China 21

21CCC Assistant Director Harris Doshay sits down with Syracuse Associate Professor and UCSD Alum Dimitar Gueorguiev to discuss his latest book, Retrofitting Leninism. In it, they explore the logic of popular participation in authoritarian regimes and the ongoing struggles faced by the CCP.

Susan Shirk, Chair of the 21st Century China Center, and former U.S. Attorney Carol Lam sit down to discuss the ways the China Initiative, from flaws in its inception to views towards the future of DOJ espionage prosecutions.

Micah Muscolino interviews James Millward, a leading scholar on China and Central Asia at Georgetown University. They connect the history of Xinjiang in the Qing Empire, to assimilationist policies and terrorism of the 2000s, and to present day large-scale repression and cultural genocide of Uighurs under Xi Jinping. This episode is adapted from the China Throughlines web series, which features UC San Diego’s China historians in conversation with their colleagues on the echos and connectedness of China’s storied past to the twenty-first century. James A. Millward is Professor of Inter-societal History at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, teaching Chinese, Central Asian and world history. He also teaches as invited professor in the Máster Oficial en Estudios de Asia Oriental at the University of Granada, Spain. His specialties include Qing empire; the silk road; Eurasian lutes and music in history; and historical and contemporary Xinjiang. He follows and comments on current issues regarding the Uyghurs and PRC ethnicity policy. His publications include The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction (2013), Eurasian Crossroads: a History of Xinjiang (2007), New Qing Imperial History: the Making of Inner Asian Empire at Qing Chengde (2004), and Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity and Empire in Qing Central Asia (1998). Micah Muscolino is Professor and Paul G. Pickowicz Endowed Chair in Modern Chinese History at UC San Diego. His research focuses on the environmental history of modern China. His first book, Fishing Wars and Environmental Change in Late Imperial and Modern China (2009), explored the environmental history of China’s most important marine fishery/ His second book The Ecology of War in China: Henan Province, the Yellow River, and Beyond, 1938-1950 (2015) engaged with the historiography of war and militarization in modern China and the interdisciplinary scholarship on war and the environment in world history. He received his B.A. from UC Berkeley (1999) and Ph.D. from Harvard University (2006). Web series host: Micah Muscolino, UC San Diego Editor: Samuel Tsoi, UC San Diego Music: Dave Liang/Shanghai Restoration Project

Micah Muscolino interviews Mary Brazelton, a historian of science, technology and medicine, on mass mobilizations to battle epidemics, medical diplomacy, and vaccines as tools of political control before and after 1949. They discuss the implications of those historical developments on how China and Taiwan managed Covid-19, the current usage of data collection and surveillance in the name of public health, the resistance against compulsory vaccinations, and how the PRC and ROC influence global health policy.

The 21st Century China Center is premiering a new web series: "China Throughlines" - featuring UC San Diego’s China historians in conversation with their colleagues on the echos and connectedness of China’s storied past to the twenty-first century. In this audo excerpt from the pilot episode, Paul Pickowicz interviews Perry Link, esteemed cross-disciplinary China scholar and translator of the Tiananmen Papers. The memory of the tragic and pivotal date of June 4th 1989 or simply 六四, is still the subject of intense debate, censorship, and protest - especially in Hong Kong. Web series host: Paul Pickowicz, UC San Diego Editor: Samuel Tsoi, UC San Diego Music: Dave Liang/Shanghai Restoration Project

Since the novel coronavirus outbreak in the megacity of Wuhan in December 2019, lockdowns were also implemented across China’s vast countryside, home to more than 700 million people. Dr. Scott Rozelle, senior fellow at Stanford University FSI and co-director of the Rural Education Action Program, presents his latest study to assess the effects of local and nationwide disease control measures on the economy, social life and health of China’s rural population. This was recorded from a May 6th webinar, to view the full presentation, visit china.ucsd.edu Webinar moderator: Victor Shih, UC San Diego Editor/Host: Samuel Tsoi, UC San Diego Music: Dave Liang/Shanghai Restoration Project

