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China & Asia

Understanding News Through History

For most of its history, China has always been a superpower. This very statement compels us to define superpower because it cannot be based solely on military power as China has suffered foreign invasions in the past - e.g., by the Mongols and the Manchurians. But even when conquered, China's civilization was supreme. So much so that the conquerors eagerly adopted the Chinese culture. 


And then, came the West. For the first time in its long history, foreigners coming to China did not kowtow and did not subscribe to the view that China's civilization was superior to theirs. Europeans profoundly transformed China's worldview and view of its own history. Until now!


Since 1978, China has been ascendant - including technologically, economically and militarily. The question on everyone's mind is how will this post-2018 China, this new China under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, alter domestically and internationally, and if for the better or worse. 


In this subject series, we have added and will continue to add other Asian countries, including Kazakhstan, Vietnam and Afghanistan. However, Russia and the Middle East are subjects in other series. 


I hope you enjoy these episodes. Listen, read and watch below. And by the way, we love feedback. 

Adel

 

p.s. 

Don't forget to glance through our Middle East and Africa series. 


Follow HbN on your favorite podcast. Click to select. 

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I hope you are enjoying our program. And if you are, then please consider supporting us for as little as 99 cents a month. And thank you. 

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Discover History Behind News Program Podcast

Kashmir's History - A Podcast Not Possible In India!

Episode 1: Introduction to History Behind News Program

Episode 1: Introduction to History Behind News Program

 Did you know that up to the Partition of India in 1947, Kashmiri Muslims lived in conditions that very much resembled serfdom? Exploitation of Kashmiri Muslims was particularly notable during the Dogra Dynasty, which ruled the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir from 1846 to 1947. 

Listen to Dr. Kanjwal

Episode 1: Introduction to History Behind News Program

Episode 1: Introduction to History Behind News Program

Episode 1: Introduction to History Behind News Program

Adel Aali, History Behind News host, discusses the history of China's labor costs.

  

Did you know that China's manufacturing wages were not naturally low? This is a story of China's state-sponsored discrimination against 100s of millions of its own people. 

🚩In The News: China and U.S. agree on a 90-day tariff war reprieve. 

🚩History Behind News: 

The common belief is that China's exports were cheap due to 3 reasons: 

  1. Subsidies, 
  2. Currency manipulation, and 
  3. Cheaper labor. 

But the third factor is highly misunderstood. China's labor costs could have drastically increased over time. Except that China made its labor cheap and then kept its labor cheap. 

►From the 1980s to 2018, internal migration from rural to urban China was the largest ever stream of human migration in history. 

In 1982, 46.5 million rural Chinese migrated to urban China. 

By 2018, the number of Chinese migrants reached 241 million. 

►In response, China committed its original sin. It created the massive discriminatory system of one country, two peoples! 

The two peoples were China's urban population (privileged) and rural migrants (discriminated against).

►In this system, rural migrants in urban China essentially became foreigners in their own country. 

They were denied equal employment, housing, urban food (they had to use coupons to buy food), benefits, insurance, pension, education, loans, and access to growth capital. They were denied freedom of movement within urban areas. 

►Rural migrants became second class citizens in their own country, with lower wages, whose manufacturing output formed the backbone of China's exports. 


  

🚩Recommendations: 

🎧 https://bit.ly/HbN-S4E20-China. In this podcast conversation, Dr. Feng Wang tells the history of how China's economic miracle happened - truly massive discrimination against its own people - and why factors that gave rise to China's economic miracle no longer exist and cannot be replicated. 

🕮 "China's Age of Abundance: Origins, Ascendance, and Aftermath". In addition to listen to this podcast, I highly recommend Dr. Wang's book, which I read cover to cover and which we discuss in the podcast as well. 

Listen to Dr. Wang

China

S3E38: China's Military History - To Make China Whole Again!

HbN Guest: Dr. David A. Graff 

Author of: A Military History of China


About Our Guest:  Dr. Graff is a professor in the Department of History of Kansas State University and the director of the undergraduate program in East Asian Studies. His research focuses on Chinese military history, especially that of the Tang dynasty.  He is currently completing a translation of what remains of Li Jing’s “Art of War,” an early Tang military text, and is also working on a study of internal politics and labor relations in the provincial armies of the late Tang period.  Dr. Graff has been the holder of the Richard A. and Greta Bauer Pickett Chair for Exceptional Faculty since 2017. He is the author of Medieval Chinese Warfare 300-900 (Warfare and History), and The Eurasian Way of War: Military Practice in Seventh-Century China and Byzantium (Asian States and Empires).


In the news:  Imagine a weapon that can fly at least 20 times the speed of sound and it can hit anywhere on earth in less than an hour. This is a hypersonic weapon. China has it. We don’t. (See WSJ). 


