This week on the Sinica Podcast, I chat with Yawei Liu, Senior Advisor for China at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia, and Yukon Huang, former China country head of the World Bank and now Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The show was taped live at the 2025 Columbia China Summit at Columbia University, put on by the Columbia University Greater China Society, on April 13,. Special thanks to them for inviting us to attend!

3:53 – Columbia University’s history with China

7:52 – How Beijing views the current trade war

11:32 – Yawei’s idea of “the clash of misperceptions”

18:18 – The actual origins of America’s trade deficits and China’s trade surpluses

23:14 – How the inevitable talk between Trump and Xi Jinping may play out

32:04 – Sinophobia versus changing attitudes toward China

35:43 – How the current trade war is related to innovation in China

45:31 – How we can wage peace

Paying It Forward: Nicholas Zeller and his Substack newsletter, The U.S.-China Perception Monitor

Recommendations:

Yawei: Americans in China: Encounters with the People’s Republic ed. by Terry Lautz, and Chinese Encounters with America: Journeys That Shaped the Future of China ed. by Terry Lautz and Deborah Davis

Yukon: David Brooks’ April 2022 article, “The End of Globalization: The Dominance of Global Cultural Wars”

Kaiser: The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918-1933 by Frank McDonough

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Sinica Live at Columbia University, with Yawei Liu and Yukon Zhang

Sinica Podcast