FACE-OFF
In this week’s newsletter … FACE-OFF: The U.S. vs China, Channel Spotlight: Diplomatic History, 3 Episodes On: Global Healthcare, Your Super Bowl Playlist, and Tariffs with Douglas Irwin.
In this week’s newsletter…
FACE-OFF: The U.S. vs China
FACE-OFF is a podcast about how China and the United States went from being friends to foes. The series is hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jane Perlez, former New York Times Beijing bureau chief and current fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. In each episode, Jane and Rana Mitter, professor of modern China at the Harvard Kennedy School, analyzes what’s at stake with leading experts.
Q: Face-Off: The U.S. vs China covers a range of pressing geopolitical issues. What inspired you to create this series, and what do you hope listeners take away from it?
A: I was inspired by a lot of events. I think the recently returned American Ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, summed it up. He stressed that China is the most significant, most motivated competitor and adversary the US has faced in the post-World War II era. He noted that the US needs to pay attention. I wanted to convey that sense of urgency in our podcast in a way that’s not threatening but says: Let’s figure this out, let’s be rational. So together with Rana Mitter, a brilliant historian of modern China at the Harvard Kennedy School, we put together episodes that we hope engage an audience of curious people who want to know more about how the US should deal with China across a range of issues. We’ve illuminated Hollywood’s relationship with China; the status of women in China; why the US doesn’t have many journalists there, and then there are the hardcore questions of TikTok, Electric Vehicles; AI and the very nature of the leader, Xi Jinping.
Q: You’ve spent years reporting from China. What do you think Western audiences misunderstand most about China today?
A: A lot of misunderstanding comes from a profound lack of knowledge. I was shocked recently when a highly intelligent, well-informed friend in China asked: Does China have nuclear weapons? China is very different to the United States: it’s an ancient and proud culture, the US is new by comparison; the languages are so different; the customs are so different. Now there’s decreasing amount of interplay in social or cultural ways. So when China expands its military by many factors of strength, and threatens America’s allies in the Pacific— like the Philippines, for example— of course there is worry in the US.
Q: You first visited China during the Cultural Revolution. How different or similar is China under Xi Jinping compared to what China was like under Mao Zedong?
A: China during the Cultural Revolution and China today are two completely different universes. China under Mao Zedong was poor, underdeveloped, and chaotic. We saw demonstrations of tens of thousands of university students on the Bund in Shanghai; factories taken over by Red Guards. Today, China is the world’s manufacturing powerhouse; on the leading edge of AI; the skies are still polluted but they are bluer in the big cities. There are so many differences between then and now. But on reflection, you can see some similarities: in the chaos of the Cultural Revolution you could still see some sense of discipline and dedication of purpose that you certainly see today. Back then, there was ideological purity, at least on the surface; today, there is quite a bit of sheer nationalism, expressed sometimes on the ground as national pride.
Q: What are the major similarities and differences between Trump and Xi?
A: They both know how to flatter the other, that’s the most obvious similarity. Trump invited Xi Jinping to Mar-a-Lago in his first administration, and bragged that he served Xi the biggest, most delicious piece of chocolate cake ever. Xi invited Trump to Beijing and returned the flattery, showing Trump usually hidden quarters in the Forbidden City, and its precious antique treasures. That trip gave Beijing a good chance to take measure of Trump. The relationship went downhill after that. Trump imposed tariffs; Covid soured relations. Now in Trump’s second administration, both men seem to be considering some form of conviviality. It seems unlikely to last long. Because both men want their nation to be number one: Xi wants to displace the US as the primary power in the Asia Pacific region. And Trump— one assumes— wants to hold on to US primacy there. Watch for Xi Jinping putting a lot of pressure on America’s allies in the Indo-Pacific region— Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines. Our guest, Minxin Pei, a professor at Claremont McKenna, gives a lively account of relations between Xi and Trump in our opening episode.
Q: There aren't many American journalists in China today. Why is this case and how does this impact our understanding of China?
A: It is one of the most troubling aspects of the US relationship with China— the lack of American journalists there compared to years past. That’s because the first Trump administration expelled 60 Chinese journalists on the grounds they served as spies for China’s intelligence services. In some cases, this was likely true. But expelling scores of Chinese journalists was an invitation to China to expel American journalists in China. There were already relatively few American journalists before Trump expelled the Chinese. Then suddenly the numbers dropped. The New York Times now has two reporters in China compared to 10 when I left as bureau chief in 2019; the Washington Post has nobody there; the Wall Street Journal has three Western and American journalists in Beijing. The handful of American journalists are followed everywhere. The surveillance is harsh and makes it difficult to report stories in depth, or even at all. What are we missing? Many aspects of life in China today. I will name a few: what is the mood among young people, many of whom are highly educated but find it hard to find jobs. What is the mood among urban women who find it hard to get a divorce, to find work with good pay. What do people think of Xi’s cozy relationship with Putin: historically, China’s relationship with Russia has been shaky. What is going on at China’s border with North Korea? That’s an area I was able to reach before I left China though with some difficulty.
