Below is a complete transcript of the live Sinica Podcast with Lizzi Lee and Damien Ma.
Kaiser Kuo: Welcome to the Sinica Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China, produced in partnership with The China Project. Subscribe to Access from The China Project to get access. Access to, not only our great daily newsletter, but all the original writing on our website at thechinaproject.com. We’ve got reported stories, essays and editorials, great explainers and trackers, regular columns, and, of course, a growing library of podcasts. We cover everything from China’s fraught foreign relations to its ingenious entrepreneurs, from the ongoing repression of Uyghurs and other Muslim peoples in China’s Xinjiang region, to Beijing’s ambitious plans to shift the Chinese economy onto a post-carbon footing. It’s a feast of business, political, and cultural news about a nation that is reshaping the world. We cover China with neither fear nor favor.
I’m Kaiser Kuo, and today I am at the Chicago Council for Global Affairs, where our good friends here at the Council have invited us to a small group live taping of the show.
With me here are my colleague Lizzi Lee, who hosts the excellent Chinese language show, Wall Street Today (今日华尔街 Jīnrì Huá’ěrjiē), and The China Project’s own, Live with Lizzi Lee. On that show she interviews academics, analysts, and business leaders about China’s finance, about the economy, about business, about politics. If you haven’t already started watching it, it’s just amazing. Lizzi did her doctorate in economics at MIT and went on into media, mainly out of exasperation at the paltry choices that Chinese language viewers in the diaspora have before them, like straight up Party propaganda, or Fǎlúngōng 法轮功, or Guō Wénguì 郭文贵. You get your choice of these three, or Lizzi now. You can take Lizzi. Anyway, hey, welcome to the show. Welcome back.
Lizzi Lee: Thanks, Kaiser. Great to be here.
Kaiser: Damien Ma also returns to Sinica here in his hometown of Chicago, where he heads the Paulson Institute’s wonderful think tank, MacroPolo, which I think puts out some of the smartest analysis and really offers full-stack multimedia, great, highly produced, wonderful stuff with infographics and animations and video, and it’s just amazing, and a whole lot more. If you aren’t already reading them regularly, you really need to start. Basically, if there are two people who I’d like to have on a show about the 20th Party Congress who aren’t actually sitting members of the Politburo Standing Committee, it would be Lizzi and Damien. So, thanks to you guys for making the time.
Damien Ma: Thank you, Kaiser. Chicago’s my adopted hometown.
Kaiser: Oh, right. Right.
Damien: Vermonter at heart always.
Kaiser: You’re a Vermonter, Burlington boy or something like that, right?
Damien: That’s right.
Kaiser: Yeah. Okay. So, adopted hometown, I stand corrected. But still, I do not stand corrected about having two people who I’d really want to have on the show. Let me start by talking about how this Party Congress, a lot of it was predictable, but there were some pretty big surprises and things that generated quite a bit of chatter among the China watching types. I suppose we will deal with the elephant in the room, which, of course, was what happened on Saturday, October 22 in Beijing with Hú Jǐntāo 胡锦涛. Before we get into that, though, the other surprise was that nobody won MacroPolo’s fantasy football pick thing, where every year you, or every five years, you get like pick your seven and see how you do. What was the closest to who came closest?
Damien: David Paulk…
Kaiser: Oh, yeah.
Damien: Who used to be at Sixth Tone. I think you might…
Kaiser: I do.
Damien: You probably do know him. He has six out of seven. And in fact, I just met up with him yesterday too. Yes, we had, let’s just give the quick rundown stats, we had probably, I just looked at the numbers before coming here, probably had more than 8,000 people play it.
Kaiser: Wow.
Damien: About a thousand entered the actual competition. And so that’s zero for 1008 players.
Kaiser: My God.
Damien: So, there are a lot of reasons, but I think one major reason, one lesson that I learned, which actually reinforced the premise of why we did the game, it’s, yes, it was fun, but there was an intellectual premise which was trying to test what political scientists Phil Tetlock has found was sort of, on average, expert predictions may not necessarily beat your non-expert-
Kaiser: Your average, yeah.
Damien: Your non-average results. And this more or less reinforced that particular finding.
Kaiser: Tetlock would say that we have sort of this, we privilege the insider view when actually it’s the outsider view that we should be looking at. I don’t know if that’s what happened here. Lizzi, how did you do?
Lizzi: Oh, I got Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 right. So, at least one of the seven correct. I also did like…
Kaiser: 1007 people got that right.
Lizzi: Right. I also did like a horse race of all the models. I think the one that won out was by counting strokes. So, if you count strokes and you rank all strokes from less to more, you will get at least five out of the seven correct. You have the Dings, the Xis, the Lis, and that’s basically it.
Kaiser: Yeah. Ding is only two strokes.
Lizzi: Right. Or if you predict the premier based on the last name of the former premier, you would also get that. So, sometimes it’s-
Kaiser: In fact, if you predicted this premier based on the full name of the former premier…
Lizzi: Yes. That’s also…
Kaiser: Yeah. He’s different by more than one gram though, I have to say.
Lizzi: Right. And Kè 克 actually. It’s kind of symbolic. But we can talk more about the new and the old premier later on in this conversation.
Kaiser: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I guess we should talk about the whole Hu Jintao thing.
Lizzi: Oh, yes. This will be the last thing.
Kaiser: You know who did get it right though? Or almost all right was Josh Chin.
Lizzi: Yes. The Wall Street Journal reporting.
Kaiser: Yeah.
Lizzi: Amazing reporting actually from Wall Street Journal.
Kaiser: Yeah. Has he talked, has he said… Has he reviewed his source or anything like that? How did he… Then the SCMP had the same lineup, basically.
Lizzi: Right. But I think the SCMP got the orders slightly wrong. So, Wáng Hùníng 王沪宁 ended up on CPCC instead of NPC, and Chén Mǐn’ěr 陈敏尔 was not on the Politburo Standing Committee.
Kaiser: Right. So, CPCC is notionally one leg lower than NPC, right?
Lizzi: Yes.
Kaiser: NPC should be number two.
Lizzi: Yep. Number two or number three depending on whether the premier is ahead of it, but…
Kaiser: Oh, right. Obviously, number three or number four. Yeah, let’s get back to that elephant in the room.
Damien: But I’ll just add, I mean, before we get to that, I’ll just say at one point. I think for a lot of people, this was fairly surprising, I would say, perhaps even shocking.
Kaiser: Yeah, for sure.
