This week, a special episode taped live at the University of California, Berkeley — my alma mater — on March 6 and featuring Jessica Chen Weiss of Johns Hopkins SAIS and Ryan Hass of the Brookings Institution, both well-known to people who follow U.S.-China relations. This episode was made possible by the Center for Chinese Studies at UC Berkeley's Institute for Asian Studies, and will be available on video as well — I'll update with the link.

5:32 – Looking back on the Biden administration’s approach to China

12:28 – Attempting to outline the new Trump administration’s approach to China

20:34 – The view from Beijing of Trump 2.0

26:54 – The Kindleberger Trap (and other "traps")

29:35 – China, the U.S., and the Russo-Ukrainian war, and the idea of a “reverse Kissinger”

34:23 – The problem with framing objectionable Trump policy moves as ceding victories to China

36:51 – How countries in the Western Pacific region are responding to the new administration

38:48 – Taiwan’s concerns for Trump’s shift on Ukraine

41:45 – Predictions for how the Trump administration will handle technology competition with China, and the apparent abandonment of industrial policy

48:14 – What the affirmative vision for U.S.-China policy should look like

Paying It Forward:

Ryan: Patricia Kim and Jon Czin at Brookings

Jessica: Jeffrey Ding at George Washington University and Jonas Nahm at Johns Hopkins SAIS

Recommendations:

Jessica: The movie Conclave (2024)

Ryan: Derek Thompson’s piece in The Atlantic, “The Anti-Social Century,” and Robert Cooper’s The Ambassadors: Thinking about Diplomacy from Machiavelli to Modern Times

Kaiser: The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil

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Live in Berkeley: Jessica Chen Weiss and Ryan Hass on the U.S. and China in 2025

Sinica Podcast