In this episode (Oct. 6, 2023): 

  • Why in China, they consider the Tang dynasty as China’s Golden Age?  
  • The cavalry - its power and limitations, a theme in China's long imperial history. 
  • How China beat and was beaten by the Tibetans, Turks, Mongols and Manchus.
  •  A pivotal battle that changed history. Or maybe not so much!
  • Why did the Ming Empire mothball the Treasure Ships – an armada that dwarfed Europe’s navies?   
  • How the Qing Empire, China’s arguably most successful imperial dynasty, was blindsided by the West. 
  •  China’s military recruitment challenges – from the Ming Empire to President Xi: Born to Fly, a recent Chinese movie similar to Top Gun.  
  •  Why is Taiwan a question of legitimacy for the PRC?  

 Watch above. Listen below. Click here for 8 highlights, fast facts. images & more.

Listen to Dr. Graff

S3E37: China's Economic History

HbN Guest: Dr. Yasheng Huang

Author of: The Rise and Fall of the EAST, How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline


About Our Guest:  Dr. Huang is the Epoch Foundation professor of global economics and management at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He is the author of 11 books in both English and Chinese and of many academic papers and news commentaries. Dr. Huang is a co-principal Investigator in a large-scale multi-disciplinary research project on food safety in China. He founded and runs China Lab and India Lab, which have provided low-cost consulting services to hundreds of small and medium enterprises in China and India. From 2015 to 2018, he ran a program in Yunnan province to train women entrepreneurs – it’s a program that we talk about in this episode. For this academic year, 2023-24, Dr. Huang is a fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington D.C.


In the news: China's gigantic economy is retrenching, and American news media herald reports and stories of China's crisis of confidence,  real estate defaults, deflation, darkening mood and economic decline.


In this episode (Sept. 29, 2023): 

  • What new perspective does his book (see below) offer about China? Hint: EAST.
  • When was China's golden age of innovation?
  • China's civil service exam system was an opportunity ladder - similar to America's rags-to-riches stories.
  • China's universal education system was established centuries before Europe's.
  • Unlike European monarchs, China's emperors were surrounded by commoners who entered the inner sanctum of the Imperial Court through merit, not by birthright.
  • Why didn't China's rigorous education and meritocratic civil service system contribute to innovation and economic growth?
  • When did China's innovation and economy fall behind Europe's?
  • Despite its gigantic failures, why has China's Communist Party proved so durable?

 Watch above. Listen below.  Click here for 8 highlights, fast facts, images & more.

Listen to Dr. Huang

S2E36: China's Leadership - History of Hubris, Insecurity, Blunders & Overreach

HbN Guest: Dr. Susan Shirk

Author of: Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise


About Our Guest: Dr. Shirk first visited China in 1971, and has been teaching, researching and engaging China diplomatically ever since. From 1997-2000, she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs, with responsibility for China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mongolia.  Dr. Shirk is the chair of the 21st Century China Center at UC San Diego, and director emeritus of the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC). She also co-chairs a task force of China experts that issued its second report in 2019: “Course Correction: Toward an Effective and Sustainable China Policy”. In addition, Dr. Shirk is the co-chair of the UC San Diego Forum on U.S.-China Relations, the first ongoing high-level forum focused entirely on the U.S.-China relationship.


In the news: Xi Jinping was selected for a third five-year term as China's paramount leader. 


In this episode (Oct. 28, 2022): 

  • China's "selectorate" 
  • How China's leaders wanted to avoid another Mao, to prevent another government based on personal leadership
  • Mao nostalgia - a stronger force than most Chinese leaders realized
  • How Xi changed China's constitution to seek a third five-year term
  • Hu Jiantao did not favor Xi as his successor. 
  • How Xi became the paramount leader in 2007 - a straw poll? 
  • China's elite fell so vulnerable in their positions and personal securities, that they over-comply with Xi's every mere wishes
  • This results in overreaction to international events, and unnecessary muscle-flexing, which in turn compromise China's peaceful rise to superpower status.   

Listen to Dr. Shirk

S2E29: China's View of Its History - History of A Superpower

HbN guest: Mr. Michael Schuman

Author of: Superpower Interrupted: The Chinese History of the World 

  

About our guest: Mr. Schuman is a nonresident senior fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub. He is also a contributing writer to The Atlantic and was previously a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and Time magazine. His two previous books are Confucius and the World He Created, and The Miracle: The Epic Story of Asia’s Quest for Wealth.


In the news: A Foreign Policy essay: "What Does China Want?". In the piece: “China doesn’t want to be a superpower... It wants to be the superpower.” (Emphasis in original). 


