Ian Buruma: The president of the college where I teach part of the time, Bard College, Leon Botstein, once said to me, “The Chinese are the saviors of Western classical music.” What he was referring to was the prominence of musicians, usually with an East Asian background — Korean, Chinese, and Japanese — in Western orchestras, conservatories, and so on. How would you start by explaining it?

Mari Yoshihara: Hello, thank you for having me. He was very kind to blurb my book, Musicians from a Different Shore, when it came out. So I know he has a lot to say about the subject, and I know that statement is deliberately a little hyperbolic. So I’m not sure I would entirely agree that the Chinese, or East Asians in general, are the saviors of classical music. But it’s definitely true that East Asians are numerically overrepresented in the field, especially in the United States.

If you look at the demographics of major music conservatories, or orchestra rosters and so on, there are definitely a lot more East Asians represented than in the overall population of the country. So that numerical overrepresentation of East Asians — that’s definitely a thing.

Chang Che: Can I ask — my experience is similar to yours. You start your book with a kind of memoir of growing up in Japan and having a piano in your house. I also had a piano growing up in my house. And just like you, I felt it was quite normal. I didn’t really notice it as something out of the ordinary. In fact, when I was reading through your book, I just realized that this topic is something I’ve always been wondering about, but haven’t been able to articulate.

So I had a more personal question for you: when did this become something that wasn’t just normalized for you? When did you begin to estrange yourself from this phenomenon — the overrepresentation of Asians in classical music — and take it on as an analytical object of study?

Mari Yoshihara: So how did I get here, is what you’re asking?

Chang Che: What was the point in time when you were like, I could write a book about this?

Mari Yoshihara: It’s kind of a long story. As you say, I grew up in Tokyo — I grew up in the ‘70s in Tokyo — and I played a lot of piano growing up. And just as you say, it seemed like a universal thing, especially among middle-class urban girls. I was pretty serious about it, and I was moderately good at it, so I thought that’s what I was going to do in life. I thought I was going to go into a music school. I’m not sure if I had a concrete idea of being a concert pianist — I don’t think I even knew what that meant — but all I knew was that was entirely my identity.

Things started to change a little when I was eleven years old. I moved to California with my parents because of my father’s job, and we lived there for a few years. At first I didn’t speak a word of English, so it was really hard. I was thrown into just regular public school in Cupertino, California. So life was hard. But then I adapted, I assimilated, I learned to speak English. And then a few years later, we had to move back to Japan, which was also hard.

But once I moved back to Japan, I was still playing piano, but I was no longer just the girl who played the piano. Now I was a girl who spoke English. I had this whole new identity, and a whole new set of things I could do better than many other people. So that gave me a new kind of confidence, and the idea that maybe I don’t have to play the piano — maybe there are other things I could do in life.

This was also around the time I became kind of a budding feminist, through reading and so on. I realized that in order to have an independent life and career in this male-dominated society called Japan, I needed some kind of tool for empowerment. So I decided not to go to a music conservatory, and I studied and got into the University of Tokyo. I still kept taking piano lessons privately, not as seriously, but I enjoyed the piano itself. I kept taking lessons until I graduated from university, and then I moved to the United States to go to graduate school. And all through my graduate school years and beyond, I hardly touched the piano at all.

Now I was becoming a scholar of American studies, which is all about the critical study of race, class, gender, nation, imperialism, colonialism, et cetera. My doctoral dissertation topic was about white women and Orientalism. So I became a devoted reader and fan of Edward Said and all these theories of Orientalism. And in that context, I could not reconcile my past as a devoted classical pianist who was really into Rachmaninoff and Chopin — basically all these dead white European men. And then by day, I was a scholar of American studies critiquing all these dynamics of race and colonialism. So I had put my piano past into the closet, so to speak, and compartmentalized my lives and identities almost completely.

Until — after I got my doctorate, and I’d published my first book based on the dissertation, and gotten tenure at the University of Hawaii — I was starting to think about what to do next as my scholarly project. It suddenly dawned on me that my personal interest and background in classical music, and my scholarly interest in issues of race, gender, nation, et cetera, could be combined into one project.

That moment happened when I happened to be watching TV and Seiji Ozawa conducting the Vienna Philharmonic New Year’s Concert came on. And I was like — that was my moment. So that’s a very long-winded answer to your question of how I came to this topic. I had left it for I don’t know — ten, fifteen years — until Seiji Ozawa appeared on my TV screen. That’s when I decided I should combine my scholarly interest and musical background together into one project. So that was the early 2000s.

Ian Buruma: It’s very interesting what you’re saying. Edward Said himself was a classical pianist as well. And he talked about Orientalism in the Orient, where he really meant the Middle East. So why do you think the topic at hand — namely, the prominence in Western classical music — is pretty much confined to East Asia, that is to Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and China, and not to Southeast Asia or India?

Mari Yoshihara: I think that has to do with the history of how Western music — basically, what we’re commonly calling classical music — was introduced to East Asia, as opposed to other parts of Asia.

As I write in my book, in the case of Japan during the Meiji era, the Japanese government took initiative and made very specific policies to introduce Western music into Japanese society. It came through military band music, and it also came through the Christian church and missionaries. It was disseminated through public education — through the composition of Western-style school songs, adapting Western harmony and melody and oftentimes using Japanese words.

So through these mechanisms, in places like Japan, Western music or Western-style music became a lot more popular, a lot more disseminated through the masses, rather than staying the pursuit of the elite. The same thing happened slightly later in the Korean peninsula, and then later in China as well. And it has to do with colonial history too. Western music came partly directly from Europe and the United States to Korea and China, but a significant number of Chinese and Korean musicians who studied Western music studied either in Japan or with Japanese teachers. So there are these multiple complicated layers of colonialism through which Western music was introduced to these Asian nations.

I think because of the different history of colonialism in Southeast Asia and South Asia, the route through which the music came, and also the segment of the population it reached, was different between East Asia and the rest of Asia.

Ian Buruma: Could another explanation possibly be that in India, for example — or indeed in Iran or Persia — their own classical tradition was still very much alive, whereas in China and Japan and Korea it does still exist (there is gagaku and so on), but as a popular thing, the classical music tradition has dwindled considerably?

Mari Yoshihara: It dwindled very rapidly. It’s quite interesting — as I’m doing this research about the culture of piano lessons in Japan now, I’m realizing even more than I used to that in the early years, when piano lessons were becoming popular — I would say even before World War II, the 1920s and 1930s — a lot of women from well-to-do families were studying piano, but they were also doing things like nihon-buyo, traditional Japanese dance. So there was a period when a lot of people were doing both — kind of traditional pursuits and then Western music.

But then very quickly, it was overtaken, overwhelmed by piano, violin, ballet, and these Western pursuits, especially after World War II. I’m realizing — especially during the US occupation and beyond — the aspiration for things Western and things American in Japan was just so much stronger. That was very strong: this aspiration for things Western in the texture of everyday life, the kind of music people were listening to, the things they wanted their children to pursue, et cetera.

Ian Buruma: When you say that young Japanese women of a certain class would do flower arrangement and Japanese dance and that kind of thing at the same time as learning to play the piano — there may not be a contradiction there, because the idea, I think, was that in order to be an educated young Japanese woman or Korean woman, and to have a good marriage and so on and so forth, you had to be cultured and cultivated. Which is a very German idea, really, much more than American — though I think it had an influence in America too. It’s that idea of Bildung of the nineteenth century, that to play an instrument is essential to be a bourgeois person. So do you think the German influence in Japan, as well as in America, plays a big role?

Mari Yoshihara: Yes, especially in terms of classical music — because even to this day, the Austrian-German influence among classical music fans in Japan is very strong. There’s a very strong inclination toward the German tradition in terms of which composers most people listen to, which conductors are most respected and adored.

Orchestra culture in Japan, for instance, is all about Beethoven. I’m exaggerating a bit, but in terms of what people were listening to and playing — orchestra culture in Japan really emerged out of university or student orchestras, because it took a while for professional orchestras to get established, and the orchestra culture really grew in places like Keio University. And by far the most popular composers were Beethoven and other German traditions.

Ian Buruma: Yes, I was thinking more in terms of class — that in the nineteenth century, for German Jews too, the way to join the bourgeoisie, to become more upper-middle class, playing an instrument was an essential thing. And that’s now almost disappeared in the United States. But in East Asia, it seems that particular tradition has survived. At what stage did it also become a marker of class?

Mari Yoshihara: I think it was always a marker of class. Before World War II, piano was still becoming more common, but it was still a very expensive instrument. Most middle-class people could not purchase one or have access to one. Then I would say afterwards too — it’s really in the 1960s that an average middle-class person could aspire to buy a piano, because manufacturers like Yamaha and Kawai succeeded in producing high-quality, mass-produced upright instruments.

So now, an average salaried family could purchase an upright piano for their children. And also with the development of pedagogy — like the Suzuki method that I know you’re familiar with, and the Yamaha music school pedagogy — your parents or grandparents, your family, didn’t have to be a musical family. You could be a complete layperson, and for relatively reasonable tuition you could get pretty decent music lessons. So that really popularized music lessons for a lot of people in Japan. From the 1960s onwards.

And 1979 — I think that’s the peak of piano production, the manufacture of pianos as well as sales in terms of numbers. And then it starts going down. So the 1960s and ‘70s — that’s really the full blossom in terms of piano specifically.

Chang Che: Before we get to the bourgeoisification of piano — could you correct or confirm my understanding of how classical music entered East Asia? It’s surprising that it seems to be structurally quite similar across China, Japan, and Korea — that the general pattern was that it initially began as a kind of tool of states trying to adopt Western classical music almost as a way of nation-building. Can you speak a little bit about this? Because it’s a little counterintuitive to think that a country like Japan or China, in their effort to build nations, wants to learn about Beethoven or Bach. Why is that the case?

Mari Yoshihara: It wasn’t initially Beethoven and Bach. The key is that it was initially the military band — that was the entrée. So in order for the Meiji government, in an effort to build a strong industrial, militarized nation — they felt they needed a kind of disciplined military and other workforce. And they somehow decided that military bands instilled this kind of discipline and rhythm.

Ian Buruma: But there was also the Rokumeikan culture of upper-class Japanese — sort of dancing and waltzes and so on.

Mari Yoshihara: Yeah. So aspiration for Western, especially European, bourgeois —

Chang Che: There were two elements. There’s a class element to it. But there was also a very practical, militaristic element to it. And then there’s also a religious element to it, right? There was also the missionary aspect.

Mari Yoshihara: Yeah, exactly. So it’s a mix of utilitarian and also cultural, social — all of that come combined.

Chang Che: Got it. And then one step before we get to the more commodification of classical music, including Yamaha and the companies we’re all familiar with now — there’s a period where all three countries, Korea, Japan, and China, repudiate that tradition in some aspect, right? You have interviews with musicians who are going through the Cultural Revolution, where that was an extreme. Can you talk a little bit about that darkening period?

Mari Yoshihara: Yeah. The Cultural Revolution in China is really a dark moment in the history of China, but especially the history of Western music in China. So Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution — anything to do with what they saw as Western bourgeois culture was persecuted. So people who were studying or practicing, performing, composing what they considered Western music were sent off to the faraway countryside or sometimes imprisoned. Some really tragic things happened to the lives and careers of these musicians. And so one could say that really stalled the development of Western music in China during that period.

But even before then — during the revolutionary years in China and also during Japan’s colonization of Korea and other Asian nations — it’s very complicated, because there were a lot of these anti-colonialist movements in these areas against Japan. And the kind of songs that these Koreans, Chinese people, workforce masses, soldiers composed and sang were often Western-style songs that originally sometimes came through Japan. So they were using Western-style music that some of them learned from Japan to fight against the Japanese.

I think that’s a very interesting twist in history, and one of the examples of the multiple meanings that any music has. Western music — just because the instruments, the compositions, et cetera, originated in Europe or the West — doesn’t mean that’s all the music means. Western-ness is not the only meaning the music has. People — Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, or anybody who adopted it for whatever reason, through whatever route — make their own meaning out of that music and use it for their own ends, whether nationalistic goals or spiritual goals, beyond the original intentions of the composers or the cultural, national origins of where it came from.

Ian Buruma: But the Cultural Revolution, I think, was a reaction unique to China. When Japan in the 1930s had a reaction against the West, Western classical music was never banned, because German and Italian composers were still okay, right? So what exactly was banned in those years after 1937? When they had the banning of enemy culture, was it only American and English?

Mari Yoshihara: Yeah, a lot of music. Some of the Japanese musicians who loved Western music, they changed the programs of their performances. This is a little bit different from Western classical music in Japan during that time — but in the 1920s and 1930s, Hawaiian music was very popular. There were a lot of Hawaiian music bands, some of whom were Japanese immigrants who were living in Hawaii and learned Hawaiian music. They were performing Hawaiian music in Hawaii. Some of them came back to Japan, or moved to Japan, because they were so popular. Hawaiian music was very big and popular in Japan at the time.

But after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaiian music was banned. A lot of them changed the names of their bands. They used similar tunes, similar kinds of instruments, but they changed the names of their brands. So they didn’t use words like Hawaii or aloha or marijuana [marimba?]. They changed it to some more generic name. And then they changed the lyrics to more Japanese, nationalistic-sounding lyrics. They made a lot of adaptations. And I think similar things happened with so-called classical music.

Chang Che: Can we talk about the Suzuki method? Did you learn —

Chang Che: I think I — I don’t remember if it was called the Suzuki method, but I just think it’s an incredible story, and it’s an example of the kind of reverse flow of culture, of classical music back to the West. Can you just explain a little bit of what the Suzuki method is?

