The Good Fight Club: Why Japan’s “Weirdo” Victory Matters, the Rise of Chinese Soft Power, and the End of Asian Stability

The Good Fight

Yascha Mounk

News

4.7 • 963 Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2026

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Yascha Mounk, Bethany Allen, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, and Chang Che examine how Asia is preparing for a more dangerous world. In this week’s episode of The Good Fight Club, Yascha Mounk, Bethany Allen, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, and Chang Che examine the stunning electoral victory of Japan’s new prime minister Sanae Takaichi, China’s coercion tactics and how they’re backfiring across Asia, and what the rise of “authentic outsiders” tells us about the current moment in global democracy. Bethany Allen is a journalist based in Taiwan and the author of Beijing Rules: How China Weaponized Its Economy to Confront the World. Pratap Bhanu Mehta is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research and a Visiting Professor at Princeton University. Chang Che is a nonfiction writer and journalist covering China, and a contributor to The New Yorker and The Guardian. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following ⁠this link on your phone⁠. Email: leonora.barclay@persuasion.community Podcast production by Jack Shields and Leonora Barclay. Connect with us! ⁠Spotify⁠ | ⁠Apple⁠ | ⁠Google⁠ X: ⁠@Yascha_Mounk⁠ & ⁠@JoinPersuasion⁠ YouTube: ⁠Yascha Mounk⁠, ⁠Persuasion⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠Persuasion Community⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	What happened?
0:05.1	From director Maggie Jelenhall.
0:07.0	We dug you up and brought you back to life.
0:10.4	Starring award winners Jesse Buckley.
0:12.4	What did you want with a dead girl?
0:14.4	And Christian Bale.
0:15.6	I'm the same.
0:16.5	Born from the dead.
0:17.6	A master.
0:18.4	With Peter Sarnsguard, Annette Benning, and Penelope Cruz.
0:21.6	The dead have got something to say, and I'm saying it.
0:24.6	Every funny screen.
0:26.6	The ride in Cinemas March 6.
0:28.6	You know, it's not something that a single president is going to be able to reverse, say, in 2028.
0:35.6	You know, once the rose-colored glasses are shattered, it's hard to kind of rebuild that.
0:42.2	So I think that, you know, we got to say goodbye to that era.
0:45.8	And I really felt that this year.
0:48.5	And now the Good Fight with Yasha Monk.
0:57.6	Welcome. with Yasha Monk. Welcome to the 15th edition of the Good Fight Club and the second Good Fight Club of the year.
1:03.9	We had a really great episode about Europe at the end of last year, and I thought it would be really interesting, despite the continent being
1:12.0	much larger and in some ways much more complex than Europe to try and do something similar
1:16.5	about Asia. And so I invited the three people I most enjoy talking about various parts of the Asian
	...

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