This week on Sinica, in a show recorded at Syracuse University on September 30, I chat with my old pal Bryce Whitwam about the remarkable rise of live-streaming e-commerce — and how it's already making its way to the U.S.

4:28 – Why Bryce chose to leave Shanghai and pursue a doctorate in the States

8:08 – How big livestream e-commerce has gotten and its predicted trajectory

9:37 – E-commerce livestreaming and the pursuit of celebrity

14:08 – The different types of livestream commerce

17:30 – Xiaohongshu

20:45 – Why Taobao has lost its dominance

22:07 – The value-add of an influencer’s pitch

27:00 – The demographics of Chinese livestream e-commerce consumers

29:09 – Insights from Bryce’s 25 interviews

36:36 – Buying food on livestream e-commerce and how agribusinesses are getting involved in the trend

41:21 – Livestream commerce in the United States

44:34 – How livestream e-commerce has changed the retail experience in China

46:43 – Potential future disruptions in the industry

Recommendations:

Bryce: Jeffree Star on TikTok as an American livestream commerce example and Omar Nok’s “Egypt to Japan Without Flying” TikTok stream

Kaiser: The album True by Jon Anderson and The Band Geeks

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This week, a show taped live at Syracuse University on September 30 with Associate Professor Dimitar Gueorguiev, author of the excellent Retrofitting Leninism: Participation Without Democracy in China. We discuss his book, his recent paper exploring hawkishness in Chinese public opinion, and his thoughts about the upcoming U.S. presidential election.

1:59 Syracuse University’s MAX 132 class ("the globalization class")

4:10 Dimitar’s background and how he became interested in China

7:44 How the genre of authoritarian resilience took off

14:26 China’s understanding of democracy (whole-process democracy)

17:40 Features of Leninism that have allowed the Chinese Communist Party to survive

21:21 Why China in the 1980s and '90s admired Singaporea's authoritarian PAP

23:37 The idea of the mass line

27:16 China’s sentiment analysis through technology, and using bottom-up information as performance evaluation

34:03 The COVID-19 pandemic and the confirmation bias of the regime-type explanation

37:37 The National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC)

40:14 Dimitar’s research on hawkishness in China: how he got the data, what drives Chinese hawkishness, and the national security vs. economic lens

51:08 Why those who are dissatisfied with the government lean more hawkish and those who are satisfied with the government lean more dovish

56:30 The upcoming U.S. election: how things may play out under the two different administrations, and understanding Chinese preferences

Recommendations:

Dimitar: The TV series The Expanse (2015-2022)

Kaiser: Anthea Roberts’ Six Faces of Globalization: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why It Matters; and the documentary Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos (2024)

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This week on the Sinica Podcast, I chat with my dear friend David Moser, a longtime resident of Beijing, formerly an occasional co-host of Sinica and associate professor at Beijing Capital Normal University. We have a long history of exploring the underlying issues in our approach to China, and this week, we unpack some of those, focusing on the role of outsiders in Chinese society and their role in "changing China," drawing on David's response to an essay I recently published.

3:46 —David’s thoughts on Kaiser’s essay (“Priority Pluralism: Rethinking Universal Values in U.S.-China Relations”)

5:18 —How David thinks about going on state media and the reasons he does so

10:37 —How David’s engagement with state media has changed over time

15:04 —Conscience, moral intuition, drawing lines, and whataboutism

26:35 —The outsider urge to change China: the differences between the U.S. and Chinese governments and COVID as a test of the two systems; the role of American policy in working toward positive change and the importance of continuing engagement; and so-called Enlightenment values and priority pluralism

50:46 —The debate over cultural differences

57:09 —China’s notion of whole-process democracy versus American democracy

1:05:55 — “Give them time:” Anticipating when we will see big changes in China’s political culture

Recommendations:

David: Richard Nisbett’s The Geography of Thought; and his own article, “A Fearful Asymmetry: COVID-19 and America’s Information Deficit with China”

Kaiser: The “Open Database for China Studies Resource Guide” published by ACLS

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