Shortly after Deborah Seligsohn was last on Sinica, in April, the lab leak hypothesis seemed suddenly to gain traction — at least in American media. This week, Kaiser invites Deborah back to the show to talk about why the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a notion long regarded by virologists as less probable than zoonotic transmission, has burst back into the conversation. Deborah served as the State Department’s Environment, Science, Technology and Health Counselor in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing from 2003 to 2007. She is an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University in Philadelphia.
3:00: The persistence of the lab leak theory
11:40: Navigating the political and institutional landscape within China
25:36: A view from Beijing’s perspective
31:02: Eliciting cooperation from Beijing, and what should our priorities be
Recommendations:
Deborah: The podcast This Week in Virology, particularly episodes 760 and 762, which touch on the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kaiser: Richard L. Watkins, a candidate running for the U.S. Senate in North Carolina.
Edward Wong on foreign correspondence and dealing with censorship in China
Books, podcasts and the history of science in China with Carla Nappi
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
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