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

12.16.11

Learning Chinese

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more 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

12.09.11

Chinese Literature

Jeremy Goldkorn & Alice Xin Liu from Sinica Podcast
Our podcast this week is all about books and money in modern China. If you, like us, are tired of Lu Xun and Lao She, listen to Sinica this week as we look into the state of contemporary Chinese literature, asking what writers are hot, what writers...

Sinica Podcast

12.06.11

The Soul of Beijing

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more 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

Kaiser Kuo & Arthur R. Kroeber 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

11.25.11

Occupy Sinica

Jeremy Goldkorn & Michael Anti from Sinica Podcast
Earlier this week, The New York Times published an editorial by prominent Chinese academic Yan Xuetong claiming that China would defeat the United States on the grounds of moral superiority. While the American bafflement over this piece has died...

Sinica Podcast

11.18.11

Is Soft Power Always This Damn Boring?

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more 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

11.04.11

The Extremes of China Media

Jeremy Goldkorn, David Moser & more from Sinica Podcast
It seems to be the consensus among longtime China watchers that the Chinese media has become more radicalized over the last five years, with both online and traditional channels now feeding the public conflicting stories of both reflexive scorn for...

Sinica Podcast

10.13.11

Sun Yat-sen and the Xinhai Revolution

Kaiser Kuo, David Moser & more 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

Kaiser Kuo & Jeremy Goldkorn 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

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more 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...

Sinica Podcast

09.16.11

North Korea: Open for Business?

Jeremy Goldkorn, Edward Wong & more from Sinica Podcast
As the guillotine of debt contagion hangs over Europe, financial pressures in Asia have led an unexpected player to make a strategic shift. After months of escalating tensions with South Korea have shuttered its opportunities for expanded trade...

Sinica Podcast

08.27.11

Zhao Liang and the South-North Water Diversion Project

Kaiser Kuo, Edward Wong & more from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica: China makes an about-face on Libya, we discuss a recent controversy in Beijing’s arts community over independent filmmaker Zhao Liang, and get an on-the-ground update on the state of China’s South-North Water Diversion Project,...