Pekingology

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair in China Studies Jude Blanchette is joined by Xiaobing Li, professor of history and Don Betz Endowed Chair in International Studies at the University of Central Oklahoma to discuss his new book China’s New Navy: The Evolution of PLAN from the People’s Revolution to a 21st Century Cold War.  

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair in China Studies Jude Blanchette is joined by Chun Han Wong, a China reporter for the Wall Street Journal, to discuss his new book Party of One: The Rise of Xi Jinping and China’s Superpower Future. 

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair in China Studies Jude Blanchette is joined by Thomas Gatley, China Strategist at Gavekal Dragonomics, to discuss his recent report “Reshaping Corporate China.” 

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair in China Studies Jude Blanchette is joined by Eric Hundman, senior research analyst at BluePath Labs, to discuss his article “Fearing Hardships and Fatigue? Refusals to Serve in China’s Military, 2009-2018,” which was recently published in the Journal of Contemporary China.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Zongyuan Zoe Liu, a fellow for international political economy at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of the new book Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances Its Global Ambitions. 

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Gerard Dipippo – Senior Fellow in the Economics Program at CSIS, and Andrew Polk – Co-founder of Trivium China and Senior associate with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at CSIS. This week they discuss China’s national security and the readout from the recent convening of China’s National Security Commission.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Carl Minzner – Senior Fellow for China Studies at the Council for Foreign Relations and a Professor of Law at Fordham Law School, Gerard Dipippo – Senior Fellow in the Economics Program at CSIS, and Andrew Polk – Cofounder of Trivium China and Senior associate with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at CSIS. Through the lens of China’s politburo and domestic leadership, they examine how China assesses its economy and recovery since the end of zero-COVID policies.  

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Tyler Jost – Assistant Professor in the department of Political Science at Brown University. They discuss how China’s bureaucratic structure and politics impacts leader decision making. 

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Gerard Dipippo – Senior Fellow in the Economics Program at CSIS, and Andrew Polk - Cofounder of Trivium China and Senior associate with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at CSIS. They discuss the economic and financial dynamics of a possible Taiwan Strait Crisis.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Dr. Lynette H. Ong, Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto, jointly appointed to the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy’s Asian Institute and also a Faculty Fellow at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. They discuss her recent book Outsourcing Repression: Everyday State Power in Contemporary China.  

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Dr. Changdong Zhang, Professor in the Department of Political Science at Peking University and Visiting Scholar at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, to discuss his recent book Governing and Ruling: The Political Logic of Taxation in China.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Kellee Tsai, Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science and Chair Professor of Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, to discuss her recent articles “Structural Power, Hegemony, and State Capitalism: Limits to China’s Global Economic Power,” published in Politics & Society, and “China’s Party-State Capitalism and International Backlash: From Interdependence to Insecurity,” published in International Security.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard, Professor at the Department of International Economics, Government and Business at the Copenhagen Business School, to discuss his work on corporate governance in the Chinese state sector, focusing on his paper: “Corporate Governance with Chinese Characteristics: Party Organization in State-owned Enterprises.” 

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Daniel Koss, a Research Scholar and Lecturer in East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University, to discuss his work on Party-building in two recent articles: “Party Building as Institutional Bricolage: Asserting Authority at the Business Frontier & Discipline Inspections,” published in the China Quarterly, and his forthcoming paper, “Discipline Inspections and the Transformation of Party Authority in China’s Banks."

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Margaret Pearson, Distinguished Professor and Distinguished Scholar-Teacher in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park to discuss her recent research on Chinese Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Africa. Her recent works include “Does Chinese FDI in Africa Inspire Support for a China Model of Development” and “Foreign Direct Investment, Unmet Expectations and the Prospects of Political Leaders: Evidence from Chinese Investment in Africa.” 

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Martin K. Dimitrov,  a professor of political science at Tulane University, to discuss his recent book, ‘Dictatorship and Information’: Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Communist Europe and China.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Howard Wang, an associate political scientist at the RAND Corporation, to discuss his recent paper, ‘Security Is a Prerequisite for Development’: Consensus-Building toward a New Top Priority in the Chinese Communist Party.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Yasheng Huang, the Epoch Foundation Professor of International Management and Faculty Director of Action Learning at the MIT Sloan School of Management, to discuss his forthcoming book, The Rise and the Fall of the EAST: Examination, Autocracy, Stability and Technology in Chinese History and Today.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Dan Mattingly, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University, to discuss his recent paper, The Missionary Roots of Nationalism: Evidence from China. In addition to the paper, they discuss emerging questions surrounding China’s system, the shift of leadership norms in China, and whether China is beginning a new crisis era under centralized rule.

