ChinaPower

Dostępne odcinki

5 z 213

Inside the PLA’s Accelerating Modernization: A Conversation with John Culver
In this episode of the ChinaPower Podcast, John Culver argues that two seemingly contradictory trends define China’s military this year: Xi Jinping’s sweeping purge of senior PLA leaders and the PLA’s rapid transformation into a far more lethal, joint-capable force. He notes unprecedented vacancies on the Central Military Commission and across theater commands—suggesting corruption is the excuse, not the cause—as Xi prioritizes loyalty and faster progress toward his ambitious reform goals. While 2027 isn’t an “invasion deadline,” Culver says the PLA is racing to meet its centennial benchmarks, with September’s parade showcasing a growing nuclear triad, serious investments in undersea warfare, and expanding unmanned aircraft. He cautions that any U.S.-created “hellscape” around Taiwan can be mirrored by China, which can produce equipment that is combat relevant in the Western Pacific at industrial scale. On gray-zone pressure, he casts China’s Coast Guard as a paramilitary tool and says its ability to run a sustained blockade would hinge on complex command-and-control that it hasn’t yet demonstrated in military exercises. Ultimately, Culver emphasizes that there is much about the PLA that remains unknown from the outside as Xi Jinping purposely keeps information opaque. This episode was recorded on October 15, 2025. John Culver is a nonresident senior fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings. Prior to retiring from the Central Intelligence Agency in 2020, he served since 1985 as an analyst and manager on China, with a particular focus on the People’s Liberation Army. From 2015 to 2018, Culver served as national intelligence officer for East Asia (NIO-EA). He was a founding member of the CIA’s Senior Analytic Service, was in the Senior Intelligence Service, and was a recipient of the CIA’s Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal, and the William L. Langer Award for extraordinary achievement in the CIA’s analytic mission.
--------
33:02
--------
33:02
The Future of Sino-Middle Eastern Relations: A Conversation with Dr. Mohammed Alsudairi and Dr. Andrea Ghiselli
In this episode of the ChinaPower Podcast, Dr. Mohammed Alsudairi and Dr. Andrea Ghiselli join us to discuss their newly released book Narratives of Sino-Middle Eastern Futures. They challenge prevailing narratives that frame China’s engagement in the Middle East primarily through the lens of U.S.–China rivalry and offer alternative perspectives by drawing on extensive Arabic and Chinese-language sources to highlight how regional actors themselves interpret and shape their relationships with Beijing. Drawing on Saudi Arabia and Syria as the two core case studies in their book, they show how regional perceptions of China diverge sharply depending on various factors such as national capabilities and alignment with the United States. The conversation also examines China’s diplomacy toward Iran, its muted response to the Israel–Iran conflict, and why both Chinese and regional leaders prefer to limit Beijing’s security role. Dr. Alsudairi and Dr. Ghiselli conclude that the future of Sino–Middle Eastern relations will likely reflect cautious continuity—marked by pragmatic engagement and mutual restraint. Dr. Alsudairi is a Lecturer in Politics and International Relations of the Arabic Speaking World, Center for Arab and Islamic Studies, at the Australian National University. Prior to his appointment, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong, working on a project examining the intersections between religion and infrastructure in the context of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Since 2015, he oversaw the development of the Asian Studies Program at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. More recently in 2022, he was awarded a research fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to work on his upcoming book manuscript. Dr. Ghiselli is a Lecturer in International Politics in the Department of Social and Political Sciences, Philosophy, and Anthropology of the University of Exeter. He is also non-resident research fellow with the TOChina Hub and the Head of Research for its ChinaMed Project. He has previously worked in China at Fudan University for nine years. You can find an open access version of their book here.
--------
54:00
--------
54:00
Hong Kong’s Struggle of Decolonization and Democracy: A Conversation with Ching Kwan Lee
In this episode of the ChinaPower Podcast, Dr. Ching Kwan Lee joins us to discuss her newly released book Forever Hong Kong: A Global City’s Decolonization Struggle. She reframes the 2019 Hong Kong protests not merely as a fight for democracy, but as the culmination of a two-decade decolonization struggle that sought to redefine the city’s identity, economy, and society. Dr. Lee first explains how Hong Kong experienced double colonization - first under Britain, then under Beijing - each system of rule justified through race, from colonial difference to China’s coercive sameness. Dr. Lee also explores Beijing’s contradictory impulses toward Hong Kong—wanting the city open enough to serve as a global hub yet controlled enough to prevent it from inspiring resistance on the mainland. She explains how this tension led to the imposition of the National Security Law and draws parallels to China’s approaches in Tibet and Xinjiang, while reflecting on what Hong Kong’s experience means for Taiwan and the fading credibility of “One Country, Two Systems.” Her insights in the book challenge familiar narratives and place Hong Kong’s struggle within the wider global conversations about authoritarianism, resistance, and decolonization in the 21st century. Dr. Ching Kwan Lee is a professor in the department of Sociology at UCLA. She is a sociologist working at the intersection of global and comparative issues, including labor, political sociology, global development, decolonization, comparative ethnography, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, and Africa. She has published three multiple award-winning monographs on contemporary China, including Gender and the South China Miracle, Against the Law, and The Specter of Global China. The trilogy of Chinese capitalism was written through the lens of labor and working-class experiences. Her most recent publications include a short format book titled Hong Kong: Global China’s Restive Frontier, and two co-edited volumes — Take Back Our Future: an Eventful Sociology of the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement and The Social Question in the 21st Century: A Global View. Forever Hong Kong: A Global City’s Struggle for Decolonization is her newest monograph.
--------
50:25
--------
50:25
China’s Quest to Engineer the Future: A Conversation with Dan Wang
In this joint episode of Pekingology and the ChinaPower Podcast, CSIS Freeman Chair Senior Fellow Henrietta Levin and co-host CSIS China Power Project Deputy Director and Fellow Brian Hart are joined by Dan Wang to discuss his new book, Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future. The conversation unpacks China’s monumentalism in its grand engineering projects, the advantages and consequences of building at such scale, China’s push to lead in key technologies, Beijing’s social engineering efforts, and much more. Dan Wang is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover History Lab. Previously, he was a fellow at the Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center and a lecturer at Yale University’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. From 2017 to 2023, he worked in China as the technology analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics, based in Hong Kong, Beijing, and then Shanghai. For more from Dan Wang, please read his latest piece in Foreign Affairs - The Real China Model: Beijing’s Enduring Formula for Wealth and Power.
--------
34:34
--------
34:34
Echonomics - U.S. Faces Economic Competition with Asia
In this special episode, listen to one of CSIS’s newest podcasts, Echonomics, that investigates how past economic events in Asia continue to impact U.S. policy today. In the 1980s, Japanese companies were snapping up prime New York real estate and Japanese cars lined both Main Street and Wall Street, spiking economic anxiety in the U.S. As a result, Americans and politicians targeted the country, through the destruction of Japanese-made products and heavy tariffs. Today, China finds itself in a similar situation. Ambassador Carla Hills, Bill Reinsch, Craig Allen, Kim Menke, and Don Morrissey discuss the similarities and differences between the anti-Japanese sentiment of the 1980s and the anti-Chinese sentiment of today. Check out other episodes here.
--------
30:13
--------
30:13