Fokke Obbema on China's rising power and the nation's relations with the West

Sinica Podcast

Kaiser Kuo

Culture, China News, Hangzhou, Chinese, International Relations, Chongqing, Beijing, Sichuan, Currentaffairs, China, Politics, Chengdu, Shanghai, Guangzhou, China Economy, News, China Politics, Business, Film, Shenzhen

4.8 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2015

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The West has spent decades pleading with China to become a responsible stakeholder in the global community, but what happens now that China is starting to take a more proactive role internationally? In today's show, Kaiser Kuo and David Moser are delighted to be joined by a Dutch journalist, Fokke Obbema (the de Volkskrant correspondent with a perfectly normal Dutch name), who is the author of the recent book China and the West: Hope and Fear in the Age of Asia. Recommendations: Fokke Obbema’s China and the West https://www.amazon.com/China-West-Hope-Fear-Asia/dp/178453384X Susan L. Shirk’s China: Fragile Superpower https://www.amazon.com/China-Superpower-Susan-L-Shirk/dp/0195373197 David Moser Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/dp/0062316095 Fokke Obbema David Eggers’ The Circle https://www.amazon.com/Circle-Dave-Eggers/dp/0345807294 The Social Credit System https://chinacopyrightandmedia.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/planning-outline-for-the-construction-of-a-social-credit-system-2014-2020/ Kaiser Kuo Will and Ariel Durant’s The Story of Civilization Volume Ten: Rousseau and Revolution https://www.amazon.com/Rousseau-Revolution-Story-Civilization-Durant/dp/1567310214 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Cynica podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China coming to from a pop-up Chinese studio here in Beijing.
0:16.0	I'm Kaiser Guo, joined this week by David Moser, academic director of the CET program here in Beijing.
0:20.0	How are you on this crisp and lovely fall afternoon?
0:23.6	Oh, feeling groovy, Kaiser, if I may be anachronistic.
0:27.3	29 was the PM2.5 reading as we had coffee earlier.
0:32.4	Yeah, lovely.
0:33.8	The same age as the woman sitting next to us, I think.
0:38.4	I wish.
0:39.9	Anyway, I have a question for you, Dave.
0:42.0	If you had to come up with a mission statement for this little podcast of ours for the Seneca podcast, what would you, how would you encapsulate it?
0:50.2	Hmm.
0:50.9	Well, China is a very complex place, right? So I suppose we try to provide some framing for certain events so that people can have a better understanding. Maybe point, focus in on certain things. It might be useful. But I think maybe your presence here makes its function more to sort of go against some prevailing narratives that we see.
1:14.0	Sure, yeah. I mean, I definitely want to make it least people aware of the narratives that are in place.
1:17.8	I mean, both Chinese narratives and, you know, those that dominate in mostly English-speaking countries
1:25.0	where some of our listeners are... Some which may be implicit.
1:29.3	Right.
1:29.7	I think the length and the format and the fairly kind of focused focus of the show,
1:34.9	the narrow focus of the show allow for unpacking of more complicated issues.
1:39.6	Yeah, so maybe it's like our mission statement is to move listeners toward both broader and deeper understanding of China and looking not only at events as they unfold, but also the historical and cultural context out of which they grow, right?
1:53.9	Right.
1:54.2	So with that in mind, I think we're delighted to welcome to the show today, Foka Obama, who is a veteran Dutch journalist with
2:01.3	their Volkskrant, who is a very popular newspaper in the Netherlands. He's the author of the
	...

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