In this episode of Pekingology, Jude Blanchette is joined by Linan Jia, a political scientist who recently received her PhD from the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia, to discuss her recent article, Loyalty and Competence: The Political Selection of Local Cadres in China.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Yong Deng, professor in the Department of Political Science at the United States Naval Academy, to discuss his new book, China's Strategic Opportunity: Change and Revisionism in Chinese Foreign Policy.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Tim Rühlig, Research Fellow in the Technology and Global Affairs Program at the German Council on Foreign Relations, to discuss his recent paper, Chinese Influence through Technical Standardization Power.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Josh Chin and Liza Lin, both reporters at the Wall Street Journal, to discuss their new book, Surveillance State: Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Ling Chen, an assistant professor in political economy at Johns Hopkins SAIS, to discuss her article, Capital Mobility and Taxation: State-Business Collusion in China.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by David Bulman, the Jill McGovern and Steven Muller Assistant Professor of China Studies and International Affairs and U.S. Director of the Pacific Community Initiative at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), to discuss his co-authored paper, Picking Losers: How Career Incentives Undermine Industrial Policy in Chinese Cities.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Xiao Ma, an assistant professor of Political Science at Peking University and faculty associate at Peking University Research Center for Contemporary China, to discuss his recent book, Localized Bargaining: The Political Economy of China’s High-Speed Railway Program.

In this week’s episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Darren Byler, an assistant professor at Simon Fraser University, to discuss two of his recent books, Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City, and In the Camps: China's High-Tech Penal Colony.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Jean Christopher Mittelstaedt, departmental lecturer in modern Chinese studies at the University of Oxford, to discuss his recent paper, Rebuilding Authority: The Party's Relationship with Its Grassroots Organizations.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Victor Shih, associate professor and Ho Miu Lam Chair in China and Pacific Relations at the School of Global Policy and Strategy, UC San Diego. They discuss his new book, Coalitions of the Weak: Elite Politics in China from Mao’s Stratagem to the Rise of Xi.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Olivia Cheung, Research Fellow at the China Institute at SOAS University of London, to discuss her recent paper, Factional Model-making in China: Party Elites’ Open Political Contention in the Policy Process.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Isaac B. Kardon, an assistant professor in the Strategic and Operational Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College, to discuss his paper Pier Competitor: China’s Power Position in Global Ports, which is co-authored with Wendy Leutert.

The views expressed by the guest are his own and do not necessarily represent those of the Navy or Department of Defense.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Suisheng Zhao, Professor and Director of the Center for China-US Cooperation at University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies, to discuss his paper, Top-level Design and Enlarged Diplomacy: Foreign and Security Policymaking in Xi Jinping’s China.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Lizhi Liu, Assistant Professor in the McDonough School of Business and a faculty affiliate of the Department of Government at Georgetown University, to discuss her recent paper, The Rise of Data Politics: Digital China and the World.

In this week’s episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Joseph Torigian, an assistant professor in the School of International Service at American University, to discuss his paper “You Don't Know Khrushchev Well”: The Ouster of the Soviet Leader as a Challenge to Recent Scholarship on Authoritarian Politics.

In this week’s episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by H. Christoph Steinhardt, assistant professor in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Vienna, to discuss his paper, Defending Stability under Threat: Sensitive Periods and the Repression of Protest in Urban China.

In this week’s episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Ashley Esarey, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta, to discuss his recent paper, Propaganda as a Lens for Assessing Xi Jinping’s Leadership.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is join by Xuezhi Guo, the Lincoln Financial Professor of Political Science at Gilford College, to discuss his book, The Politics of the Core Leader in China: Culture, Institution, Legitimacy, and Power.

