This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Margaret (Maggie) Lewis, a professor of law at Seton Hall University, about her work on the U.S. Department of Justice’s “China Initiative.” Launched under former attorney general Jeff Sessions in November 2018, the China Initiative sought to bring criminal cases against perpetrators of industrial espionage benefiting China, but as Maggie argues, it has in fact resulted in discriminatory ethnic profiling and the criminalization of what she calls “China-ness.” Listen to the end to hear Kaiser’s impression of Cookie Monster as a death metal vocalist.
8:24: Viewing China as an existential threat
17:44: Where the framing and implementation of the China Initiative falls short
28:11: Prosecuting “China-ness”
37:38: The impact on American competitiveness
Recommendations:
Maggie: What Do You Do With an Idea?, What Do You Do With a Problem?, and What Do You Do With a Chance?, by Kobi Yamada; also, Beautiful Oops!, by Barney Saltzberg.
Kaiser: The album Blackwater Park, by the Swedish progressive metal band Opeth.
Shadow banking, P2P lending, and pyramid schemes: Lucy Hornby on China's gray economy
Introducing the Ta for Ta Podcast
Kevin Rudd on Xi Jinping’s worldview
Danny Russel on the rebalancing and decoupling
Kai-Fu Lee and the U.S.-China AI rivalry
Nury Turkel and the Uyghur plight
Introducing the ChinaEconTalk podcast
Xi Jinping's long, hot summer
Paul Haenle on North Korea, Taiwan, U.S.-China relations, and more
China's 'reliable friendship' with Pakistan, explained by Andrew Small
The strange tale of a kung-fu master in Madagascar
Legendary diplomat Chas W. Freeman, Jr., on U.S.-China strategy and history: Part 3
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
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