The sociologist watching the China-watchers: A conversation with David McCourt
Sinica Podcast
Kaiser Kuo
4.8 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 6 January 2022
⏱️ 81 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with David McCourt, associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis. For the last several years, David — who is not himself a China specialist — has undertaken a sociological study of "China-watchers," and has presented his findings to date in a series of papers as he prepares to publish a book. Focusing on China-watchers as a community, he offers fascinating insights into how they interact to shape the major narratives of "engagement" and "strategic competition.
5:24 – Who counts as a “China-watcher”?
13:53 – A taxonomy of China-watchers
21:43 – Small e engagement and capital E Engagement
28:35 – The sociological sources of China policy
37:54 – What China policy positions tell us about America
45:14 – Habitus and China policy orientation
55:19 – The China-watching community and American presidential administrations, Obama to Biden
A transcript of this conversation is available at SupChina.com.
Recommendations:
David: Gregoire Chamayou, The Ungovernable Society: A Genealogy of Authoritarian Liberalism
Kaiser: The works of the great American political scientist Robert Jervis, who died on December 9, especially Perception and Misperception in International Politics and System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the cynical podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China, produced in partnership with SubChina. |
| 0:14.8 | Subscribe to SubChina's daily access newsletter to keep on top of all the latest news from China from hundreds of different news sources. |
| 0:21.2 | Or check out all the original writing on our site at suprinia.com. |
| 0:25.1 | We've got reported stories, editorials, and regular columns, as well as a growing library of videos, |
| 0:30.3 | and of course, podcasts. |
| 0:31.9 | We cover everything from China's fraught foreign relations to its ingenious entrepreneurs, |
| 0:36.5 | from the ongoing repression of Uyghurs and |
| 0:38.5 | other Muslim people in China's Xinjiang region, to the tectonic shifts underway as China rolls out |
| 0:44.0 | what we're calling the Red New Deal. It's a feast of business, political, and cultural news |
| 0:49.3 | about a nation that is reshaping the world. We cover China with neither fear nor favor. |
| 0:55.9 | Who is watching the China Watchers? Well, the short answer is David McCourt. David McCourt is |
| 1:02.5 | watching the China Watchers. David is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California |
| 1:07.4 | Davis, and for the last six years, he's been doing sociological research |
| 1:11.6 | on that ill-defined and fractious tribe of individuals once referred to as China hands, and now generally, |
| 1:17.3 | but not unproblematically, called China Watchers. David himself is not by his own reckoning a China |
| 1:24.0 | watcher, but they are his subject, and he has conducted a bewildering number of |
| 1:27.7 | interviews with people in the childhood field, ranging from academics to media, people, |
| 1:31.8 | to think tankers, to people in government, and from positions ranging from the most strident |
| 1:35.9 | national security hawks to rights advocates, to the most ardent doves. |
| 1:40.9 | Panda huggers, panda sluggers, and maybe even panda shruggers. They've all spoken at length |
| 1:46.6 | with David, and I suppose I should say right up front that I'm actually one of them. And then that's |
| 1:50.4 | how I first learned about his fascinating research. And I spoke to him quite early on. David joins |
... |
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