In this week’s episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Elizabeth Economy, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, currently on leave serving as senior advisor for China in the Department of Commerce. They discuss her evaluation of Xi Jinping’s leadership, as well as her new book, The World According to China.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Patricia Thornton, an Associate Professor of Chinese Politics at University of Oxford and Acting Chief Editor of The China Quarterly. They discuss her recent paper, Of Constitutions, Campaigns and Commissions: A Century of Democratic Centralism under the CCP.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Iza Ding, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Pittsburg, to discuss her paper, Performative Governance.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Ling Li, a Lecturer in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Vienna, to discuss her essay, The Third Road: Where Will Xi Jinping Go in 2022?.

In this week’s episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Rongbin Han, an Associate Professor in the Department of International Affairs at The University of Georgia, to discuss his recent paper, Cyber Nationalism and Regime Support under Xi Jinping: The Effects of the 2018 Constitutional Revision.

On this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Rory Truex, an Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, to discuss his research on public opinion in China.

For more on Rory's work: https://www.rorytruex.com/research-areas

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Chang-Tai Hsieh, the Phyllis and Irwin Winkelried Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, to discuss his recently co-authored paper, Special Deals with Chinese Characteristics.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair in China Studies Jude Blanchette is joined by David Shambaugh, the Gaston Sigur Professor of Asian Studies, Political Science & International Affairs, and the founding Director of the China Policy Program in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, to discuss his new book, China's Leaders: From Mao to Now.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair in China Studies Jude Blanchette is joined by Jack Zhang, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director of the Trade War Lab at the University of Kansas. They discuss a co-authored paper with Samantha Vortherms, Assistant Professor of Political Science at UC Irvine, Political Risk and Firm Exit: Evidence from the US-China Trade War, which examines the political economy of tariffs and decoupling. 

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair in China Studies Jude Blanchette is joined by Mary Gallagher, Professor of Political Science and Director of the International Institute at the University of Michigan, and Blake Miller, Assistant Professor of Computational Social Science at the London School of Economics, to discuss their recent paper, Who Not What: The Logic of China's Information Control Strategy, which examines how the Chinese Party-state controls social media.

References: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/china-quarterly/article/who-not-what-the-logic-of-chinas-information-control-strategy/4DC69883679770CBCDB1F1B87A34F09E

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair in China Studies Jude Blanchette is joined by Joseph Fewsmith, Professor of International Relations and Political Science at the Boston University Pardee School, to discuss his new book, Rethinking Chinese Politics, which was recently published by Cambridge University Press.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair in China Studies Jude Blanchette is joined by Manfred Elfstrom, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics, Philosophy, and Political Science at the University of British Columbia, to discuss his new book, Workers and Change in China: Resistance, Repression, Responsiveness. 

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair in China Studies Jude Blanchette is joined by Manoj Kewalramani, a Fellow in China Studies at the Bangalore-based Takshashila Institution. They discuss how and why to read the People's Daily. 

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair in China Studies Jude Blanchette is joined by Dimitar Gueorguiev, an associate professor of political science at Syracuse University, to discuss his forthcoming book, Retrofitting Leninism: Participation without Democracy in China.

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair in China Studies Jude Blanchette is joined by Leng Ning, an Assistant Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, to discuss her research on state-business relations and incentive structures for CCP cadres. 

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair in China Studies Jude Blanchette is joined by Wang Yuhua, the Frederick S. Danziger Associate Professor of Government at Harvard University, to discuss how rulers in Imperial China maintained -- and lost -- political power. 

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair in China Studies Jude Blanchette is joined by Karrie J. Koesel, an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, to discuss her research on Beijing's campaign to instill regime loyalty amongst the Chinese population.

In this week’s episode of Pekingology, Jude Blanchette is joined by George Mason University's Ketian Zhang to discuss her recent article, "Cautious Bully: Reputation, Resolve, and Beijing's Use of Coercion in the South China Sea."

In this week’s episode of Pekingology, Jude Blanchette is joined by Jason Wu, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, to discuss his work mapping the substance and spectrum of ideology in China. 

In this week’s episode of Pekingology, Jude Blanchette is joined by Jérôme Doyon, a Departmental Lecturer on Contemporary Chinese Studies at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, to discuss his research on the evolving role of the Communist Youth League as a "path to power" within China's elite political networks. 

In this week's episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Jessica Teets, an Associate Professor in the Political Science Department at Middlebury College, to discuss her work on China's evolving governance system. 

In this week's episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Yeling Tan, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon and Kyle Jaros, an Associate Professor of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. They discuss the critical -- and surprising -- role that provinces play in China's economic policymaking and development. Despite Xi Jinping's centralizing tendencies, provincial governments are as important as ever. 