Mari Yoshihara: Yes. The Suzuki method is a very effective method of music pedagogy that was initially designed by this violinist and violin pedagogue, Shinichi Suzuki, who studied in Germany in the 1920s and then moved back to Japan. He had this philosophy that music should be — and is — accessible to everybody, regardless. It doesn’t have to do with one’s innate talent or your family background. Everybody, with proper methods, will be able to learn music and do it well, through things like immersion and strong parental guidance. He initially developed a structured series of pieces for kids to learn, initially for violin, and then a similar method was adapted to other instruments — piano, cello, flute, et cetera.

This became extremely successful, especially after the late 1950s, when a bunch of American violin teachers came to Japan to study with Mr. Suzuki. They were amazed by the level of playing among young Japanese kids who were playing in complete, perfect tune, complete unison in big groups. So these American pedagogues — violin teachers — studied with Suzuki and brought it back to the United States and other parts of the world. Later on, the Suzuki method actually became even more popular outside of Japan than in Japan proper. It’s a very structured and effective method of music pedagogy.

Chang Che: I think Jimmy Carter’s daughter, right? You mentioned that Jimmy Carter’s daughter was a student of the Suzuki method.

Mari Yoshihara: Many prominent professional musicians today — people like Sarah Chang — being started with the Suzuki method, especially among violinists. A lot of people started playing the instrument through the Suzuki method.

Ian Buruma: But the Suzuki method doesn’t quite explain why even today, classical music seems to be so prominent in households in East Asia, whereas in the United States it’s become a kind of niche thing for specialists, and popular culture has completely swamped it. Why do you think that is? Why has it survived much more in East Asian countries?

Mari Yoshihara: I think classical music still carries a lot of cultural cachet in East Asia, much more so than in the United States.

And also — now that I’m studying the culture of piano in Japan today, I get the sense that the meaning of piano lessons today has changed compared to, say, when I was growing up in the 1970s and ‘80s. Not as many children study the piano in Japan today. For one thing, there are far fewer children in Japan today than decades ago overall. But also kids’ pursuits have diversified a lot more. There are many more lessons — like English lessons, [tucker?], et cetera — that kids do. So piano lessons are far less universal now than they used to be. But it’s still very popular. It’s one of the top two pursuits — lessons that kids take today.

I think a lot of it has to do now with the fact that learning an instrument, especially piano, is associated with strong academic skills. A lot of people believe in the Mozart effect — they believe that if you play a lot of music while you’re pregnant, the baby will come out good with cognitive development, et cetera. And a lot of people believe — I think not wrongly — that learning to play an instrument like piano develops a lot of skills that are applicable to other things in life, especially academic and other professional skills.

So I think that kind of motivation is driving piano culture now, more than aspiration for Western culture or veneration of Beethoven. The thing that people like to see in music lessons today is different from, say, the 1970s.

Chang Che: I wanted to ask, Mari, whether you had thoughts about the flip side of this — that in the United States, classical music attendance has been falling consistently. There are regional orchestras that are reducing performances or cutting wages. And the Trump administration, in their effort to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts, was also threatening a lot of symphonies. What do you make of that process in the United States? Or maybe you might know a little bit more about that than I do — could you describe what we’re seeing in the United States with respect to classical music over the past decade?

Mari Yoshihara: I think the place of classical music in American culture in general has changed a lot. It’s not even that recent of a phenomenon. I have written a book about Leonard Bernstein, who was a huge star — he was the American musician of the twentieth century. He was hugely popular, a very big celebrity even beyond classical music fans, because he was so multi-talented and charismatic, and just so popular in so many different fields. But even during his heyday, the share of classical music recordings in the overall recording market was shrinking very rapidly. Through his Young People’s Concerts series and so on, Leonard Bernstein could pack the hall. But even then, the recording industry and the media industry generally were shifting more and more of their weight into popular music. So that has been the case for decades.

Things like orchestras are a very difficult thing to run financially, because even if every single concert is sold out, it would only pay for about 30% of the cost of the musicians. That’s just how the operation is. So I think it’s becoming more and more difficult, especially with the changing media landscape and the way many people listen to music. It’s a difficult thing to sustain as an economic enterprise, in a lot of cases.

Ian Buruma: There may be another reason too, which is a political one — that in the first decades after World War II, there was a sort of consensus in Europe and the United States that it was, in some ways, the duty of a government, and of public broadcasting and education, to elevate the cultural level of the masses. And so to subsidize music as well as other things. Whereas right now, in an age of populism — and right-wing populism — everything that is considered to be elitist… But that’s also said amongst people on the left, that anything elitist has to be discouraged, no longer subsidized, and so on. And of course classical music, opera and so on, which is very expensive, is very much associated with the elites.

Mari Yoshihara: That’s true, which is very unfortunate. Because I’m working on another research and writing project, which is kind of a sequel to my book Musicians from a Different Shore. So about twenty-some years after the publication of the book, a lot of things are changing in the classical music industry, especially in the United States. I’ve gone back to many of the same musicians I interviewed twenty-some years ago, and I’m also interviewing a lot of other musicians today and writing about that.

From that research, I can say that I think what we call classical music is very much alive. It’s very vibrant. A lot of very talented, very visionary, very audacious young — and less young — musicians are doing great things in music, either in terms of composition or performance, conducting, directing, producing, et cetera. They have very creative ideas and are doing a lot of new things. Many of them are playing Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, et cetera, brilliantly. But they’re also doing a lot of other things, like creating new music, using the traditions and instruments — instruments not just in terms of musical instruments like the flute, but the tools of classical music — to do great new things.

And I find that a lot of music organizations like orchestras — especially regional orchestras and regional opera companies — are oftentimes doing very interesting things, more so than the more established big organizations. Because the smaller the organization, the fewer board members you have to convince, so you can actually do more interesting things. Bigger organizations tend to be less nimble in terms of trying out new things.

So I think a lot of great, innovative things are happening in so-called classical music. But it takes a while for that to reach a wider audience, or for the general audience to get that message, or even just have a chance to experience it and learn about it.

Ian Buruma: Right. At the same time that there is this anti-elitist wave in the West — and here, Chang, I think you should come in — in China that does not seem to be the case.

Chang Che: I was looking at the statistics in China around classical music today, and it has been growing at a really rapid pace. There are currently 2,600 or so youth symphony orchestras in China, which is crazy — and 50% of them had been established in the preceding five years, which means they didn’t really exist before roughly 2018. So it’s really only in the past six years that this has been the case.

There are stories — and a lot of them are from state media, so I think someone needs to do some more independent reporting on this — but state media are reporting on orchestras in like the poorest regions of China. And all of them are tied to the Education Department. So it’s a government-affiliated approach.

In my understanding — Mari, I’m really curious how you understand this — but, one, Leon Botstein, Professor Botstein, may have a point. There’s certainly an initiative that is growing in China. My sense is that, similar to what you said, Ian, about how there was this kind of initiative after World War II to educate the masses — part of this is certainly educating the masses. The Education Department’s role is to raise the spiritual quality of the masses. So that is certainly a part of it. There’s also, I think, this general fascination — that, Mari, you mentioned — with the West, just the cultural cachet of Western music. It seems that, at least maybe less within the central government, but these local governments are on board with supporting Western classical music. Are you aware of the recent boom in classical music in China?

Mari Yoshihara: Yeah, definitely. In the last ten, fifteen years — the rise of orchestras all over China, and also the building of big concert halls everywhere in China. A lot of American music schools, for instance, music conservatories — they often say that they really could not survive without, quote unquote, “the China market,” in a lot of ways. American orchestras or soloists would go tour in China because they can pack the halls and they can make a lot of money. American music conservatories send their faculty to China to give master classes and lessons, in the hopes of recruiting students to come study in the US. Some of them, like Juilliard for instance, even set up a branch of the Juilliard campus in China. And other organizations have launched various kinds of partnership programs and enterprises with China.

So yes, one could say that the classical music industry is very much dependent on China as a market — as a source of students, listeners, et cetera. Also, piano manufacturers like Yamaha — for a while, China was a very important market. I think it has changed quite rapidly in the last few years, because the government’s position on music education has drastically changed in the last few years. But yeah, a lot of people, a lot of performers, go perform in China, go recruit students in China, et cetera.

Ian Buruma: Can we change the subject a little bit to another aspect of your book, which is the gender issue, and the prominence especially of female musicians from East Asia or Asian Americans — the influence of their looks, and that there’s a certain exotic image that is being projected. How did that evolve?

Mari Yoshihara: Independent of music or classical music, there has always been historically these gendered and sexualized perceptions of Asian women in the United States. Asian women have stereotypically been viewed as exotic, sensual, also diminutive, subordinate, weak, et cetera — all these things that white male gaze wanted to project upon them, regardless of the reality of Asian women. But these gender, sexual stereotypes of Asian women have also been applied to how Asian women musicians have been perceived and treated in the classical music industry.

I have encountered a lot of Asian female musicians who felt that in music schools in the United States they were not treated as seriously by their faculty, and some of them experienced outright harassment by their faculty. They were not given as rigorous training, or expectations as high as other male musicians, et cetera. And — I guess this happens somewhat less frequently now, but like twenty-some years ago, when I was researching and writing the book — it was also still quite common for the media representation of these Asian women musicians to use very explicit, sexualized language, to focus more on their looks than on their playing, or to project that kind of filter onto their perception of these musicians.

Chang Che: Can I ask a question about authenticity? This is regarding your last chapter. I wanted to give you an example from something I know a little bit more about, which is the Chinese interest in the Greco-Roman classical tradition. This is the classics in a different sense.

There’s this kind of tension I noticed between people who are actually studying the classics — Chinese who are actually experiencing studying Western classics — versus the meanings that society ascribes to that action. Oftentimes when I talk to Chinese classicists, they don’t really see Western classics as white or Western. They just see it as kind of pure — like the Odyssey is such a beautiful story, and so I want to continue to read it and continue to study it in college. But then, especially in this age of populism, there are populists who want to search for roots of identity. And so they oftentimes co-opt the classics as theirs — that Greek and Latin is a part of the West, and the Confucian tradition is a part of the East. And so we Chinese must learn the Confucian tradition, and you Americans must learn the Western canon. There are these debates going on.

I was surprised to learn from your book that there are people who believe that about classical music as well — that there’s something innate about Europeans, white Europeans, who might have better access to classical music. So I was wondering whether you could speak to how you navigate that tension between the interviews you conduct and the kind of impressions people have of what’s going on.

Mari Yoshihara: This is complicated. This is a complicated topic for classical music specifically, because classical music is a genre of music that places a lot of weight on origins. Unless you’re playing contemporary music, basically what classical musicians do is perform music that was literally written and published. There is a score. And it is generally considered that the performer’s job is to faithfully realize the composer’s intentions.

So in order to do that, the performers should really understand deeply the origin and the context of where that music came from — the composer’s biography, the culture he was living in most of the time, and all of the stylistic and other elements that make up that music — and faithfully recreate it. That’s the job of the performer in the case of classical music. That’s the commonly held belief. So it’s very different from other genres of music, like jazz, which is very improvised — that’s a very different kind of music.

So when I interviewed musicians about what they think about this issue — by which I mean how they understand the relationship between the European origin of the music they play and their own non-European identity, how they reconcile or think about the relationship between these two — I was surprised by the wide range of answers my interviewees gave. Some musicians said very firmly that they did not believe one’s racial, cultural, ethnic background was a factor — as long as you are a serious musician who understands and studies the music deeply, and you relate to the music in an authentic way, you can achieve the composer’s intentions. Whether you’re Chinese or Korean or Japanese, you will be able to play Beethoven just as well as a German musician. So in that sense, music transcends borders. It’s universal. A lot of people say that very firmly.

But on the other hand, I was also quite surprised by the number of people — and these are not just people who didn’t make it; they’re not saying it because they couldn’t make it in the classical music world. Some of these answers came from people who are very well known, prominent professional musicians. Some of these people said music is like a language. There is something quite Germanic, essentially Germanic, about German music. There is something essentially French about French music. And there’s a big difference between somebody who was born and raised in Germany, or whose family have been living in Germany for generations, or somebody who’s a native French speaker — those people would have a different relationship to German language or French language. And the same goes for music as well.

So if you grew up in Japan listening to Japanese music, and then studied French music or German music or Italian music, you have a different relationship to that body of music. It doesn’t mean you can’t do well — it’s just that you have a different relationship to it. So I’m calling these people kind of “particularists,” as opposed to the “universalists,” in terms of how they understand the nature of music as a form of language.

I don’t know where I myself stand on this question. I think you can draw a lot of analogies between music and language, as well as other things like food. I do believe there are cultural differences across different things. To what extent your upbringing, your ethnic, racial background, has to do with your understanding of a product of another culture — I don’t know if there is a clear answer to it.

Ian Buruma: Race in America always comes up in many ways. It’s a bogus thing, because I remember an American woman saying something that one does hear quite a bit — that Asian musicians, East Asian musicians, are technically perfect, they’re fantastically good, but they don’t really understand the soul of Western music because they haven’t been raised in it. And the same woman who said that herself was raised in Southern California, where she’s just as far removed from the German and French and Italian origins as any Asian.

What you’re saying reminds me of another experience I had, which was in the ‘80s. I was having dinner with a Korean writer — he was a bit of a nationalist — in Seoul, and we were sitting in a traditional Korean restaurant. Suddenly we heard a tape of classical music played by Kyung-Wha Chung. He went silent, and he said to me, “This is the soul of Korea. This is the Korean blood showing through her music.” And she was playing Bartók or something like that. There are a lot of bogus ways to approach this subject, is my point.

Mari Yoshihara: Yeah.