Q: In recent years, when Chinese companies start to build up an American or European consumer base, officials tend to worry about the potential harms to national security. For example, the banning of TikTok or the recent concerns around DeepSeek. How concerned should we really be about these companies being used as Trojan horses for political ends?
A: I may be an outlier on this but I am surprised that the US can’t— or doesn’t want to— find a way to balance national security with freedom to listen. The problem of TikTok is not exactly at the level of nuclear weapons. Yes, there are national security concerns with the algorithm being accessible to the security services in China. Of the Chinese being able to live mic a phone with TikTok. But is there not a way to overcome these problems? It will be interesting to see what American users will do if TikTok is eventually banned. Will they be like Indian users? When the Indian government banned TikTok, users went to other social media platforms. I have a sense that would not be the case in the US.
Q: Hollywood movies have found great success with Chinese audiences in recent years, but the happy relationship between the American film industry and China has started to sour. Why?
A: Hollywood probably had overblown expectations about China. Studio bosses saw the huge market and lots of dollars. Peter Loehr, an American movie maker who lived in Beijing from the mid-1990s until very recently, takes us through the ups and downs of the China-Hollywood relationship in our episode about the movies. Peter talks about the first movie he made in China, a love story called Spicy Love Soup with a pop music soundtrack. He marketed it by hauling two large movie cans around 38 cities on long train journeys. Cadbury sponsored the movie by dispatching a 300 kilo block of chocolate that was chipped into small pieces for the audiences. He tells us about the travails of the Los Angeles movie moguls. After the huge success of Titanic (recommended to all Chinese by then leader of China, Jiang Zemin), the Americans thought they had it made. And they did for a while. In 2012, then-Vice President Biden and Xi agreed that 34 big American movies could be shown in China. Soon afterwards, Jeffrey Katzenberg started producing the Kung Fu Panda sequels. Six were planned. But only three were made. Peter Loerh was involved at a very senior level with the production of The Great Wall starring Matt Damon. It turned out that movies that appealed to American audiences didn’t always appeal to Chinese audiences. Just big differences in taste. Gradually, censorship combined with a nationalism in China doomed the dreams of Hollywood penetrating the 1.4 billion person China market. There’s still some appetite for American made movies. Oppenheimer did moderately well in 2023. Deadpool & Wolverine made decent box office money in 2024. But that’s nothing compared to Hollywood’s outsized ambitions.
Q: China has made incredible progress with electric vehicles, producing EVs at a scale and price-point that would completely outcompete with American and European EVs like Tesla. Why have EVs become such a central point of contention?
A: Essentially, EVs have become so sensitive because Detroit is way, way behind on making EVs. A senior Ford executive visited China recently and returned saying EV production presented an “existential crisis” for the company. It all harks back to around 2014, when China decided it was going to double down on battery technology. Soon afterwards, Xi Jinping announced his Made in China 2025 program in which China would outstrip all other nations in 10 categories of manufacturing. Electric vehicles were one of the goals. When China sets a target they usually get pretty close to it. And with EVs, they have done so. I particularly like our podcast episode on EVs: Michael Dunne, is a US auto expert with great flair who worked for GM in China and Indonesia. He shows how China concentrated on getting the battery technology right. Among other things, China has remarkable sources at home and abroad of lithium, an essential ingredient in batteries. Beyond that, the Chinese government has heavily subsidized EVs: for example, giving land for auto plants. That’s one of the reasons why you can get a basic, smart-looking Chinese EV for as little as $10,000. There are also some top of the line models for more than $100,000.
Q: For those who listen to your podcast series and hope to deepen their knowledge, which books or newsletters do you recommend as supplementary reading?
A: For daily injections of China news, I highly recommend, The Wire, a newsletter that drops every morning. It’s a digest of the China stories in the major news outlets, including some English language Chinese media. The Wire, is masterminded by David Barboza, a former New York Times correspondent. It makes China news very accessible.
In the evening, Sinocism, a newsletter by Bill Bishop, a veteran China hand who lived in China for a number of years, summarizes the major news. Bill incorporates his excellent insights from his perch in Washington.
