Sinocism Live

Thank you Inês Carrières, LeftieProf, scott murphy, Andrew Polk, Dan Houghton, and many others for tuning into my live video with Tara Palmeri!


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe

Thanks everyone who tuned into my live video with Drew Thompson. Drew is now based in Singapore as a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University.
From 2011-2018 he was the Director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In 2012 he planned and organized a visit to the US of a delegation led by then-Defense Minister General Liang Guanglie. Zhang Youxia was part of the delegation.
We had a great discussion about his personal experience shepherding Zhang Youxia around the US many years ago, his work on US-China military-to-military relations, and the disappearance in 2023 of South China Morning Post reporter Minnie Chan.
Drew wrote about his experience with Zhang in the excellent The demise of Zhang Youxia hits different. You can and should subscribe to him @ Drew Thompson
Thanks.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe

This is a recording of my November 20, 2025 discussion with Sheena Chestnut Greitens ( Sheena Chestnut Greitens), Isaac B. Kardon (CHINA: Threat or Menace on Substack), and Cameron Waltz about their excellent and important new paper China’s Foreign Police Training: A Global Footprint - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
I learned a lot from the paper and the conversation, and we had a good discussion at the end about whether or not China is using this security cooperation and training to export its governance model.
From the summary of the paper:
Global outreach by China’s internal security agencies is expanding. As China’s Global Security Initiative externalizes a concept of security focused on domestic stability and regime protection, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has increased its efforts to train and build capacity among foreign law enforcement and internal security forces around the world, including across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Foreign police training is one of the most concrete and measurable outcomes associated with the Global Security Initiative, as President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders have publicly committed to training thousands of foreign security officers in multiple high-profile appearances.
This paper examines China’s foreign police, security, and paramilitary training from 2000 to 2025. It draws on an original new dataset of nearly 900 trainings provided to at least 138 countries and places these trainings in the wider context of Chinese soft power, foreign policy objectives and projects such as the Global Security Initiative, broader patterns of Chinese security engagement, and Beijing’s narratives about China’s role as a global security provider.
You can read the whole paper here.
Earlier this year they published A New World Cop on the Beat? China’s Internal Security Outreach Under the Global Security Initiative.
If you prefer to consume the Sinocism Live episodes as a podcast, please add this URL to the podcast player of your choice:
https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/2/s/7556.rss
You can also listen to it in the app:
Thanks for watching/listening.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe

This is a recording of my October 31, 2025 discussion with Ruixue Jia and Hongbin Li about their excellent and important new book The Highest Exam - How the Gaokao Shapes China.
From a synopsis of the book:
In The Highest Exam, authors Ruixue Jia, Hongbin Li, and Claire Cousineau present a sweeping, data-rich account of China’s exam-centered education system — a “centralized, hierarchical tournament” culminating in the Gaokao, a grueling three-day college entrance exam. Drawing on decades of empirical research and lived experience, Jia and Li — both leading economists who took the Gaokao and later taught at top universities in Beijing, Hong Kong, and the U.S. — reveal how this state-managed system shapes education, labor markets, political legitimacy, and social values.
You can buy the book here: The Highest Exam - How the Gaokao Shapes China. It is well-written and priced like a normal book, not an academic one. You can not understand China without understanding the Gaokao system, so this is an important and very useful book.
If you prefer to consume the Sinocism Live episodes as a podcast, please add this URL to the podcast player of your choice:
https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/2/s/7556.rss
You can also listen to it in the app:
Thanks for watching/listening.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe

This is a recording of my October 30, 2025 conversation with Rush Doshi, the C.V. Starr senior fellow for Asia studies and director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and an assistant professor in Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service.
Rush Doshi was deputy senior director for China and Taiwan on President Joe Biden’s National Security Council (NSC), where he served from 2021 to 2024 and helped manage the NSC’s first China directorate.
During his time in the Biden Administration he worked on multiple Biden-Xi engagements, so I thought he would be a great guest to help us parse through the Trump-Xi meeting in South Korea and what it means for US-China relations. He did not disappoint.
Rush is about to launch a new Substack called “The Great Changes 大变局. You can and should subscribe to it here.
You can catch up with many of Rush’s recent writings and podcast appearances here on his CFR page.
Thanks for watching/listening.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe