukong and the future of Chinese games.

6:44 – The scale of the phenomenon of Black Myth: Wukong 

12:01 – Rui and Rob’s thoughts about the game (so far)

17:23 – What Chinese players think of the game, and the difficulty in understanding its esoteric characters for Western players 

24:23 – The appeal of mobile games versus console games in China 

27:30 – The difficulty of attracting investment [or “How Game Science attracted investment”]

31:06 – Rob’s criticism of the game’s go-to-market strategy and its lost opportunities 

35:46 – The party-state's response so far, and the politics surrounding the game

40:57 – Feng Ji, the founding of Game Science, and his criticisms of the gaming industry 

46:01 – AAA Chinese games to look forward to

49:29 – The impressive success stats of Black Myth: Wukong

Recommendations:

Rui: Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

Rob: The Chinese TV series Escape from Trilateral Slopes (Biān shuǐ wǎngshì 边水往事) (2024)

Kaiser: Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

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This week on Sinica, I chat with Olivia Fu, who this spring completed her year at Schwarzman College and wrote her Capstone project — a research paper that is required of all Schwarzman Scholars — on the rise and fall of the Beijing hip-hop scene. We explore some of the parallels to Beijing's rock scene, and how many of the same factors that stifled rock in Beijing ultimately led to Beijing's relative decline as a hip-hop city.

3:16 – Olivia’s background and connection to China, and what drew her to the Schwarzman Program and studying hip-hop

6:13 – Olivia’s Schwarzman mentor, Paul Pickowicz 

7:47 – How Olivia dealt with censorship in her Capstone project 

10:24 – The parallels and differences between the hip-hop and rock scenes in China

12:27 – The dakou CDs and the origins of the hip-hop scene in China 

17:03 – The influences of Japanese and Korean rap and hip-hop and Black American culture

18:30 – The importance of studying Beijing hip-hop 

23:05 – The spirit of Beijing and societal commentary in Beijing hip-hop 

27:38 – The phenomenon of Rap of China 

29:50 – The divergence of PG One and GAI, and the regulatory influence of the State Administration on Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television

35:13 – Sinifying hip-hop 

37:21 – What the burgeoning hip-hop scene in China was like in the early 2000s

40:10 – Critiques of the Beijing dialect in rap and the Beijing rap style 

45:16 – Iron Mic rap battles and Shanghai, and Chinese hip-hop’s critique of the educational system 

48:34 – Why Beijing rap declined 

59:09 – What’s next for Olivia 

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Hey folks! I took some time off to drive the kids to college and then flew to California to celebrate my brother John’s birthday. The upshot is there’s no interview this week, so in place of that, here’s my essay from this week. Hope you enjoy it. If all goes as planned, I’m back next week with regular interview for Sinica!

You can find the text of the essay at sinicapodcast.com.

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I was looking for a good episode to pull from the archive to run this week as I'll be traveling and I asked my good friend Deb Seligsohn for a recommendation. She went immediately to this one, and by God if it's not an oldie-but-goodie. This is from December 2015 and features Jeremy Goldkorn — I miss him dearly! — and Terry Townshend, an absolute institution in China's birding community.

I'll likely have to run another re-run next week, and I welcome your suggestions!

All best,

Kaiser

Recommendations and Links:

Birding Beijing

Action for Swifts

British Trust for Ornithology

Jonathan Franzen, Purity: A Novel

Cement and Pig Consumption Reveal China's Huge Changes

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Here's a little bonus ep for you ahead of tomorrow's show, which will be a re-run of a really fun one from about 10 years ago! I'm driving the rest of this week to the Midwest to drop my kids off at their respective universities, and I've been thinking a lot about the education systems in China and the U.S. So here's my essay for this week.

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