Live in Berkeley: Jessica Chen Weiss and Ryan Hass on the U.S. and China in 2025

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

🗓️ 12 March 2025

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week, a special episode taped live at the University of California, Berkeley — my alma mater — on March 6 and featuring Jessica Chen Weiss of Johns Hopkins SAIS and Ryan Hass of the Brookings Institution, both well-known to people who follow U.S.-China relations. This episode was made possible by the Center for Chinese Studies at UC Berkeley's Institute for Asian Studies, and will be available on video as well — I'll update with the link.

5:32 – Looking back on the Biden administration’s approach to China

12:28 – Attempting to outline the new Trump administration’s approach to China

20:34 – The view from Beijing of Trump 2.0

26:54 – The Kindleberger Trap (and other "traps")

29:35 – China, the U.S., and the Russo-Ukrainian war, and the idea of a “reverse Kissinger”

34:23 – The problem with framing objectionable Trump policy moves as ceding victories to China

36:51 – How countries in the Western Pacific region are responding to the new administration

38:48 – Taiwan’s concerns for Trump’s shift on Ukraine

41:45 – Predictions for how the Trump administration will handle technology competition with China, and the apparent abandonment of industrial policy

48:14 – What the affirmative vision for U.S.-China policy should look like

Paying It Forward:

Ryan: Patricia Kim and Jon Czin at Brookings

Jessica: Jeffrey Ding at George Washington University and Jonas Nahm at Johns Hopkins SAIS

Recommendations:

Jessica: The movie Conclave (2024)

Ryan: Derek Thompson’s piece in The Atlantic, “The Anti-Social Century,” and Robert Cooper’s The Ambassadors: Thinking about Diplomacy from Machiavelli to Modern Times

Kaiser: The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil

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Transcript

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0:40.8	Start your free 30-day trial at audible.com slash Wondery UK.
0:45.7	That's audible.com slash Wondery UK. Welcome to this special live edition of the Cynica podcast coming to you from the University of California, Berkeley.
1:05.0	Hello, Berkeley!
1:16.9	Thank you. All right. So I want to hear.
1:18.0	I want to thank Sophie Volp and Xia Jemaa,
1:20.3	and of course, Rachel Stern,
1:21.2	who just introduced us from the Center for Chinese Studies
1:23.5	at the Institute for Asian Studies here at Cal for making this happen.
1:28.3	What a delight it is to be back at my alma mater, a place where even knowing everything I'd now know about higher education,
1:35.3	I would enroll here again if I could without hesitation, but of course now I would never, never get in as possible.
1:43.3	Anyway, Cal absolutely made me the person that I am today.
1:47.9	My four years spent here were just some of the best and most memorable years of my life
1:52.2	where I made friendships that have literally just endured to this day.
	...

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