This week Kaiser and Jeremy welcome back Bill Bishop, the force behind the invaluable Sinocism newsletter and the man Evan Osnos once referred to as "the China watcher's China watcher." Starting with a look at Bill's past and how he ended up in China, our discussion moves on to why he decided to start his esteemed newsletter before segueing into his take on the most important but overlooked China stories of the past month.Enjoy Sinica? Please remember that if you don't want to listen through our site, you are always welcome to download this show as a standalone mp3 file. If you want to subscribe to this and future shows by RSS to automate the downloading via iTunes, please remember that you can subscribe to our public feed at http://popupchinese.com/feeds/custom/sinica. Inquiries and suggestions for future show topics are also welcome by email at sinica@popupchinese.com.
howiesnyder
said on May 17, 2013
The Asahi Shimbun is generally the most leftist of the major Japanese newspapers, and was one of the earliest media outlets to enter China. Also, Japanese organizations have wine and dine budgets, or, in the spirit today's podcasts, hookers and coke money......
Sinica
said on May 18, 2013
Recommendations:JeremyChina: What’s Going Right? (ChinaFile) - http://www.chinafile.com/china-what-s-going-rightBill1. "Wealth and Power: China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century" by Orville Schell and John Delury - http://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Power-Chinas-Twenty-first-Century/dp/06796434782. The Americans (FX) - http://vod.fxnetworks.com/watch/theamericansKaiserNetwork Insecurity: Are we losing the battle against cyber crime? (The New Yorker) - http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/05/20/130520fa_fact_seabrook
jeremy
said on May 18, 2013
About my "no liberals in China" comment:I should add a link to the interview I mentioned by Matt Schiavenza with Huang Wenguang. The money quote: http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/04/interview-will-the-bo-xilai-case-change-china/275026/
rwsavoy
said on May 20, 2013
This photo makes me chuckle after getting used to Bill's 老大 twitter photo.
wgj
said on May 22, 2013
On the China-Japan-US strategic relationship (and other topics related to the geopolitics regarding China and neighboring Asian countries), Peter Lee's China Matters blog and his writings for the Asia Times Online are a must-read. This guy does extensive research, is very insightful and writes with lots of sarcastic humor -- exactly the kind of guy that would fit in perfectly with the Sinica crowd. Too bad he lives in the Bay Area and not in China.To be fair, Sinocism did link to a piece of his recently. Still, I was a bit disappointed that nobody cited his analysis on what's currently going on, because it provides plausible answers to some questions raised but not answered in this podcast.
qmmayer
said on May 23, 2013
The point raised in the podcast about the American press perhaps overstating the case for reformists in the Party reminds me of a similar scenario described in B. Tuchman's Stilwell book, with influential Americans projecting onto CKS the image of a committed democratic leader. More recently, it was a theme of the Iran-Contra scandal, with Reagan administration officials convinced that they were dealing with reform-minded elements in the Iranian government. I think there’s a certain idealism at play: surely there are enlightened, intelligent leaders in every government who see the unalloyed good that would come from Western-style democracy!
stevendaniels88
said on May 23, 2013
The Chinese-language media sources Bill Bishop mentioned:Policy & Politics: Caijing 财经 http://www.caijing.com.cnBusiness and Financial News: Economic Observer 经济观察 http://www.eeo.com.cnNews Portals: Netease News 网易新闻 http://news.163.com
