As part of our ongoing efforts to secure the hottest scoops for you, our Sinica team originally planned to storm Hu Jintao's flight to Washington and record a live podcast with everyone's favorite Chairman during his flight across the Pacific. Sadly, this idea did not meet equal enthusiasm after a good night's sleep, leaving us to report on the ongoing US-China summit from our regular studios in downtown Beijing.Joining Kaiser Kuo to analyze the Washington summit is Sinica regular Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei fame, who brings his candid impressions of what both President Obama and Chairman Hu are hoping to achieve at the summit. Also in our studio is Gady Epstein, Beijing Bureau Chief for Forbes magazine and recently-outed China apologist and pro-slaver. Conspicuously absent is Bill Bishop and his chocolate cupcakes, both of which we will lure back with promises of further animal deportations if necessary. And capping off Sinica we have our regular financial news roundup courtesy of Caixin magazine.We had a great time in the studio recording this and hope you like it. As always, if you want to save yourself the hassle of having to remember to come here and listen each Friday, just sign-up for an account on Popup Chinese and follow the instructions to add Sinica to your list of shows. Once you've setup your personal RSS feed, new episodes will download automatically as soon as they become available. iTunes holdouts can also continue to download the show as a standalone mp3 file.
barrister
said on January 22, 2011
For anyone else who has trouble finding it, the Gady-ambush video is on the page linked to above. You have to scroll down the sidebar to the section that says "The View from China". It's about halfway down the page.
And good job, Gady....
Benrose
said on January 23, 2011
Hi everyone!
Let me just start by saying that absolutely love Sinica!
Listening to this weeks podcast and being a citizen of the "Old World" I was wondering about how a lot of the topics you cover apply to Europe in the same way or maybe totally different.
With most of the regulars being from the US and given the fact that the two countries ARE in fact the only superpowers that really matter it's understandable that you focus on Sino-American relations.
For a lot of times when you mention "the West", the principles and political standings of Europe and the US often do coincide but we obviously feel like there are substantial differences between us as well. Especially with the right-wing shift that seems to be occurring in the US right now, i think Europe has now more than ever a second opinion on a lot of issues. Infortunately this is not relevant because Europe is constantly deconstructing every last bit influence we used to have by various means, such as handling our currency but for the most part just being a bunch of very small countries not willing to give up authority to a supra-national institution that despite a common sense of a European brotherhood of nations, most of us can not identify with. So while I'm aware that politically Europe is practically irrelevant, economically we're still a big shot. So...
Im wondering about a few things:
What is China's general attitude towards Europe as whole or towards certain bigger countries such as the big three? This goes for the government as well as the 老百姓 on the street.
How do you put this into a historical context? Some countries carry greater historical luggage that others. My understanding and personal experience in China is that people are aware of this. To what degree does this still have tagible effects?
Do you get the feeling that Chinese reflect our differences such as the one between an anglo-american fiscal attitude that has been responsible for the economic crisis and a more controlled franco-germanic system?
Do they even care? Is 美国 all that is important these days? What are you predictions for this decade? Will China continue to regard us as "the West" or will they even try to bond with some part of Europe in their endlessly motivated strive to compete with America?
I remember you had a podcast on Africa and I really liked that. I was just wondering if you guys are planing on touching some of the issues I mentioned. I'd be really interested to hear from the regulars what they think about this. You mentioned that "Der Kaiser fährt nach Europa" and maybe you're already way ahead of me. Anyways...
Keep it up guys. Thanks for all the great insight.
-Philipp
b_lewis
said on January 23, 2011
@Philipp
With regards to your question about how close China will keep Europe in it's perennial competition with the US you may want to check out this article I came across on Caixin yesterday. The title is "Between a Crutch and a Walking Stick" (http://english.caing.com/2011-01-19/100218740.html) and the premise of the article is that it is in China's economic interest to strengthen the euro and push toward making it the world reserve currency instead of the dollar.
Not to go into too much detail but the premise is basically that the Fed here in the States is going to continue pursuing deflation of the dollar as an economic stimulator (see QE2) and this consequently will hurt anybody who holds US bonds. Given all the financing China and Japan are currently doing to support weakened EU economies it is in the Chinese interest to strengthen the euro to offset the dollar losses that will come from the quantitative easing. The author of the article suggest that the best way to do this is by convincing OPEC countries to denominate oil in euros instead of dollars.
It is a very thorough and well-researched article and one that I'm sure will not go unnoticed. This is all to say that while yes, politically China and the US are the most important players on the field right now, economics is far more complicated with many more influential players. And China is nothing if not economically shrewd. So you can count on China taking advantage of every option available to it, and that most certainly will include Europe.
creampieslanteye
said on February 17, 2011
I'm seriously pissed off at you guys. You haven't released a new podcast in almost a month, maybe even longer.
Lame!!!