In this episode (Sept. 9, 2022): 

  • How China's view of world history is different than ours. 
  • China's perception of its own history - always a superpower!
  • China almost reached industrialization centuries before Europe. 
  • China's huge trade imbalance with the rest of the world - China exported, but didn't import anything in return. So the world paid for China's goods with silver and gold. 
  • Did the Ming Dynasty represent "authentic Chinese rule in China?"  Is that why Pres. Xi refers so fondly to the Ming Dynasty? 
  • China's Treasure Ships
  • The Qing Dynasty - China's largest empire. 
  • How the First Opium War ushered in a century of humiliation for China. 
  • China's History of Totalitarianism
  • The Dominance of China's Culture

Listen to Mr. Schuman

S2E1: China's Gigantic Ponzi Scheme

HbN guest: Mr. Daniel Okrent

Editor of:  Economic Shocks and Authoritarian Stability

  

About our guest: Dr. Shih is an associate professor at UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy, and the Chair of China and Pacific Relations. Prior to joining UC San Diego, he was a professor of political science at Northwestern University and a former principal for one of the largest American private equity firms. 


In the news: The Evergrande Group, one of China's largest real estate developers, defaults on its colossal debt. (It filed for bankruptcy in 2023).  


In this episode (Jan. 7, 2022): 

  • How China's real estate developers and local governments have been borrowing very irresponsibly for a long time. 
  • How real estate developers borrow new money to pay off their old loans.
  • What are shadow banks? 
  • China's belief is that an economic meltdown will likely not occur in China because the Central Bank will pump massive amounts of money into the economy when needed. 
  • But this has led to the problem of moral hazard! 
  • In 2020, China's regulators ended this practice of borrowing to pay off other debts. 
  • President Xi: Stability above everything! 
  • President Xi: pivoting from capitalism. 
  • How dictators control economic shocks. 

Listen to Dr. Shih

S1E19: Hong Kong's History

HbN guest: Dr. Jeffrey Wasserstrom

Author of: Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink

  

About our guest: Dr. Wasserstrom is a Chancellor's professor of history at the University of California, Irvine. He is a specialist in modern Chinese history and has a strong interest in connecting China's past to its present and placing both into a global perspective. In addition to the above book, Dr. Wasserstrom is the author of several others about China and Hong Kong. 


In the news: Apprehensive about Hong Kong's future, dozens of big international companies have left Hong Kong and more are leaving still. Leaders of G-7 countries rebuked China on several issues, including the autonomy of Hong Kong and the freedom of its residents. 


In this episode (Jun. 25, 2021): 

  • Hong Kong's early history. 
  • The Opium Wars 
  • 100 years of humiliation! 
  • President Xi: smaller nations repeatedly defeated China. 
  • How Hong Kong became a major international city. 
  • "One Country. Two systems." 
  • How China's communist portrays Hong Kong's history for its own political narratives.  
  • Lessons for the U.S. and Europe as they challenge China's Hong Kong policy. 

Listen to Dr. Wasserstrom

S1E12: China's Failed One-Child Policy

HbN guest: Dr. Feng Wang

Author of: One Quarter of Humanity: Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Realities, 1700-2000

 

About our guest:  Dr. Wang is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine. He has research interests in contemporary Chinese society and comparative demographic processes and social inequality in state socialism. He has received many academic distinctions and his works are frequently cited in prominent journals. 


In the news: China's population decline


In this episode (May 7, 2021): 

  • Why did China implement its one-child policy? 
  • How can it be that this widescale policy with massive repercussions for China was never written into law - anywhere in China?
  • How bureaucrats and local governments zealously implemented the one-child policy: forced abortions in the third trimester!
  • Midnight calls and millions of forced sterilizations. 
  • Impacts of China's failed one-child policy on China's economy, military and society.

Listen to Dr. Wang

Asia

S2E3: Kazakhstan's Past & Present

HbN Guest:  Dr. Assel Tutumlu

Author of: Multilateralism in Global Governance: Formal and Informal Institutions


About Our Guest:  Dr. Tutumulu is a professor in the Department of Economics and Administrative Sciences at the Near East University in Turkey.   She has published widely about her homeland, Kazakhstan, and is a contributor to Kazakhstan in the Making: Legitimacy, Symbols, and Social Changes (Contemporary Central Asia: Societies, Politics, and Cultures).


In the news: mass protests in Kazhastan and Russian troops intervention


In this episode (Jan. 21, 2022): 

  • Who are Kazakhs? 
  • Why does Mr. Putin state that Kazakhs "had never had statehood"? 
  • Ethnic Russian population of Kazakhstan. 
  • Nursultan Nazarbayev - Kazakhstan's extremely powerful politician and autocrat. 
  • What ignited this latest mass uprising in Kazakhstan? 
  • Rampant corruption in Kazakhstan. 
  • Russian troops in Kazakhstan. 
  • Kazakhstan's post-Soviet alliance. 
  • Business of petroleum. 
  • Kazakhstan's importance to China. 

