Face-Off: The U.S. vs China

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has given China five years to dominate Artificial Intelligence. He believes China must accomplish this goal in order to become the world’s tech giant. But the United States is doing everything it can to stop China from reaching its goal. Can Washington stop US and European advanced chips from reaching China? It seems not, as the arrival of DeepSeek shows. Will AI development be throttled by the Chinese government’s heavy censorship? Can China achieve its goal? 

Guest: Karen Hao, journalist and engineer. Writing appears in The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal. Author of the upcoming Empire of AI. 

Book Recommendations: 

AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order by Kai-Fu Lee 

Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future by Reid Hoffman and Greg Beato

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions. Rowhome’s Creative Director is Alex Lewis. John Myers is Rowhome’s Executive Producer. Face-Off is a proud member of the Airwave podcast network.

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Back in 2015 the Chinese government declared that they would become the world leader in EVs by 2025. Major car companies scoffed. Who wants an EV? Today, China automakers have surpassed Japan, Germany and the US to become the number one exporter of cars. A record number of Chinese EVs were sold globally last year. How did China become the global leader in EVs? We’ll talk with the man who literally wrote the book on the rise of China’s car industry. 

Guest: Michael Dunne, Auto executive in China and the US, author American Wheels, Chinese Roads.  

Books: Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk and the Bet of the Century by Tim Higgins.

Michael Dunne's new book will publish in mid-2025.

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions. Rowhome’s Creative Director is Alex Lewis. John Myers is Rowhome’s Executive Producer. Face Off is a proud member of the Airwave podcast network.

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China’s leader, Mao Zedong famously said that “Women hold up half the sky.” But these days it doesn’t feel that way in China. Unfair marriage rules, difficulties getting a divorce, barriers to owning property and many more restrictions are challenging women to speak out, and act. We’ll hear about the Chinese “leftover women” who are veering from the traditional path and about the Chinese feminists of today.

Guest:  Leta Hong Fincher, author, Left Over Women. 

Recommended Books:

Left Over Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China by Leta Hong Fincher

Tiananmen Square by Lai Wen

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions. Rowhome’s Creative Director is Alex Lewis. John Myers is Rowhome’s Executive Producer.

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Motion pictures first came to China in 1896.  China was one of the first countries to screen the Lumiere brother’s “western shadowplays” as they were called. By the 1930’s Shanghai was known as the Hollywood of the East. 

That all changed after the founding of the People’s Republic. Western films were eventually allowed back into China but it wasn’t until the release of the American epic, Titanic and its blockbuster success in China that Hollywood woke up to the potential of the Chinese market. Hollywood studios soon swarmed into China, working with Chinese movie makers to concoct big movies for big audiences: The Great Wall; Mulan; Kung Fu Panda 3. Then the dream went in a different direction.  We’ll speak with an American film producer who has been at the center of the push and pull between Hollywood and China.

Guest: Peter Loehr, American movie executive with three decades in China.

Recommended Books:

The Golden Screen by Jeff Yang

An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema 1896 - 1937 by Zhang Zhen  

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions. Rowhome’s Creative Director is Alex Lewis. John Myers is Rowhome’s Executive Producer.

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More than 170 million Americans are entertained, informed and earn big bucks from the Chinese-owned app, TikTok. Now their relationship with TikTok is in mortal danger, to say the least. American politicians seem to be able to agree on one thing: TikTok is bad. What happens now, and how did Americans get hooked on TikTok in the first place. Trump used TikTok to great affect in his campaign. What’s his attitude to TikTok going forward? What’s happening to the potential American buyers of TikTok?

Guest: Louise Matsakis, senior business editor at Wired. Louise has been reporting on TikTok for more than four years.

Recommended Reads:

Love It; Hate It; Fear It: How TikTok Changed Our Culture by Sapna Maheshwani 

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions. Rowhome’s Creative Director is Alex Lewis. John Myers is Rowhome’s Executive Producer.

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There are few American journalists reporting from inside China today. But that has not always been the case. In fact, American journalists in China freely reported on one of the biggest stories of recent history: the Chinese army’s massacre of protestors in Tiananmen Square in 1989. In this episode, we talk to Richard Roth, a CBS correspondent who was there during the 1989 protests. We feature Lingling Wei, the distinguished Wall Street Journal correspondent who was kicked out of China, along with other American reporters. How are journalists today reporting on China from afar? At this vital time, how do we get on the ground reporting from China when we can’t be on the ground?  

Guest: Lingling Wei, Wall Street Journal, Chinese born journalist now in New York

Book Recommendations:

Assignment China: An Oral History of American Journalists in the People’s Republic by Mike Chinoy

Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life by Nicholas Kristof.

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions. Rowhome’s Creative Director is Alex Lewis. John Myers is Rowhome’s Executive Producer.

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Trump has praised Xi Jinping in the past. He’s also slapped tariffs on China. What does the return of Trump mean for China? Economic rivalry for sure. Possible war over Taiwan? A battle over AI dominance and confrontation over China’s rapidly expanding military force, also for sure. How will Trump stop China from usurping America’s place on the global stage?

Guest: Minxin Pei, Claremont College professor and China commentator.

Book Recommendations: 

The Red Emperor: Xi Jinping and His New China by Michael Sheridan. 

