Kaiser Kuo is the host of the Sinica Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China that has run since 2010. He was Head of Podcasts and Editor-at-Large for The China Project, and previously served as Director of International Communications for Baidu. In his over 20 years in China, his career ran the gamut from rock music to tech journalism to corporate communications. He is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and holds an M.A. from the University of Arizona. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Last Updated: March 14, 2024
Sinica Podcast
02.10.12
The Allure of the Southwest
from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn take a closer look at the beautiful city of Chongqing in a forthright discussion that delves into the myriad attractions of this beautiful and occasionally mysterious Chinese city, famous recently...
Sinica Podcast
02.03.12
Running Dogs and Locusts
from Sinica Podcast
Ongoing tension between Hong Kong and mainland citizens erupted into open flames on February 1, when a Hong Kong group raised more than HKD 100,000 to publish a full-page anti-China advertisement in the Apple Daily comparing mainlanders to parasitic...
Sinica Podcast
01.20.12
The Elections in Taiwan
from Sinica Podcast
If your impression of Taiwanese politics has been dominated by the island’s recurring stories of vote-buying and parliamentary brawls, you’ll probably be shocked to hear what Mary Kay Magistad has to say about her recent trip to cover last week’s...
Sinica Podcast
01.13.12
Year-End Roundup
from Sinica Podcast
It was the year of the housing market (up then down), Ai Weiwei’s imprisonment, Wukan, the Wenzhou train crash, air pollution, gutter oil, tainted milk, clenbuterol, China bulls and bears, government transparency, the soaring price of Maotai, Guo...
Sinica Podcast
12.31.11
The Wukan Uprising
from Sinica Podcast
For the last few days, international attention has focused on the small fishing town of Wukan in southern China, where villagers are in open revolt. Simmering tensions caused by corruption and illegal land sales have escalated into an armed uprising...
Sinica Podcast
12.16.11
Learning Chinese
from Sinica Podcast
Shortly after his arrival in China, the late great 19th-century Sinologist Robert Hart would write his frustrations in his private diary, confiding that the convoluted phonemes of the Chinese language struck him like nothing so much as “the sounds...
Sinica Podcast
12.06.11
The Soul of Beijing
from Sinica Podcast
Today, we’re pleased to share a special live edition of Sinica recorded last Saturday at Capital M in Beijing. Held to a standing-room only crowd, we talked all about our ongoing love-hate relationship with Beijing, and asked what on earth is...
Sinica Podcast
12.02.11
The Bears Are Back in Town
from Sinica Podcast
Falling housing prices, soaring inflation, and an export market peering over the brink of what seems a cataclysmic abyss. If you’ve been following the economic news lately, you can be forgiven for being overwhelmed by the chorus of bearish voices...
Sinica Podcast
11.18.11
Is Soft Power Always This Damn Boring?
from Sinica Podcast
In some ways, the latest deluge of rhetoric from the Party feels timeless. Ever since Mao’s famous speech in Yan’an on literature and art in 1942, the CCP has made clear that culture ought to serve politics. But there’s also something new about the...
Sinica Podcast
10.13.11
Sun Yat-sen and the Xinhai Revolution
from Sinica Podcast
One hundred years ago this week, local outrage over plans to nationalize provincial railways triggered the Wuchang Uprising, an act of sedition that marked the start of the Xinhai Revolution and the beginning of the end for China’s long-governing...
Sinica Podcast
09.30.11
The Shanghai Train Accident
from Sinica Podcast
At least 284 people were injured on Tuesday when a train in the Shanghai metro smashed into another which had stalled on the tracks. The accident, which threw Shanghai into disarray, came only two months after another near-disastrous incident on the...
Sinica Podcast
09.23.11
The Gutter Oil Podcast
from Sinica Podcast
“It was really distressing for me to talk to a WHO expert and have him tell me, ‘I have no idea where it’s safe to buy food here ...’” — Sharon LaFraniere.When Luoyang journalist Li Xiang broke China’s latest food scandal last week, exposing the...