Podcast: In China, What’s New and What’s Old? (Elizabeth C. Economy, Council on Foreign Relations)

http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2016/12/22/podcast-china-whats-new-whats-old/

Podcast: Xi Jinping’s Team of Rivals (Elizabeth C. Economy, Council on Foreign Relations)

http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2016/12/08/podcast-xi-jinpings-team-of-rivals/

Making America Great is Like Making a Great Hotel (Elizabeth C. Economy, Council on Foreign Relations)

http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2016/11/30/making-america-great-is-like-making-a-great-hotel/

Podcast: The Future of U.S. Statecraft in Asia (Elizabeth C. Economy, Kurt Campbell, Council on Foreign Relations)

http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2016/10/27/podcast-the-future-of-u-s-statecraft-in-asia/

Podcast: Hope and Fury Among India’s Young (Elizabeth C. Economy, Council on Foreign Relations)

Over the course of the next decade, one million Indians are predicted to turn eighteen each month and India will be the youngest nation on earth by2020. These young people are making new demands on their government such as greater job creation, improved teacher quality, and better air quality in cities. Are Indian leaders prepared to respond to these calls? On this week’s Asia Unbound podcast, Somini Sengupta, the United Nations bureau chief for the New York Times and author of The End of Karma: Hope and Fury Among India’s Young, presents the stories of seven young Indians, who came of of age following economic liberalization in 1991. Sengupta depicts a generation brimming with aspiration and eager to move beyond the constraints of their past, such as caste and family background. The stories include those of Anupam, a boy from one of India’s poorest provinces who dreams of attending one of the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology, and Varsha, who defies her father’s wishes in attempting to become a policewoman. Listen below to hear more about Sengupta’s take on India’s “most transformative generation.”

http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2016/10/12/podcast-hope-and-fury-among-indias-young/

Podcast: Young Lives in New China (Elizabeth C. Economy, CFR)

On this week’s Asia Unbound podcast, Alec Ash, author of Wish Lanterns: Young Lives in New China, gives of glimpse of today’s China through the varied stories of its young adults. Ash beautifully profiles six of his Chinese peers born in the late 1980s and 90s—such as Fred, the patriotic daughter of an official, and Lucifer, an aspiring superstar—who are only children with no memories of Mao or Tiananmen. Ash describes a generation with lofty ambitions and the energy and confidence to shape their own destinies. Yet at the same time he finds their lives are also constrained by a kind of powerlessness. Their lives are circumscribed by what Ash calls China’s “brick wall”: the reality that they can only change their own futures as much as the system around them will allow. Though his subjects are not activists, they are not all apathetic; some remain deeply patriotic even as they are critical of the Chinese state, hoping for greater accountability and rule of law. Listen below to hear more about the lives of Ash’s characters, and find out why Chinese youths today are not simply optimistic, but feel entitled to a better future than any generation before them. At the end of the day, Ash’s subjects are just like any other twenty-year-olds, venturing forth into an uncertain world to realize and discover who they really are.

http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2016/10/05/podcast-young-lives-in-new-china/

Podcast: India and China’s Brave New World (Elizabeth C. Economy, CFR)

On this week’s Asia Unbound podcast, Anja Manuel, cofounder and partner at RiceHadleyGates and author of This Brave New World: India, China and the United States, offers her prescription for how the United States can understand and engage with Asia’s two largest rising powers. Manuel compares and contrasts Indian and Chinese history, leaders, and trajectories, ultimately arriving at a pair of distinct national ambitions: China aims to regain its long-lost place on center stage, and India wishes to re-engage with the world after being relatively isolated since independence.She is sanguine about troubling headlines, such as China’s faltering economy and India’s violent outbursts of Hindu nationalism, which she believes will not hold the two countries back from achieving their greater goals, but acknowledges continuing challenges in both countries’ relations with the outside world, such as unfair business practices or Chinese cyber policies. For Manuel’s recommendations as to what role the United States should play, listen to our conversation below. By her assessment, we are on the right track by bolstering ties with India and—especially in the face of occasional adversity—continuing to seek areas of cooperation with China.

http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2016/09/29/podcast-india-and-chinas-brave-new-world/

Podcast: Myanmar’s “Democratic” Reform ( Elizabeth C. Economy, CFR)

http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2016/09/22/podcast-myanmars-democratic-reform/

Podcast: The Perfect Dictatorship (Elizabeth C. Economy, CFR)

http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2016/09/14/podcast-the-perfect-dictatorship/

China’s Summer of Discontent (Elizabeth C. Economy, CFR)

http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2016/09/06/chinas-summer-of-discontent/

Podcast: The Dictator’s Dilemma: The Chinese Communist Party’s Strategy for Survival (Elizabeth C. Economy, CFR)

Are Chinese citizens unhappy with their government? Media coverage of corruption, pollution, and censorship might lead outsiders to believe that they are. But on this week’s Asia Unbound podcast, Bruce Dickson, professor of political science and international affairs and director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at George Washington University, offers evidence to the contrary. In 2010 and 2014, in collaboration with Chinese scholars, Dickson conducted two broad public opinion surveys of thousands of Chinese urbanites that culminated in his new book, The Dictator’s Dilemma: The Chinese Communist Party’s Strategy for Survival.

http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2016/07/21/podcast-the-dictators-dilemma-the-chinese-communist-partys-strategy-for-survival/

Podcast: China’s Offensive in Europe (Elizabeth C. Economy, CFR)

In this week’s Asia Unbound podcast I speak with Philippe Le Corre, visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, about his new book with Alain Sepulchre,China’s Offensive in Europe.