Damien: I think general assumptions were that Xi Jinping was quite strong, but I don’t think anybody anticipated this level, this extent. And so, I think the question we ought to ask, rather than fixate on the outcome now is sort of like, what were our priors? What were the assumptions that we had going into it that may have changed, if you considered this possibly a paradigm-shifting election, so to speak, or selection, so to speak, what paradigms did it shift from? And I think that’s why the predictions were especially hard, if not impossible, this year.
Kaiser: Well, I think there was a lot of-
Damien: Because a lot of the assumptions fell apart.
Kaiser: Yeah. But I think there’s a lot of wishful thinking going into a lot of people’s assumptions. I mean, I think everyone had their own kind of cherished market reformer champion that they were hoping was going to get a seat. But I looked at it, I mean, obviously I was wrong too. I was completely wrong too.
Damien: You had Hán Zhèng 韩正 on yours, didn’t you?
Lizzi: That’s my…
Kaiser: Because of you, Lizzi. That’s your fault.
Lizzi: Yeah. That’s completely my fault. So, here’s my thinking. I thought Xi Jinping would break some norms. If he is to break the age norm, I thought it would’ve been broken in the other direction. He would’ve kept someone over the age thresholds, and that would have been Han Zheng, who has been the executive vice premier who has governance experience and who’s a very capable leader. So, that’s my choice. But apparently, he broke the norm in the other direction by kicking down Lǐ Kèqiáng 李克强 and Wāng Yáng 汪洋 from the Politburo Standing Committee, which, to be honest, is probably the biggest surprise. That has not happened before, kicking down a leader who has not crossed the aged threshold from the Politburo Standing Committee.
Kaiser: One of many unprecedented things that happened.
Lizzi: Yes, exactly.
Kaiser: Damien, you mentioned priors. I think that there were a lot of people who were going into this having read Lingling Wei’s reporting, I think, and believing that there was meaningful opposition to Xi Jinping in the run up. That there were a lot of people who were quite sore over what happened in the Shanghai lockdown, for example, and did not think that Lǐ Qiáng 李强 was going to rise as a result of that. What I came away with, though, what I kept thinking was we’ve seen all these people writing about how now Xi Jinping, he’ll ran the table, now he’s unconstrained, and now… Was he really constrained before?
Lizzi: Yeah. I mean, so we heard lots of chatter about internal seizure among leaders, especially in the spring of this year. But to my knowledge, there really has not been any concrete evidence of any policy pushback from either Li Keqiang or some more “reform mind leaders” in air quotes. I mean, so here’s my thing. I don’t think Li Keqiang and Xi Jinping had a good relationship. Li Keqiang was not Xi Jinping’s first choice. Li Keqiang, in every sense of the word, is compromised. And I always joke with my friends, Li Keqiang is like that pair of sneakers, half a size too small for Xi Jinping. You’ll have blisters in your feet. It will not be the pair of shoes you would’ve chosen if you had another chance. But I mean, your shoes are not going to revolt against you and kill you in the literal sense.
I think that’s sort of the way I think about the relationship between Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang. And also, I think it’s important to note that the State Council, China’s cabinet, had long lost its policy making, policy designing power under Xi Jinping’s reign. And that happened during the first term of Xi Jinping.
Kaiser: With all the creation of these small leading groups.
Lizzi: Yes. With the work leading groups, the small groups, lǐngdǎo xiǎozǔ (领导小组), Xi Jinping chairing almost all of them. So, to the extent that there was some seizing or some sort of internal fight between the Fu and the Yuen, the south and the north of Chinese policy-making body is long gone. At this point, Li Keqiang has never, and will never, and didn’t ever present a danger or challenge to Xi Jinping’s power.
Kaiser: And Damien, I brought this up with you before too, but it just strikes me that one would have to be pretty naive to think that this leadership would come together during this moment when they felt, from their perspective at least, enormous external threat, an enormous external… We saw the absence of this phrase in his speech. We saw the absence of the phrase ‘period of strategic opportunity’ (战略机期 zhànlüè jīqī) that was absent from his speech. And they clearly see themselves very much undergone with the United States, especially trying to basically cut China off at the knees as far as they’re concerned. With this knee on China’s neck, you think they’re going to say, “This is a good time to pursue collective leadership?” No, of course not. Right?
Damien: Well, so I think, to your point, Kaiser, one question that I think people haven’t asked enough about it, and this is just one of my first draft ideas that I’ve been thinking about, so take it with a grain of salt, but we’re focusing on the person. We’re focusing on the strength of Xi Jinping. But I think another way to think about it is, well, is it the person or is it the institution? In other words, is it really the strength of Xi Jinping or the weakness of the CCP because of what transpired in the last decade? And because of what happened with the Bó Xīlái 薄熙来 crisis back in 2012. Not a perfect analogy, but you can ask the same question on what happened in our politics, is it really that Trump was really strong or was it that the GOP was weak? I know that’s not a perfect parallel, but that’s just another way of thinking about maybe we should be looking a bit more closer at the institution rather than just focusing on the person.
Kaiser: God, that would be a radical notion. I mean, it’s so focused right now on the individual. But let me ask you, Lizzi, we had a conversation just the other day where you raised a really interesting suggestion. We were talking about Li Keqiang and his removal. Discarded like that old pair of shoes, as you say. But Li Qiang, who’s replaced him, the general knock on him is that, oh, he screwed up the Shanghai lockdown, he was terrible, and all that stuff. But there are a couple things that you’ve said about him that I thought were really interesting. One is that he’s actually quite respected by the business community in the Yangtze River Delta, where he has served. That is, I mean, not just in Shanghai, but in Zhejiang and also in Jiangsu. So, the economic powerhouse of China that he actually is well liked, not just by the Chinese business community, but by MMCs as well. The other thing that you said, which I thought was even more interesting, was that you think that his close association with Xi might actually mean he’s comfortable speaking uncomfortable truths to Xi.
Lizzi: Right. That’s basically my point. I mean, on <Li Qiang, I think, I mean, there are like two strands of thought. One is just Li Qiang is completely just not capable of governing China. He’s just like a Xi Jinping acolyte. He’s going to do whatever Xi Jinping directs him to do. That’s one strand of thought. Another strand of thought is, oh, Li Qiang is the only person who has governed all three of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai. He clearly knows the business community. He knows how to run the richest provinces of China. So, Li Qiang is the most capable candidate for the premier. I think both are probably two extreme. My take is probably somewhere in the middle.
