Transcript: Kerry Brown: on What does the West Wants from China, and the Exercise of Chinese Power

The prolific author, Chinese Studies professor at King's College, and former diplomat talks about his latest book

The following is a complete transcript of the Sinica Podcast episode with Kerry Brown, recorded on 17 February 2024 in Salzburg, Austria.

Kaiser Kuo: Welcome to the Sinica Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China. In this program, we’ll look at books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural trends that can help us better understand what’s happening in China’s politics, foreign relations, economics, and society. Join me each week for in-depth conversations that shed more light and bring less heat to the way we think and talk about China. Sinica is supported this year by the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a national resource center for the study of East Asia. The Sinica Podcast will remain free, but if you work for an organization that believes in what I’m doing with the podcast, please consider lending your support. You can get me at sinicapod@gmail.com. You can also support me as an individual on the new Sinica Substack — substack.sinica.com. 

This week I am delighted to have Kerry Brown on the program. Kerry, who is a professor of Chinese studies and director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College London is well known, I imagine, to most of the listeners here. He is an enviably prolific writer who embodies all the qualities I look for in an observer of contemporary China. His latest book, China Incorporated: The Politics of a World Where China is Number One, looks critically at the narratives about China that have become so pervasive in the English-speaking world and beyond. The book also offers a thoughtful and deeply informed perspective on the nature of Chinese power. It’s one of the best attempts to right-size China’s capabilities, its intentions, and its many limitations. What I especially love about the book is that it ranges over a lot of the issues and questions that I think are really at the very heart of the way that we think about China. 

And it does it in a way that’s really accessible. It’s not theory and jargon-laden, and it really boldly applies the accrued wisdom that only comes of really immersing yourself in a topic for a very long time. I think it’s an extended essay. It’s not bogged down by methodology, and it really dares to ask, and even try to answer those really big questions. So, I’m really eager to speak with you, Kerry. Welcome to the show. You’ve been on before; it was years and years ago. So, welcome back to Sinica, and really so glad that we could be together here in Salzburg.

Kerry Brown: Thank you very much, and it’s great to see you again, Kaiser. Really great to see you.