As we are living through a historic pandemic and ever more turbulent US-China relations, we revisit a conversation recorded at our last public lecture right before the lockdown. 21st Century China Board Chair James Kralik interviews investor and best-selling author Weijian Shan about his memoir of living through the trauma and turmoil of Mao’s Cultural Revolution to become one of Asia’s most successful financiers, and how to move forward on constructive U.S.-China relations. Watch Shan’s full presentation for the So Kwan Lok Distinguished Lecture series on china.ucsd.edu Weijian Shan is chairman and CEO of PAG, a private equity firm. Prior to PAG, he was a partner of TPG and co-managing partner of TPG Asia. He led a number of landmark transactions including the acquisitions of Korea First Bank and China’s Shenzhen Development Bank, both of which made his investors billions of dollars in profits and were made into case studies of Harvard Business School. He holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, and an M.B.A. from the Univer­sity of San Francisco. James Kralik is the board chair for the 21st Century China Center. He is Managing Director of Linden Street Capital Ltd. and a Director of Milestone Capital Investment Holdings Ltd. Over the last fifteen years, these investment vehicles have been involved with a number of leading Chinese businesses in the alternative energy, advertising media, and consumer sectors. Based in Shanghai, Kralik began his career at McKinsey & Company and has lived and worked in China for nearly thirty years. Editor/Host: Samuel Tsoi, UC San Diego Music: Dave Liang/Shanghai Restoration Project

Wang Dan 王丹 speaks with Victor Shih on the lessons from the 1989 student democracy movement. They discuss Wang’s journey as a young student leading up to the Tiananmen Square protests and his life since. Wang describes his mission for Dialogue China - and the discussions he’s fostering about prospects of political reform and preparing citizens for potential crisis at the Chinese Communist Party.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Susan Shirk and Geremie Barmé discuss cultural and political life in China during the Xi Jinping era. Barmé, who coined the term “Chairman of Everything,” compares Xi’s style and ambition with the cult of Mao and dynastic rulers from China’s long history. They also traced the usage of classical Chinese in the formation and articulation of policy agendas such as the “the China Dream” 中国梦 and the “Community of Common Destiny.” 人类命运共同体, and the continuity of literary Chinese education and culture through the periods of revolution and reform.

Molly Roberts interviews Rebecca MacKinnon about her time as a journalist covering human rights and politics in Asia that leads to her pioneering work on advocating for digital rights, corporate responsibility and freedom of expression around the world. Rebecca MacKinnon is the director of Ranking Digital Rights, a program at New America promotes freedom of expression and privacy on the internet by creating global standards and incentives for companies to respect and protect users’ rights. She was a Pacific Leadership Fellow at the Center for Global Transformation at UC San Diego School of Global Policy & Strategy. Ms. MacKinnon is the author of the book "Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom" and the co-founder of the citizen media network Global Voices. Ms. MacKinnon was CNN’s Beijing Bureau Chief from 1998-2001 and Tokyo Bureau Chief from 2001-2003. Since leaving CNN, she taught journalism and conducted research on Chinese censorship at the University of Hong Kong and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Molly Roberts is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at UC San Diego and the director of the China Data Lab at the 21st Century China Center. Prof. Roberts uses social media, online experiments, and large collections of newspaper articles to understand the influence of censorship and propaganda on the spread of information in China. She is the author of the award-winning book "Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China's Great Firewall". Editor/Host: Samuel Tsoi , UC San Diego Music: Dave Liang/Shanghai Restoration Project Illustration: Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University

Paul Pickowicz, Perry Link and Jeremy Murray speaks with guest host Lazlo Montgomery in this special co-produced episode with China History Podcast, with excerpts from their new book “China Tripping: Encountering the Everyday in the People’s Republic” and discussion about how traveling to China across four decades changed these authors. (Part 1 of 2) Editor/Host: Lazlo Montgomery & Samuel Tsoi Production Support: Mike Fausner, Kirk Wang Music: Dave Liang/Shanghai Restoration Project

Paul Pickowicz, Perry Link and Jeremy Murray speaks with guest host Lazlo Montgomery in this special co-produced episode with China History Podcast, with excerpts from their new book “China Tripping: Encountering the Everyday in the People’s Republic” and discussion about how traveling to China across four decades changed these authors. (Part 1 of 2) Editor/Host: Lazlo Montgomery & Samuel Tsoi Production Support: Mike Fausner, Kirk Wang Music: Dave Liang/Shanghai Restoration Project

Diana Fu describes the evolution of activism, citizenship and civil society in China, and how NGOs engage in unconventional mobilization under authoritarian rule, based on her research on migrant workers and labor organizations.

Steph Haggard speaks with Danny Russel about the intensifying U.S.-China rivalry that is ushering in new dynamic in the Asia Pacific region. They address the trade war, negotiations with North Korea, American alliance with Japan, the Indo-Pacific strategy, and warn against the notion of decoupling.

Barbara Finamore, who founded the National Resource Defense Council’s China program, discusses with China Focus editor-in-chief Charlie Vest about China’s clean energy sectors, domestic environmental activism and its push to develop renewable energy infrastructure abroad.