Xi Jinping: The Backlash by Richard McGregor.

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions. Rowhome’s Creative Director is Alex Lewis. John Myers is Rowhome’s Executive Producer.

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Season 2 of Face-Off: US vs China begins Tuesday, February 11.

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In this bonus episode, Jane Perlez sits down with New York Times national security and White House correspondent David Sanger. In this candid conversation, they talk about his new bestseller: New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West. Plus they discuss Sanger's views on where the US - China relationship is headed, how he worries about the friendship between China and Russia, and a party in New York City where talk turned to the subject of nuclear weapons. This conversation was recorded in August 2024 at a surf club in Sydney, Australia. 

Follow David Sanger on Twitter at @SangerNYT.

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions.

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Will the United States and China go to war over an island of 24 million people nearly 6,500 miles from California? Why is this a possibility? What is the history and significance of Taiwan to America and China?

Guest: Lyle Goldstein, former professor US Naval College, now at Brown University. Taiwanese expert, Syaru Shirley Lin, founder of the think tank, Capri.

An essay by Lyle Goldstein on how Taiwan features in US foreign policy. In the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.  

https://home.watson.brown.edu/research/research-briefs/trouble-taiwan

 About Shirley Lin’s CAPRI, a foundation that studies the Asia Pacific region. 

https://caprifoundation.org/syaru-shirley-lin/

A controversial essay on how nuclear weapons could be used in a war over Taiwan by Matthew Kroenig, a professor at Georgetown University and senior director at The Atlantic Council. Mr. Kroenig’s article is considered an outlier on the subject https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/deliberate-nuclear-use-in-a-war-over-taiwan-scenarios-and-considerations-for-the-united-states/

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions.

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How the Chinese economic downturn is affecting all kinds of people. How real estate meltdown, with enough unfinished empty apartments to fill the population of Germany, is at the center of it all. How tech entrepreneurs are mysteriously disappearing, and how college graduates don’t want to work. 

Guests: Keyu Jin, London School of Economics, author of New China Playbook; Elsie Chen, a member of China’s “lying down” generation, now a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.

Elsie Chen’s New York Times article about lying flat. She interviews Luo Huazhong, the factory worker, who quit his job, went back to his rural village. His post about his lifestyle decision went viral, and inspired a movement dedicated to opting out. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/03/world/asia/china-slackers-tangping.html

A roundtable discussion with Keyu Jin at the Fairbank Center at Harvard. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=357QIFs9FXc

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions.

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Two young CIA agents were flown to northern China in 1952, part of a bizarre Cold War operation to overthrow Mao Zedong. The plane crashed. The two Americans were arrested, and jailed for 20 years. We fast forward to today and turn the tables: How does China spy on the US now? Who is ahead in the fight over the new technologies?

Guests: John DeLury, author, Agents of Subversion; Nigel Inkster, former director operations, MI6; former agent in Beijing. 

Details about John Delury’s compelling book that tells the story of how two CIA operatives were captured in China and how they endured 20 years in jail. 

https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501765971/agents-of-subversion/

Nigel Inkster’s book about the US and China, the two big tech competitors.   

https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Great_Decoupling/K4xfzQEACAAJ?hl=en

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions.

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Xi Jinping and Joe Biden met on a basketball court in China in 2011 when they were vice presidents. They later toasted each other in Washington. They’ve spent many hours together. Much has changed. Can they hold the center together? 

Guest: Minxin Pei, Chinese born professor of government Claremont McKenna College; author of Surveillance State and other books on China.

 Jane’s first podcast about how Washington got it all wrong on Xi Jinping. 

https://shorensteincenter.org/podcast-on-the-trail-of-xi-jinping/

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions.

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From his studio in Boston, Yo-Yo Ma tells us how music eases tensions between American and Chinese people, even as Washington and Beijing are at each other’s throats. 

Guests: Yo Yo Ma; Hai Ye Ni, principal cellist, Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions.

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China is rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal even as arms control treaties are shredded. Can China and the U.S. come to the table and agree to nuclear arms control accords? Should Artificial Intelligence control nuclear weapons?  

Guest: Tong Zhao; Chinese born nuclear expert now at Carnegie China in DC 

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions.

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Apple, one of the world’s most valuable companies, depends on China, America’s biggest adversary, to manufacture its iPhones. Apple employs millions of contract workers in China. Is this marriage heading for the rocks? What will Apple and China do to keep their marriage intact? 

Guests: Prof. Willy Shih, Harvard Business School; Wayne Ma, tech reporter, The Information

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions.

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An American surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter jet collide near the Chinese coast in 2001.  Smart diplomacy by a former American Navy Admiral results in the release of two dozen American airmen and women from detention in China. Today, tensions between the countries are much higher, their planes are flying within feet of each other. There are fears a similar collision could result in war.  

Guest: Admiral Scott Swift, former Commander US Pacific Fleet.

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions.

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Our trailer features jaw-dropping audio from the cockpit of an American spy plane flying over the South China Sea. It’s early 2001. A Chinese fighter jet is getting perilously close to the slow moving American plane. Some weeks later, a collision occurred. What happened next? Listen to episode 1 of Face Off. Our trailer also dazzles with interview clips from our episodes covering tech, spies, the Chinese economy and more. 

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions.

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