Chang Che: So you interviewed Asian musicians. If Asian musicians actually at the top of their craft are telling you, “Yeah, there really is something about this music that we Asians can’t access” — how does that particular view square with what I think you’re arguing in the book, which is that Asians in classical music are not just joining some tent, they’re also reimagining, reinventing? We just spent some time talking about the Suzuki method. I feel like language is not exactly the right analogy, because then what the Suzuki method would be is like Americans adopting a Japanese person speaking English. There’s something about music that’s a little bit more porous culturally, and can be brought in and incubated in a different culture or context.

Mari Yoshihara: Yeah. So what I was trying to get at in that chapter about authenticity is that musicians can and do have a wide range of ideas, positions about this question of authenticity and how their racial, ethnic identity relates to the European origin of the music. And because, as I said earlier, classical music is a genre of music that places a lot of emphasis on its origins, there can be a lot of different ideas about it. But I don’t think the goal of classical music or classical musicians is necessarily — the ultimate goal is not necessarily to play Beethoven like Beethoven would have. Maybe some people want that, but not everyone is trying to play Beethoven the way Beethoven would have.

After all, it’s all an interpretation, and a performance of the interpretation. Just like anything else, in order to interpret something very deeply, you have to do a lot of studying, a lot of thinking, a lot of analysis. And then out of that, you create your own interpretation and performance of it. So I think the ultimate goal is not necessarily to play German music like a native-born German would, or play French music as if a Parisian would do, but to come up with your own understanding of what that means and do it your way. Because otherwise everybody would end up playing the same piece of music the same way. And what’s the point of that?

Ian Buruma: Yes. That raises the question of whether there really is such a thing as a national style of performing. I think you were talking earlier of a national style in composition — because Verdi operas clearly are rooted in Italian popular music and so on. But the idea that there should be a national style in performing sounds to me very suspect.

Mari Yoshihara: I think with certain instruments, there actually — it’s not so much because, well, I don’t know if it’s so much national, but there are traditions of pedagogy. There are certain kinds of like a Russian style of pianism that’s different from, say, French style. But the thing is, because of globalization and the flow of people, et cetera, a lot of people — for instance, prominent Japanese piano teachers were trained in Germany or the United States. Some of them are more German style, and some of them are American style. Same with violin pedagogy. Certain prominent violin teachers — like Dorothy DeLay, who taught at Juilliard for a long time — her style was different from, say, another violinist from France or Belgium or wherever. So I think there are styles of pedagogy that get passed down through generations of students, but it doesn’t necessarily correlate with national or ethnic identities.

Chang Che: Great. Thank you so much, Mari. I really, really appreciate it.

Ian Buruma: Thank you.

Mari Yoshihara: Thank you for having me.

Show Notes

• Japan’s fear of what Trump with do when he meets Xi Jinping: could Trump trade something on Taiwan for a deal with Xi?

• Why Takaichi is constitutionally limited in sending warships to the Strait of Hormuz

• Japan stuck between Iran and the United States

• Why the United States and Japan are at odds over Takaichi’s November comments on Taiwan

• Takaichi’s push to revise Japan’s pacifist constitution and prepare for a post-Pax Americana world

Chang: Today we’re going to be talking about Sanae Takaichi, the prime minister of Japan’s recent visit to the White House. From my understanding, part of the motives was that Takaichi wanted some reassurance before Donald Trump’s more high-profile scheduled meeting with Xi Jinping. I think now it’s been pushed back to May and June because of the Iran war.

Takaichi wanted to make sure she was the last person to talk to Trump just before the meeting because she’s nervous that Trump is unpredictable and he might do some crazy deal with Xi Jinping bilaterally without consulting Japan. What do you think was the motivating force behind the meeting, Ian?

Ian: Yes, I think that’s absolutely true. She also is taking a leaf out of Abe Shinzo, her predecessor, her mentor’s book. She’s very keen to get as close personally to Trump as possible. And this is partly because Japan is so completely dependent on the United States for its security, even more so than the Europeans are. So any opportunity to cement a personal relationship with this very mercurial figure, she sees as essential. Now, of course, she didn’t know that the Iran war was going to intervene, which made her visit to the White House far more perilous. First of all, Japan is very dependent on Middle Eastern oil and therefore on the flow of oil and tankers through the Straits of Hormuz. Japan has had a fairly good relation with Iran for many years. And she also knew that Trump was going to put a lot of pressure on America’s so-called allies to try and clear up the mess that he himself has made. He’s contemptuous of the Europeans for having refused to get involved in this war.

She knew before she left for Washington that he was likely to put pressure on Japan. And indeed, he had already said that Japan should take part in this and send minesweepers and that kind of thing. And this was going to put her into a very, very tight spot because she doesn’t want to alienate Trump in any way. On the other hand, she is constitutionally unable to take part, to send Japanese naval ships while combat is still going on. It’s forbidden by the constitution. So she would have to turn him down on that.

I think the Japanese were terrified that this visit, because of the Iran war, would end very badly for Japan and end up with Trump ranting and raving at her that they weren’t a dependable ally.

Chang: Yeah. There’s something so on point about 2026 and meeting with Donald Trump — your plans for your summit just completely go out the window because the United States decides to go into a war with Iran.

I think Japan probably feels like they’re on the back foot quite a bit. Before the Iran war, they were afraid that Trump might give some tacit security agreement about Taiwan that might undercut what Takaichi said in November last year. I think that is still hovering over the visit, and we can talk about that.

There’s been some really interesting drama with the Director of National Intelligence’s threat assessment. They released a threat assessment that basically said that Takaichi strayed from the political line. Did you see that? I remember we were talking about it before and you thought that she just said the quiet part out loud.

Ian: Well, we don’t know exactly why she said what she said at that time. Some people say it was an off-the-cuff remark to a comment made in the Japanese diet and that she hadn’t prepared it and was therefore perhaps incautious. I do think she said out loud what she and many other Japanese politicians think, including again her predecessor Abe Shinzo.

But I’ve always taken a slightly different view from many people on this. I think she said it partly because of Donald Trump. It wasn’t just the fear of China and China’s might and Japan’s vulnerability, in which Taiwan plays a very major role — because if Taiwan were to be seriously threatened or indeed invaded, that would be a threat to Japan.But the Trump factor, I think, plays a big part. She does want to change the Japanese pacifist constitution. She wants a stronger military profile. But up until now, the Japanese were resigned to being dependent on American protection and American nuclear protection. With Donald Trump, they can no longer be sure of that. And so I think she was sending a signal to the Japanese to shape up and say, look, we have to start preparing for a different world — in a way a little bit like the Canadian Prime Minister Carney, who said we no longer live in the post-war world. We’re now entering a completely different era in which we can no longer depend on the United States as the guarantor of the security of the so-called free world. Things have to change. And in his case, he said middle-ranking countries have to start getting together and taking care of their own security and no longer rely on the United States in the long run.

Now, I’m sure that the Japanese think that too, but with even more urgency because there is no NATO in East Asia. The Japanese and the South Koreans are entirely dependent on the United States.

Chang: I think there’s an interesting dynamic at play here where Trump’s pressure on allies to step up with their own security is having unintended consequences. Takaichi is making these claims in some ways in reaction to what Trump is doing — Trump 2.0, which is to basically say we’re America first and everyone else needs to step up with their security — that is what angered China. China called Trump immediately after Takaichi’s comments and Xi Jinping spent, I think, half an hour talking to him about how this is not okay. And Trump had to basically call Takaichi and say, you’ve got to tone it down.

So these reverberations across the global order that he doesn’t know about — the global order is fracturing, people are reacting — it’s causing these instabilities that he’s causing, but he’s also having to ameliorate somehow. He’s got to tell Takaichi to tone it down.

That backdrop is interesting because it clearly shows Trump hasn’t — in general, the US hasn’t really taken a side in the current China-Japan dispute. The US-Japan relationship always tries to present an extremely united front, but we know that there’s always a lot of distance between the two. And this was a clear distance, with China-Japan relations being so bad right now and Trump trying to maintain a trade deal with China.

One thing we were looking for in the summit is how that would play out. And I don’t know about you, Ian, but it seems to me like they kicked the can down the road. The questions and the readouts don’t seem like there was much progress on that front. It looks like Trump made a comment that the China-Japan relationship is “edgy” right now and he didn’t really say anything else. What do you think about that?

Ian: Well, it always has been slightly edgy. Think back to 2009, when almost for the first time since World War II, the Liberal Democratic Party was not in power and the opposition Democratic Party of Japan was in power. Prime Minister Hatoyama tried to reset, in a fairly cautious manner, Japan’s foreign policy goals. His idea was that Japan had to become slightly more independent, move more towards a new relationship with Asia and be an equal partner with the United States. And there was talk of moving US military bases from Okinawa and that kind of thing.

The Japanese conservative establishment, associated with the Liberal Democrats who have been in power for most of the time since World War II and still are, were very much against this. They wanted to stick to the status quo, meaning Japan would remain dependent on American support, American security. Washington took the side of the conservatives and tried to stop Japan’s new initiatives to focus more on Asia and less on the special relationship with the United States. So that really came to an end then.

Trump is very different. Trump himself is not a real proponent of Pax Americana, of the post-war order. He wants to break it. And what he seems to have in mind is to basically divide the world into spheres of three superpowers. Russia has its sphere, which might include Ukraine — probably does in Trump’s mind, which is why he takes Putin’s side usually against Zelensky. He feels that is part of Russia’s legitimate sphere. He sees a future in which China has its sphere, and that would include East Asia and its periphery. And the United States controls the Western Hemisphere. I think that’s how he sees the world — that the only powers that matter are the three superpowers, and the peripheral powers, the middle powers, in Carney’s words, should simply listen to what the big powers tell them.

Chang: Yeah.

Ian: Now, this makes the relationship with Japan and Korea edgy because they are clearly very much in China’s periphery. And yet they have this security relationship with the United States. In some ways, if this is indeed the way Trump sees the post-Pax Americana world, the Japanese and the Koreans are a nuisance. Which is why he tells everybody to take care of their own security and the American taxpayer will no longer pay for this.

Now the question is how China sees this development, how China sees the post-Pax Americana world. On the one hand, they welcome it — they want China to be the great power in East Asia. They don’t want the Americans there interfering. On the other hand, if the choice is between the United States being the policeman of East Asia and keeping its allies — Japan and Korea and Taiwan — in order, or handing over the responsibility for security to the Japanese, they might very well, or at least some Chinese might very well, prefer Pax Americana. They’re more afraid of a remilitarized Japan than they are of America continuing to play its role.

I would imagine that these are things that are debated or thought about in very small circles in Beijing. I don’t know the answer to this. But that is why Xi Jinping would call Donald Trump and say, keep Japan in order.

Chang: I agree. I do think we can separate the longer-term question of who is going to guarantee East Asian security — either the US or Japan — from just the question of Taiwan and what positioning the US should have on Taiwan at this moment.

Right now, the strategic ambiguity policy that America has towards Taiwan has been there a long time, and it’s starting to fray. Famously, Biden had made some gaffes about saying that he would defend Taiwan. From China’s perspective, it seems to be a really great opportunity while Trump is still president. As you say, he has asserted this Western Hemisphere idea — he’s already hinted at this idea that we’re going to have control over the Western Hemisphere, by which he’s also implying that China can have control over the Eastern Hemisphere.

In this case, he’s just so primed to trade some economic deal for some improvement on the Taiwan issue — some tacit shift. Trump recognizing that he opposes Taiwanese independence — even that small statement, to try and inch him towards that — I think would be a major win for the Chinese. That is hovering over the May-June meeting. And that’s a really scary thing for Japan and Korea. I think that was clearly the main goal for Takaichi: to back him off that.

Ian: Yes, it is. Well, also thinking about Taiwan — the Americans have defended Taiwan for various different reasons. For a long time, Taiwan was a military dictatorship, but the Americans stood by Taiwan because of anti-communism, because they wanted to oppose communist China. They wanted to stop communist China from becoming too powerful. Then when Taiwan became a democracy, the rhetoric changed somewhat and it was about defending a democratic government and defending democracy against a powerful dictatorship. And it was of course also about defending the security of Japan and South Korea by having open sea lanes.

But the idea that Taiwan should be defended because it’s a democracy — I don’t think that enters Donald Trump’s mind. I don’t think he cares at all about Taiwan being a democracy. He would be perfectly happy for China to take over if it weren’t for other security concerns and indeed Japan.

Now, what is Takaichi’s strategy? I think in the longer run, she is positioning or trying to position Japan for a post-Pax Americana world, which is why she wants the constitution to be changed so that Japan can actually send troops into combat if necessary. She wants to beef up the military. She wants Japan to be much more independent in that way. But she also knows that this will take a long time. So kicking the can down the road is the short-term strategy — or tactic, maybe. And that is what she was doing in Washington. It was simply playing for time.

In the same way that the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, whenever he sees Trump or speaks about Trump in public, covers him in oily flattery so that Trump is less likely to break up NATO. And she does exactly the same thing. When she said to Trump in the White House, or at a press conference, that Donald is the only one who can guarantee peace and prosperity of the world, and telling him how handsome he is and so on — she was obviously very carefully briefed by the Japanese foreign ministry. Pile it on. Just keep him happy. Flatter him. Tell him how good-looking and how great he is.

Everybody knows that this can work in the short term, and indeed it does seem to work. He does respond to flattery. When Rutte did this, he backed off from Greenland and NATO and so on. And in this case, even though Japan hasn’t sent any ships to the Straits of Hormuz, he came out of the meeting saying Japan was great and a great ally and was doing its bit to help America on Iran and so on. So it really does work, but it only works in the short term because he can change his mind five minutes later. And she knows that, but every five minutes is valuable.

Chang: So let’s talk about Iran. As you’ve already mentioned, Japan is extremely exposed to Middle Eastern oil through the Strait of Hormuz. They take over 90% of their crude oil through the strait. Japan has already released its emergency stockpile of oil — I think they have about 200 days of that — but it’s a delay tactic.