Elsa Kania discusses the potential and concerns of cutting-edge technologies that are underpinning the competition between the U.S. and China, especially in the race towards supremacy in AI and 5G - and describes what healthy U.S.-China competition can look like going forward.

Alibaba’s Joe Tsai speaks with Susan Shirk in front of a live audience on a wide-ranging conversation about current U.S.-China trade disputes, security concerns, technological competition, and the innovation and collaborative capacities for both countries.

Andy Rothman speaks with Victor Shih on the opportunities and volatility of investing in the People's Republic and the outlook on China's impact on global economic growth. They discuss the risk of including China's bonds and SOEs in passive indices, the challenge of data verification and spurring entrepreneurship, how to actively look for the dynamic industries and avoid risks, and the rebalancing of the economy towards services and consumption.

In the critical period of China’s opening in the 1980s, Chinese policymakers invited Western economists to learn and debate the way forward for China, and that’s the subject of fascinating research by Julian Gewirtz in his book “Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China” Gewirtz is currently a Fellow in History and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He completed doctorate in history at the University of Oxford, and he is interviewed by Charlie Vest, a Master’s Candidate in Chinese Political and Economic Affairs here at the School of Global Policy & Strategy, and he is the Editor-in-Chief for the China Focus blog

As President Trump’s team continues trade negotiations in Beijing this week, we bring you this recently recorded conversation between GPS professors Natalia Ramondo, Barry Naughton and Victor Shih. They discuss the current threat of tariffs by both countries, and implications on multilateral trade norms, the effectiveness of Chinese industrial policy and American innovation strategy. Natalia Ramondo is an associate professor of economics at GPS, Barry Naughton is the Sokwanlok professor of international affairs, and Victor Shih is the Ho Miu Lam professor of political science. This episode was recorded at UC San Diego Host & Editor: Samuel Tsoi Production Support: Mike Fausner, Lara Sievert Music: Dave Liang/Shanghai Restoration Project

Ian Johnson joins Richard Madsen to discusses how today’s Chinese Communist Party is striving for a national set of values, and how ordinary Chinese are seeking for deeper meaning in their lives, and the lessons for the rest of the world in this global populist moment. Ian Johnson is a Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter in China for over 20 years, for various publications, including The New York Times and The New York Review of Books, and is author of a new book: The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao. Dr. Richard Madsen is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at UC San Diego. He is the author or co-author of 12 books, including the landmark village study “Chen Village under Mao and Deng” and Democracy’s Dharma: Religious Renaissance and Political Development in Taiwan.” He is currently working on a book about happiness in China, which he describes as an exploration on “searching for a good life in China in an age of anxiety.” This episode was recorded at UC San Diego Host & Editor: Samuel Tsoi Production Support: Mike Fausner Music: Dave Liang/Shanghai Restoration Project Photo credit: Ian Johnson Video/Book info: http://ian-johnson.com

Historian Paul Pickowicz interviews acclaimed author John Pomfret about patterns in the long history of US-China relations, and how it informs the controversies in the current moment of Sino-American relations ranging from the impact of Chinese students on US universities, Xi Jinping’s end to presidential term limits, and trade and business relations.

Tai Ming Cheung, Mikko Huotari and Barry Naughton unpack the China factor in the case of the U.S. government’s protection of Qualcomm, and discuss what kind of tools and policies will emerge as the rules of engagement in international investment and technological competition continue to become murky and fraught with geopolitical tensions.

21st Century China Center faculty reflect on Sunday's announcement by Chinese Communist Party to end term limits on the presidency, clearing the way for President Xi Jinping to stay in power indefinitely. Even in the context of the party's authoritarian rule, it is a significant break from rules established in the 1980s to prevent the country from returning to the days when Mao Zedong dominated every sphere of the political system. Susan Shirk is the chair of the 21st Century China Center, Barry Naughton is the Sokwanlok professor of international affairs, and Victor Shih is the Ho Miu Lam professor of political science, and Lei Guang is the Director of the 21st Century China Center.

Francis Fukuyama and Barry Naughton trace the origins of the Chinese state, its historic economic modernization, and how the current Xi Jinping era is challenging assumptions and theories about political order and decay. They also discussed the relationship between political freedom and technological innovation and roles of China and US in global leadership.

UCLA sociologist Ching Kwan Lee discusses her new book that is the culmination of over six years of ethnographic research in Zambia on Chinese capital and labor. In The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa, Prof. Lee analyzes the peculiarity of outbound Chinese state capital by comparing it with global private capital in copper and construction in Zambia. Refuting the rhetorical narratives of “Chinese colonialism” and “south-south cooperation,” Prof. Lee chronicles the multi-faceted struggles that confront and differentiate these two varieties of capital, and discuss their uneven potentials for post-colonial African development, China's Belt-and-Road Initiative, and telling a more nuanced story about Global China.

