Bill Bishop, author of the Sinocism newsletter, chats with experts from around the world to help us all get smarter about China. Topics discussed include politics, foreign relations, business, finance, culture, history and markets. It started as a podcast but is now video too.
Nearly 400,000 investors, policymakers, executives, analysts, diplomats, journalists, scholars and others read Sinocism for valuable insights into China.
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Thanks everyone who joined live earlier today, Friday the 13th.
This was not a China-focused discussion, but if you are interested in the future of the media and/or Substack you should find it interesting.
Thanks Hamish McKenzie for co-founding Substack, our home, and for writing the excellent How to Save the Media, which you can buy here.
Sinocism Live has been on hiatus. I am working on bringing it back with a more regular cadence, and this chat reminded me that these discussions can be quite fun.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe
This a recording of a March 17 live conversation I had with Demetri Sevastopulo, US-China correspondent for the Financial Times. You can read all his recent FT stories here, and subscribe to him on Substack @ Demetri Sevastopulo
We had a fascinating conversation about US-China relations, now and in Trump’s first term, when he was Washington Bureau Chief, for the FT, Trump’s delayed China trip and why it may be delayed longer than 5-6 weeks, Taiwan, and the visit later this week to Washington by Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi.
Thank you to Demetri and everyone who tuned in live, and apologies for the brief technical glitch at the start.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe
Thank you Inês Carrières, LeftieProf, scott murphy, Andrew Polk, Dan Houghton, and many others for tuning into my live video with Tara Palmeri!
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe
Thanks everyone who joined live earlier today, Friday the 13th.
This was not a China-focused discussion, but if you are interested in the future of the media and/or Substack you should find it interesting.
Thanks Hamish McKenzie for co-founding Substack, our home, and for writing the excellent How to Save the Media, which you can buy here.
Sinocism Live has been on hiatus. I am working on bringing it back with a more regular cadence, and this chat reminded me that these discussions can be quite fun.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe
This a recording of a March 17 live conversation I had with Demetri Sevastopulo, US-China correspondent for the Financial Times. You can read all his recent FT stories here, and subscribe to him on Substack @ Demetri Sevastopulo
We had a fascinating conversation about US-China relations, now and in Trump’s first term, when he was Washington Bureau Chief, for the FT, Trump’s delayed China trip and why it may be delayed longer than 5-6 weeks, Taiwan, and the visit later this week to Washington by Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi.
Thank you to Demetri and everyone who tuned in live, and apologies for the brief technical glitch at the start.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe
Thank you Inês Carrières, LeftieProf, scott murphy, Andrew Polk, Dan Houghton, and many others for tuning into my live video with Tara Palmeri!
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe
Thanks everyone who tuned into my live video with Drew Thompson. Drew is now based in Singapore as a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University.
From 2011-2018 he was the Director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In 2012 he planned and organized a visit to the US of a delegation led by then-Defense Minister General Liang Guanglie. Zhang Youxia was part of the delegation.
We had a great discussion about his personal experience shepherding Zhang Youxia around the US many years ago, his work on US-China military-to-military relations, and the disappearance in 2023 of South China Morning Post reporter Minnie Chan.
Drew wrote about his experience with Zhang in the excellent The demise of Zhang Youxia hits different. You can and should subscribe to him @ Drew Thompson
Thanks.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe
This is a recording of my November 20, 2025 discussion with Sheena Chestnut Greitens ( Sheena Chestnut Greitens), Isaac B. Kardon (CHINA: Threat or Menace on Substack), and Cameron Waltz about their excellent and important new paper China’s Foreign Police Training: A Global Footprint - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
I learned a lot from the paper and the conversation, and we had a good discussion at the end about whether or not China is using this security cooperation and training to export its governance model.
From the summary of the paper:
Global outreach by China’s internal security agencies is expanding. As China’s Global Security Initiative externalizes a concept of security focused on domestic stability and regime protection, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has increased its efforts to train and build capacity among foreign law enforcement and internal security forces around the world, including across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Foreign police training is one of the most concrete and measurable outcomes associated with the Global Security Initiative, as President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders have publicly committed to training thousands of foreign security officers in multiple high-profile appearances.
This paper examines China’s foreign police, security, and paramilitary training from 2000 to 2025. It draws on an original new dataset of nearly 900 trainings provided to at least 138 countries and places these trainings in the wider context of Chinese soft power, foreign policy objectives and projects such as the Global Security Initiative, broader patterns of Chinese security engagement, and Beijing’s narratives about China’s role as a global security provider.