If you compare Li Qiang’s portfolio with, say, Li Keqiang’s portfolio, yes, Li Keqiang had more central governing experience, but the only provincial governance experience Li Keqiang had was back in Liaoning, which this economic backwater in Northeast China.
Kaiser: A rust belt.
Damien: Yes, that part. So, how do you compare people’s resumes? If you want to focus on central governance experience, yes, Li Keqiang won out, but in terms of economic governance, which is going to be the main part of the premier’s job, and Li Qiang actually arguably had more experience. So, that’s the first point I would make. And second point is, so to the extent that Xi Jinping trusts Li Qiang’s experience in Shanghai, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu, and Xi Jinping perceives Li Qiang as a loyal person, Li Qiang’s information channel might be more transparent to Xi Jinping. And Xi Jinping’s feedback to Li Qiang might be more candid. So no one is speaking truth to power in Communist Party these days, but Li Qiang might feel more comfortable giving Xi Jinping the true information on the ground, especially when it comes to China’s economy woes, which there are many.
Kaiser: Yeah.
Lizzi: So, that’s my take of things. And also, so we spoke previously about people’s impression of Li Qiang. I would say there are three camps of people, and they have very different perceptions of Li Qiang. The business community generally treat Li Qiang with regard. These are the people who experience the opening of Star Market in Shanghai, who experienced the first Tesla factory in Shanghai. They thought Li Qiang was pro-business, he’s friendly, knows how business works and welcoming in the, especially the foreign executive community. The second group of people are Shanghai bureaucrats, and they clearly favor Han Zheng overly Li Qiang. They told me Han Zheng was just a much more capable person than Li Qiang. But thinking back, I think it might be that Shanghai bureaucracies are very cliquish, and Han Zheng was a Shanghai native, spent his entire career in Shanghai.
Li Qiang was very much parachuted into Shanghai. So that might be the reason, thinking back. And the third group of people are the Shanghai aunties, Shanghai dàmā (大妈). They experienced the worst of the lockdown, and they are pretty ruthless in their judgment of Li Qiang. Depending on who you speak to, I think Li Qiang, I still have a question mark over his face. I think we will wait for a few months to see. And Liang doesn’t have much time. After this week, we’ll probably see Li Qiang being promoted to a vice premier role. So, he will have a three-month internship session to learn how to govern the central government, how to run all the agencies, there are hundreds of them. And then, if he can hit the ground and run, I think that’s sufficient to make up his lack of central governing experience. And if he’s not a smart enough person, we’ll see a disappointment, but let’s give him some time.
Kaiser: One of the things that came out of this Party Congress is the end of the Communist Youth League faction. If it was ever meaningful to speak of a Communist Youth League faction under Hu Jintao, during that era, so we’ve seen factions come and go in China that we used to speak all the time about a Shanghai clique. What are the meaningful factions now? I mean, it seems to me that there’s a lot of them who spent a lot of their formative careers in Jinjiang and serving simultaneously with Xi Jinping. Is it meaningful, Damien, to speak about a Zhejiang faction? And secondly, is it meaningful to speak about a Bei-hang clique? The Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, where it seems like a lot of the new provincial party secretaries, and people who are moving up in the ministries, and therefore into the state council, are from these, not just technocratic backgrounds, but specifically from Beihang and hard sciences?
Damien: Well, there’s also a mìshū (秘书) clique now, right?
Kaiser: Yeah, sure,
Damien: Three out of the four were former secretaries of Xi Jinping at various times. So, I guess that might be the best route to a promotion these days. But I think it’s more than just Zhejiang. It’s true that a lot of the people that are currently at the top, it almost looked like he sort of took his Zhejiang team and kind of brought them up to the top this time. It does look a bit like that, but I think it’s beyond that. If you look at the broader Politburo bureau and some of the other people that got promotions, it almost seems like he’s got the coastal provinces fairly locked down from Shandong down to Guangdong, if you think about Lǐ Xī 李希 and other folks. There aren’t red or blue provinces in China, but if there were Xi provinces, he sort of just kind of got the coast. Which is pretty significant if you think about what percentage of GDP that is for China, probably? I’m gonna guess probably 40%…
Kaiser: And in some ways that…
Damien: … At a minimum.
Kaiser: No, I think it’s more.
Damien: Possibly more, but I just-
Kaiser: If you look at the sort of factional composition before when we talk about the CYL faction, their power base was often in hinterland provinces. Their preferences were for inland development, for balancing this sort of terribly unbalanced coastal thing. Not being so focused on foreign direct investment and things like that, and more interested in moving development focused into the hinterland.
Damien: So, I think that’s why it’s an interesting paradox is that he’s got the lock on sort of elite provinces, right? But then he obviously has a bit of a populous streak in terms of the way he’s optically projecting himself. So, it’s interesting to see that paradox and how that leads to… He’s big into poverty, poverty reduction, and that was one of the big goals he announced.
Kaiser: What about technocracy, the return of these technocrats? Lizzi, do you want to talk about that?
Lizzi: Yes. So, I think, if there’s one piece of good news coming out of this round of Party Congress is the raise of STEM stars, and nerds are in, again. That’s good news for many, our audience, I guess. And I wanted to –
Kaiser: You mean they’re all nerds out there. Everyone listening to this is a nerd.
Lizzi: Yeah, they’re all nerds out there.
Damien: That’s a rough assessment of the Sinica audience.
Lizzi: Right. But if you count, at least six of the Politburo members have strong qualifications in science and technology backgrounds from environmental engineering, to space program, to public health. And I think people are familiar with Xinjiang party secretary Mǎ Xìngruì 马兴瑞, who’s currently only 63 years old, and Zhejiang party secretary Yuán Jiājūn 袁家军, only 58 years old. Oh, by the way, promotion of Yuan Jiajun will be interesting to watch if he gets Chongqing party chief. That’s going to be a promotion for him because Chongqing is one of the four zhíxiáshì (直辖市) in Beijing that really gets-
Kaiser: He actually worked on the Mars Rover project too.
Lizzi: Yes. To be fair, these are not bureaucrats who got like trophy degrees after they’re well established in their official career. They are actually scientists. This is a-
Kaiser: And they’re literal rocket scientists.