Japan is a prime candidate for what Trump has been on about: getting allies to contribute by bringing warships into the Strait of Hormuz. Takaichi had already been asked about this before she came to the US. She had said in the diet that she was going to tell Trump what Japan legally can and cannot do under the constitution.

I don’t know how well you know what they’re technically allowed to do. My understanding is that, ironically, when she said Taiwan could potentially be an existential threat or some survival crisis — that would be the trigger for Japan to be able to send their military. By defining the Iran war right now as something that’s a survival-threatening situation, which I don’t think can be done — do you know what is feasible under the current constitutional framework?

Ian: Well, it keeps changing. Again, Abe amended it and reinterpreted the constitution to mean that they could take part in collective defense. But basically, constitutionally, they’re only allowed to use any kind of force if Japan is under direct threat. If another power were poised to invade Japan or attack Japan directly, they could constitutionally use military force to defend themselves. What they can’t do is send any kind of military to take part in combat outside Japan.

What Abe did in his reinterpretation — I can’t remember the exact phrase — but I think he interpreted the constitution to say that Japan could take part in military operations if it was part of a collective defense. But again, Japan has never sent ships or used any kind of military in any combat abroad.

What they can do is send minesweepers and so on when a war has been concluded, to clean up. They can send medical personnel, they can help out in some ways, but never to engage in direct combat. I don’t think even if the oil supplies were directly threatened by Iran, that means they can constitutionally send troops to the Middle East to actually take part. They can’t do that.

Chang: Yeah. It doesn’t seem like she even made a commitment about minesweepers or surveillance or intelligence — those things that might be allowed under the constitution.

But what was really fascinating was that just yesterday or two days ago, the Iranian foreign minister said that they would let Japanese ships through the Strait of Hormuz. So there’s this fascinating dilemma now for Japan. As you say, they have had a diplomatic relationship with Iran. Iran has offered Japan safe passage through the strait. At the same time, Japan has to think about sucking up to Trump, because what they really care about is China.

It’s a fascinating situation because they have 90% of their crude oil through the strait. They would love to just have straight passage now, but the optics of that look awful in front of Trump, who you want to pretend you’re on his side. What do you think about that?

Ian: Yes, well, that’s exactly why I think they were terrified when Takaichi went to Washington. They were terrified it would go very badly wrong and end up with him ranting at her the way he did to Zelensky. And she solved it basically through flattery. But of course, that’s not a long-term solution. It worked this time.

But those dilemmas that you mentioned have not gone away.

Chang: I think Japan is trying to play both sides. There are diplomatic channels towards Iran asking for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz for Japanese ships. At the same time, Japan signed on to a pledge with five European nations expressing their readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts on Hormuz, which is vague, but that’s in the broad theme of “we’re on the side of the allies.”

I don’t really know what Japan is doing and what it will end up doing. The main question I have is: are they going to take Iran up on their offer to have Japanese ships just go through the strait? And how would they be able to sell that to Donald Trump?

Ian: That’s indeed a huge question. I suppose one thing they could do — Trump seems now to be thinking, and of course he wants to walk away from this war as quickly as possible because it could damage him very badly in the midterm elections with gasoline prices going sky high and so on. He’d love to walk away and claim victory. Then what he would say is, the Europeans and others, you clean up the mess. You’re dependent on the oil going through the Straits of Hormuz, so it’s up to you now. I think he’d love to do that.

The Europeans, reluctant though they may be, would at least still be able to use some kind of military force to try and open the Straits of Hormuz if Iran insists on keeping it closed. The Japanese cannot do that. But what they could do is, once the conflict is over and Iran agrees that ships will be allowed to go through the strait again, there’s probably still quite a lot of work to do to clean up mines and all kinds of stuff that could still cause a great deal of damage. There they can play a role. They can send minesweepers because that would not be a question of taking part in combat.

But I agree that the dilemma — on the one hand, making sure that the Japanese can still get oil; on the other hand, looking like a loyal ally of Donald Trump’s — is going to be very, very difficult.

Chang: What did you think about the comment that Trump made when the journalist asked him, “Why didn’t you notify Japan about the Iran attack?” Trump was like, “Well, we wanted it to be a surprise. Who knows better about surprises than Japan? Pearl Harbor. Why didn’t you notify me about Pearl Harbor?”

It’s such a ridiculous comment. clearly it just popped into his head and he just said it out loud. But to be fair to him, I think he was just trying to say that he wanted this war to be a surprise. He didn’t want to notify allies because he was afraid that it might leak. What do you think?

Ian: That is what he was trying to say. From what I have read, Takaichi was angry at the Japanese journalists who asked the question. And I think that’s very unfair to the journalists because it’s a completely fair question. You cannot, as a responsible superpower, simply go to war — not only without notifying your allies, especially if you’re going to ask those allies to help you later, but also without notifying Congress.

even in the Iraq war, ill-conceived though it may have been, President Bush did try to get the allies on line. He did involve Congress. He did try to pave the way to make it look legitimate. Trump did none of that.

So it’s a completely legitimate question, and the response — “Well, it has to be done in secret and we’re not going to tell you” — this has become the stock response to any question, including from the American press, about what America’s goals are. People are not asking Trump to give away military secrets or to discuss tactics. But it’s legitimate to ask the administration what the strategy is and what they’re trying to achieve. And this is where they’re very cagey, because this changes from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour. Sometimes it’s regime change, sometimes it’s about oil, sometimes it’s about nuclear weapons.

So it’s an entirely legitimate question to ask: A, what the strategy is, and B, why the allies are not involved in this, even though the allies are asked to take part.

Now, how serious is a crack like that about Pearl Harbor? I think the Japanese take it in their stride because you expect it from Trump. If Joe Biden had said something like that, or even Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan, it would have been all over the world press and there would have been a diplomatic incident, probably. But in this case, people shrugged their shoulders. He’s said so many outrageous things and it doesn’t come as a surprise.

Chang: That’s true. The tolerance has just gotten a lot higher.

Ian: I think people think it’s entirely in character.

Chang: So to summarize: the US wanted Japan to pitch in and send warships to the strait. They did not make a decision on that. In a way, Japan came out of this relatively the winner in that they didn’t have to make any commitments on Hormuz. Although they’ve already made the deal to invest billions of dollars in the United States, and that is still on schedule. Several of the nuclear plants that they’ve agreed to have already started to break ground. Japan is trying to play up their end of the bargain — this is from the previous negotiations with tariffs, even though the Supreme Court has struck down the tariffs as unlawful, Japan is still going on with that. But the last question I have is: did Japan get the reassurances that it wanted on China with Donald Trump? The only real empirical outcome that Trump mentioned is that he off the cuff said, “I’ll speak Japan’s praises to Xi.” I don’t know what that means. But of course, the general vibe of the summit was extremely jovial and happy. They sent a picture of Takaichi almost in a dancing pose. do you think Takaichi has come back to Japan with the reassurances that she wanted?

Ian: No, because I don’t think such reassurances are possible with this president, because he changes his mind all the time. I think it’s very important that we discuss in our podcast now and in future, that we reflect on the post-Pax Americana world, because that is what we’re entering now and everybody knows it.

It probably had to happen anyway, but Trump has sped it up because he’s not committed to it. For the time being, the United States is still guaranteeing Japanese security. But we don’t know how long that’s going to last.

I think she was probably happy at the end of her visit to Washington because things didn’t go badly. But the long-term problem, and this concerns the Chinese as much as it does the Japanese, is that we’re faced with two different futures in Asia. One is that Pax Americana continues, which is highly unlikely, but it’s possible that for a while it will still continue. Or in the longer run, Japan and South Korea will become nuclear powers. And the question then is: which would China prefer? Of course they’d prefer for America to leave and Japan not to become a nuclear power. But I think that’s unlikely to happen.

Chang: Yeah. It seems to me that Trump, as you say, doesn’t believe in Pax Americana, but on the other hand just wants Asia to stay the way it is. Based on the pattern of what happened in November, Trump didn’t say, “Yeah, go Japan, you’re taking your security seriously.” He could have said, “Look, this is a good sign that Takaichi and the Japanese government are taking their security seriously. This is the world that we’re entering.” He could have had this forward-looking vision that is consistent with his post-Pax Americana theory. He could have picked up the phone with Xi and said, “I’m sorry, you’re going to have to deal with it.” He could have told Xi, “Do you want Japan or me? You can only pick one. You can’t have none.”

But instead, he immediately hung up the phone with Xi and the same day called Takaichi and said, “You’ve got to tone it down. Tone down your rhetoric.” It seems like he wants to have his cake and eat it too. Do you think I’m interpreting that right?

Ian: Yes, probably. But it’s very difficult to discern any kind of strategic logic in what Trump is thinking or doing, because I don’t think he has a strategy. It appears that he doesn’t really think very much beyond next week. The way he sees the world is how it’s going to look on TV and how he’s going to look. And that can change very, very quickly.

I don’t think he thinks strategically. Strategies can of course be wrong. But most presidents have had a strategy. I don’t think Trump really has one beyond this very vague idea of dividing the world into — basically divvying it up between three superpowers. I think that’s vaguely in his head. But apart from that, I don’t think he has a real strategy.

It’s very difficult for a country like Japan to deal with that. They’re stuck with a status quo, but they realize it’s not going to last. Again, I have very little sympathy for a lot of Takaichi’s politics, but I sympathize with her dilemma and I sympathize with her attempt to gradually move Japanese public opinion towards thinking seriously about what the post-American world will look like.

Chang: So in a way, her flattery line in the beginning of the summit where she says that Trump is the only one who can guarantee peace around the world — maybe she’s saying, look, the ball is in your court. Next time you’re with Xi Jinping, you can choose to sell us out or you can choose to stay the line. In a way, it’s up to you — which is true, right?

Ian: Yes, that is true. But I don’t think one should read too much into it. I think the first goal was to keep this great big bully happy so that he doesn’t do more damage. As a diplomatic maneuver, that worked.

The problem is — and this again is very much like Mark Rutte, the Secretary General of NATO — he’s been criticized for flattering Trump in such a gross manner. But from his point of view, you could say, well, his job is to keep NATO together and you can only keep NATO together with American leadership. Okay, him rather than me, but somebody has to flatter this man.

On the other hand, there are those who say bullies always respond to people who stand up to them. And it’s a mistake to simply flatter him because you can play for time that way, but you don’t solve anything. And both are true. That is probably true. On the other hand, you can’t afford to alienate him unnecessarily. And I think both Rutte and Takaichi have concluded that it’s better to play for time than anything else because they have no other options.

Hang on until the midterms, hang on until the next presidential election — things might change again. I think that’s the idea.

Chang: All right, that sounds like a good place to end it.

Below is our conversation:

In this episode:

• Why Takaichi is so popular among young voters and women

• Did Takaichi bring in new voters or flip existing ones?

• Will Takaichi overshoot her mandate?

• Japan’s nuclear future and the U.S. alliance under Trump

• Is Takaichi’s industrial policy just Abenomics 2.0?

• Takaichi’s policy on immigration

• Japan-South Korea relations and Takaichi’s possible visit to Yasukuni Shrine

• Takaichi’s Taiwan statement and the future of China’s economic coercion

Ian: Perhaps we can start with this: Why do you think Takaichi is so enormously popular personally in Japan, and it seems especially with the younger generations, which is counterintuitive for a politician of the right — although perhaps less and less so in many different countries. But what is your explanation? How has she managed to turn around a party in such trouble through what seems to be personal charisma?

Tobias: I think there are a few explanations. Part of it is the fact that she is getting a dividend for being Japan’s first female prime minister. For many people — and just anecdotally, from many conversations — Women of all generations look at her and they either see, in the case of younger women, a role model, or older women, closer to her age, see someone who had to overcome many of the same obstacles that they overcame in their own professional lives. There’s something inspiring about her reaching the premiership. People don’t want her to fail. There are a lot of people rooting for her.

Some of it is just that there are a lot of right-wing voters and those voters were unhappy with leadership of the LDP before her. They were unhappy with former Prime Minister Ishiba, who they saw as too moderate. Prime Minister Kishida, who they saw as too moderate too. And they see her as one of theirs. So of course they are very excited. When I’ve written about her in the past, I’ve described her essentially as a zealous follower of the new conservative view. So you have a lot of that.

And then for younger people, they see a leader who looks very different than her predecessors. She has a frank way of speaking. She’s very blunt. She’s very sincere. She’s very diligent, and they see a different kind of leader. They see a leader who’s maybe saying the right things about some of the issues they care about, particularly inflation. So there’s maybe — Call it a rational exuberance. There’s this excitement about her and a willingness to believe that she’s going to be different, that she’s going to make headway on some of these problems. All of that , I think, has resulted in her having these extraordinarily high approval ratings, now almost six months into her government.

Ian: It’s interesting you say it’s partly because she’s a woman, because she’s not a feminist. She hasn’t really done — There’s no sign that she’s going to be great for women in Japan. The other question I was thinking about is that it seems that being tough on China and even talking about Article 9 of the Constitution and so on is more popular with the younger generation than with the older ones. Do you think it has to do with the fading of World War II memories? And could that have something to do with the popularity of, it’s a while ago now, manga like Kobayashi Yoshinori? Do you think that it shows that young people, at a greater distance from the past, are beginning to have different views on Japan and Japanese power and the use of Japanese power?

Tobias: I think there’s absolutely something to that. It was very striking during the general election campaign. You had the opposition — not just the left-wing Japanese Communist Party opposition, but even the mainstream, this centrist reform alliance that emerged right on the eve of the election — talking about these old left-versus-right categories and positioning themselves as neither left nor right, saying “we’re centrist,” but still thinking in terms of these old categories really stretching back to the beginning of the post-war period. I thought it was very striking how This was a party that had no support among young people at all. If you look at the exit polling, this was a party that offered nothing to the young, almost conceded that it wasn’t going to appeal to the young — essentially hoping that they could appeal to more older voters to make up for the deficits they had with the young.

