A total of 57 countries have now joined the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, China’s newly-launched competitor to the Asian Development Bank (AIIB) that has sparked a flurry of objections from the United States, even culminating in a failed diplomatic campaign by the superpower to lobby allies including the United Kingdom and Australia to abandon the organization, whose stated mission is funding infrastructure projects in underdeveloped parts of Asia.
Although the news has passed mostly unnoticed in the American media, the political furor has raised questions about the future of the Bretton Woods system and China’s place in it: What are the American concerns over the AIIB and is there any validity to them? Why is China attempting to set up a development bank outside the Bretton Woods framework, and what actions may have triggered the Chinese move? And, quite specifically, how does the AIIB compare to its competitors both in capitalization as well as its power in the region?
If you happen to live in the anglophone world and aren’t closely tied to China by blood or professional ties, chances are that what you believe to be true about this country is heavily influenced by the opinions of perhaps one hundred other people, the reporters who cover China for the world’s leading media outlets and the writers who build a narrative to encompass it beyond
Welcome back to Sinica after our New Year’s break. And what could headline our first podcast of the New Year but Egypt, where an unexpected political uprising has raised obvious parallels for China-watchers worldwide. Moving beyond the politics of protest, we also delve into the story of group-purchasing site Groupon, whose tongue-in-cheek Tibetan advertisement during the Super Bowl has tarnished the company’s image in China and damaged its largest strategic partnership in the country.
Joining Kaiser Kuo in our studio today is Jeremy Goldkorn, the founder and lead editor of Danwei. Our other participants include Gady Epstein, a Sinica recidivist and the Beijing Bureau Chief of
Mere months after China’s handling of the Eighteenth Party Congress suggested the country would undergo a peaceful leadership transition, the issue of freedom of the press surged to attention this week after a censored editorial in
Southern Weekly (
Nanfang Zhoumo) resulted in a vociferous protest from the newspaper’s editorial staff, and an unexpected ripple of agreement across the country. As this situation continues to play out, we look this week at what brought on these protests, what is at stake, and what the response suggests about the way China’s new government will handle media relations.
And who are our guests? Joining Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn to talk about this ongoing constitutional kerfuffle are two guests we are delighted to welcome back to our studio: Ian Johnson, the former Beijing Bureau Chief for
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