This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy are joined by Sue-Lin Wong, who until recently covered China for the Economist and hosted an eight-part podcast series all about Xi Jinping called The Prince. The podcast features interviews with a wide range of China-watchers, peers of Xi, dissidents, and many others who offer insights into what makes Xi tick.
3:38 – Reason behind naming the podcast “the Prince”
5:53 – Differences between traditional journalism and podcasting
9:52 – The role of Sue-Lin’s mother in the podcast
13:37 – How corruption influenced Xi’s leadership style
19:29 – Identifying Xi’s greatest anxieties: party in-fighting, the collapse of the USSR
22:48 – Early signs of Xi’s ideological underpinnings most China watchers missed
29:33 – Did the CCP’s internal crisis make Xi’s rise inevitable?
32:57 – Is Xi Jinping the most powerful man in the world?
37:12 – Reframing the engagement debate after Xi’s administration
41:51 – David Rennie’s view on China: “a giant utilitarian experiment”
46:45 – Key insights on Xi that listeners of the Prince should walk away with
52:16 – How Sue-Lin would brief an American policymaker on Xi Jinping’s main motivations
A transcript of this episode is available at TheChinaProject.com.
Recommendations:
Jeremy – A Matter of Perspective: Parsing Insider Accounts of Xi Jinping Ahead of the 20th Party Congress, an article on The China Story written by Neil Thomas
Sue-Lin – Race to the Galaxy, a two-player board game
Kaiser – Interview with the Vampire, a new AMC TV series
