Jasmine Sun on Silicon Valley through a Chinese Mirror
Sinica Podcast
Kaiser Kuo
4.7 • 710 Ratings
🗓️ 22 September 2025
⏱️ 71 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on Sinica, co-host Tianyu Fang makes his debut on the show to join me in interviewing his Stanford classmate and talented writer Jasmine Sun, who studies the anthropology of disruption. This summer, she took a trip to China with a group of friends with different levels of China experience, from people raised in the country to total novices. She reflects on how it hit, and how a group of young people reckoned with the reality of Chinese hypermodernity, which she wrote about in a terrific essay titled "america against china against america: notes on shenzhen, shanghai, and more."
06:10 – Getting to know the new co-host: Tianyu Fang
07:17 – Meet the guest: Jasmine Sun
08:47 – Is there really an “American Vibe Shift” in how people see China?
13:56 – The stories nations tell: America vs. China
18:26 – Why that title for the essay?
21:05 – Surveillance, awe, and future shock: China vs. San Francisco
28:19 – Chinese tech’s power to surprise (and scare) + U.S.–China perceptions
34:34 – China vs. Silicon Valley: patriotism and motivation
39:51 – The involution phenomenon: China vs. U.S.
45:41 – China’s public services and the U.S. gap
52:33 – What U.S. cities could learn from China
56:13 – Guests’ tips for understanding China
Recommendations:
Jasmine: Yunnan food
Tianyu: Mad Men (Tv series)
Kaiser: The Origins of Political Order and Political Decay by Francis Fukuyama
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Cynica podcast, the weekly discussion of current affairs in China. |
| 0:13.0 | In this program, we'll get books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural trends |
| 0:18.2 | that can help us better understand what's happening in China's politics, |
| 0:21.6 | foreign relations, economics, and society. |
| 0:24.6 | Join me each week for in-depth conversations that shed more light and bring less heat to how we think and talk about China. |
| 0:31.6 | I'm Kaiser Guo coming to you this week from Beijing, where it is just great to be back. |
| 0:36.6 | Cynica is supported this year by the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, |
| 0:41.7 | a National Resource Center for the Study of East Asia. |
| 0:44.7 | The Cynica podcast will remain, as always, free. |
| 0:47.8 | But if you work for an organization that believes in what I'm doing, and boy, do I need you to work for an organization that believes in what I am doing, lend your support. You can get me at Cinecapod.com. I've lost my |
| 1:00.2 | Title VI grant funding from the University of Wisconsin-Madison that will dry up by the end of the year. |
| 1:05.9 | So I'm really in the market for new institutional support. Reach out. |
| 1:09.8 | Listeners, you, meanwhile, can support my work |
| 1:11.9 | by becoming a paying subscriber at sinecabodcast.com. You will enjoy, in addition to the podcast, |
| 1:18.0 | the complete transcript of the show, essays from me, as well as writings and podcasts from some of your |
| 1:23.1 | favorite China-focused columnists and commentators, and of course, the knowledge that you are |
| 1:28.1 | helping me do what I still honestly believe is important work. So do check out the page to see |
| 1:33.0 | all that's on offer and consider helping out. I've been thinking a lot about what my friend |
| 1:38.5 | and Seneca co-founder Jeremy Goldcorn and I called back in February on the show a vibe shift in how America talks about China, the steady drumbeat of deep seek moments, the exodus of TikTok creators finding a new home on Red Note, and that endless stream of China infrastructure and EV porn on social feeds. |
| 1:58.8 | All of it is reshaping the conversation on parts of the American left, |
| 2:02.8 | you hear a renewed, sometimes giddy talk of abundance, of course, looking very favorably at China. |
| 2:08.6 | Dan Wong's book Breakneck, and, you know, Dan's been interviewed now on every damn podcast, |
... |
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