This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy are joined by Sue-Lin Wong, who until recently covered China for The Economist and hosted an eight-part podcast series all about Xi Jinping called The Prince. The podcast features interviews with a wide range of China-watchers, peers of Xi, dissidents, and many others who offer insights into what makes Xi tick.

3:38 – Reason behind naming the podcast “the Prince”

5:53 – Differences between traditional journalism and podcasting

9:52 – The role of Sue-Lin’s mother in the podcast

13:37 – How corruption influenced Xi’s leadership style

19:29 – Identifying Xi’s greatest anxieties: party in-fighting, the collapse of the USSR

22:48 – Early signs of Xi’s ideological underpinnings most China watchers missed  

29:33 – Did the CCP’s internal crisis make Xi’s rise inevitable?

32:57 – Is Xi Jinping the most powerful man in the world?

37:12 – Reframing the engagement debate after Xi’s administration

41:51 – David Rennie’s view on China: “a giant utilitarian experiment”

46:45 – Key insights on Xi that listeners of the Prince should walk away with

52:16 – How Sue-Lin would brief an American policymaker on Xi Jinping’s main motivations

A transcript of this episode is available at TheChinaProject.com.

Recommendations:

Jeremy – A Matter of Perspective: Parsing Insider Accounts of Xi Jinping Ahead of the 20th Party Congress, an article on The China Story written by Neil Thomas 

Sue-Lin – Race to the Galaxy, a two-player board game 

Kaiser – Interview with the Vampire, a new AMC TV series

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