This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Thomas Pepinsky and Jessica Chen Weiss, both professors of government at Cornell University, about their recent essay in Foreign Affairs, “The Clash of Systems? Washington Should Avoid Ideological Competition With Beijing.” In that essay, they argue that, despite all the talk of Chinese authoritarianism as an existential threat to American democracy, Beijing is mostly on the defensive, and does not seek to export its political system. This is not to say that American democracy is not under threat: It very much is — but not from China. Tom, a specialist on Southeast Asia, looks at the ASEAN countries and their relations with Beijing to show that ideological affinity is not a predictor of close ties to China. And Jessica offers an update to her influential 2018 essay on China’s effort to “make the world safe for autocracy.”
8:08: Defining ideology and ideological competition
19:57: Beijing’s transactional conduct with nations in Southeast Asia and the geostrategic implications
25:20: How the current rhetoric in the United States fuels Sinophobia and anti-Asian racism
36:01: China as the disgruntled stakeholder
A transcript of this episode is available on SupChina.com.
Recommendations:
Tom: The French television shows Lupin and The Bureau.
Jessica: “The Ezra Klein Show” podcast interview with Jamila Michener, and anything written by Yangyang Cheng.
Kaiser: Music to read by: The Goldberg Variations (particularly the 1982 version performed by Glenn Gould and the version performed by Lang Lang), The Well-Tempered Clavier, and The French Suites, by Johann Sebastian Bach, and the YouTube series “What Makes This Song Great?,” by Rick Beato.
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Allegiance
Sauced: American cooking in China
The China meltdown
Air pollution and climate change
While we're here: China stories from a writers' colony
Out of Africa: The swifts of Beijing
Live at the Bookworm, part two: What's ahead for China?
Live at the Bookworm, part one: How has Beijing changed over the years?
Fokke Obbema on China's rising power and the nation's relations with the West
Tu Youyou and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Edmund Backhouse in the long view of history
Sinica archive: Beijing's Great Leap Forward
Rogier Creemers on cyber Leninism and the political culture of the Chinese internet
Comfort women and the struggle for reparations
Under the Dome
LGBT China
The Islamic State and China
Bo Xilai: The Trial of the Century
The one-child policy, plus the African community in Guangzhou
The extremes of Chinese media, plus Chinese internet humor
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