The View from Behind Xi Jinping's Desk, with Jonathan Czin
Sinica Podcast21 Okt 2025

The View from Behind Xi Jinping's Desk, with Jonathan Czin

This week on the Sinica Podcast, I speak with Jonathan Czin, the Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies and a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center. His new essay in Foreign Affairs, “China Against China: Xi Jinping Confronts the Downsides of Success,” challenges the dominant Western narrative of Xi Jinping as either Mao reincarnate or a brittle autocrat presiding over imminent collapse. Instead, Czin argues that Xi’s most illiberal reforms can be understood as attempts to cure the pathologies of China’s own success. We discuss his framing of Xi’s “Counterreformation,” how it helps explain China’s current political direction, and what it reveals about our own analytical blind spots in the West.

7:15 – Xi’s “reformation” and Carl Minzner’s “end of reform and opening”

12:18 – Corruption, decentralization, and the “lost decade” under Hu and Wen

20:12 – Defining “resilience” and what Xi means by “eating bitterness”

29:45 – The “downsides of success”: property, corruption, and governance contradictions

45:30 – Counter-reformation vs. counterrevolution: what Xi wants to preserve and discard

54:20 – The myth of yes-men: triangulation and feedback in Xi’s leadership style

1:07:07 – Cognitive empathy and why most U.S. analysis of Xi falls short

1:15:35 – Systems that can’t course-correct: comparing the U.S. and China

1:22:05 – Cognitive empathy, ideology, and the problem of American exceptionalism

Paying it forward:

Jonathan: Allie Mathias and Dinny McMahon

Recommendations:

Jonathan: The Thirty Years War by C.V. Wedgewood; The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni

Kaiser: Transplants by Daniel Tam-Claiborne

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Episoder(537)

The Engineering State and the Lawyerly Society: Dan Wang on his new book "Breakneck"

The Engineering State and the Lawyerly Society: Dan Wang on his new book "Breakneck"

This week on Sinica, I'm delighted to be joined by Dan Wang, formerly of Gavekal Dragonomics and the Paul Tsai Law Center at Yale University, now with the Hoover Institute's History Lab. Dan's new boo...

21 Aug 20251h 32min

Chinese and U.S. AI Applications in Public Administration: Lessons and Implications for Ukraine

Chinese and U.S. AI Applications in Public Administration: Lessons and Implications for Ukraine

Artificial intelligence has been a frequent topic on Sinica in recent years — but usually through the lens of the two countries that have produced the leading models and companies: the United States a...

14 Aug 20251h 18min

Nuclear Weapons, Ukraine, and Great-Power Competition

Nuclear Weapons, Ukraine, and Great-Power Competition

Join me for a conversation with four fantastic panelists about nuclear safety and security issues brought on by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and more broadly on the state of nuclear securi...

12 Aug 20251h 12min

The World AI Conference in Shanghai: Two tech veterans share their impressions

The World AI Conference in Shanghai: Two tech veterans share their impressions

This week on Sinica, Paul Triolo of DGA Albright Stonebridge and tech investor Ryan Cunningham join to talk about their observations and insights from the World AI Conference (WAIC), held in July in S...

6 Aug 20251h 26min

Chinese Cooking Demystified: Chris Thomas and Stephanie Li visit Shaxi!

Chinese Cooking Demystified: Chris Thomas and Stephanie Li visit Shaxi!

This week on Sinica: On my final two days in Shaxi in Yunnan, Chris Thomas and Stephanie Li, the hosts of the marvelous YouTube channel Chinese Cooking Demystified, joined me for some cooking and lots...

30 Jul 20251h 17min

Adam Tooze Climbs the China Learning Curve

Adam Tooze Climbs the China Learning Curve

I'm in Shaxi, a wonderful little town in the Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, and I was joined here by the Columbia economic historian Adam Tooze, who shared his thoughts on what he sees happening on t...

16 Jul 20251h 3min

Carnegie's Tong Zhao on the Expansion of China's Nuclear Arsenal

Carnegie's Tong Zhao on the Expansion of China's Nuclear Arsenal

This week on Sinica, in a show taped in early June in Washington, Kaiser chats with Tong Zhao (赵通) of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a leading expert on Chinese nuclear doctrine, abou...

25 Jun 20251h 10min

The Strange Afterlife of an American Football Story from China

The Strange Afterlife of an American Football Story from China

In 2014, the writer Christopher Beam published a humorous, heartwarming story in The New Republic about an unlikely team of American football enthusiasts in Chongqing who went on to defeat their archr...

18 Jun 202545min

Populært innen Business og økonomi

stopp-verden
lydartikler-fra-aftenposten
dine-penger-pengeradet
e24-podden
rss-penger-polser-og-politikk
rss-borsmorgen-okonominyhetene
pengepodden-2
pengesnakk
tid-er-penger-en-podcast-med-peter-warren
livet-pa-veien-med-jan-erik-larssen
morgenkaffen-med-finansavisen
utbytte
rss-sunn-okonomi
stormkast-med-valebrokk-stordalen
rss-markedspuls-2
okonomiamatorene
lederpodden
liberal-halvtime
finansredaksjonen
rss-finanslunsj