This is a live recording from the fourth and final session of 'Cosmopolitan Conversations,' a recent symposium held in Shanghai at M on the Bund and sponsored by CET Academic Programs. All four conversations are hosted by UC Irvine Professor of History Jeffrey Wasserstrom, author of the new title China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know and the organizing force behind The China Beat, generally considered the best academic group blog on China today.

And the topic under discussion? Nothing other than "Writing China, Blogging China." Sharing the microphone with Jeff is Evan Osnos, who you may know as the staff writer for the New Yorker based in Beijing and occasional guest on the Sinica podcast. In this wide-ranging discussion Evan and Jeff touch on everything from the hyper-productive travails of early journalists in China, to the challenges of keeping up a blog and the oft-exaggerated death of the format. The conversation also covers a host of other hot topics in US-China relations.

This is a lengthy recording clocking in at more than an hour and a half. If you don't plan to spend that time at your computer or want to grab the recording for later use, we encourage you to download this recording as a standalone MP3 file.