What you saw with Takaichi’s appeals was very much not talking left or right, just moving beyond that and saying, “I’m looking at the future. I’m looking at The issues that Japan faces to have the kind of future that we want.” I think that is in some ways a response to the fact that certainly for younger voters, these ideological categories don’t have the same heft to them. They don’t carry the same meaning. They don’t think about them as much. And some of that reflects that certainly on national security — which was the left-right issue for all those decades — especially post-2022, this has been a long-term erosion, so it’s not just post-2022, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had a seismic impact on Japan. It was a huge wake-up call to the realities of what war could look like. “We could be the ones hiding in our subways from missiles overhead. Russia is next door. China is growing. North Korea and these countries are aligning.”

There’s a sense that the issue has essentially been settled. The right wing won that debate. Japan needs to be stronger, needs to spend more on its own defense. As an advisor to the prime minister said in December, “there’s no one to help us but ourselves, ultimately.” That thinking is widespread. I don’t think you’re going to find a lot of opposition to that among the young. And she has definitely profited from that in terms of her popularity.

Chang: Did she bring in younger voters who were otherwise non-political and weren’t voting in elections, or were there voters who had voted for a different party and she flipped them?

Tobias: I think it’s both. There’s been this assumption for a long time that turnout among young voters is low , and so elections are going to be decided by older voters. In absolute terms, of course, younger people don’t vote nearly as much as older people do. But as a result, if you can get a marginal increase in younger voters, it makes big differences. Last year, if you looked at turnout in the upper house elections, you got something like a five percentage point increase in younger voters. And it basically made the difference between the LDP controlling the upper house and not.

You had a bunch of young voters who came out and voted for a couple of anti-establishment parties of the right to various degrees. Sanseito, the anti-globalist party, got a lot of attention, but also the Democratic Party for the People, which is more center-right than far right. You have to be careful not to clump these two together. But both of these parties have had very strong support among the young and brought them out last summer.

What happened this time is that Takaichi got new young people out to vote, and then she also flipped a lot of the young voters who did come out last time and voted for these other parties and brought them over to the LDP. One of the questions before the campaign was: will these young voters be willing to vote for the LDP, which they see as stodgy and out of touch? Will the Takaichi factor matter more than the LDP factor? And as it turned out, it did quite a lot.

Chang: So you’re saying that there’s more hope for the American Democratic Party.

Tobias: Yeah, perhaps so, with the right messenger, I guess.

Ian: Except the Democratic Party is also seen as pretty stodgy. It’s interesting to compare Japan to Germany in this respect, because it seems that pacifism is now more and more associated with old farts. And it’s the young who are beginning to say, “Look, that’s out of date and we have to adapt in a changing world.” In Germany, for example, it was the Greens that were most supportive of helping Ukraine and not the old Social Democrats and Christian Democrats. Do you think that there is a clear parallel there?

Tobias: I think You see it just in the opinion polling. The polling after this episode with Takaichi and the Diet, talking about a Taiwan crisis and that Japan would probably end up being involved — the age group that was most skeptical of that and most divided on the value of that was, of course, older people. And you realize too, Older people have memories of a different China. Younger people only really know China as this overbearing power, economic power, growing military power. Older people will remember Japan helping China and years where they’re cooperating economically and getting along. They’re just very different views of these things.

But young people are much more inclined to be China hawks. They’re much more open to the idea of constitutional revision. They’re much more open to the idea of spending more on defense. All of these things that have been controversial — they just don’t have the baggage. It’s not part of their worldviews. And so it’s very hard for parties of the left that are still very opposed to these developments to make inroads among young voters, because it just seems out of touch. This is not the world we’re facing. We have to be adaptive. We have to respond to the conditions that we face now.

Ian: How conscious do you think she was when she made her statement on Taiwan — which was controversial and people think was undiplomatic — how conscious was she of the United States and Donald Trump when she made that statement? In other words, You’ve made the case that more and more Japanese feel that they have to look after themselves, and obviously Trump under the United States is less and less dependable. Was that one reason, do you think, that she felt she had to tell the Japanese that things are serious and they have to shape up?

Tobias: I think It’s hard to read exactly. There have been different explanations given for how premeditated that was — versus was it because of questioning and she, in the moment, basically fell back on a position that she has said before, There’s an argument that she really thought this was assumed and everyone just understood this, and that she wasn’t making some grand statement that things are different and we have to change. The evidence is there on both sides of the argument.

But the fact remains that there’s an appreciation certainly among national security elites in Tokyo that there does need to be more work by leaders to get the Japanese people to understand that if something were to happen with Taiwan, the likelihood that we’re going to be involved somehow is very high. You’ve had these articles in newspapers about war games showing the likely casualties — Japanese civilian casualties and things like that — trying to focus minds about the reality. What does it mean when we say “Ukraine today could be Taiwan tomorrow”? Really getting people to appreciate that and be aware of the reality of that. There’s still probably more work to do, but her saying that has certainly put it more front of mind than really at any point in time where people are really thinking about what this could actually mean if something were to happen.

Chang: I had a question about the distance between how a leader reads their mandate versus what actually happened in an election for them to win. I’m thinking about the US case, and there were voters last year who voted for Trump who may just have had issues with their grocery prices. They were not expecting the massive immigration raids and the assault on Venezuela and Greenland. There’s generally a difference between how political leaders think — because of the vantage point that they have, they’re thinking a lot more about national security — whereas voters tend to be maybe thinking more about economic issues. Do you feel like there’s a risk that Takaichi might overshoot, misinterpret her mandate?

Tobias: When you win to the extent that she did — and it’s really worth stressing, the LDP is 70 years old, and she won the biggest victory the party has ever won. That’s a big deal. No LDP leader in history has done as well in an election as she did. So naturally I think the temptation is going to be: “I’m vindicated.” And also because of the circumstances in which the election came about — she didn’t have to do it. There was a lot of pushback in the LDP, people saying maybe this isn’t the right time, maybe you need to accomplish a little more in office, maybe this is too risky. So the fact that she did it anyway and it pays off in ways that I think even the LDP was surprised by — there’s an argument in her mind, I’m sure, that the voters chose her, the voters decided to give her this majority, and the expectation is that she’s going to use it and run with it and act on it.

But there’s always the risk that she oversteps, There are some real hard constraints out there in the world. Even if she’s overcome domestic political constraints for the moment, Trump still has to be managed. That is a difficult thing for whoever the Japanese prime minister is. The bond market is waiting and watching to see what she does. That is something that is going to have to be managed. So there are real constraints out there.

But in terms of the things that she can control, the risk that she decides “I’m vindicated, I’m going to run with it” — I think absolutely. It’s also worth noting the victory is not entirely because of her popularity , and that’s the cautionary note for her. The size of the victory — I think It was clear that her popularity was going to get that majority in some form. The degree to which they won, though, depended a lot on the fact that the opposition’s voters rejected this alliance that was made between the Constitutional Democrats and Komeito before the election. Something like 30 to 40 percent of people who voted for the Constitutional Democrats in 2024 did not vote for the candidates they were offered this time around. That’s not because they were all switching over to the LDP — They just rejected these strategic decisions, and that cleared the way for LDP candidates to win in places that I don’t think the LDP expected didn’t expect to win.

The LDP, for all of its success, still only got 49 percent of the vote in single-member constituencies. So there are wrinkles in this victory, even if the absolute seat total is dramatic.

Ian: On handling Trump, it seems to me that Japan is in a real bind, and so is South Korea. If we’re thinking of this in the longer term and not just in the next year or so, the Europeans, following Mark Carney’s speech, are beginning to realize that in the longer term they really do have to start thinking of a different world in which they’re no longer dependent on American security guarantees. But the Europeans have the EU, they have NATO, they have nuclear arms in France and Britain. The Japanese and the South Koreans only have their security treaty with the United States. How are they going to deal with this? If I were to lay a bet, I would say within the next 10 years, Japan is going to be nuclear-armed.

Tobias: Ten years — the longer the time horizon, the likelihood is going to rise because these discussions are already happening. They’re happening quietly and maybe less quietly. You had this episode in December where an advisor to the prime minister, unnamed, told the press that yes, we have to have a discussion about having nuclear weapons. So it’s happening. The thinking is there.

In Japanese elite discourse, they talk about “Plan Bs” and “A-pluses,” trying to think about alternatives. Certainly In the near term, they don’t have any illusions about alternatives. They recognize that in the near term, there is not really an alternative when it comes to deterring China in particular , but just in general, keeping a strategic balance. They know there’s not an alternative to the United States.

What you’re seeing — and in some ways Takaichi’s domestic strength could be a liability — is that in the past, you’ve had Japanese governments that could say, “Well, we’d love to help you out, but we don’t have a big majority or the public’s not behind us. And after all, we have this pesky coalition partner, Komeito, that’s going to raise a stink if we push too hard on this stuff.” She doesn’t have any excuses anymore.

She’s going to meet with Trump next month and Trump is going to have a lot of demands. She’s not going to have the option of saying, “Well, the public’s not really behind me.” It’s like, “You won this fantastic victory. It’s time to act.” And there’s going to be a lot of demands. Every US ally in some ways faces the same calculus, but I think it’s very acute for Japan, precisely because they are essentially on their own in a lot of ways.

There is this fundamental asymmetry where Japan needs the United States. It knows that Its entire strategic worldview is centered around the idea that the United States is going to be there to help keep Japan secure, and that US markets are going to be open to Japan. This has been the bargain going back to the early 1950s. This was the very foundation of this relationship.

What they’re realizing is that with Trump, the United States has made clear that “we don’t need you, we don’t need anyone. We don’t need institutions, we don’t need norms — all of this is up for negotiation.” It’s even a big change — You could say, “Well, has any US government really needed Japan?” And actually, certainly in recent years, the Obama administration really appreciated having Japan as a partner in the region, enhancing US relations with countries in Southeast Asia, doing things that the United States couldn’t do. Japan was respected, was listened to, it had a lot of economic power . It did have and increasing military power. All of these things have made Japan quite a valuable partner.

And now you have a United States that’s saying, “Yeah, all of those things are great, but we need more. You want us to stay involved? The price is getting higher. Nothing is sacrosanct anymore.” That makes life very uncomfortable for a Japanese government. It’s going to be very uncomfortable for Takaichi when she finds that there are going to be a lot of demands coming her way. And frankly, there’s an undercurrent — the Japanese people aren’t blind to this. You’ve had people calling the trade agreement from last year an unequal treaty. They see the kind of things that Japan is being expected to do by this administration just to keep the United States doing the things that it’s always done.

It’s an uncomfortable situation, and she’s going to really — if the United States pushes too hard, she could find herself squeezed between public opinion that is uncomfortable with some of this and the reality that there’s not really an alternative in the near term to keeping the US onside.

Chang: So what do you think about the recent tariffs now that the Supreme Court has invalidated some of the tariff numbers? Do you think that has an impact on the way that Takaichi is going to discuss the investment that she’s pledged to Trump.

Tobias: Well, also because you realize that The negotiation was about the Liberation Day tariffs, but it was also about the automobile tariffs, which are not affected by the Supreme Court decision at all.

They’ve already pretty much said that the Supreme Court did its thing, but there’s not anything they can do about that. They’re going to keep the deal. They have enough on their plate just figuring out how this investment framework is going to work They’re not going to mess with it by suggesting that the deal should be altered because of the Supreme Court.

Chang: You mentioned that Takaichi doesn’t really have any excuses because she’s got such a supermajority in the lower house. How likely do you think it is that Article 9 — the effort to revise the constitution, the post-war rule that restricts Japan from having a military — how early do you think we could see an effort to try and be revised? Tobias: On the one hand, I think the barriers to revision are probably lower than they’ve ever been. Back in 2016, Abe had two-thirds majorities in both houses, which is the threshold you need to revise. Everyone got very excited that maybe now this time it’s going to happen. And even though Abe wanted to get it done and he believed in it and actually put forward some proposals for amendments, it didn’t happen.

Chang: Why didn’t that happen?

Tobias: It’s just a heavy lift. When it comes to what you want to spend political capital on, he just ultimately wasn’t going to. And I think there was a real fear that if you attempt to do it and it fails — particularly the amendment he proposed was revising Article 9 so that you make the status of the Self-Defense Forces clear, you write “the Self-Defense Forces shall exist” into the Constitution — there was a fear that if they do this and it either doesn’t pass the Diet or it doesn’t pass a referendum with the public, which needs a simple majority to pass, then isn’t the obvious implication going to be that the Self-Defense Forces are not legitimate , because the amendment failed?

One of my favorite little bits of trivia from those days: there was a delegation that met with David Cameron — I think they went to the UK and met with David Cameron in the wake of the Brexit referendum. And they said, “Talk to us about this process of having a national referendum.” And he told them, “Don’t do it unless you’re absolutely sure you’re going to get at least 60 percent. Anything less than that is too risky. Don’t do it.”

So there’s a real concern that unless they’re very confident they’re going to get it done, the risks of trying and failing are high. It’s not going to happen this year. She’s got other things to do.

Ian: But public opinion has probably changed since Abe had those ideas, right? It would be more sympathetic now to a change than even then, wouldn’t you say?

Tobias: It would, yeah. It’s just — what does the public want the government spending its time on? I think It’s as much about priorities as anything else, because ultimately, constitutional revision is not really going to change Japan’s defense capabilities all that much. They’ve already found ways of doing just about whatever they want under the scope of the Constitution as it’s written. The Constitution as it’s written, according to an interpretation that is now nearly 70 years old, allows them to have nuclear weapons. They do not need to revise the Constitution to have a nuclear arsenal.

