My contention is that while nation organizes politics, civilization supplies deeper identity, moral depth, and historical meaning especially when political legitimacy starts to wobble. Nations are new. Civilization is ancient and enduring. That’s the potency.

The Civilization Trap On the Inevitable Return of a Surprisingly Recent Idea

www.sinicapodcast.com/p/the-civili...

I've just published a stupidly long essay called "The Civilization Trap" at the Sinica Podcast newsletter page. Free. Examines how civilizational discourse has returned (think Rubio's Munich speech and China's Global Civilization Initiative). Inspired in part by @chenchenzhang.net Link below.

China’s War Narratives on Ukraine: Entering the Fifth Year Four years ago today, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began.

Join for this conversation I moderated, organized by the Ukrainian Platform for Contemporary China in collaboration with the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies. www.sinicapodcast.com/p/chinas-war...

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began 4 years ago today. Two Ukrainian China scholars, a Beijing-based Ukrinform correspondent, and a leading analyst of Chinese media look at how Chinese perspectives on the war have evolved over the course of the last four years. 👇

Yi-Ling Liu's book The Wall Dancers traces China's internet through five lives: a rapper, a censor, a gay app founder, a feminist, a sci-fi writer. We talk "dancing in shackles," the end of techno-utopianism, and how Chinese & US internets are converging. New Sinica drops Wed!

It's a great museum, but the Shaanxi Provincial Museum in Xi'an probably takes the prize for best Chinese provincial museum!

Never did read it. Sorry!

Think of it as a nice slow buildup to a climax!

On Not Intervening in Iran I’m wandering off from the usual China-centered fare in this essay because I’ve been thinking a lot about the right thing to do with Iran.

www.sinicapodcast.com/p/on-not-int...

Wrestling with the Iran intervention question. The humanitarian case is real but I loppose strikes. We suck at predicting what military force actually accomplishes. This might be the moment that forces a reckoning with liberal interventionism. My thinking (for now) in the essay at the link below. 👇

So depressing to read (over on the hellsite) all the WaPo foreign correspondents and others announcing they've been laid off. It'a completely insane to be gutting international coverage at a time like this. I'm dreading the crap that will fill the vacuum.

Uneasy Calm: Ryan Hass on Three Pathways for U.S.-China Relations Under Trump This week on Sinica, I speak with Ryan Hass, director of the John L.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts or at the Sinica Podcast newsletter page, here: www.sinicapodcast.com/p/uneasy-cal...

New Sinica Podcast episode with Ryan Hass of Brookings on US-China relations under Trump. He lays out 3 scenarios: soft landing, hard split, or (most likely) uneasy calm through mutual constraint. We dig into Beijing's bet on Trump, and why Xi's April visit matters.
Link below 👇

Transcript | Afra Wang on "The Morning Star of Lingao" (临高启明) and the Rise and Reckoning of China's "Industrial Party" Transcript, courtesy of CadreScripts, further down the page.

Paying subscribers — and y'all should think about becoming one — can read the complete transcript here. Help out a struggling podcaster doing important work! www.sinicapodcast.com/p/transcript...

Afra Wang on "The Morning Star of Lingao" (临高启明) and the Rise and Reckoning of China's "Industrial Party" This week on Sinica, I speak with Afra Wang, a writer working between London and the Bay Area, currently a fellow with Gov.AI.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts or at the Sinica Podcast newsletter page, here: www.sinicapodcast.com/p/afra-wang-...

500 modern Chinese wormhole back to the Ming Dynasty to jumpstart industrialization. A crowdsourced novel "The Morning Star of Lingao"《临高启明》— the ur-text for China's "Industrial Party." Writer Afra Wang joins the SinicaPodcast to discuss the Industrial Party, Lingao, & how China thinks about power.

Transcript | Daniel Bessner on American Primacy, Cold War Liberalism, and the China Challenge Transcript, courtesy of CadreScripts, further down the page.

If you're a (paid) subscriber, read the complete transcript here: www.sinicapodcast.com/p/transcript.... And if you're not already subscribing, please consider doing so to support my work!

Daniel Bessner on American Primacy, Cold War Liberalism, and the China Challenge This week on Sinica, I speak with Daniel Bessner, the Anne H.H.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts or at the Sinica Podcast newsletter page here: www.sinicapodcast.com/p/daniel-bes...

This week on the SinicaPodcast, I speak with Danny Bessner about Cold War liberalism, how American primacy became ideology, why the first Cold War was a choice, and what genuine restraint toward China would actually require. Links below!

The crazy thing is that it has a surprisingly large and very dedicated fan base in China! Shockingly high ratings on Douban. This owes much to the danmei/BL culture, I suppose. But hockey? I have yet to watch the show but my brother's a big fan!

The Makers of Modern China • EQUATOR For many years, Zheng Xiaoqiong has collected the stories of the workers whose migration to Guangdong powered China’s manufacturing revolution

Fascinating stories of Chinese workers who migrated from rural areas to Guangdong in 2006-15: skillfully collected by the poet Zheng Xiaoqiong, translated by Eleanor Goodman, insightfully introduced by @kaiserkuo.bsky.social—and, thankfully, published by @equatormag.bsky.social.

Yeah, too much for BlueSky. I'd say most in the Chinese strategic class want regional hegemony, parity in comprehensive power with the US, enough to avoid being pushed around, but do not aspire to global primacy.

Not a "China expert," and don't believe anyone to qualify as one, but that said, this kind of civilizational essentialism should have been retired along with fortune-cookie geopolitics. It's lazy, one-size-fits-all psychologizing those who can’t be bothered to learn anything about China trot out.

Kaiser dot Kuo at gmail!

Had a great conversation with @kaiserkuo.bsky.social of the Sinica Podcast about the causes and consequences of the seeming softening of Washington's China-hawkism.

Finbarr Bermingham of the SCMP on Nexperia, Export Controls, and Europe's Impossible Position Sinica Podcast · Episode

It was my great honour to go back on the Sinica podcast with @kaiserkuo to discuss the "economic thriller" that is Nexperia

Recommended if you want to go deep on the latest crisis in Europe's strategic autonomy
Thanks Kaiser for having me!

Lizzi Lee on Involution, Overcapacity, and China's Economic Model This week on Sinica, I chat with Lizzi Lee, a fellow on the Chinese economy at the Asia Society Policy Institute and one of the sharpest China analysts working today.

This week on @SinicaPodcast, I spoke with Lizzi Lee of the Asia Society Policy Institute about China's 4th Plenum, the anti-involution push, why "overcapacity" is misleading, VAT incentives driving overcompetition, and what really happened at the Trump-Xi meeting in Busan.

Yeah this is some seriously uhinged shit.

Following along!