Lizzi: Yes. They’re literal rocket scientists. Also the minister of education, Huái Jìnpéng 怀进鹏, was a very famous computer scientists in China. So, this is like a touring award winner becoming the governor of New York, so to speak. So, it’s kind of surprising. And also, in addition to Yuan Jiajun and all the space scientists, there are Lǐ Gànjié 李干杰 Party Secretary. There’s Chén Jíníng 陈吉宁, Beijing mayor who was rumored to be the next Shanghai party secretary. And there’s Liaoning party secretary, Zhāng Guóqīng 张国清, and there’s Yǐn Lì 尹力, 60-year-old public health expert who will probably be the next party secretary of Beijing. We have all those experts. So what does it mean? I think one thing that works in the nerd’s favor is that they don’t have strong political coalitions in political affiliations growing up, and they are considered relatively clean in terms of factional affiliations. Also, scientists, I think, well by default are not that corrupt. And that’s something that Xi Jinping values a lot. And more importantly, China perceives itself as locked into this rivalry, especially over high tech with the United States. So, to the extent that China wanted to really turbocharge its STEM program, those scientists, and technocrats are probably going to be coming in handy. That’s my read of things…
Kaiser: That part of the reason they’re being promoted is because they’re perceived as being clean, and not just sort of politically clean, but also in terms of their not having been tainted, brought with the brush of corruption. Damien, we are in Chicago right now, or I’m in Chicago right now…
Damien: That’s a very interesting segue. I don’t know where you’re going with this.
Kaiser: Because part of the reason that we’re meeting is we’re getting together this informal group that you and I are part of. And one of the things that we’re going to be talking about is generation skipping. In the talent pipeline, there’s this weird conspicuous gap of people. And it’s a topic that we’re going to be bringing up. It strikes me, and this is something that Lizzi pointed out to me, I’m curious to hear what both of you have to say about this. That there’s this phenomenon happening in China as well where people who spent their 30s and their 40s, the really formative years of their political careers during the Hu and Wen era, eras of rampant corruption, they are regarded as being all sort of tainted by that era whether or not they themselves were directly corrupt.
And that there is a dearth of leaders right now in their 50s and early 60s who are up for promotion. Have you seen this phenomenon? Lizzi, you can riff on this if you want, of course, is sort of your idea I’m borrowing.
Damien: Well, that’s interesting. I mean, from a data standpoint, there isn’t anybody I think in the post 70s that’s in the Central Committee. So, they didn’t promote anybody who are in their early 50s.
Kaiser: Gen X getting skipped again, man. This is happening to me in America and China, it’s just terrible. It’s just not fair.
Damien: Yeah. But Gen X created a bunch of amazing companies, right?
Kaiser: Yeah. So what? We want political power.
Damien: Just didn’t get into politics.
Kaiser: No, we didn’t. Yeah, you’re right. Lizzi?
Lizzi: Yeah. I mean, I think generation is an interesting, important notion in Chinese politics. And I think it’s Li Cheng from the Brookings Institution who coined those terms, the 5G generation, the 6G generation, referring to the decade they were born in. If you look at the 5G, the fifth generation of Chinese leaders, these are the people who experienced the great famine when they were young and they were sent down to the countryside. Those are the sent down youths, Xi Jinpings. And they also experienced cultural revolution in their 20s. So, their outlook on the world is clearly different from the generation that came after, the ‘60s generation, who came of age at the very start of the reform opening era, who sort of spent their career when China was gradually opening up to the world when China had a period of political stability and economic growth, which was cut short by the tumultuous period of time in the late ‘80s.
And the ‘70s generation is completely different. These are the people who spend their youth and their midlife generally in stable times. Many of them studied abroad, gained degrees, and their view of the world in China are clearly very different. So, in terms of generation skipping, I don’t think the ‘60s generation are going to be skipped out of the Politburo. I was referring to the Standing Committee, the top leadership. And I think that is probably going to be true if we hold that Xi Jinping stays for one more term. The two youngest members on the Politburo Standing Committee now are Dīng Xuēxiáng 丁薛祥 who is already 60 years old. And perhaps if we are generous about the career prospect of Yuan Jiajun who’s currently 58 years old, those will be the younger generation. But in general, the ‘60s generation, I mean, they might be in the Standing Committee, but I don’t think they stand a chance anymore to be the supreme leader of China. So, who are the next generation leaders? Those are going to be the Zhūgé Yǔjiés 诸葛宇杰, the –
Kaiser: Why millennials, I mean.
Lizzi: Yeah. Currently doing sort mid-level jobs, but are sort of-
Kaiser: Tell us about Zhuge Yujie.
Lizzi: So, I don’t know much about Zhuge Yujie, but he’s this bureaucrat who’s a rising star, amazing rising star who was born in the ‘60s and keep rising through the ranks in Shanghai. He’s really like a political powerhouse in China. That’s all I can say about him for now, but I should caution that previous rising stars had suffer sort of unexpected tragedies in their political career, for example, Chen Min’er. Whether it’s reputation for being the next supreme leader of China.
Kaiser: What could happen? Is he going to get a decent appointment? I think Tianjin.
Lizzi: Yeah. So, the word is that he’s probably going to be rotated to Tianjin, which is gonna be a disappointment for Chen Min’er. If Chen Min’er is reappointed to Shanghai or Beijing, the career prospect for Chen Min’er is gonna be completely different. Chen Min’er is actually one of the people I got wrong in the fantasy football race. I thought he definitely he stood better chance than Cài Qí 蔡奇, but apparently Cai Qi won out. Did you get Chen Min’er correct?
Kaiser: You got Cai Qi, though. Tell us why, why did you pick Cai Qi Jinping, and tell us a little bit about Cai Qi, Damien?
Damien: Well, our assumption was that he was somebody that we thought Xi Jinping really trusted because he was already under National Security Council working under Lì Zhànshū 栗战书in the previous term.
Kaiser: He was with him for many provincial assignments. I mean, he was in Fujian back in the ‘90s.
Damien: And our read was in just the previous Politburo Standing Committee, Li Zhanshu was probably the closest to Xi Jinping on there. And so, if Cai Qi Jinping was Li Zhanshu’s guy, then I think that gave, in our mind, gave him a leg up.
Kaiser: A surrogate for Li Zhanshu –
Damien: And plus, if you look at his position, it sounds like he’s gonna have a pretty significant national security portfolio just as he had already done on the National Security Council. So, that’s why we picked him. We haven’t talked about, I think one thing, I think I tweeted about this, that we’re gonna have a higher gray hair to black hair ratio, right? On the Standing Committee.
Kaiser: Right. Yeah. What’s up with the hair dye out now?
Damien: That’s the silver lining, don’t you think?
Kaiser: The silver lining.