You can read the whole paper here.
Earlier this year they published A New World Cop on the Beat? China’s Internal Security Outreach Under the Global Security Initiative.
If you prefer to consume the Sinocism Live episodes as a podcast, please add this URL to the podcast...
This is a recording of my October 31, 2025 discussion with Ruixue Jia and Hongbin Li about their excellent and important new book The Highest Exam - How the Gaokao Shapes China.
From a synopsis of the book:
In The Highest Exam, authors Ruixue Jia, Hongbin Li, and Claire Cousineau present a sweeping, data-rich account of China’s exam-centered education system — a “centralized, hierarchical tournament” culminating in the Gaokao, a grueling three-day college entrance exam. Drawing on decades of empirical research and lived experience, Jia and Li — both leading economists who took the Gaokao and later taught at top universities in Beijing, Hong Kong, and the U.S. — reveal how this state-managed system shapes education, labor markets, political legitimacy, and social values.
You can buy the book here: The Highest Exam - How the Gaokao Shapes China. It is well-written and priced like a normal book, not an academic one. You can not understand China without understanding the Gaokao system, so this is an important and very useful book.
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This is a recording of my October 30, 2025 conversation with Rush Doshi, the C.V. Starr senior fellow for Asia studies and director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and an assistant professor in Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service.
Rush Doshi was deputy senior director for China and Taiwan on President Joe Biden’s National Security Council (NSC), where he served from 2021 to 2024 and helped manage the NSC’s first China directorate.
During his time in the Biden Administration he worked on multiple Biden-Xi engagements, so I thought he would be a great guest to help us parse through the Trump-Xi meeting in South Korea and what it means for US-China relations. He did not disappoint.
Rush is about to launch a new Substack called “The Great Changes 大变局. You can and should subscribe to it here.
You can catch up with many of Rush’s recent writings and podcast appearances here on his CFR page.
Thanks for watching/listening.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe
This is a recording of my October 24, 2025 conversation with Chris Johnson, CEO of China Strategies Group and a former top China analyst at the CIA, about the recently concluded Fourth Plenum, and specifically the ongoing purges in the PLA, and US-China relations ahead of next week’s Trump-Xi meeting in South Korea.
Chris wrote a guest piece for Sinocism earlier this week on Xi and succession - Forever Xi Jinping? Perhaps Not.
If you prefer to consume the Sinocism Live episodes as a podcast, please add this URL to the podcast player of your choice:
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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe
This is a recording of my October 16, 2025 conversation with Ambassador Mike Froman Mike Froman about recent developments in the US-China trade war and US-China relations in general. I learned a lot from this conversation and I think you will as well.
Ambassador Froman is president of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and has had a distinguished career in the private sector and in public service, including as the head of USTR from June 2013 to January 2017.
He now writes a weekly newsletter called The World This Week, to which I encourage everyone to subscribe.
We also discussed some of his recent writings, including:
After the Trade War: Remaking Rules From the Ruins of the Rules-Based System - Foreign Affairs
China Has Already Remade the International System - Foreign Affairs
China, the United States, and the AI Race | Council on Foreign Relations
Thanks to everyone who watched our chat live.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe
This is a recording of my October 14, 2025 conversation with Charles Parton about the recent UK-China spy case and UK-China relations in general.
Charles Parton OBE is the Chief Advisor to the China Observatory at the Council on Geostrategy. He spent 22 years of his 37 year diplomatic career working in or on China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. In his final posting he was seconded to the EU Delegation in Beijing, where, as First Counsellor until late 2016, he focussed on Chinese politics and internal developments, and advised the EU and Member States on how China’s politics might affect their interests.
You can follow Charlie on Substack @ Charles Parton.
Thanks to everyone who watched our chat live.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe
Thanks everyone for tuning into my live video with afra Wang and Jasmine Sun. We had a great conversation about their recent trip to China, the differing views of AI in the US and China, and the ongoing narrative/vibe shift about China.
I highly recommend their newsletters, and specifically the two essays that prompted this discussion:
Afra Wang - Topology of "China AI"
Jasmine Sun - America Against China Against America
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe
This is a recording from the September 4th live conversation I had with Professor Joseph Torigian about his excellent book on Xi Jinping’s father - The Party's Interests Come First - The Life of Xi Zhongxun, the importance of history to the Party, and to Xi Jinping, and how we might view the recent commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the “Victory in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War”.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe
On July 22nd I spoke with Finbarr Bermingham, Brussels-based senior correspondent for the South China Morning Post whose beat includes EU-China relations. He has in a roll with scoops about EU-China relations, including China tells EU it does not want to see Russia lose its war in Ukraine earlier this month.
