Susan Thornton on the urgent need for diplomacy with China over the Russo-Ukraine War
Sinica Podcast
Kaiser Kuo
4.8 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 30 March 2022
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Susan Thornton, former Acting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and a veteran diplomat. Susan makes a compelling case for the importance of diplomacy in the U.S.-China relationship — and the alarming absence of real diplomacy over the last several years. She helps interpret American and Chinese diplomatic engagements over the Russo-Ukrainian War and assesses the prospects for China actually playing a role in negotiating an end to the conflict.
3:42 – What diplomacy is really all about, and why it's so conspicuously absent
7:32 – Does it make sense for the U.S. to expect Beijing to outright condemn the invasion?
10:40 – What should the U.S. actually expect from China?
13:55 – Is China willing and able to play a meaningful role as a mediator?
17:06 – What's up with the leaks?
21:32 – Reading the readouts
28:20 – What is China's optimal endgame here?
32:06 – China's "southern strategy"
34:50 – Do upcoming U.S. midterm and presidential elections matter to Beijing?
41:29 – What are we missing when we talk about China's perspectives on the war?
A full transcript of this interview is available on SupChina.com
Recommendations:
Susan: Butter Lamp, a short film directed by Hu Wei, nominated for Best Live Action Short at the 87th Academy Awards
Kaiser: Birria Tacos. Here's a good recipe! (These should come with a doctor's warning)
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Transcript
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| 0:45.7 | That's audible.com slash Wondery UK. Welcome to the Cynica podcast, the weekly discussion of current affairs in China, produced in partnership with SubChina. |
| 1:04.7 | Subscribe to SubChina's newly designed China Access Newsletter to keep on top of all the latest news from China from hundreds of |
| 1:11.8 | different news sources or check out all the original writing on our website at suprinna.com. |
| 1:17.4 | We've got reported stories, essays, and editorials, great explainers and trackers, regular columns, |
| 1:23.1 | and of course, a growing library of podcasts. We cover everything from China's fraught foreign relations |
| 1:29.4 | to its ingenious entrepreneurs, from the ongoing repression of Uyghurs and other Muslim peoples |
| 1:34.7 | in China's Xinjiang region, to the tectonic shifts underway as China rolls out what we call |
| 1:40.4 | the Red New Deal. It's a feast of business, political, and cultural news about a nation |
| 1:45.5 | that is reshaping the world. We cover China with neither fear nor favor. I'm Kaiser Guo, |
| 1:51.6 | coming to you from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. By the time most of you hear this podcast, |
| 1:56.7 | the Russo-Ukrainian War will be entering its fifth week. For listeners to this show who are keenly interested, as I think many of us are, |
| 2:03.2 | in how the war is being processed in Beijing, |
... |
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