So at this point, it really is as much about a cultural victory — showing that after all these years, part of the Constitution has been written by Japanese hands. It is more of their document. It’s really a question of how much she wants to do this.

My guess would be that, assuming Takaichi’s numbers don’t plummet, in a year or two’s time, does she start starts thinking about this as a real legacy issue ?. I still think we’re looking at a few years before it’s really possible for her to push this.

Chang: Could you walk through Takaichi’s domestic agenda in terms of what she’s hoping to do with industrial policy? I wonder whether there’s a framework for how we should understand that approach. I’ve been thinking about it in terms of something similar to the US’s CHIPS and Science Act and IRA. I’m curious how you approach it.

Tobias: It’s a great question. I have been trying to bang the drum since she took power against this idea — there’s this assumption that what she wants to do is just Abenomics 2.0: reflate the economy, spend a lot of money, loose fiscal policy, loose monetary policy, and just get the economy growing at a really fast clip.

Really, I think it’s actually a fundamental misunderstanding, because for Abe, it was, “Yes, we’ve got to overcome deflation. We’ve got to get wages up. We’ve got to get spending up. We’ve got to get all the arrows pointing in the right direction.” For her , actually — and she’s been very clear about this — she has said that Abenomics failed on its most important task of getting businesses investing, getting Japan’s industrial capacity and the advanced sectors of the future to a higher level. That is what she cares about.

She’s been pretty consistent about this for a really long time. In some ways You get a feeling that she sees this as Japan’s last chance — that if Japan is not able to compete in chips and AI and robotics , these advanced sectors, if Japan is not able to compete with China, with Europe, with Korea, with the United States in these sectors, then essentially Japan will fall behind and actually end up dependent on other countries. She’s very fearful of Japan’s dependence on others.

She talks about wanting 100 percent self-reliance on energy, which has been the Holy Grail for Japanese leaders going back for decades — Japan is resource-poor , they’ve got to find a way out of this. She wants Japan to be 100 percent self-sufficient in food. Again, this has been a long-term dream. But it’s also: Japan can’t be dependent on others for chips. It can’t be dependent on others for digital services. She wants Japan to compete in all of these areas.

What she recognizes in a way that Abe actually did not is that if Japan wants to be competitive in these sectors, it needs national champions. It needs to be willing to spend money to build industrial capacity. They have this project in Hokkaido — Rapidus — they’re building this chip maker with public money, and they’re trying to crowd in private investment. They put forward a lot of public money, and then they try to get private companies to sign on as clients, to invest, to basically support the project too. The idea is they’re going to do that in a bunch of different sectors: put a bunch of public money in and try to get private companies to then sign on and invest and help build out capacity.

The risk, of course — well, one, building national champions is hard. Rapidus at this point still hasn’t actually built anything or really sold anything yet. But also Japan’s fiscal capacity is not unlimited. There are real limitations and real risks if it has to issue more debt to do this. There’s a real danger that even if this is the right idea, executing it will already have been may be too late because interest rates are not zero or negative anymore. Borrowing costs are only going up. And if this doesn’t work, the cost for Japan could be very dear.

Ian: How is that industrial policy different from what MITI [Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry] used to do — picking winners and having the state heavily involved in building up Japan’s industrial strength?

Tobias: In a lot of ways it is a throwback. MITI used to allocate capital and allocate investment credits and help with licenses. The tools are a little different, but it’s definitely a throwback. People at the successor ministry, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, feel that life is good. There are high METI officials in Tokyo who are in her circle. This is very much a government that is driven by those priorities , those old industrial policy priorities.

To some extent, the building-national-champions approach is maybe a little different. Where MITI was managing competitiveness and figuring out how many companies were in a sector and trying to organize the shape of competition — because they’re really thinking about these new sectors where it’s not like you have a bunch of Japanese companies competing for market share in automobiles or steel. These are frontier industries. And I think that makes what they’re trying to do a little different in some ways.

Ian: One thing that Abe did recognize, though, is that for Japan to remain competitive, they need foreigners — they need immigration, they need tourism, and so on. She has projected herself in many ways as Abe’s disciple, but her policies on immigration and tourism and foreigners in Japan in general seem to be rather the opposite.

Tobias: Certainly She has pivoted to a harder line towards policing Japan’s growing resident foreign population, possibly slowing the numbers of arrivals. I don’t think she wants to turn tourists away.

The question is how much is her conviction versus this is the political moment, that she was facing threats from parties to her right that were making a big issue out of this and reaping a lot of political advantage from calling attention to the problems with the foreign population in Japan and lawbreaking. There’s a lot of misinformation and maybe actual disinformation about Japan’s foreign population.But she’s responded to that. She really has responded to the fact that the public is concerned about this. Young voters especially seem concerned about this. She certainly wants to make a show of cracking down.

The question is: who is she going to listen to ultimately when it comes to making policy? Big business really wants access to foreign workers. They need them. Employers are having trouble getting enough workers. They have supported the effort to open Japan, if not to migration, then at least to guest workers. If she were to really move to limit their ability to have foreign workers, she would hear about it. Big business would make a lot of noise about that. So there is a question of how much in substance she can actually do to reverse the increase in Japan’s foreign population, versus making a show — “we’ve found all these visa overstayers and we’re going to kick them out and we’re going to have these controls at the border” — things that will maybe convincing voters that they’re taking it seriously but not actually changing the reality that there is a need for foreign workers in a lot of sectors.

Ian: Has she successfully undercut the Sanseito by taking that — at least rhetorical — position?

Tobias: Certainly. In the election she did. That was one of the questions: is Sanseito able to compete even when you have a more conservative LDP leader? As it turned out, Sanseito did not do well. They still increased their presence in the Diet, but nothing like what they were aiming for. They were aiming for something like 30 seats and they won half of that. Clearly she took some of the wind out of their sails.

Chang: Can I go back to clarify a question about her industrial policy? It seems to me that there’s this effort to basically do what China does — pick out national champions and key technology sectors. There’s also a strong investment angle to that. And then there’s also what Takaichi ran on, which was to improve cost of living for ordinary voters. Do you feel like one of the risks is that this comes into tension? I’m thinking back to what Trump ran on — cost of living — and then he went on to do Liberation Day. Do you feel like that might happen here as well?

Tobias: There’s absolutely a risk in that. A portion of her support , going back to the beginning of our conversation, is young people in particular expecting that she’s going to actually do something about inflation, about the cost of living crisis. And if people don’t feel that they have more money in their pockets, if they don’t feel that their circumstances are improving, some of that popularity is going to erode. To the extent that If her industrial policies end up increasing the size of the deficit, if they do end up having to depend on bond issuance to do that, you’re running the risk that the reaction from bond markets is going to be that interest rates should rise. What we’ve been seeing is that when interest rates have risen, the yen weakens. And a weaker yen means higher inflation. So you could end up with a situation where on the one hand, she does some policies to help people with the cost of living — there’s this talk about cutting the consumption tax on food and new handouts and new distributions — so she does things that puts more money in people’s pockets through tax policy, but on the other hand ends up running larger deficits, higher interest rates, weaker yen. You end up basically giving with one hand and the inflation tax takes it away with the other. There’s a real risk where you’re running to stand still and no one ends up better off at the end of the day.

Ian: On foreign policy, the LDP, when it was especially under really conservative prime ministers — and she’s of course one of them — their relations with South Korea were pretty good when South Korea had conservative governments. How do you think she’s going to cope with that? Because it’s interesting — and in a previous podcast we talked about that — it’s interesting that She, as a conservative Japanese prime minister, seems to have done everything to get on well with a liberal president in South Korea, and vice versa. How do you see this developing?

Tobias: It’s been one of the more remarkable developments of her tenure. Who would have thought — Progressive Korean president and conservative Japanese prime minister has generally not been a good combination. That was what we saw when Prime Minister Abe had this downward spiral of relations with President Moon of South Korea. What you’re seeing now is the dividends from when the Biden administration was helping bring Japan and Korea together — a shared appreciation that you have shared interests, you face similar threats, and you have to find a way to work through this.

The fears of abandonment by Trump, the fears that this really is a different strategic environment and we really have to find a way to get together and work together because otherwise we’re really on our own — in both countries, both governments, that feeling is acute. It helps that President Yoon has been very pragmatic and very flexible and very eager to find a way to get along with Takaichi. In some ways It’s almost a game-theoretical setup: if Korea cooperates, Japan will cooperate. And as long as they continue to do that, they see that they have enough interests at stake that there’s a lot to lose if they can’t figure it out.

The question is what happens if it gets tested. If some politician in one country or the other does something about Takeshima/Dokdo, or you have some lawsuit in Korea about a history issue, or Prime Minister Takaichi decides to go to Yasukuni Shrine — and she very noticeably alluded to that on election night as she was basking in the glow of her victory. What happens when you get one of these stressors that we’ve seen in the past? Is the recognition of shared interests strong enough to overcome that? Is it strong enough to induce some restraint? That’ll be the real question. And Yasukuni is going to be a pretty good test for it.

Ian: What is your judgment as far as South Korea is concerned? If it’s true that the memories of World War II in Japan are beginning to fade and people are much less sensitive about it — which means that pacifism is also retreating — do you think that the sensitivity in South Korea to something like the Japanese prime minister going to the Yasukuni Shrine would be less now than it would have been some decades ago?

Tobias: I don’t know South Korean public opinion well enough to make a really deep judgment on that. And clearly, I do know enough about South Korean public opinion to know that You have major polarization just among young voters. So It’s hard to even generalize about young voters, where you have a real left-right split and a gender split as well.

It’s hard to say specifically. I think We have seen that the hold of the memories from the period of colonization by Japan have not relaxed. We really saw this during the standoff over compensation for forced laborers. There’s still real feeling about that. Certainly on the left, the feelings are still very strong that you can’t trust Japan. We saw this when Takaichi was taking power — the Korean press was very concerned about what she would be like. I’m guessing you still have some doubts there, that people are not quite entirely convinced that Korea can really trust her.

I think If she went, you’d still see some pretty vociferous reactions from the public, even if the public is maybe not 100 percent united on the issue.

Ian: I was thinking of the Polish foreign minister, Radek Sikorski. I can’t remember the date, but some decades ago In a speech he said, “It’s no longer the case that we are afraid of German militarism. On the contrary, we’re afraid that Germany won’t do enough to defend Europe.” You can’t see a South Korean foreign minister saying something like that in the near future.

Tobias: I don’t think we’re quite there yet. But you do have healthy communication between the two militaries and the two defense ministries. They have really resumed regular communication after some low points in recent years. South Korea maybe isn’t cheering on Japan’s rearmament process, but I think you’re also maybe less inclined to see South Koreans say that Japan is the greatest military threat that South Korea faces. I don’t think you’re going to see that kind of thinking anymore either.

Chang: Let’s just bring China into this. Just to refresh people’s memory, This comment that Takaichi made last year about how Japan’s security is tied to Taiwan triggered a really big backlash from China. China has restricted tourism. They’ve restricted some Japanese firms. They’ve also restricted rare earth access for Japanese companies. These are really big economic sanctions. There’s a little bit of performative outrage that the Chinese system often performs when these issues come up, but there’s also an effort to try to change people’s behavior — this is meant to change Takaichi’s calculation. Would you say that the election is basically a resounding referendum , that that’s not the case at all? And in fact, iIt may have made Takaichi more popular that China was reacting this way?

Tobias: I think China has these tools and does use them to try to change political behavior. They have built out this economic coercion toolbox precisely so that they can try to do that.

Chang: And it works sometimes — look at what happened with Trump.

Tobias: Right. What’s actually kind of amazing is how they’ve been relatively restrained. It’s been very much one thing at a time. It’s not like they’re going guns blazing at Japan. The tourism — okay, that’s a message first. It’s clearly graduated escalation, gradually trying to impose costs on Japan. But I think there’s also a real appreciation that they don’t want to harm China’s economy either. They can’t just do whatever they want. There are things that Chinese companies depend on importing from Japan. There’s a lot of different factors at play.

Just in terms of the structure of the conflict, though, This has the makings of something that is not going to end anytime soon, because ultimately neither side is in a position to concede here. China can’t concede the point. You have a Japanese prime minister say openly that if China uses force, we have to get involved because our security is at stake. It was bad enough for China when a former prime minister said that — when Abe, after he left office, talked about a Taiwan crisis being a Japan crisis. But for a sitting prime minister to say that, and to say that in the first days really of her premiership, clearly that’s not something China can easily swallow, given their position on Taiwan and that this is an internal matter. Conceding that a Japanese prime minister can say that — they can’t allow that.

In some ways, Takaichi painted herself into a corner, too. By saying “this has been our policy all along, so I wasn’t announcing a new policy,” that puts her in a situation where if she concedes, she can’t, because then she’s conceded that she’s allowed China to change Japan’s policy through economic coercion. She’s basically stuck now: “I didn’t say anything different. This was prevailing policy. Therefore, I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to apologize. I don’t have to say anything different.” And China is not going to concede the point. They are going to be stuck in this cycle , it seems like, for a while — until some external factor changes that leads them to find some way of compromising that makes everyone feel that they didn’t actually give anything up.

For Takaichi, the real question is what happens between Trump and Xi Jinping. Do you end up with a situation where, If the US and China are drawing nearer each other, Japan feels like it’s being could be left out and isolated by the US and China making some by a deal that disadvantages Japan ?. That is a risk that a lot of people in Tokyo are concerned about. But in the meantime, they’re locked into this struggle because neither can concede easily.

Ian: No, Thank you very much. That was very interesting.

Tobias: Thank you. Thanks for reaching out. Obviously there’s a lot going on, so happy to talk about all this.

