The View from Behind Xi Jinping's Desk, with Jonathan Czin

Sinica Podcast

Kaiser Kuo

Currentaffairs, Business, News, China Politics, Shenzhen, Chinese, Chongqing, China News, Politics, China, Culture, Sichuan, Hangzhou, Beijing, International Relations, China Economy, Chengdu, Film, Shanghai, Guangzhou

4.7 • 710 Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2025

⏱️ 80 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week on the Sinica Podcast, I speak with Jonathan Czin, the Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies and a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center. His new essay in Foreign Affairs, “China Against China: Xi Jinping Confronts the Downsides of Success,” challenges the dominant Western narrative of Xi Jinping as either Mao reincarnate or a brittle autocrat presiding over imminent collapse. Instead, Czin argues that Xi’s most illiberal reforms can be understood as attempts to cure the pathologies of China’s own success. We discuss his framing of Xi’s “Counterreformation,” how it helps explain China’s current political direction, and what it reveals about our own analytical blind spots in the West.

7:15 – Xi’s “reformation” and Carl Minzner’s “end of reform and opening”

12:18 – Corruption, decentralization, and the “lost decade” under Hu and Wen

20:12 – Defining “resilience” and what Xi means by “eating bitterness”

29:45 – The “downsides of success”: property, corruption, and governance contradictions

45:30 – Counter-reformation vs. counterrevolution: what Xi wants to preserve and discard

54:20 – The myth of yes-men: triangulation and feedback in Xi’s leadership style

1:07:07 – Cognitive empathy and why most U.S. analysis of Xi falls short

1:15:35 – Systems that can’t course-correct: comparing the U.S. and China

1:22:05 – Cognitive empathy, ideology, and the problem of American exceptionalism

Paying it forward:

Jonathan: Allie Mathias and Dinny McMahon

Recommendations:

Jonathan: The Thirty Years War by C.V. Wedgewood; The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni

Kaiser: Transplants by Daniel Tam-Claiborne

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Cynical Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China.
0:12.8	In this program, we'll look at books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural trends that can help us better understand what's happening in China's politics, 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.
0:32.6	I'm Kaiser Guo, coming to you this week from the lovely little village of Stonesfield in Oxfordshire, where my sister and her husband live.
0:40.6	Cynica is supported this year by the Center for East Station Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
0:45.6	a National Resource Center for the Study of East Asia.
0:48.8	The Cineca podcast will remain free, as always.
0:51.8	But if you work for an organization that believes in what I'm doing
0:54.6	with the show and with the newsletter, please consider lending your support. You can get me at
0:59.5	Cinecapod at gmail.com. And listeners, please support my work by becoming a paying subscriber
1:05.6	at Cinecapodcast.com. You will enjoy, in addition to the podcast, the complete transcript of the show, essays from me, as well as writings and podcasts from some of your favorite China-focused columnists and commentators. And of course, you will also enjoy the knowledge that you are helping me do what I honestly believe is very important work. So do check out the page to see all that's on offer and consider
1:28.2	helping out. This week on Cineco, we're going to take a step back and look again, well, really,
1:34.6	really, really look at how we understand China's leadership under Xi Jinping. I've often been
1:40.3	frustrated by the persistence of certain tropes in especially American commentary, but
1:45.3	you know, more broadly, Western commentary about Xi and the senior leadership in Beijing,
1:50.6	that he's either, you know, Mao reincarnate or some brittle autocrat presiding over imminent collapse.
1:58.0	That's why I found Jonathan Zin's new piece in foreign affairs titled
2:01.5	China Against China. Xi Jinping confronts the downsides of success. Really refreshing.
2:07.8	The piece should come out right around the time that you're hearing this if you're listening
2:11.1	to it on the day that the show drops. If you are a subscriber to foreign affairs, you might
2:15.8	think about hitting pause and giving it a read
2:17.6	first or not. John is Michael H. Armacoste Chair in Foreign Policy Studies and a fellow at the
	...

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