http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2016/07/07/podcast-chinas-offensive-in-europe/

Podcast: The Hacked World Order (Elizabeth C. Economy, CFR)

http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2016/05/17/podcast-the-hacked-world-order/

Podcast: What Everyone Needs to Know About China’s Economy (Elizabeth C. Economy, CFR)

On this week’s Asia Unbound podcast, I speak with Arthur Kroeber, founding partner and head of research at Gavekal Dragonomics and author of the just-released China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know, about why China’s much ballyhooed economic reforms have fallen flat. Kroeber argues that the Chinese leadership’s contradictory belief in both a “decisive” role for markets and a “dominant” state sector has not yet been resolved and is the fundamental barrier to economic progress. According to Kroeber, Xi Jinping himself may not buy into the notion that markets need to be decisive, but rather believes they can function as a tool of the state to draw more efficiency from state-owned enterprises. For an increasingly globalized and connected Chinese economy, however, open and transparent markets are a necessity, not a choice. Listen below to find out why Kroeber gives China a “C–” on its economic reforms thus far and why reforming the state-owned enterprise sector is the first—and most crucial—step to unlocking long-term sustainable economic growth in China.

http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2016/05/10/podcast-what-everyone-needs-to-know-about-chinas-economy/

Podcast: The Paper Tigers and Hidden Dragons of China’s Tech Sector (Elizabeth C. Economy, CFR)

Chinese President Xi Jinping has claimed that the direction of China’s technological development is “innovation, innovation and more innovation.” But besides prominent success stories like Huawei and Lenovo, how innovative are other companies in China’s tech sector? In this week’s Asia Unbound podcast I talk with Douglas Fuller, professor of business administration at Zhejiang University’s School of Management, about his upcoming book—possibly the best China book I have read all year—Paper Tigers, Hidden Dragons: Firms and the Political Economy of China’s Technological Development. Fuller paints the big picture of China’s tech sector and describes how heavy support from the state, which actually disincentivizes innovative behavior, has led to weak domestic tech firms in China. Hybrid firms that combine Chinese management with foreign financing and “irrational” firms like Huawei, which initially pushed away state support in favor of competing abroad, are the true “hidden dragons” driving Chinese innovation. However, the Chinese government’s faith in a “techno-nationalist paradigm” that prioritizes indigenous Chinese ownership and control puts these foreign-invested Chinese firms at a disadvantage when it comes to state procurement and support. Listen below to hear why, at least for now, it seems that China’s tech sector is not the innovation powerhouse that Xi might hope for.

http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2016/04/28/podcast-the-paper-tigers-and-hidden-dragons-of-chinas-tech-sector/

Beijing’s Squeeze Play on Taiwan (Elizabeth C. Economy, CFR)

In late April, I spent several days in Taiwan as part of a Council on Foreign Relations delegation. We met with a wide range of officials from the major political parties, including President Ma Ying-jeou, President-elect Tsai Ing-wen, President of the Legislative Yuan Su Jia-Chyuan, and Kuo Chang-huang, a first-term legislator. It is a period of political transition from eight years of Kuomintang (KMT) leadership under President Ma to a government led by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) with Tsai at the helm. And waiting in the wings is the brand new New Power Party (NPP), which was born out of the 2014 Sunflower Movement, and earned itself five seats in the most recent Legislative Yuan elections.

http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2016/04/25/beijings-squeeze-play-on-taiwan/

Podcast: China’s Future (Elizabeth C. Economy, CFR)

China’s political, economic, and social prospects have all been the source of endless speculation for academics, journalists, and policymakers alike. This week I talk with David Shambaugh, professor of political science and international affairs and director of the China Policy Program at the George Washington University, who provides a concise take on these questions and introduces his excellent new book, China’s Future. Shambaugh lays out four pathways for alternative futures toward which China could be headed: neo-totalitarianism, hard authoritarianism, soft authoritarianism, and semi-democracy. Which of these paths China opts to follow will have enormous domestic implications, although the effect on foreign policy may be more limited. Listen in as Shambaugh discusses the hard choices facing China’s leadership and whether U.S. policy has kept up with a changing China.

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A “Gut Check” on U.S.-China Policy (Elizabeth C. Economy, CFR)

At the end of March, I testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on the economic aspects of the “rebalance” to Asia. I have testified before the commission several times, know a number of the commission members, and typically enjoy the experience. This time was no different. However, I was struck by the number of “gut check” questions, as one commissioner put it—questions where the answer appears clear, even obvious, but with a bit more pushing becomes less clear and less obvious.

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Friday Asia Update: Five Stories From the Week of April 1, 2016 (Elizabeth C. Economy, CFR)

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Elizabeth C. Economy. C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies

Prevent the Destruction of Scarborough Shoal (Sean R. Liedman, Elizabeth C. Economy, CFR)

Reuters reported on March 19 that the U.S. Navy had observed Chinese maritime survey activities around Scarborough Shoal that may be a precursor to reclamation activities similar to those executed by China on seven other maritime features in the Spratly Islands located more than three hundred and fifty nautical miles to the south. The U.S. response to China’s island building campaign in the Spratlys has been confined to callsto “halt the expansion and the militarization of occupied features” and maritime and aerial freedom of navigation operations (FONOPS) to preserve freedom of access to the high seas and international airspace. However, the case of Scarborough Shoal is different as an arbitration case remains ongoing, and the United States and its allies and partners in the region should be prepared to use a broader range of the tools of statecraft to prevent similar ecological destruction and occupation of Scarborough Shoal by the Chinese.

http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2016/03/28/prevent-the-destruction-of-scarborough-shoal/