Q: Do you have a favorite book about China?
A: I am currently re-reading China Hands: Nine Decades of Adventure, Espionage, and Diplomacy in Asia by James Lilley. It is one of the most extraordinary books about an American living and working in China. In 1973, after the Nixon visit to China, Lilley, who was born in China, became the first CIA officer to take up a position in Mao’s China. He was Ambassador from 1989 to 1991. But it’s his childhood during the 1930s in Tsingtao on the eastern seaboard as one of three sons of a Standard Oil executive in China that stands out. He recounts how foreigners in China lived in compounds separated from the general population. Lilley went to Yale in the early 1950s, and followed some of his classmates into the CIA. He recalls his early days as a spy in Hong Kong and then the Philippines scraping information from disaffected exiles. His ambassadorship coincided with the Tiananmen massacre in the spring of 1989. He tells how, against the wishes of the Chinese government, the US embassy sheltered Fang Lizhi, a Chinese nuclear scientist, and dissident, for 18 months. Finally, Beijing let Fang go to the US, and he became the heroic symbol of the basic differences between the US and China on human rights.
Check out Face-Off with Jane Perlez and Rana Mitter to learn more about U.S. and China relations.
Channel Spotlight: Diplomatic History
Interested in learning more about diplomacy, international relations, and geopolitics? Subscribe to our New Books in Diplomatic History channel. Recent episodes include interviews with scholars about NATO, Canadian foreign policy, and Greenland.
3 Episodes On: Global Healthcare
Listen to three interviews with scholars who have examined healthcare issues across the world.
In her compelling interview, Kirsten Moore-Sheeley shares how the development of insecticide-treated nets was deeply enmeshed with the emergence of the contemporary global health enterprise. Nothing But Nets: A Biography of Global Health Science and Its Objects, shows that while public health workers first thought of these nets as a stopgap measure, they eventually became standardized market goods with the potential to save lives and promote economic development globally. In doing so, she sheds new light on how and why commodity-based health interventions have become so entrenched as solutions to global disease control as well as the challenges these interventions pose for at-risk populations.
Check out Pierre Minn’s interview on his book, Where They Need Me: Local Clinicians and the Workings of Global Health in Haiti. Focusing on Haiti, he illustrates the divergent criteria that actors involved in global health use to evaluate interventions' efficacy. He examines the role of physicians, nurses, and administrative staff who are hired to implement global health programs. Minn demonstrates the need to consider these local health care providers in order to move beyond focus on the donor-recipient relationship in theoretical work on humanitarianism.
In We Wait for a Miracle: Health Care and the Forcibly Displaced, Muhammad H. Zaman examines the health care experiences of refugees and forced migrants in 7 countries. He highlights that barriers to healthcare share key factors: trust, social network, efficiency of the health system, and the regulatory framework of the host environment. Listen to his full interview to hear more about how organic social networks and trust save the lives of migrants, refugees, and the stateless.
And remember that thanks to Disqus, you can now add comments to any of our episodes on our website. Just register for a free account, search for the episode you want to comment on, and start posting your messages to share with the NBN community.
Your Super Bowl Playlist
The Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles will face off in Super Bowl LIX on Sunday! The first Super Bowl was played on January 15, 1967 in Los Angeles, and since then it has become the most-watched event in the United States annually. Listen to these episodes before the game to learn more about the Super Bowl as a cultural event, the rise of the modern National Football League, and the history of televised sports.
First, listen to Peter Hopsicker and Mark Dyreson discuss 50 years of the Super Bowl, and how this sporting event has become an unparalleled display of nationalism and consumerism. They also compare the Super Bowl as a cultural event in the United States, with the relative lack of interest worldwide. Check out their book, A Half Century of Super Bowls: National and Global Perspectives on America's Grandest Spectacle.
Then hear Jack Gilden recount how conflict between the quarterback of the Baltimore Colts and his coach elevated the game to new heights in his book, Collision of Wills: Johnny Unitas, Don Shula, and the Rise of the Modern NFL. He puts this story in the context of the 1960s as the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and Sexual Revolution led to social and political clashes in the United States and abroad.
Finally, check out this episode with Dennis Deninger, an Emmy-award winning former television production executive and who has produced live sports television from six continents and across the US. In Sports on Television: The How and Why Behind What You See, he discusses the history of televised sports, how it’s programmed and packaged, and the ways in which sports television has shaped our culture.
Substack Recommendation
Former NBN host Jon Hartley speaks with Professor Douglas Irwin about all things trade. If you want to understand the history and economics of tariffs, this interview is an excellent place to start.