He explains what to expect from the EU-China summit that convenes July 24th, and how EU-China relations have deteriorated over the last several months.
Apologies, we had some technical difficulties at the start and briefly a few minutes in.
He is active on Substack Notes Finbarr Bermingham
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe
On Wednesday, July 3rd I hosted Robin J Brooks for a discussion about the RMB.
Robin is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and formerly Chief Economist at the IIF and Chief FX Strategist at Goldman Sachs. He writes an excellent and free Substack which I highly recommend.
Some of Robin’s views may be controversial to some, especially his argument that the PRC has more leverage over the US in the trade war because it was the very slight devaluation of the RMB against the USD just after the April 2nd tariff “Liberation Day” that was the proximate cause of the US bond market going “yippy”, which ultimately forced President Trump to back down. We had a good back and forth on that topic.
I learned a lot from the whole conversation and I think you will too. And if you enjoyed it please “like” it and restack it on Substack, and send to your friends and contacts.
Thanks for watching.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe
On Wednesday June 25th I hosted a discussion with Lisa Hanson and Daniel Ahmad of Niko Partners about the China video game market and how Chinese game firms are going global
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe
Thanks to everyone who joined the live discussion today.
This is a recording of a June 9th, 2025 Sinocism Live conversation with Tu Le, Founder and Managing Director of Sino Auto Insights.
We had a wide-ranging conversation about the state of the EV market in China, the recent BYD price cuts,Tesla’s China prospects, autonomous driving and the prospects for legacy car makers globally.
If you are interested in EVs, China and globally, you should sign up for the free weekly Sino Auto Insights newsletter.
Thanks.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe
I joined Jonathan V. Last on his show at The Bulwark to chat about China and the Trump Administration.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe
Thanks to everyone who joined the live discussion tonight.
This is a recording of a March 20th, 2025 Sinocism Live conversation with Jonathan Czin, now the Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, and before that was for many years at the CIA as one of the US intelligence community’s top China experts. He was director for China at the National Security Council from 2021 to 2023, where he staffed all of President Biden’s interactions with President Xi.
I learned a lot from Jonathan Czin in this conversation and I think you will too.
His recent work:
What Beijing wants from a US-China trade war - Brookings
Burying Deng: Xi Jinping and the Abnormalization of Chinese Politics - China Leadership Monitor
Thoughts on the political demise of Miao Hua - Brookings
Abetting competition, restraining Beijing: Recommendations for diplomacy toward China - Brookings
And his bio:
Jonathan A. Czin is joining the Brookings Institution as the Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies and a fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center. He is a former member of the Senior Analytic Service at CIA, where he was one of the intelligence community’s top China experts.
Czin led the intelligence community’s analysis of Chinese politics and policymaking, playing a central role in assessing and briefing senior policymakers on President Xi Jinping, his rise to power, and decisionmaking on an array of key issues and crises. From 2021 till 2023, he was director for China at the National Security Council, where he advised on, staffed, and coordinated White House and inter-agency diplomacy with the People’s Republic of China, including all of President Biden’s interactions with President Xi, and played a leading role in addressing a wide range of global China issues.
He also served as advisor for Asia-Pacific security affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and overseas at a CIA field station in Southeast Asia. Czin holds a master’s in inte...
I had a good conversation this afternoon with Chris Cillizza about what may happen in the next few hours with TikTok Us, and how President-elect may try to undo the ban. we also chatted a bit about what US-China relations may look like in the Trump 2.0 Era.
Join me for my next live video in the app.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe
Thanks to everyone who tuned in live to my Friday discussion with Christopher Johnson on China and the US election. Our talk was part of the ongoing Substack Election Dialogues.
Chris is President and CEO of China Strategies Group. He served for nearly two decades in the United States Government’s intelligence and foreign affairs communities. In addition to his work advising multinational corporations on their business and commercial strategies in China and greater East Asia, his insights on the Chinese leadership and on Beijing’s economic, commercial, foreign and security policies are regularly sought by senior Administration, Congressional, military, and foreign government officials. Chris also serves as a Senior Fellow on Chinese Politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis.