Damien: There’s just a lot more silver hair these days.
Lizzi: Yeah. I have to tell this. So, Cai Qi is an avid social media user.
Kaiser: Oh yeah.
Lizzi: He’s like Donald Trump-level Twitter addict. He, at some point, he had like-
Damien: On Weibo or something? On Weibo.
Lizzi: On Weibo, when Weibo was still cool back in the day, and when Cai Qi was an official in Zhejiang, he had like 6 million followers on Weibo, and he would comment on people’s tweets or micro-blogs. And people call him Cai Xu (蔡叔 Cài Shū), Uncle Cai. And sometimes people will like, “Oh, Cai Xu, please come here and see what’s going on.” And he would actually reply to those people. So, that was Cai Qi, but that was when he was in Zhejiang. In Beijing. I mean, as a native Beijinger, I had to say Cai Qi’s not my favorite. He’s probably one of the worst leaders in Beijing I’ve seen in my lifetime. Wait, I haven’t seen that many, to be-
Kaiser: Exactly why, I mean, because it was in 2017 after the fire, there was this terrible fire in a district in southeastern Beijing that was heavily… It was very analogous to the fire that happened in London in that there was sort of a similar socioeconomic group that was affected by it.
Lizzi: Yes. So, if you’re from Beijing, there are lots of migrants in Beijing. And those people are like the blood cells of Beijing. They keep Beijing working. They’re in their service industries in Beijing, they’re in the construction sites. They live on-
Kaiser: The delivery drivers.
Lizzi: Yes. And those are people, and we love them, and they usually live on the outwards of Beijing. That’s where the fire happened. And after that, Cai Qi led this, basically forced eviction operation, just drove those people out. And we saw this video footage of public security officials sort of just rampaging people’s homes, smashing people’s furniture and just drew people out. And there was this video of Cai Qi that got leaked online, Cai Qi basically directed the whole thing and asked for this cut and thrust kind of technique.
Kaiser: What was the phrase you used? See blood on the sword.
Lizzi: Yeah, so cìdāo jiàn hóngsè (刺刀見紅色), so let’s see some blood on the knife. That’s the kind of stuff, this fascist language that he used. I think many Beijingers were angry at Cai Qi for doing that. I mean, there was a moment of like public reconciliation afterwards. But I think Cai Qi is not a fan. Many Beijingers do not treat Cai Qi with much respect. I mean, for many of those officials, it’s kind of weird. I mean, the earlier you go back in their career, the more likable they were, including Xi Jinping himself. I mean, when Xi Jinping was official in Fujian and Zhejiang, people thought Xi Jinping was pro-business. And he would talk about Hollywood movies with American diplomats. He just seems like a totally different person now.
Damien: The institution changes people for sure.
Kaiser: Imagine that.
Damien: The one person we haven’t talked about a little bit, because you talked about sort of the younger generation, younger folks is Lǐ Shūlěi 李书磊. Sort of probably by all, on appearances, young Wang Huning in waiting, and he just became, officially became to propaganda chief.
Lizzi: Yes. The propaganda chief. Oh, did you see the Li Shulei Harvard diary, or whatever it’s called?
Damien: No, I haven’t seen it.
Lizzi: Yeah. it’s already censored on Chinese internet, but-
Kaiser: Tell us about it. I haven’t seen this either.
Lizzi: It’s kind of like the Li Shulei version of America Against America. But I think I got a glimpse of it before it was censored out. But Li Shulei is a-
Kaiser: Let me, just in case somebody listening doesn’t know what America Against America. So, Wang Huning, in the late 1980s, spent three, or just a few months, actually just a few months traveling in the United States, visiting scholar at UC Berkeley and other places. And he wrote this book that he called America Against America (美国反对美国 Měiguó Fǎnduì Měiguó), in which he espouses this bizarre kind of cultural conservatism, Allan Bloom style cultural conservatism, and sort of sees America going down this politically correct path of self-destruction and decadence. I think there were a lot of people who wanted to read this as the equivalent of Sayyid Qutb, who was one of the early progenitors of the Muslim Brotherhood who would, also sojourned in America and wrote about lascivious American women. He wrote this great chapter about attending this church dance and the writhing of the hips and the full lips and all. Anyway, it’s not like that. It’s not like that. It’s actually a pretty interesting book.
Lizzi: Wang Huning also wrote about gaming. Apparently, he was an avid gamer for a brief period of time, and he regret that because gaming was addictive. Wang Huning was into gaming. But that’s not the-
Kaiser: Was he playing World of Warcraft?
Lizzi: That was not the main theme of his work, but Li Shulei, he’s officially the propaganda chief of China. And to be honest, I think it’s good news.
Damien: Sorry, now I’m having images of the propaganda chief being a gamer. That’s just pretty interesting. That’s a pretty interesting image.
Lizzi: Yeah. But I mean, Li Shulei, he’s called Lǐ Shéntóng 李神童, child prodigy. He was admitted to a big university, one of the two best universities in China at a very young age, and he has this very precocious writing on U.S.-China relations and Western culture. So, we’ll see. Damien, do you think Li Shulei’s promotion was a force in the positive direction for Chinese propaganda work?
Damien: I don’t know the guy well at all. I just know that it seemed like, I think for Xi Jinping, ideology and optics is quite important for his politics. And so, obviously I think he would want somebody who would succeed Wang Huning at some point, because he really seems to like Wang Huning. And so, yeah. But I’d be curious to hear more about, so have you read the diaries?
Lizzi: So, I got a glimpse of Li Shulei’s Harvard diary, but I didn’t read it in full detail and didn’t save a copy of it, but because it was censored out on Chinese internet, but I’m pretty sure there are people who have saved a copy of it.
Kaiser: So let’s get our hands on it.
Lizzi: I will read it and report back.
Kaiser: Yeah, no. I will want to do a show with you to talk about this.
Lizzi: To talk about Li Shulei’s, yeah, Harvard diary.
Kaiser: I mean, irrespective of whether China does become sort of more ideologically rigid or really enforces more ideological uniformity, what’s clear to me is that, viewed from America, looking at Xi having run the table and filled not just the Standing Committee, but the Politburo itself with his own people, the United States will conclude, well, I mean, people who have been sort of espousing this idea that the contest between China and the United States is essentially an ideological one, whether it’s between democracy and authoritarianism or democracy and Marxism, Leninism, Maoism thought, what have you. They’re going to get a whole lot of oxygen. They’re going to be triumphalist. They’re going to declare themselves having been vindicated. And that’s just going to lead on this just in this another downward spiral. So, I’m just deeply depressed. Tell me some good news. Okay, for example, who’s going to take over the economic leadership? There are some really important people like Guoqing who are now retiring, who headed CBIRC now, I guess.