In this episode, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette talks with Rogier Creemers, an Associate Professor in the Law and Governance of China at Leiden University, about the role ideology plays in China's evolving legal and governance system. 

In this week’s episode of Pekingology, Jude Blanchette is joined by John Yasuda, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University to discuss his research on the development of China's financial and equity markets, and how these intersect with Beijing's political priorities.  

In this week's episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Andrew Polk of Trivium China and Barry Naughton, the So Kwanlok Chair of Chinese International Affairs at UC San Diego, to discuss Beijing's evolving theory and praxis towards managing its economic and financial systems. 

On this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette explores the evolving nature of Chinese state capitalism with Meg Rithmire, the F. Warren McFarlan Associate Professor at Harvard Business School. 

In this episode of Pekingology, Jude Blanchette is joined by Yale University's Dan Mattingly to discuss his new working paper, "How the Party Commands the Gun: Coups, Revolts, and the Military in China." In it, Dan leverages a new dataset of over 10,000 appointments in the PLA to explore how Chinese leaders, including Xi Jinping, manage the possibility of coups through personnel appointments. 

How did communist ideology affect state-building efforts in the early PRC? How and why does the current CCP leadership view statistics through the lens of politics? In this episode, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Arunabh Ghosh, an associate professor of Modern Chinese History at Harvard University to discuss his new book, Making it Count: Statistics and Statecraft in the Early People's Republic of China. 

In this episode of Pekingology, Jude Blanchette talks to Jörg Wuttke, the president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China, to discuss the expanding power and influence of state-owned enterprises in China's economy.

What is the role of the quinquennial Party Congress? And why was the 19th Party Congress in 2017 so important to China's future economic, political, and military trajectory? In this episode, Jude Blanchette is joined by Dan Tobin, a member of the China studies faculty at the National Intelligence University, to explore the "watershed" of the 19th Party Congress. 

The opinions expressed in the podcast belong solely to the guest and do not in any way represent the views of the United States government.

Under the rule of Xi Jinping, the space for intellectual debate has shrunk dramatically, impacting both China's left and right. To explore the realities of intellectual discourse in contemporary China, Jude Blanchette is joined by veteran journalist Chris Buckley of the New York Times. 

Is China a developing country or a superpower? This question is at the heart of Pu Xiaoyu's 2019 book, Rebranding China: Contested Status Signaling in the Changing Global Order. In this episode, he joins Jude Blanchette to explore how China's "contradictory posturing" complicates interpretations of its foreign policy. 

What explains Beijing's extraordinary campaign of repression in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region? In this episode, Jude Blanchette is joined by political scientist Sheena Greitens to discuss her 2019 paper, "Counterterrorism and Preventive Repression: China's Changing Strategy in Xinjiang."

With the removal of the only term limit on office in March 2018, Xi Jinping stands to rule indefinitely. But what happens if he suddenly dies in office? How will China's political and economic system respond? In this episode, Jude Blanchette is joined by Michigan State University's Erica Frantz to discuss her co-authored paper, "When Dictators Die." 

In this episode of Pekingology, Georgetown University's Kristen Looney joins Jude Blanchette to discuss her new book, Mobilizing for Development: The Modernization of Rural East Asia, which explores, inter alia, how the CCP used political campaigns to drive poverty alleviation efforts in rural China. 

In this episode of Pekingology, Harvard University’s Lei Ya-Wen joins Jude Blanchette to discuss her recent paper, "Revisiting China’s Social Volcano: Attitudes toward Inequality and Political Trust in China," which explores the evolving attitudes of Chinese citizens towards inequality and what impact this has on social stability and political trust. 

In this episode of Pekingology, Jude Blanchette is joined by Stanford University's Jennifer Pan to discuss her new book, Welfare for Autocrats: How Social Assistance in China Cares for its Rulers, which explores how China's social safety net has morphed to become a tool for enforcing political stability. 

In this first episode of Pekingology, Jude Blanchette invites Julian Gruin to discuss the evolution of China's hybrid economic system and the domineering role of the Communist Party over the financial sector.

Julian Gruin is assistant professor of transnational governance at the University of Amsterdam. You can find his book, Communists Constructing Capitalism: State, Market, and the Party in China's Financial Reform, here.