The live videos are first available in the Substack app, and that is also where you can find me most days on Notes and in the Sinocism chat:
I hope you enjoy this discussion, let me know if you think I should do more.
Thanks
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In this episode of the Sinocism Podcast Bill speaks with Tu Le, Founder and Managing Director of Sino Auto Insights. Tu recently attended the Shanghai Auto Show. We discuss the rise of China EVs both inside China and increasingly in other countries, and especially of BYD, why the legacy foreign auto manufacturers are struggling and will continue to struggle in China, and how “China EV Inc” will win share in many overseas markets. We also discuss Tesla’s positioning in the PRC and some if its challenges ahead, especially from BYD, both inside the PRC and in other markets around the world.
Links:
Sino Auto Insights
Sino Auto Insights newsletter
Doug DeMuro reviews the BYD Han:
The BYD Song L:
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Bill: Welcome back to the Sinocism podcast. Today we're very lucky to have Tu Le to talk about the PRC auto industry. Tu is the founder and managing director of Sino Auto Insights. Tu recently relocated to Detroit after many years in Beijing. Tu and his team at Sino Auto Insights do advisory and market research work for companies and investors who want to understand the PRC auto industry and especially the rise of Made in China EVs. He also writes an excellent weekly newsletter and does a podcast and occasional or weekly, I think, , Twitter spaces. I will put links to those in the show notes. Tu, welcome and thanks for joining the podcast. Great to see you again.
[00:00:36] Tu Le: Bill first. , thanks for having me. Last time we saw each other, I think we were at Central Park having a coffee at Jamaica Blue. That quite a few years ago.
[00:00:47] Bill: Tu and I are old friends from, from Beijing. , so, and, and it's, it's good to see you and, , nice to have you, , back in the US and Detroit. , Detroit is home, right. But it's also a great place to be if you're working on the auto industry.
[00:00:59] Tu Le: Yeah. It's kind of ground zero for what's happening in the EV and mobility space. So, so it's, it's a great time to be back.
[00:01:05] Bill: I've been...
It is my pleasure to be able to run an excerpt from Tania Branigan’s excellent new book “Red Memory: The Afterlives of China's Cultural Revolution”. Tania has also kindly recorded herself reading this chapter, so you can listen to it if you prefer.
Tania writes editorials for the Guardian and spent seven years as its China correspondent, reporting on politics, the economy, and social changes. we overlapped in Beijing and became friends.
We also recorded a podcast about the book which you can listen to here.
You can purchase the book on bookshop.org or on Amazon. The audio edition will be available from Tantor starting 7/11/23 wherever audiobooks are sold.
Begin excerpt:
Chapter 5
Chongqing saw some of the era’s fiercest fighting, with the rift between Red Guards descending into warfare. The Kuomintang had made it their capital while battling the Japanese occupation, and it was home to multiple munitions plants; when armed struggles broke out in 1967, the military backed one side and helped its fighters seize what they needed. The factions battled with grenades, machine guns, napalm, tanks and ships upon the river – everything except planes, a resident recalled.
They executed in cold blood too: even the injured, even the pregnant. Tens of thousands fled the city and at least twelve hundred people died, though the true toll was probably much higher. Some were caught in the violence by chance, like the eight-year-old killed by a ricocheting bullet as he played on the street. The others were not so much older, and you could blame chance there too, even if they saw themselves as soldiers. They never thought it would be so serious, that people would die, that so many would die. By the time they saw their friends fall they’d been battling for hours. They were numb; none of it seemed possible. Had it really happened at all?
Shapingba Park held the proof. More than five hundred of the victims, mostly teenagers, were buried here, at a Red Guard cemetery hidden on one edge...
Episode Notes:
Tania Branigan and I discuss her excellent new book “Red Memory: The Afterlives of China's Cultural Revolution”. Tania writes editorials for the Guardian and spent seven years as its China correspondent, reporting on politics, the economy, and social changes. We overlapped in Beijing and became friends. I have also published an excerpt from the book here. You can purchase the book on bookshop.org or on Amazon. The audio edition will be available from Tantor starting 7/11/23 wherever audiobooks are sold.
Links:
China's Cultural Revolution remembered by artist Xu Weixin - video | The Guardian
2012 - China's Cultural Revolution: portraits of accuser and accused | The Guardian
Xilin Wang: Music by a Survivor | Hamburg International Music Festival - YouTube
Wang Xilin ( 王西麟 ): Yunnan Tone Poem (1963) - YouTube
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Bill: Welcome back to the occasional Sinocism podcast. I know I've been absent for a while, and now that I do the Weekly Sharp China podcast, I've realized I like podcasting. So we'll be recording more Sinocism episodes with guests I think are really interesting.