But Hasan isn’t the only one. His visit was preceded and followed by other influencers — IShowSpeed, The Nelk Boys, Pokimane among others — who collectively command audiences in the tens of millions on platforms like Twitch and YouTube. Their followers skew young, ranging from 13 to 25, and they have recently taken up a viral phenomenon called “China-maxxing,” in which young Westerners, disillusioned with their lives, cosplay elements of Chinese culture. Piker knows something about how discontent in America is shifting his audience toward an embrace of China, so I wanted to get his thoughts on the matter. Below is our conversation:

In this episode:

• Why Hasan sees China differently than liberals; growing up in Turkey

• First impressions of China, Tiananmen flag-raising ceremony

• The incident where Hasan got stopped by security at Tiananmen

• Hasan’s thoughts on Chinese (and American) censorship

• Surprising similarities between America and China

• Hasan’s Chinese fan base and how the red pill pipeline is going global

• What Hasan would advise a future Democratic president on China policy

Chang: I wanted to ask you about your trip to China and your general thoughts and impressions.

Hasan: You said there’s been a change of attitude about a lot of people with regard to China. I have not had a change of attitude about China. So for me, it was more so just seeing what I was already talking about in action and seeing it in real time, whether it be the development or whether it be what I suspected were rumors about everyday Chinese existence — either great exaggerations in western press or outright fabrications.

One of the examples I always use is I went with a bunch of people who had these kinds of negative opinions about China, these fears. Given its presentation, I think, in the western world, for the uninitiated it’s kind of like the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — a hermit kingdom. If you recall, JD Vance said, even as recently as a couple months ago, that it’s a nation of peasants. I think that’s still by and large the average American’s attitude towards China. And instantly, as soon as we landed in Beijing airport, the people that I was with who had previously thought that it’s illegal to even show Winnie the Pooh were shocked to find out that the first vending machine that we saw was a Disney vending machine, and there were Winnie the Pooh figurines.

It’s little things like that. I already knew they were greatly exaggerated — the social media ban over referring to Xi Jinping as Winnie the Pooh being turned into this major story in the western news. That’s why a lot of people will still do that thing when they’re talking about China, even well-intentioned liberals.

Chang: This was your first time in China. Tell me about how you were able to overcome that narrative. I’m curious where your views of China formed.

Hasan: I grew up in Turkey. I’ve had a very different approach to western narratives. I grew up not being too trustful of the western State Department narratives about enemies of America. And that skepticism, I guess, leaked into my analysis of China as well, where I was like, is this actually real? So I sought out further information.

I think one of my first interactions with this kind of anti-China coverage was around ghost cities. That transformation also happened at the same time when I was learning more about socialism as well, developing my own personal worldview. So that was what caused me to be doubly skeptical, I guess, of the official narratives. But I remember reading into ghost cities and what the actual intentions behind building these robust infrastructure and development projects were. And the approach from the Chinese government was obviously they wanted to increase the amount of development around housing. There was a specific purpose for it from what I understood. And that made a lot more sense to me — it wasn’t just to create economic activity necessarily, although that certainly helped give people jobs, and have investments for people to put their savings into.

But it was also for people to live in, right? It was housing, which is a major issue in the western world. It was a radically new approach from my perspective. I don’t know if these ghost cities are necessarily being built out in the way that we think they are in the western world. I think they’re just building housing, especially as there were developments happening on the edge of cities that were expanding rapidly as well. As far as I can remember, that was one of the first instances where I was like, is this as bad as the way people are presenting it? Or is there an alternative reason for why they’re doing it? And then it just expanded from that point on.

Chang: One thing that I’ve been interested in thinking about with you is just how younger Americans think about China and how different their views are, because it strikes me that for younger Americans, a lot of them — especially the ones who I think are engaging with China — are less political or at least less ideological.

They don’t have these kinds of ideological blinders. There’s a certain kind of cultural vibes, aesthetic that comes out of China that you can see on Little Red Book and these kinds of social media apps that I think older politicians in America don’t have any sense of, but I think younger Americans are tuned into. I wanted to get your thoughts on it.

Hasan: Yeah, I think IShowSpeed is a great example of this. His audience is primarily kids and teenagers. And he probably went through a transformational experience personally going to China. I talked to him about it. He’s like, it’s one of his favorite places that he’s ever visited. He thought the experience was unbelievable — going in thinking that it’s gonna be this scary place, because that’s what a lot of Americans think. They think it’s somehow unique, that the people are gonna be different, that the culture is gonna be totally different, that it’s not going to be as welcoming, that there is this constant fear of mass surveillance.

People talking about social credit, right? It’s understandable that the average American would be like, what the hell is going on over here? They’re communists. I’ve been taught to fear communism my whole life. And then you go there and you’re like, wait a minute, they just chill.

Another one that I thought was really interesting was the Nelk Boys. They’re a Canadian podcast group that is deeply in the manosphere. Donald Trump, I believe, credited his victory to a group of broadcasters. One of them was the Nelk Boys. That’s how right wing these guys are, right? And they went to China. And I think it was Kyle who was telling the other Nelk that the experience was eye-opening, because they thought it’s gonna be so scary. And then it was like, we partied freaking hard. And we learned that as long as you don’t say anything about the leadership or the party, you could do whatever you want. It’s just like us. That was their takeaway.

Obviously, it’s not exactly like America, but I would say that my experience was also somewhat similar in that regard. I do think there are a lot of similarities between China and America in ways that I think most people would not ever think would be so similar. Car-reliant infrastructure, even though they have public transit obviously. And also treats — they love their treats, just like we do.

Chang: What do you mean?

Hasan: Commodity consumption, more so than other OECD nations that I’ve been to, in Europe and all these other places. Culturally speaking, there’s more of an emphasis on purchasing goods. There is a focus on almost the veneration of commodities and consumption in the way that you see in America, which is really interesting because it is—

Chang: Not a very Marxist thing.

Hasan: It’s not, but I like that personally. I do think it’s one of the things that the western capitalist world has actually nailed fairly well. Treats are an important part of making sure that you have a happy base of support.

China has nailed that.

Chang: I wanna talk a little bit more about your trip, but before we get there — what was the kind of trigger, when you decided to go?

And was it a kind of formal thing related to Speed’s visit?

Hasan: Ha. According to the Chinese netizens, that’s why they call me Lemon Bro, because they say I’m sour about all the love that IShowSpeed got in China. Because I was always one of the few big content creators that is not super anti-China, especially in my realm.

Many of the political commentators are like, China is our enemy, they’re the worst country on the planet, all this stuff. I spend a good deal of time cutting through that. But I’ve always wanted to go. I’m fascinated by countries that are outside of the American sphere of influence and considered foreign adversaries. IShowSpeed’s trip made it a lot easier for me to sell it to my friends, because they were like, he did this, he had a great time, I think we can do it as well.

Chang: He kind of opened the door.

Hasan: They were still resistant. Even after all of that, they were still like, I don’t know.

Chang: Were they afraid that something might happen to you?

Hasan: Not to me, just in general, because they didn’t know anything. I kind of understand it — if you’re an American and you’ve learned so much about how scary and dangerous China is, you’re gonna get in there and you’re gonna be like, am I allowed to say whatever I wanna say? What could happen to me? It’s a very real fear in the back of your mind when you’re visiting for the first time, I think.

Chang: I’ve lived in China for the past five years since 2020. I think technologically, it’s just a nightmare getting all the new apps.

Hasan: We did all that ahead of time.

Chang: So you guys just had people help you out?

Hasan: We had friends who had lived in China. And on top of that, we hired help. We literally paid for a group to show us around. An MCN or something, there was someone from the tourism bureau walking us around in the cities. We had time to ourselves as well because we wanted to explore. But basically it would have been impossible for us to do a comprehensive multi-city trip without getting a tremendous amount of logistical help from a Chinese company.

Chang: You mentioned that you had interacted with the cultural bureau. Did they give you any sort of hints about things not to say, or were you guys aware of things to keep in mind of what not to do?

Hasan: No, not really, but also, it wasn’t the cultural bureau. It was an MCN, a private company. They had a local tour guide wherever we went, for each individual city.

There wasn’t any warnings about what you can and can’t say. I was also live-streaming on Bilibili as well while I was there.

I learned through the process of going through that experience that there are certain things that people look at you weird about when you say something about it — mentioning Xi Jinping, mentioning Mao Zedong in any way. And I wasn’t even making fun of them or anything. I would talk about Xi Jinping or Mao Zedong in a historical context, as a matter of history, right? And even then, there was definitely a little bit of tension. But I did find in my experience that there was an environment of self-censorship for sure, both amongst the people who are not tourists but are living there as foreigners, and certainly even amongst the local population as well. That environment of self-censorship changed dramatically once we left Beijing.

We went to Shanghai. It was much more loose. And then from Shanghai onward to Chengdu and Chongqing, it was nonexistent almost. It was really interesting to see — the more inland the cities were, the less tense it was. Beijing, I will admit, as much as I love the history of Chinese development, as much as I’m fascinated by it — I will say, Beijing, you feel like you’re being surveilled.

Chang: Hahaha

Hasan: But Chengdu and Chongqing was awesome. Definitely the two dopest out of all the cities that we went to. I think it was Chengdu where they said that there was a big Taoist culture and temples and whatnot. The vibes were dramatically different city to city. And I would say that Chengdu was the most chill.

Chang: What do you think about the self-censorship? You’ve expressed admiration for the political economy of China and bringing so many millions of people up through poverty. But I think that there’s a view among liberals that this kind of socialist system also comes hand in hand with this kind of self-repression.

How are you thinking about that now that you came back?

Hasan: It’s interesting. I don’t know how much of it is cultural differences. I don’t know how much of it is more so just a byproduct of existing in a system such as this one versus — I feel like western liberalism has a social libertarian streak in it where people want to be offensive. People want to constantly prod people on issues. This is foundational, I feel, to western society. I don’t necessarily believe that any sort of social repression has to exist in a socialist or communist structure of governance.

Overall, though, I think it’s not something that I personally like. I grew up in Turkey, and then I now live in America. So very clearly, free speech is something that I value. Turkey didn’t have it. America is supposed to have it. But in general, I do think it’s heavy-handed. I don’t think it needs to exist in a different economic organization of society.

Chang: The other thing about China, in addition to the repression, is that there’s just a lot of history that a lot of Chinese don’t know. For example, I bet that the fans of Speed who were interacting with Speed, most of them probably wouldn’t know about Tiananmen, 1989. There’s a lot of things like that in China.

So I guess to summarize your view — would it be safe to say if you were to think about some kind of future governmental system in America, it would look closer to China but without the repression? And you think that’s possible?

Hasan: No, I’m more so focused on controlling the flows of capital, right? I think that’s one aspect of Chinese development that has been profoundly successful. It’s actually a reality that even western countries are now having to reckon with, right? The alleviation of poverty, a focus on education — even if sometimes it has downsides as well, this hyper focus on education.

But those are the things that I am not only familiar with, but those are things I think are valuable lessons we can learn to integrate into our system. But no, not the social repression or restriction of speech in any way, shape or form.

Chang: I’d love to get some more memorable moments from your trip. And I think that a lot of Americans maybe don’t realize how different Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, and Chengdu are, even though they’re all kind of first-tier cities. But they have clearly very different vibes, and there’s even kind of like beef.

So tell me a little bit about what you noticed.

Hasan: I noticed that there’s a little bit of a rivalry as well, for sure. It was fascinating to see the diversity of it all, because I think it’s beyond the differences between Texas and New York City. Because at the end of the day, there isn’t an almost totally different dialect in Texas as opposed to New York City, right? Whereas because China is so vast and these cities have been around for a very long time — much longer than America has been around — it’s almost like a collection of different countries inside of one country.

Chang: Any memorable moments from your trip that stuck out to you?

Hasan: They let us work in a wonton shop in Chongqing — straight up work the lunch rush. I was the busker, bringing people in. My friend Will was literally whipping up wontons in the back, and we were serving the people of Chongqing wonton soup, wonton dumplings.

Chang: And they knew that you were influencers?

Hasan: Yeah, there were cameras. I was literally pulling random people off the street to come into the shop. That was a really cool experience. Seeing the tunnels was a crazy experience as well, the bomb shelters—

Chang: For listeners, during the Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese used to bomb Chongqing. And so Chongqing has these bomb shelters that have been repurposed into bars and turned into restaurants.

Hasan: But for me, the most fascinating thing was just seeing a country run by a communist party have Gucci stores, basically. Because it’s something that people yell at me about all the time, where they’re like, you’re a Gucci Marxist, you’re a Gucci communist, or champagne socialism. Seeing both of those worlds exist at the same time where there is obviously still income inequality, but ultimately, the productive forces are almost entirely centrally controlled in this totally unique mode of development — that was the ultimate fascination for me.

Chang: I wouldn’t say that productive forces are totally centrally controlled, but I would say that there’s a complex mix and interaction between the state and the private sector that produces the overall productive forces.

Hasan: But what I mean is, they ultimately control the flows of capital, and they move it in a certain direction. It’s not as hands-on, I would say, in comparison to some of these other communist projects.

Chang: You had mentioned at some point you kind of see China as where Japan was in the 1980s or ‘90s when Japan was also this kind of East Asian technological powerhouse. Did you see that when you were in China? I know you’re excited about high-speed rail and I want to get your thoughts on high-speed rail, but anything else that you felt was particularly like, damn, we don’t have this in America — that China is like the future?

Hasan: Absolutely. Pretty much everything. All the cities that we went to were so modern. Very clean, very modern. Seeing all of that from an American perspective, looking at the trajectory of a country that is very clearly still developing but has areas that have already developed.

Because I think ten, twenty years ago the argument was, this is all — what do they say — tofu dreg buildings, they’re all fake. They’re building all these things just to flex on us or to make it seem like they have these constructions taking place in China. And then you go and you’re like, this is a real metropolitan city.