Lizzi: Right. So, PBOC Governor Yì Gāng 易纲 will retire. He will probably get some advisory roles, which is typical as Zhōu Xiǎochuān 周小川 did.
Damien: By the way, went to Indiana University, I believe.
Kaiser: Oh, he did?
Damien: Yes. Next door.
Lizzi: Yes. He was a tenured professor at one of the American universities before he moved back to China. So, that said something. I mean, Yi Gang has an international reputation, and for finance people internationally I’ve interacted with all have very good things to say about Yi Gang. His portfolio is important. And the person who is rumored to take over Yi Gang’s governor role is Yīn Yǒng 殷勇, currently a vice mayor in Beijing, but who’s also has a really strong financial background. He was on Wall Street. He was on Wall Street for many years. He got his degree in the United States, I believe, and also is a specialist in currency management. And also he was in PBOC during different vice governor-level roles for many years. Well experienced, lots of experience there.
So, I think in terms of economic policy, there’s not much surprise in terms of monetary policy management. The other person is Hé Lìfēng 何立峰 who has been rumored for long to be a Liú Hè’s 刘鹤 successor. He Lifeng, also a close aide to Xi Jinping is perceived to have strong background in economic management-based styles, probably a little different than Liu He’s. But I think in terms of the economic lieutenants, China will be in good hands. And I think that’s actually crucial for China to sort of restore investors’ confidence in its economy. That’s all I have to say, but those positions will not be confirmed before next March. So, we’ll wait for a few months, and things can change within the next few months.
Kaiser: Who do you hear is being tapped to replace Li Qiang as he moves out of Shanghai? Who’s gonna run Shanghai?
Lizzi: Yeah. So, the person I hear is Chén Jíníng 陈吉宁, the current mayor of Beijing. So Chen Jining is an environmental scientist. I mean, I guess his biggest success was cleaning up air pollution in Beijing under his leadership, or at least during his time as mayor of Beijing. I think Shanghai people are gonna be happier or at least slightly on the margin, happier with Chen Jining than Li Qiang. That’s my perception.
Damien: Actually, can we stay on the vice premier?
Kaiser: Oh, yeah.
Damien: I think Ding Xuexiang is going to be the VP. He Lifeng is probably going to get the other. So, that’s two out of four.
Lizzi: That’s a good question.
Damien: Maybe we can start another pool or something, or poll about who the other two VPs are going to be, the vice premiers.
Lizzi: Yeah. So, those are going to be the successors of Sūn Chūnlán 孙春兰 and Hú Chūnhuá 胡春华. And Sun Chulan’s portfolio is health education and science. Hu Chunhua’s portfolio-
Damien: And zero-COVID before the end.
Lizzi: Zero-COVID. Yeah. Hu Chunhua’s portfolio is agriculture. I mean, this is my pure speculation, but I think there’s going to be some new division of labor among those two roles. The original division of labor is not quite correct, if you ask me. How can you lump health with science and technology, and then put agriculture in a separate category? This does not make much sense to me. I think science and education is probably get more importance in terms of those division labors. But we will wait and see. I think South China Morning Post also had an article just coming up this week on how foreign policy is probably going to be a part of the portfolio of at least one of the premiers, but we’ll-
Damien: So, maybe one of the technocrats has a shot at the VP, right? So, there’s seven of them, so that’s not that hard to pick. Pick one out of seven.
Kaiser: Speaking of foreign policy, you mentioned one of the other surprises was that the U.S. ambassador or the Chinese ambassador to the U.S., Qín Gāng 秦刚, has now been named to the central committee. What’s the significance of that?
Lizzi: So, Qin Gang, as we know, his promotion to the Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. was a surprise to start with. People thought it would be Xiè Fēng 谢锋, who’s the vice minister in charge of the North America portfolio. So this is Qin Gang’s second round of surprise promotion. I think it speaks to Xi Jinping’s trust in Qin Gang and also speaks to the importance of U.S.-China relations in general. But it’s going to be a big promotion for Qin Gang. And the question is, who’s gonna be the next ambassador to the U.S.? I think, if you ask me now, I would say Xie Feng is probably the best, the most qualified candidate, but we’ll wait and see. And what that means in terms of U.S. and China relations, now we have Wáng Yì 王毅 and Qin Gang as two top diplomats.
Kaiser: Yáng Jiéchí 杨洁篪 is retiring.
Lizzi: Yang Jiechi is retiring. Wang Yi, earlier in his career, was actually this very suave, cosmopolitan diplomat, but later got more wolf warrior like later in his career at least. That’s the word on the street. And Qin Gang is a little-
Kaiser: He contracted lycanthropy. Yeah.
Lizzi: Yeah. So, Qin Gang is a little hard to tell. I don’t know what you guys think about Qin Gang. Qin Gang seems a little stiff to me. But also, you think-
Kaiser: I have no idea what to make of him. I mean, sometimes he seems like he handles himself very, very well in some media engagements, and other times he comes off, yeah, very poorly.
Lizzi: Yeah. I guess he’s also in all kinds of community activities in the U.S. He’s doing media engagement. So, he seems eager to build those relationships in the United States. I guess it’s still a little hard to tell.
Kaiser: So, just now we talked about how science and education are going to be very, very important. This is a big part of what we used to call the Red New Deal, real reforms in the education system and a real renewed emphasis on the hard sciences. It used to be that promotions within the party really depended on how well you grew, GDP growth in whatever geography we were responsible for. Things are different now. What are going to be the new hard measures that people are going to be looking for? Damien, what do you think? Do you think that, for example, your ability to deliver…
Damien: Nanometers.
Kaiser: Yeah, nanometers, exactly. It’s going to go in reverse-
Damien: That’s the most obvious answer. The lower it is, the better, right? Not the higher it is.
Kaiser: Get down to… Exactly, the lower, the better. Lithography, is that going… That’s going to be the new… You say it sort of jokingly, but I think we mean it. I mean, after October 7, after the announcement of the really kind of sweeping export controls, this is the new measurement, you think?