[00:00:11] Bill: Today. We are very lucky to have Tania Branigan to talk about her excellent new book Red Memory: The After Lives of China's Cultural Revolution. As Tania writes, it is impossible to understand China today without understanding the Cultural Revolution. That is something I agree with wholeheartedly. So much so that I even wrote my grad school thesis on Mao badges.
[00:00:30] Bill: I will also be running an excerpt from her book in the coming days, which is released in the UK already and will come out on May 9th in the United States. Tania writes editorials for the Guardian and spent seven years as its China correspondent reporting on politics, the economy, and social changes.
[00:00:45] Bill: She lives in London. Welcome Tania, and congratulations on this great book.
[00:00:50] Tania: Thank you so much for having me on.
[00:00:51] Bill: Oh, it's my...
Episode Notes:
A discussion of the recently concluded 20th Party Congress and what to expect ahead in US China relations. I'm pleased to welcome back Chris Johnson, CEO of Consultancy China Strategies Group, Senior Fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute Center for China Analysis and former Senior China analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. This is the 7th Party Congress that Chris has analyzed professionally.
Links:
John Culver: How We Would Know When China Is Preparing to Invade Taiwan - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Transcript:
Bill: Welcome back to the very occasional Sinocism podcast. Today we are going to talk about the recently concluded 20th Party Congress and what to expect ahead in US China relations. I'm pleased to welcome back Chris Johnson, CEO of Consultancy China Strategies Group, Senior Fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute Center for China Analysis and former Senior China analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. This is the 7th Party Congress that Chris has analyzed professionally. So we have a lot of experience here to help us understand what just happened. Chris, welcome back and thanks for taking the time.
Chris: My pleasure. Always fun to be with you, Bill.
Bill: Great. Well, why don't we jump right in. I'd like to talk about what you see as the most important outcomes from the Congress starting with personnel. What do you make of the leadership team from the central committee to the Politburo to the Standing Committee and what does that say about.
Chris: Yeah, well, I, think clearly Xi Jinping had a massive win, you know, with personnel. I think we see this particularly in the Politburo Standing Committee, right, where on the key portfolios that really matter to him in terms of controlling the key levers of power inside the system. So we're talking propaganda, obviously, Uh, we're talking party bureaucracy, military less so, but security services, you know, these, these sort of areas all up and down the ballot he...
Episode Notes:
This episode's guest is David Rennie, the Beijing bureau chief for The Economist and author of the weekly Chaguan column. Our topic is online discourse, nationalism, the intensifying contest for global discourse power and US-China relations.
Excerpts:
I spoke to some very serious NGO people who've been in China a long time, Chinese and foreigners who said that this was the worst time for NGOs since 1989, and the kind of mentions of espionage and national security was a very serious thing. So then I had to make a decision, was I going to try and speak to someone like Sai Lei. Clearly he is an extremely aggressive nationalist, some would call him a troll and there are risks involved in talking to someone like him. But I felt, I'm one of the few English language media still in China, if I'm going to add value, I need to speak to these people.
I had a very interesting conversation with a CGTN commentator…He said, I can't tell you how many Western diplomats, or Western journalists they whine. And they moan. And they say, how aggressive China is now and how upset all this Wolf warrior stuff is and how China is doing itself damage. And he goes, we're not, it's working. You in the Western media, used to routinely say that the national people's Congress was a rubber stamp parliament. And because we went after you again and again, you see news organizations no longer as quick to use that. Because we went after you calling us a dictatorship, you're now slower to use that term because we went after you about human rights and how it has different meanings in different countries. We think it's having an effect…
One of the things I think is a value of being here is you have these conversations where the fact that we in the West think that China is inevitably making a mistake by being much more aggressive. I don't think that's how a big part of the machine here sees it. I think they think it worked….
To simplify and exaggerate a bit, I think that China, and this is n...
Episode Notes:
Today's guest is Chen Long, co-founder and partner of Plenum, a research firm covering Chinese economy and politics. Prior to that, he was a China economist at Gavekal Dragonomics. Chen Long is a Beijinger, and graduated from Peking University. Welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you.
