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.
The delights of cooking Chinese food: A conversation with chef and author Fuchsia Dunlop
How has China changed in the past four decades? A conversation with John Holden
How will Donald Trump’s victory impact China and U.S.-China relations?
Love and journalism in wartime China: An interview with Bill Lascher
Why China bears are wrong: An interview with Andy Rothman
Suing for clean air and studying for the bar exam: Rachel Stern on China's legal system
Lines of fracture in Chinese public opinion: A conversation with Ma Tianjie
Mei Fong on the one-child policy, its consequences and what's next for China's demographics
Michael Manning: Behind bars in Beijing
Fan Yang on fakes, pirates and shanzhai culture
Frank H. Wu on Chinese-Americans and China
Andrew Ng on artificial intelligence and startup culture from Beijing to Silicon Valley
Filmmaker Daniel Whelan on Yiwu, a city at the core of cheap Chinese goods
What is cultural about the Cultural Revolution? Paul Clark on creativity amid destruction
It's all connected: Silk Roads old and new
A discussion with Cheng Li: Where is Chinese politics going?
Clay Shirky on tech and the internet in China
Calming the waters of the South China Sea and beyond
Whose century is it, anyway?
The Kaiser Kuo exit interview
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