Damien: I mean, there was I think a much stronger emphasis on talent and human capital than I’ve seen in past party congresses, and for obvious reasons. And I think Xi Jinping’s been thinking about human capital broadly, both sort of the political personnel and also the technocrats and people that are going to execute on what he hopes that China will become strong and leaders in. So, talent’s a tough problem. It’s a hard problem for anybody to solve. A lot of it also depends on our response and our actions here in the United States. Because it’s not just depending on what China does or says, if they want to have a reverse brain drain. Well, there are ways to prevent that from happening depending on how we react and respond. So, talent’s just a very, very tough situation. And few countries get it right.
Kaiser: I can’t believe that we’ve gotten to this point without actually having talked about the Hu Jintao exit. How did we miss that? Okay. Let’s pick that up now, but I want to also do two more topics before we wrap up here, and we can try to dispense with them hopefully pretty quickly, and you guys can deliver your wisdom with a great level of authority and finality. The other two that I’m constantly being asked about, which honestly my answer is like, I don’t think you should have expected to see a big announcement. The two are, of course, what’s going to happen with the zero COVID policy? And the second is, what does this mean for Taiwan? So, in any order, so who wants to… Let’s do Hu Jintao first.
Lizzi: Let’s do Hu Jintao, but do we have to do Hu Jintao? I think-
Kaiser: Yeah, I guess we have to. We’re obliged to.
Lizzi: Yeah. Okay, so let’s do Hu Jintao. Now we have the fuller footage of what actually transpired on that day.
Kaiser: Yeah, the CNA footage, right?
Lizzi: Yes. At this point, I’m just going to say people are going to believe whatever they want to believe. I showed the footage to multiple people, and it just strengthened their prior belief of what actually happened and what they believe what actually happened are completely different. My view of this is probably more on the side of health crisis as opposed to anything more sinister. I mean, there were just a few things I wanted to say. First, it’s not a good picture for a Communist Party to publicly broadcast internal seizures and sort of those moments of disharmony within their leadership.
Communist Party is all about projecting strength and projecting unity. The idea of showing that moment of weakness in front of international audience is just not how they do this.
Lizzi: Also, it’s not Xi Jinping’s personal style. If there’s one word you can use to describe Xi Jinping and summarize his whole life is dìng lì (定力). He is a very patient person. He is a very deliberate user of power. The way Xi Jinping builds a case against you is by sort of closing in on you gradually, first investigating your secretaries, your associates…
Kaiser: Protégés.
Lizzi: Your protégés. And then sort of slightly circling in around you. It’s like plucking all the hair off a chicken. That’s a word we use. Yeah, for Wáng Qíshān 王岐山, for Mèng Jiànzhù 孟建柱, for Sūn Lìjūn 孙力军, that’s a kind of style Xi Jinping has. I mean, doing like a public humiliation episode, that’s just not Xi Jinping’s style. And also, Hu Jintao is not a viable challenge to Xi Jinping at this point. Whatever power Hu Jintao might have possessed at one point, which was not that great to start with, is really long gone. So, does it really make sense for Hu Jintao to humiliate the Party elder in this way in front of the international TV? I honestly don’t think so. But I think the symbolic meaning of that episode, there’s probably more important: this senile leader, perhaps permanently retreating from the center of power, this generational shift in power, and now Xi Jinping’s show. So, there’s a metaphorical meaning in that, but that’s sort of the way I read this.
Kaiser: Damien, do you agree with that assessment largely?
Damien: Well, again, I agree with Lizzi that there’s just so many different interpretations of it. I would say the way to think about the way to be more concrete about this is let’s wait for some potential signals to see how they handle a couple things, both on a personnel policy side. One is how do they handle somebody like Hu Chunhua? And if he just rides quietly off into retirement, that’s fine. But if there are some other possible outcomes for that, then I think we would have to adjust our assessment of what happened. And also on the policy side, again, on, we talked about zero-COVID, so what do they do on zero-COVID? If there’s going to be…
Kaiser: Yeah. Let’s deal with that one now too.
Damien: If there’s going to be a plan B or sort of a pivot to more of a coexistence approach, I don’t see it at least not in the near term, at least not in the fourth quarter. I think the best thing we can hope for is that they start to announce, or they start to articulate a plan B or exist strategy around the National People’s Congress. But planning that out and executing that is going to take a long time.
Kaiser: My sense is that we’re going to see, almost right away, a major central push for vaccination.
Lizzi: Yes. That’s also my-
Damien: They have to. If they don’t do that, there’s no plan B.
Kaiser: Yeah, exactly.
Lizzi: So, there’s already like a pilot program in Shanghai rolling out in terms of vaccination erosion. And also, I don’t know. I mean, I admit my thinking on zero COVID has evolved gradually over the past years. I think now I have more empathy to the Chinese approach. The truth is there’s no easy answer for China. China has a significant elder population and they tend to… Population tend to be denser in areas where health and medical resources are not sufficient. And I think from the models I see, if you open up China, you’re looking at tens of thousands or even close to a million deaths within five months or half a year.
Kaiser: Well over. Well over, yeah.
Lizzi: So, that’s not a easy choice for China. On the other hand, if you look at the economy now, clearly the zero COVID approach is not sustainable. So, there has to be some sort of an exit strategy. There has to be some sort of an offramp. But I mean Xi Jinping knows there’s no easy position. There’s no easy answer to those questions, I guess.
Kaiser: Yeah. Let’s turn now that final topic that, again, it’s the first one for some reason that everyone seems to think that I would have some kind of an answer to, which is, what do we now assume about Xi Jinping’s intentions vis-à-vis Taiwan after this Party Congress? Is there anything we can discern? I mean, is there any reason to believe that anything has changed? Damien, do you want to weigh in on that? See, you’re making the same face I always make when I get asked this.
Damien: Yeah. It’s obviously top of mind for a lot of people in both capitals in Washington, D.C., for sure, and of course, in Beijing. I would just say that Taiwan has… It’s been an omnipresent risk, right? So, if you think about it as sort of always being there as sort of one of those, you might call it a fat tail risk, low probability high impact type of risks, I think it’s reasonable to believe that that tail gets a little bit fatter in the next few years. Because in part, just because there are tons of known unknowns, to quote Donald Rumsfeld.
Kaiser: Which I know you love to do.
Damien: A lot of factors that are in play that is extremely hard to game out. I’m not sure pure rational actor models are going to really hold here, because when it comes to sovereignty for a lot of Chinese people, Taiwan is viewed as a domestic issue, not a foreign policy issue, for a lot of Chinese people on mainland. And we can agree or disagree with that, but that doesn’t change the view in Beijing and on the mainland.