Listen to Dr. Tutumlu

S1E34: WHO ARE THE TALIBAN? WERE AFGHANS GOOD COMMUNISTS?

HbN Guest:  Dr. Timothy Nunan

Author of: Humanitarian Invasion: Global Development in Cold War Afghanistan (Global and International History)


About Our Guest:  Prof. Nunan is a lecturer in the Department of Global History at the Free University of Berlin. He leads a Volkswagen Foundation Research Group devoted to the history of Islamism during the Cold War. In his work, he looks at how actors from the former Soviet Union, Iran, and Afghanistan have sought to challenge the Western-dominated world order. 


In the news: The Taliban are now firmly in control of Afghanistan. But how will they govern? 


In this episode (Oct. 8, 2021): 

  • Who are the Taliban?  
  • How the Taliban movement is in opposition to other ethnic groups. 
  • Taliban's rural war against the urban elite. 
  • Afghanistan's deep dependence on foreign subsidies to survive. 
  • Islamist Internationalism Between the Cold War and Decolonization 
  • How Iran's 1979 revolution changed the history of political Islam. 
  • The Taliban are not interested in internationalism. 
  • Impact of NGO's long presence in Afghanistan. 
  • Humanitarian Invasion? 

Listen to Dr. Nunan

S1E30: Comparing America's Saigon Rooftop Moment in Vietnam to Our Afghanistan Exit

HbN Guest:  Dr. William Thomas Allison

Author of: American Military History: A Survey From Colonial Times to the Present


About Our Guest:  Dr. Allison is a recipient of the Department of the Army Meritorious Public Service Medal and is a former Vice President of the Society for Military History. He is a  former Chair in Military History, the US Army War College, and a former member of the Army Historical Advisory Committee. He has written and co-authored several books on military history, including My Lai: An American Atrocity in the Vietnam War (Witness to History). 


In the news: America's war in Afghanistan is officially over. Now, America's ignominious exit!


In this episode (Sept. 10, 2021): 

  • War is difficult, but ending wars is more difficult.
  • What American military colleges teach about ending wars. 
  • What does war termination look like? What should it look like? 
  • How did the Soviets end their occupation of Afghanistan? 
  • How did America end its occupation of Iraq?  
  • In Vietnam, we made a political decision - a sound political decision - not to win!
  • Vietnam's government: "We can't win with you and we can't win without you".
  •  In Vietnam, we were at war, but pretended like we were not! 
  • Why do we tend to win battles but lose wars? 
  • Vietnam's exit compared to our Afghanistan exit. 

Listen to Dr. Allison

S1E22: Afghanistan's History

HbN Guest:  Dr. Shah Mahmoud Hanifi

Author of: Deciphering the History of Modern Afghanistan


About Our Guest:  Dr. Hanifi is a professor of Central and South Asia and Middle Eastern studies at James Madison University. He has published widely on Afghanistan's history from the 16th century, including his book Connecting Histories in Afghanistan.


In the news: Afghanistan is on the news, undoubtedly because we fear the worst - that the Taliban will reclaim Afghanistan after we leave!


In this episode (Jul. 16, 2021): 

  • Who are Afghans? 
  • When did Afghanistan become an independent nation? 
  • "Graveyard of Empires" 
  • How did colonialism touch Afghanistan? 
  • Modernization - how an Afghan king abolished the Burka. 
  • America did not even have an embassy in Afghanistan until 1948.  
  • Pres. Eisenhower visited Afghanistan in 1959.  
  • What happened after the monarchy was abolished in 1973? 

Listen to Dr. Hanifi

S1E15: Comparing Vietnam Refugees to Afghanistan Refugees

HbN Guest:  Dr. Amanda Demmer

Author of: After Saigon’s Fall: Refugees and US-Vietnamese Relations, 1975-2000


About Our Guest:  Dr. Demmer an assistant professor of history at Virginia Tech. Her research and teaching are focused on the boundaries between war and peace in American history.


In the news: America is leaving Afghanistan. So what happens to all the Afghans who helped American forces and efforts there? 


In this episode (May 23, 2021): 

  • During WWII, the US was allied with Ho Chi Men. 
  • In Vietnam's Declaration of Independence, Ho Chi Men directly quotes the US Declaration of Independence. 
  • How the French left Vietnam. 
  • Dean Acheson: "Korea came along and saved us!" 
  • The US-Vietnam War was a total war for the Vietnamese. 
  • When the U.S. evacuated Vietnam in April 1975, about 130,000 Vietnamese evacuated along with US military personnel.
  • Over time, more than one million Vietnamese refugees settled in America. 
  • Vietnamese refugees in US military bases. 
  • Comparing Kabul to Siagon. 

Listen to Dr. Demmer

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