Dr. Somkiat Tangkitvanich, President of the Thailand Development Research Institute, discusses current Thailand-China relations and the impact of Chinese investment and infrastructure projects in Southeast Asia.

Does the Trump Administration have a grand strategy in Asia? How does an "American First" posture square with the idea of a free and open Asia Pacific? Stephan Haggard interviews Michael Green on the president's visit to Asia and how it reflects the recurring themes in the long arc of American strategic thinking.

Scholars Jennifer Pan & Yiqing Xu discussed their paper on “China’s Ideological Spectrum,” which has generated widespread acclaim and discussion. They analyzed data from an opinion survey of more than half a million Chinese citizens, and find that public preferences in ideology are not simply split along a pro-regime or anti-regime divide in authoritarian contexts. The paper can be accessed via: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2593377

Caixin's Managing Editor Wang Shuo 王烁 describes the challenge for investigative journalists in China in the context of a changing media landscape and state control of information. He also discusses the stories his team has worked on, from high-speed rail accidents, to the one-child policy, to shadow banking - and Caixin's growing international audience.

Director Evans Chan (陳耀成) talks about his latest documentary “Raise the Umbrellas,” the politicization of Hong Kong identity and media, and the city's democratic future and implications for Greater China. (Trailer: https://youtu.be/Q2kxtQW-nAA)

Gordon Hanson and Charlene Barshefsky discuss China’s commitments and market reforms since joining the WTO and the path ahead in the trade relationship between the world’s two biggest economies. They explore the policy and enforcement tools the US has to confront China over the imbalance and lack of reciprocity, and the immediate political pressure on US policy makers to address the loss of jobs due to trade.

China is now the biggest auto market, including electric vehicles. Michael Dunne discusses the government's role in guiding the car industry, competition and cross-border investment among Western and Chinese firms, and implication for clean energy and job-creation in both countries.

Karl Gerth interviews Tom Mullaney about his journey in building a digital humanities community for Asian studies and how a new set of analytic tools are disrupting and transforming the practice of teaching history and understanding various phenomena in China.

Two China policy veterans: Prof. Susan Shirk and Amb. Winston Lord are members of a high-level bipartisan task force that launched a report on US Policy Toward China, with detailed policy recommendations for the Trump administration. They offer an overview of the comprehensive list of issues covered in the report, and discuss the priorities that the 45th President must address in his first year, such as the North Korean nuclear threat, climate change leadership, Asia Pacific alliances, and trade and civil society reciprocity.

Intercultural comedian Jesse Appell, founder of US-China Comedy Center in Beijing, talks about the fun and educational journey of learning what makes Chinese people laugh, and using comedy to bridge US-China cultural gaps. www.China Focus.us hosted Jesse's performance at UC San Diego on Feb. 6 as part of his “Great LOL of China” North American tour.

Dr. Julio Friedmann unpacks environmental and energy challenges in China - the world’s largest energy user, largest emitter, largest market and largest cleantech enterprise. Interview is followed by excerpt from conversation with Dr. David Victor

Dr. Melanie Hart reviews America's foreign policy towards China in the last eight years, and looks ahead to opportunities and challenges in US-China Relations in light of constructive milestones and the US presidential elections.

The Chinese Communist Party issued new directives for religious affairs earlier this year, especially calling for religions to serve national interests. What does this new project to “sinicize” religions imply for religious practice in China? For Christians in China, how are they adapting as rising nationalism clashes with religions that have foreign roots?

Deborah and Jack unpacks the details and highlights of China’s latest five-year-plan, the most basic and authoritative document that charts out the country’s strategic vision, covering policies, measures and targets on domestic social issues, to the environment, to education and economic development.

Professor Victor Shih speaks with Ken Wilcox of Silicon Valley Bank on the lessons learned from running a joint-venture with a state-owned bank and how banking practices have evolved to respond to recent financial crises in China.

Two of the most influential China Hands, Professor Susan Shirk and Ambassador J. Stapleton Roy, discuss the current state of Chinese politics, the South China Sea, and US foreign policy toward China.

Professor Albert Park of Hong Kong University of Science & Technology talks with Samuel Tsoi about his research on human capital and labor, firm performance, poverty and inequality, rural-urban migration, and the social safety net in the People's Republic of China.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Barboza reflects on his decade-long journey of reporting on China's economy, culminating in his investigative article on the hidden wealth of China's political elite, published by the New York Times in 2013.