OpenSource is sponsored by listeners like you.

Pitch in to keep the world's first podcast going strong.

15 years and counting, find us at patreon.com slash radio open source.

And thank you.

I'm Christopher Lighten. This is OpenSource.

China talk this hour, unofficial talk, people talk,

close to ground level,

listening for affinities and anxieties,

the attitudes in the US and China that could complicate relations in a transition.

We've heard the official line from Secretary of State Antony Blinken,

who can make the challenge from China sound like a threat.

China has a top tier fighting force, Blinken said,

and it aims to become the world's leading power.

The question this hour is, do the people here and there know better

or have a different intuition?

Our guests, our teachers, talkers, listeners in both cultures.

Kaiser Guo is a celebrity in digital China,

first with the heavy metal rock band Tang Dynasty in the 80s,

now with the Seneca podcast from his American base in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

We open with Zheng Su, the class cultural historian at Yale.

Her masterpiece so far recounts the literary and typographical breakthrough

that made Chinese writing modern.

...