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.
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
Kurt Campbell on U.S.-China diplomacy
The saga of CEFC and China's push into Central and Eastern Europe
Andrew Chubb on Chinese nationalism and its influence on maritime behavior
China’s security picture, from North Korea to the South China Sea
Talking trade and tech with Yasheng Huang
China's international relations, with Jiang Changjian, Ira Kasoff, and Anthony Saich
Virginia Tan on women and work in China
Introducing TechBuzz China by Pandaily, plus Joanna Chiu on Hong Kong’s illicit wildlife trade
Gao Yutong on the Chinese student experience in America
Live from Beijing: David Moser and Jess Meider on jazz in China
All sorts of swindles in the late Ming society, with Christopher Rea and Bruce Rusk
Why China and North Korea are not as close as you think: Ma Zhao and John Delury talk history
The Chinese Communist Party’s refusal to reconcile with its past, explained by Orville Schell
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