2:20 - I think the economy is a little bit like ice and fire, for now. There are certain areas certainly doing pretty poorly. Of course, everyone always talking about the property market, Evergrande, and basically every couple weeks we see a property developer default…
6:00 on the power generation problems - usually December is a peak of Chinese electricity consumption. I'm not sure the current supply of coal is not ... I mean, it's better than a month ago, but they probably have to do a little bit more. So I think it's still too early to say that we have totally overcome the end of the shortage.
13:07 on whether this time is different with the real estate market - a year after Beijing and many local governments introduced restrictive policies, finally, we had three months in a row of property sales volume falling by double digits, on a year on year basis. But this is just three months, right? If you look at the previous cycles, especially 2015, 16, we could have the down cycle for 15 months. But this is just three, right? So Beijing has not blinked yet, because it's only three months.
16:30 on Evergrande - I think there was a little bit of overreaction, especially when you see headlines linking Evergrande to Lehman Brothers, and this sort of thing. And I have to say that this is at least the third time I hear a Chinese Lehman moment in the last ten years.
35:50 on the 6th Plenum and likely historical resolution - The previous ones were all about resolutions on certain questions of the party's history. Right? And this one is not uncertain questions. There is no question. It is resolution on the party's accomplishments over the last 100 years, and the lessons. So...
Episode Notes:
Today's guest is Joanna Chiu, a long-time journalist covering China from both inside and outside the country, co-founder and chair of the editorial collective 'NüVoices 女性之音', and the author of the new book "China Unbound." She now covers Canada-China issues for the Toronto Star. Joanna, welcome to the podcast.
4:20 on Huawei, Meng Wanzhou and the two Michaels - when the whole Huawei, Meng Wanzhou saga was unfolding, I got so many questions from not just Canadian journalists, but media around the world about what was going on. I think it's surprising to us because we've been in the China-watching bubble, but more broadly, what happened was very shocking for a lot of people all over the world
23:20 people like me and my family aren't fully accepted as Canadians or as Australians or as Americans, it's always like a hyphen, like Chinese-Canadian, Chinese-American. That just plays into what Beijing wants. When people of Chinese descent are taken as political prisoners or get calls from Chinese police saying, "Stop supporting Hong Kong on social media or stop doing this," these people get less attention. They're not taken seriously when they try to report what's happening because unfortunately a lot of people in the West have accepted the CCP's myth that we're still essentially Chinese
36:20 on Canada-China relations - in Canada, the mood after the Michaels returned and the Meng case was resolved is that they really want to go back to business as usual. To not have any kind of plan in place on how to prevent Canadian hostages from being taken in the future. The Prime Ministers office really steering this even though other parts of government was like, "We need some sort of plan, we need some sort of update to foreign policy in general." There's very little political will.
Links: China Unbound on Amazon.
Joanna Chiu’s website
NüVoices 女性之音
Transcript:
Bill:Hi everyone, today's guest is Joanna Chiu, a long-time journalist covering China from both in...
Episode Notes:
Today, we're going to talk about US-China relations, the upcoming Sixth Plenum , Xi Jinping, and what we might expect for the next year heading into the 2022 20th Party Congress among other topics. I'm really pleased that our first guest for the Sinocism Podcast is Chris Johnson, CEO of Consultancy China strategies Group, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic International Studies and former senior China analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency.
4:45 on US-China relations - I think their assessment is that it's working. In other words, by maintaining that sort of very strict line, they've gotten Madam Meng of Huawei fame home. They've gotten the trade discussions going again. They've got the US saying, "Well, we might lengthen the timeline for you to implement phase one." In other words, it's working from their perspective.
13:30 on the 6th Plenum - The first I think is that, it would represent, I think the net evolution in what I call Xi Jinping's further development of his leadership supremacy. And, I use those terms very deliberately because often times, the shorthand we see in describing this as references to Xi's consolidation of power. Well, in my mind that took place very early on in his tenure.
30:00 on the economy and heading towards the 2022 20th Party Congress - Equally important in my mind is how little the leadership and the economic technocrats seem to be rattled by that fact. In other words, we're not seeing the stimulus wave. We're not seeing monetary policy adjustments in a significant way. There's a lot of study as she goes. And, that could change. We've got the central economic work conference, obviously in December, which will give us a sense of how they're thinking about next year. But like so many other things, I think we as watchers and the investment community and others, we're slow to sometimes break with old narratives. One of which is you must welcome a party Congress with very high growth. And every signal coming ou...
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