China’s Heart of Darkness
Sinica Podcast
Kaiser Kuo
4.8 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 6 May 2021
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Prince Han Fei, or Hán Fēizǐ 韓非子, is perhaps the most influential Chinese thinker that many Westerners have never heard of. With Jeremy hosting Sinica this week, we bring to you a conversation recorded in November 2020 featuring writer and journalist Zhā Jiànyīng 渣建英 and Geremie R. Barmé, editor of China Heritage. The three discuss the overlooked salience of the words of Han Fei in understanding modern China, the concept of legalism and its relation to the contemporary interpretation of fazhi (法治 fǎzhì), or rule of law, and the churn of being caught between the United States and China as relations between the two great powers continue to sour.
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Transcript
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| 0:43.9 | Wondery UK. That's audible.com slash Wondery UK. |
| 0:54.1 | Hi there, you are listening to A Diverion from Sinica, the first of an occasional series of chats with a variety of fascinating guests talking to me, Jeremy Goldcorn, about China and all kinds of other things. |
| 1:07.5 | This episode took a few months to bring together. It was recorded in November 2020, just after the US elections, but it covers a subject who is more than 2,000 years old. The Chinese philosopher-statesman, Han Fei. He lived 280 to 233 BC, but his ideas seem so much more relevant to understanding China today than say the more famous |
| 1:30.8 | analects of Confucius or the ideas and the art of war by Sunza. |
| 1:36.0 | Before we begin the conversation, let me give a quick plug for SubChina a.m. |
| 1:39.8 | Our new daily newsletter covering business in China that goes out every day at 9 p.m. Beijing time, |
| 1:45.4 | 9 a.m. New York time. Go to subchina.com slash newsletters to subscribe. Now on with the show. |
| 1:57.3 | Jeremy Bame is a sinologist and historian, publisher and recovering academic who first went to China in the dying years of the Cultural Revolution, where he did manual labor, studied the works of Mao and Marx, and ate a lot of terrible food. |
| 2:10.6 | He is the editor and publisher of China Heritage at ChinaHeritage.net. Welcome, Jeremy. |
| 2:16.6 | Hi, and Jia Jingying writes, of course, for the New Yorker and is the author of several |
| 2:23.0 | books, most recently Tide Players, the Movers and Shakers of a Rising China. Welcome, Jai Ying, |
| 2:29.2 | and let's hope our technical issues are resolved this time. Hi, Jeremy. Thanks for inviting me to this conversation. |
| 2:35.8 | Hi. Jeremy recently, the other Jeremy, recently edited and published a five-part essay by |
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