ChinaTalk13 Feb 2025

China's Great Power Wars: Lessons from Imperial History for Today

How has Chinese hegemony shaped power relations in East Asia? Why did imperial China conquer Tibet and Xinjiang but not Vietnam or Korea? Can learning from history help maintain peace in the Taiwan Strait? Today’s interview begins with one shocking truth — while medieval Europe suffered under near-constant war, East Asia’s Middle Ages were defined by great power peace. To discuss, ChinaTalk interviewed Professor David C. Kang, director of the Korean Studies Institute at USC and co-author of Beyond Power Transitions: The Lessons of East Asian History and the Future of U.S.-China Relations. We discuss… How East Asian nations managed to peacefully coexist for centuries, Why lessons from European history don’t always apply in non-European contexts, Why wars begin and how they can be avoided, How to interpret outbreaks of violence in Asia — including conflicts with the Mongols, China’s meddling in Vietnam, and Japan’s early attempts at empire, State behaviors that cannot be explained by power transition theory alone, Whether the Thucydides trap makes U.S.-China war inevitable, Old school methods for managing cross-strait relations. Co-hosting today is Ilari Mäkelä of the On Humans podcast. Outro music: 荒城の月 "The Moon over the Ruined Castle" by 滝廉太郎 Rentarō Taki (Youtube link) Cover photo of a Song Dynasty axe-wielding god https://dragonsarmory.blogspot.com/2016/12/song-chinese-armor-in-religious.html Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(561)

WarTalk: USN Readiness Reckoning, Steampunk Navy, and AI Cyberwar with Shashank of the Economist

The USS Abraham Lincoln is coming home after a deployment that stretched past 240 days, and the bill is about to come due: mechanical failures, rations down to the emergency stores, 20,000 unfilled bi...

29 Aug 1h 4min

How AI Becomes a Political Crisis

The political economy of AI — things are getting weird, it seems. We have models on the loose, open weights being dropped from the heavenly temple, and data center protests fanning out across the land...

24 Aug 1h 8min

Lessons from the American Civil War

Note: This episode was recorded in late 2024. Luckily, there haven't been any US Civil War updates since then, so the episode's content still holds up. Enjoy! During paternity leave, the new influx o...

21 Aug 1h 32min

North Korea's Messiah

Why is North Korea so weird? Is it Stalinism? Maoism? Japan-style emperor worship? Ancient Korean hermit kingdom energy? No, argues Jonathan Cheng, Beijing bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal and...

19 Aug 1h 59min

The Rise of China’s Electric Vehicle Industry

How did China grow its EV industry? Hint: it wasn’t really central planning from Beijing. It was a magical concoction of entrepreneurs and local officials using their guanxi to dance around giant SOEs...

17 Aug 1h 54min

China's Best Music in 2026 (So Far)

Jake Newby is the author of the Concrete Avalanche Substack, which covers the best music coming out of China. If you enjoy this playlist, check out Jake’s sets from 2025, 2024, and 2023, as well as hi...

14 Aug 54min

$75k Contest Launch! ChinaTalk Hiring + Evals for the Situation Room

Contest links: General $50k https://www.chinatalk.media/p/50k-chinatalk-submission-hiring-contest we're looking at submissions on a rolling basis! AI evals: Due Over the past few years, we’ve seen ...

10 Aug 48min

WarTalk: Out of Ammo for Real + Are CCAs Dumb?

Six months into the war with Iran, the United States has fired 850 Tomahawks, emptied its LRASM and JASSM-ER inventories, expended essentially every ATACMS and PrSM in the arsenal, and burned through ...

7 Aug 1h 17min