Kaiser: That’s right. Look at Damien doing the cognitive empathy thing. All right, Lizzi, what do you have on this?
Lizzi: I mean, to paraphrase Chris Johnson, I think China still views Taiwan as a crisis to avoid, not an opportunity to seize on. So, I think that’s exactly correct. I would just say one thing. I keep hearing from Beijing, I mean, China scholars, that they are increasingly view United States intention with suspicion. The word I hear is they think the United States is hyping up the crisis, the danger of war to provoke Beijing to actually take some sort of an action. And that’s a trap that Beijing should avoid falling into. The word I keep hearing zhànlüè dìng lì (战略定力), to keep stable, to not be lured by the trap set up by the United States. Of course, that’s a Chinese point of view. But I think that’s reassuring in a sense that it’s not like Xi Jinping has already planned out armed unification with Taiwan.
I think China is still sort of acting with restraint or trying to avoid going into a war there. But I will say there are two scenarios that are likely scary for China and for Taiwan and for the world. First is if the pro-independence power in Taiwan actually declares independence, that’s going to be a turning point for Beijing. Or if the United States actually gave up its current stance on Taiwan and offered an indirect promise to support Taiwan militarily, I think those are the two scenarios that would actually provoke the situation into something more.
Damien: I think in the near term, we’re going to get some indicators, is how many Congresspeople are gonna go there.
Kaiser: Yeah. I think in a couple of weeks, I’m going to be interviewing Mike Mazarr, who is at RAND, and recently wrote a book called Leap of Faith, which is a real exegesis on the whole run up to Iraq. And he has a sort of haunting paragraph toward the very end where he basically says the same thing is happening now, right now, where we’re sort of beating that same drum and prepping everybody. We’re doing the same sort of manufacturing of consent. We have the Judith Millers in our own media right now who are preparing the American population for something like a war with China over Taiwan. And this is truly, truly horrifying to me. All right. On that very happy note, let me thank Matt Abbott for helping out to set this up in here at the Chicago Council.
And what I’d like to see you guys both before we move on to recommendations, let me quickly remind everybody that the Sinica Podcast is produced in partnership with The China Project. And if you want to support the work that we do with our flagship podcast at Sinica or with any of the other shows in the network, really the thing to do is to subscribe to Access. One of the things that it gets you is early access to this show. I edit it on Monday and put it out by Monday afternoon for subscribers only. And the rest of you chumps have to wait three days until Thursday before you can listen to the thing. So, all you need to do is pony up a little money. You get this fantastic newsletter and an early access to this very program. All right, guys, you’ve had time to think. Let’s start with Lizzi to give of Damien a little more time. What do you have to recommend for this?
Lizzi: Damien, do you want to…
Kaiser: Now Lizzi, you go first.
Lizzi: Okay. So, I have to recommend Joseph Torigian. Is that the correct way to pronounce his last name?
Kaiser: I think it’s Torigian, yeah.
Lizzi: His Chinese name is Táng Zhìxué 唐志学, by the way. He wrote a fantastic book, Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao. I think the catch phrase from the book, I remember, is Chinese politics are not a popularity contest. Sometimes it’s just raw power struggle. That’s the sentence to take away. It’s a tremendously interesting book and has sold out multiple times, to our surprise. I have to check with Joseph if he bought out all his own book and bragged to his friends.
Kaiser: Yeah, I’ve got a copy of it now. It’s probably worth a lot more now. Yay. I got to send it back to Joseph just to have him autograph it because his star is rising apparently. He’s everywhere now it seems like. I actually re-listened to a fantastic interview that Jude Blanchette did with him. I don’t know if you’ve heard that on his Pekingology podcast. It’s really good. All right, good recommendation. And actually, Joseph is going to be on Sinica before too long. I’m finishing the book and then I’ll interview him.
Lizzi: Yeah, Kaiser, make sure to pop quiz him on like Chinese chéngyǔ (成语).
Kaiser: I will, although he’s going to shore me up. I mean, I know like three chengyus.
Lizzi: Yeah. Joseph knows four.
Kaiser: Okay, good. All right. Only four. I’ll learn one more before I do the interview, a really good one. All right, what you got, Damien?
Damien: I always forget about this part, so I never come prepared with pre-baked idea. On the spot, and I have a knack of I think, recommending things that are non-China related.
Kaiser: Good, go for it.
Damien: So, I’m going to keep up that record. I’m currently getting through Brad DeLong’s book, Slouching Towards Utopia, which is economic history of the 20th century, which I think is quite interesting actually to think about our recent past. And so far, it’s been very good. So, I would recommend that particular book. It’s a fairly large tome.
Kaiser: Yeah. He’s a really good stylist. His writing is interesting and his ideas are really original.
Damien: And he’s a prolific blogger.
Kaiser: Yeah. I read him a lot online. Brad DeLong’s book, Slouching Toward…
Damien: Utopia.
Kaiser: Utopia.
Damien: We’re not there yet. We’re just slouching towards it.
Kaiser: We’re slouching toward it. My recommendation is for, actually, it is something China related for once, and usually it’s some frivolous thing or my latest obsession, but it’s the latest Radio Open Source podcast. It’s on Taiwan notionally, so it features Shelly Rigger, who, of course, I absolutely adore, and Lev Nachman, who’s there in Taipei and very, very smart. It’s also got a long interview with Massachusetts Senator, Ed Markey, which… Well, listen to it, you’ll see. I mean, it’s… But best of all, as much as I love Shelly, it’s Jake Werner who really kind of bats clean up on this and he does this fantastic. It’s just one profound and deeply insightful thing after another. He was just full of really brilliant ideas.
Jake, if you are listening, kudos, you freaking killed it. That’s fantastic. He’s right here in Chicago, by the way. All right. Thank you both. Lizzi.
Lizzi: Great to be here.
Kaiser: Yeah, Damien.
Damien: You are welcome. Thank you.
Kaiser: All right, what a fun time. And I’m looking forward to the rest of this weekend here in Chicago. All right, folks. The Sinica Podcast is powered by the China Project and is a proud part of the Sinica Network. Our show is produced and edited by me, Kaiser Kuo. We would be lighted if you would drop us an email at sinica@thechinaproject.com or just give us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts as this really does help people discover the show, if you give us good reviews that is. Meanwhile, follow us on Twitter or on Facebook @thechinaproj. And be sure to check out all the other shows in the Sinica Network. We’ve got lots of really good shows. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week. Take care.
