How to Be a Sensitive China Watcher – Kaiser Kuo

UPenn Center for the Study of Contemporary China

Today, the reality and consequences of China’s rise have come to dominate news headlines the world over. Along with China’s growing wealth and power have come new tensions, with the United States and other countries, that further require better understanding of China’s story, in all its different facets. Given the stakes, there may never have been a more important time for us to think about how we think about China, whether as professional “China watchers” or more casual observers. In this episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses with Kaiser Kuo, host of the Sinica Podcast, precepts for analyzing China that Kaiser has distilled from his longtime and varied engagement with the country and its people. The episode was recorded on March 31, 2019.

Kaiser Kuo is host and co-founder of the Sinica Podcast, the most popular English language podcast on current affairs in China, as well as editor-at-large of SupChina. Sinica has run since April 2010, and has published over 400 episodes. Until April 2016, Kaiser served as director of international communications for Baidu, China’s leading search engine. In 2016, he returned to the U.S. after a 20-year stint in Beijing, where his career spanned the gamut from music to journalism to technology. Kaiser also spent a year in Beijing from 1988 to 1989, when he co-founded the seminal Chinese heavy metal band Tang Dynasty as lead guitarist. In May 2016, he was honored by the Asia Society with a leadership award for “revolutionizing the way people live, consume, socially interact, and civically engage.” He speaks frequently on topics related to politics, international relations, and technology in China. You can follow him @KaiserKuo.

Sound engineering: Elijah Melanson and Neysun Mahboubi

Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com