Sinica Podcast

From their website:

A weekly discussion of current affairs in China with journalists, writers, academics, policy makers, business people and anyone with something compelling to say about the country that's reshaping the world. Hosted by Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn and powered by SupChina.com. Each week, Kuo and Goldkorn talk about China-related topics with a range of guests including prominent China-based journalists, academics, authors, bloggers, and subject area experts. Guests have included reporters like Gady Epstein of The Economist; Edward Wong, Andrew Jacobs, and Ian Johnson of The New York Times; Evan Osnos of The New Yorker; Mary Kay Magistad of Public Radio International’s The World; Tania Branigan of The Guardian; Li Xin of Caixin; Jamil Anderlini of The Financial Times; John Garnaut of The Sydney Morning Herald; and Jeremy Page and Josh Chin of The Wall Street Journal.

Sinica has also hosted scholars like Geremie Barmé of Australian National University, Victor Mair of the University of Pennsylvania, and Jeffrey Wasserstrom of University of California, Irvine, as well as authors like Pankaj Mishra (From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia, Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2012) and Tom Miller (China’s Urban Billion: The Story Behind the Biggest Migration in Human History, Zed Books 2012). The hosts and guests also make a few recommendations at the end of each show—articles, books, documentaries, films, or other things that might be of interest to China watchers.

Launched in April 2010, the podcast is recorded in various locations in China, the USA, and around the world.

Last Updated: July 7, 2016

Sinica Podcast

01.19.17

The State of Journalism in China—Ed Wong’s Exit Interview

Jeremy Goldkorn, Kaiser Kuo & more from Sinica Podcast
Edward Wong became a reporter for The New York Times in 1999. He covered the Iraq war from Baghdad from 2003 to 2007, and then moved to Beijing in 2008. He has written about a wide range of subjects in China for the Times, and became its Beijing...

Sinica Podcast

01.13.17

Can the Vatican and China Get Along?

Jeremy Goldkorn, Kaiser Kuo & more from Sinica Podcast
Ian Johnson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has lived in Beijing and Taiwan for more than half of the past 30 years, writing for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and other publications. He has...

Sinica Podcast

12.19.16

Beijing Meets Banjo: Wu Fei and Abigail Washburn

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
Wu Fei is a classically trained composer and performer of the guzheng, or traditional Chinese 21-string zither. Abigail Washburn is a Grammy Award–winning American banjo player and fluent speaker of Chinese. They’ve been friends for a decade and are...

Sinica Podcast

11.30.16

The Intersection of Chinese Law and Politics

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
China’s legal system is much derided and poorly understood, but its development has, in many ways, been one of the defining features of the reform and opening-up era. Rachel Stern, a professor of law and political science at the University of...

Sinica Podcast

11.23.16

Lines of Fracture in Chinese Public Opinion: A Conversation with Ma Tianjie

Kaiser Kuo & Jeremy Goldkorn from Sinica Podcast
On this week’s episode, our guest Ma Tianjie, editor of the bilingual environmental website chinadialogue and the blogger behind Chublic Opinion, untangles the complexities and contradictions of online discussions in China. Ma shares insights into...

Sinica Podcast

11.11.16

How Will Donald Trump’s Victory Impact China and U.S.-China Relations?

Kaiser Kuo & Isaac Stone Fish from Sinica Podcast
The U.S. election is over, and Donald Trump’s pundit-defying victory over Hillary Clinton has stunned and surprised people all over the world. In China—where activity on Weibo and WeChat indicated strong support for Trump among netizens both in...

Sinica Podcast

10.20.16

The Consequences of the One-Child Policy Will Be Felt for Generations

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
The first day of 2016 marked the official end of China’s one-child policy, one of the most controversial and draconian approaches to population management in human history. The rules have not been abolished but modified, allowing all married Chinese...

Sinica Podcast

10.14.16

An American’s Seven Months in a Chinese Jail

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
In 2009, Michael Manning was working in Beijing for a state-owned news broadcaster by day, but he spent his nights selling bags of hashish. His position with CCTV was easy and brought him into contact with Chinese celebrities, while his other trade...

Sinica Podcast

09.27.16

Fakes, Pirates, and Shanzhai Culture

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
Fakes, knockoffs, pirate goods, counterfeits: China is notorious as the global manufacturing center of all things ersatz. But in the first decade after the People’s Republic joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, a particular kind of knockoff...

Sinica Podcast

09.20.16

What is the Chinese-American Identity?

Kaiser Kuo & Jeremy Goldkorn from Sinica Podcast
What is the Chinese-American identity? How has the rise of China affected American attitudes toward ethnically Chinese people in the United States and elsewhere? How do the 3.8 million Chinese-Americans impact U.S.-China relations, and what role...

Sinica Podcast

09.07.16

Yiwu, a City at the Core of Cheap Chinese Goods

Kaiser Kuo, David Moser & more from Sinica Podcast
Renowned as a trading town during the Qing dynasty, the eastern city of Yiwu again became famous for its markets after China’s economic reforms kicked in during the 1980s. Since then, the metropolis of 1.2 million people has transformed into a hub...

Sinica Podcast

08.31.16

What Is Cultural About the Cultural Revolution? Creativity Amid Destruction

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
This year marked the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, a chaotic decade of Chinese history made infamous in the West through books such as Wild Swans and Life and Death in Shanghai, which describe in horrific detail the...