The View from Behind Xi Jinping's Desk, with Jonathan Czin

In this episode of the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser Kuo interviews Jonathan Czin about his recent Foreign Affairs piece, "China Against China: Xi Jinping Confronts the Downsides of Success." They discuss Xi Jinping's leadership as a "counter-reformation," his efforts to consolidate power and address the dysfunctions of the Hu Jintao era, and the concept of "resilience" in the Chinese context. Czin argues that Xi's policies are aimed at making China more resilient against external pressures and curing the "pathologies of prosperity," such as corruption and the marriage of wealth and power. The conversation explores the mechanisms through which course corrections happen in the Chinese system, the challenges in Western analysis of Chinese politics, and the symmetry between the dysfunctions in both the American and Chinese systems. They also touch on recent events like export controls and the removal of senior military officers, interpreting them through the lens of Xi's priorities and challenges.