It’s one that I would say is even more modern than American major cities.

It feels like there is a promise of more growth. You can feel that the Chinese trajectory is on an upward trajectory. Whereas when you go to any city in America — I live in Los Angeles. It was raining earlier today, my internet was going in and out. There’s this feeling of living in a big city in the United States where there’s a downward trajectory.

Chang: I wanted to ask about the incident where you were stopped at Tiananmen.

Tell me a little bit about that — what actually happened?

Hasan: That was the only time, and it was really funny because it happened the first day we were in Beijing. So we land in Beijing, we get into our hotel — very nice hotel, one of these famous international hotel chains, right?

And the next morning we have to wake up at 4:00 AM. It’s like minus 30 degrees.

Chang: Is that for the flag-raising ceremony?

Hasan: Yep.

Chang: I think that China and the US are similar in this way, because there’s this kind of patriotism that’s kind of unique to the two countries. We love to sing the Star-Spangled Banner at every sports event, and Chinese too — they do this thing every single day. People come from all over just to see the flag-raising ceremony.

Hasan: It blew my mind. That level of patriotism is higher than American patriotism. American patriotism is like bubblegum — you experience it while you’re watching a football game and an F-35 flies over or something.

So what I thought was really interesting about it is that I asked people my age, Chinese people that are somewhat more liberal that live in big cities, how they felt about it. And they’re like, why would I go to the flag-raising ceremony? But when we went there, it was people who were either 7 or 70 and nothing in between, and they were coming from all different parts of China. I asked the auntie next to me, where are you coming from? And they were like, I traveled for 24 hours to get here to watch this flag get raised in the morning. Basically a five-minute experience sitting in the cold.

We start off our trip in Beijing, which is, I wouldn’t say, as welcoming as the other cities are — even though it was very welcoming, the people are very welcoming — but there’s an environment of tension.

We’re going to Tiananmen Square, which is a very important place. As our guide told us, the most important place — the beating heart of 1.4 billion Chinese who wish to come to Tiananmen Square to see the flag-raising ceremony. She was really patriotic.

Chang: She was very strict.

Hasan: Much more so, for sure, than the other cities and the other guides that we had. So, yeah, she gave us this big spiel. And that spiel actually came after one of my friends made the mistake of being like, isn’t Tiananmen Square where the thing happened?

And she got tense: “Tiananmen Square is really important for the People’s Revolution. Historically, this place that was for the super wealthy changed ownership over warlords and emperors and it was given to the people. So it’s a very important place for all Chinese people, 1.4 billion Chinese people.”

So we’re just kind of sitting there, and I was like dude, you shouldn’t have said that. Anyway, it was 4:00 AM. We are shocked, to say the least, because there are tens of thousands of people walking in these massive lines that have come from all around China to get to Tiananmen Square.

And obviously, that’s the most security theater we’ve ever encountered, because there are checkpoints upon checkpoints and constant face scanning, to even get to Tiananmen Square for this flag raising.

Chang: For people who don’t realize, going to Tiananmen Square today is like three times harder than going through airport security.

Hasan: They do not mess around at Tiananmen Square with their security. So we get in, and I’m really excited. I’m like a six-foot-four white guy. I think the only white guy at Tiananmen Square on this random Monday morning. I’m jumping up and down, I’m super stoked. The rest of the group is not as excited as I am. My producer — because we’re livestreaming — in the chat shows a meme of me, my face as Mao Zedong. And I’m not even thinking that’s going to be seen as anything — it’s not going to be seen as a slight, because it’s not even offensive. My intention is not to offend.

So, all of a sudden, boom. We have a young police officer walk up to us. And he was a little bit stern with us. He’s trying to talk to us in Chinese and we’re like, we don’t know what you’re saying. And he’s like, show me your phone. So we show him the phone and we’re filming from the phone too, we’re livestreaming from the phone. And we’re trying to explain to him, there’s nothing on the phone, because we didn’t even understand what was going on at the time. And it was like a one-minute conversation. And then he just let us go. And then we kept livestreaming and it wasn’t that big of a deal. It was a very funny first interaction with Beijing and China as well. Because we did happen to go to the one location where there are no jokes allowed.

But outside of that, there was no other instance where there was any sort of stress or pressure whatsoever.

Chang: I’m curious about your audience in China. Were you able to interact with people who were big fans of you?

Hasan: Yeah, definitely. It was really interesting. There was one experience where someone came up to me and was like, I’m a huge fan of you, I’ve been watching for years.

Chang: Which, first of all, is remarkable that they have to go through the firewall to see you.

Hasan: From what I gathered, VPN usage is very liberal out there. Maybe there are times when the government stresses it more. But the only time when someone stressed that VPNs are not allowed was the border patrol in China when we were first walking in. They were like, what do you do? And I was like, I’m a Twitch streamer, all this stuff, right? And they’re like, what is Twitch? And I was like, don’t you have a VPN? And they were like, no, VPNs are not allowed. But it was the police, the border police saying that. But I very quickly found out everybody uses it.

Chang: VPN use is pretty widespread in first-tier cities among a certain young population. It gets a little bit diffuse — the kinds of people that would go to the flag-raising ceremony, I think they’re probably pretty underrepresented in VPN use.

Hasan: If you have any sort of appetite for western content, I hear it’s fairly easily accessible. But as I was saying — There was a guy in Chengdu who said, I’m a huge fan of you. And I immediately assumed that this person was either American-born Chinese or was a Chinese guy that went to school in America at some point. And no, he was like, no, I’m born and raised, I never left China. I was like, okay, that’s crazy cool. He was like, you got me out of the red pill pipeline.

Chang: Hasan, I think that you’re aware that this kind of debate around feminism and red pill men in China is as intense as it is in the US, which is a fascinating phenomenon.

We also see this in South Korea. But there isn’t a Hasan Piker in China. There isn’t somebody like you who can pull people away from the red pill, which is oftentimes connected with nationalists and this concept of the “Little Pinks” — these ultra-nationalist Chinese youth. And so it makes sense to me that you are playing that role for some people in China, which is really remarkable.

Hasan: It was definitely a shock to me. I can understand why someone who is Chinese, born and raised in China, is fascinated with American culture and they see my commentary and they’re like, this guy isn’t so anti-Chinese. And then they start listening to other stuff. But the fact that they were getting content from people who are expressly and outwardly anti-China in ways that are fairly hateful — that was so shocking to me.

The gender wars are very much alive and well everywhere around the world. I don’t know if it’s as bad as it is in South Korea. I feel like, because everything is so heavily controlled by the government — the flows of information are very restricted by the government if they have ambitions that people need to repopulate, for example, they’ll be like, we need to focus more on traditional lifestyle. The American version of that is pretty crazy. I don’t know how anyone who is Chinese could find that appealing. Because it’s very nationalistic, very pro-America. The red pill content creators here in America — they’re very pro-America, they’re very pro-West. They feel a sense of western superiority. They make racist memes about Chinese people and stuff like that.

So that’s why I’m like, how does that not get you out of it?

Chang: Oftentimes these kinds of masculine red pill figures in China — the equivalent would be some kind of ultra-nationalist, anti-feminist, misogynist person.

They tend to have a kind of affinity towards each other, even though they’re both kind of racist and anti…each other. This is the same reason why nationalists kind of prefer to deal with Trump sometimes over somebody like Biden.

Hasan: Are they nationalists, like pro-China nationalism?

Chang: Yeah, pro-China.

Hasan: That’s why I’m so shocked by it, right? Because if you’re a pro-China, ultra-nationalist, guy, and you get your notes and your content from a guy who is very clearly anti-China — that’s shocking to me. Ideologically, I’m so far removed from that. I’m so totally on the opposite end of that spectrum that if I saw someone who was super nationalist in China, as opposed to communist or whatever, I would be like, this is a little strange for me.

Chang: They disagree with that, and I’ve talked to nationalists who find that off-putting. But these red pill influencers are magnets for lost men who can’t really find a place in their society, who feel like culture has shifted significantly to the left, especially around women’s rights.

And so what happens is they see this kind of affinity with the way that they are attacking the enemies domestically. And they find that to be more resonant with them. And they kind of airbrush — they sort of move that anti-China stuff to the side. That’s my general impression of it.

I’m sure that you have been criticized going and coming back. What have you been hearing?

Hasan: Some people say I’m paid by the Chinese government, and I always laugh and say I wish. But that’s usually the number one thing — you hate America, you love China, you went to China to do propaganda for China. Things of that nature.

That’s pretty much it. Normal people that aren’t political operatives — they just think it’s fascinating. They’re like, how was it? That’s usually the conversation I have with normal people. But political operatives will be like, you are an enemy of the state, and you are a propagandist for China. Even though I’ve been very critical of numerous aspects of Chinese governance, and am more so fascinated by the difference in their governance when it comes to the economy — how they manage the economy.

Chang: So let’s talk about some of the criticisms. What are you critical of when it comes to the government? We’ve already talked about repression. Is there anything else?

Hasan: Obviously, Xinjiang — dragnets, mass surveillance initiatives, things of that nature. I think it’s super heavy-handed. I understand the argument from the Chinese government, but I just think it’s a human rights violation.

I also understand why people in Hong Kong are resistant to the One Country, Two Systems approach, because once again, it comes back to social repression. People don’t see Chinese control in a positive way, especially if they’ve been living under a western system, because the western system gives you more freedoms in terms of what you can say. It makes you feel like you have a say in the process.

And that’s important for a lot of people, understandably. A big part of my argument in the West is that the two options are oftentimes not reflective of the real material needs that we have — Democrat versus Republican. But that’s besides the point.

The very fact that you have this pressure valve of the democratic process, and the very fact that you have at least this established, almost social libertarian culture — that’s very alluring for people. And they don’t want that to go away. It’s understandable that you don’t want it to go away. So it’s things like that I am critical of.

Chang: You don’t want that to go away either, right?

Hasan: Yeah, no, I don’t want that to go away. And I’m pretty critical of the American government currently moving in that direction. It would be very hypocritical of me to say, no, that’s fine. Although sometimes I do go back and forth, because the brain rot here is pretty severe. So sometimes I’m like, maybe we should be a little bit more restrictive. But then I know that restriction is going to inevitably go in the direction of what the American government wants.

And we’ve clearly seen what that looks like with Israel and commentary surrounding Israel. Both under the Biden administration, 3,500 student protesters being arrested. And then now with the Trump administration accelerating pretty severely with surveillance lists that the Department of Homeland Security now has for anti-ICE protesters, anti-Israel protesters as well. So it’s pretty terrifying. I fundamentally am at odds with any sort of social repression of that sort.

Chang: I wanted to share a little bit about my thought process. For reporting on China, it’s become harder over the years as a reporter to cover China. We oftentimes will write critically about certain things that China does, right?

And so we’ll write about trade protectionism or the security state. And then when the West starts to do that and more, it becomes harder to write about China from that perspective. That being said, I think that there are still significant differences, right? China — if you look at the ranking of free speech, there’s a list of countries.

And I think America is somewhere in the 50s, which is already pretty low. But China is at 178 of 180. That’s still a categorical difference, right? And the thing about Don Lemon — he got arrested, and that’s still playing out, but that is a national story. Whereas in China, there’s so many Don Lemons. It happens all the time.

Hasan: The same with Turkey. There is no free speech in the Turkish constitution at all.

And I can’t go back to Turkey because I’ve written extensively about the Turkish coup that happened. I wasn’t even all that critical of the Turkish government, but it’s not great. I know that if I go back, I will have issues. I might go to jail. And because I’m a Turkish citizen as well, I know the American government is not trying to get me out. They’d be like, you can keep him, right?

That’s why I said Ai Weiwei’s approach to it has been fascinating, because he’s experienced Chinese state repression. And he is a dissident — a person who was incredibly critical.

And then for him to also experience it in the West, especially after October 7 — it’s been really fascinating to see that unfold, where he’s like, these guys are hypocrites too. At least China is also offering something to the citizens. Because from my Chinese relatives and my friends that now live here, when I talk to them, it was always like, there are certain things you can’t say that you all know. As long as you don’t do that, you’re fine. You have this knowledge that the government will take care of you. There is a social cohesion around that.

But if you obviously want to become a dissident, or if you see something that is truly an issue — in the case of Ai Weiwei, it was the earthquake, right? There was this massive earthquake and all these students had died and he wanted to criticize the government over it.

And the government was like, you can’t do that, we’re going to put you in prison and we’re going to beat you up. And then he wanted to criticize the fact that he got beaten up. And he wanted to make a performance art piece out of it. I feel like the American government hasn’t gotten to that level yet. But I think the reason why is because America has been the hegemonic superpower. And I have this belief that the First Amendment, as a foundation or principle, is almost afforded to a country like that. Because we are not considered disruptive enough. I, as a person, can be a socialist, a communist, whatever I want to be in America, because I can’t cause any instability in the eyes of the state, right? Because the state is so powerful. Whereas I feel like it stems from a place of insecurity, basically a place of vulnerability.

When you think speech and being a dissident is a problem that exposes a weakness in your own mechanism of governance. Maybe I’m wrong about this, but I do think that there will be a loosening of restriction if China becomes more of a power player around the world, in terms of speech.

Chang: The reason why it’s hard for me to think that is the case is because I feel like the repression now has been worsening over my five years that I’ve been here. It’s gotten worse in China.

Since the pandemic, when China was locked down, there’s a whole host of things that you just could not say about the government. And the government became a lot more censorious during that period and it never really relaxed after that. So a lot of people in Shanghai — I don’t know if you knew — but Shanghai was under lockdown. There was a period where for two months we didn’t have enough food. We couldn’t even get basic medicine. And people were trying to basically express their issues online, which is the only way that they could possibly do it. And the government censored that. And so a lot of people died during that period, and it’s still not a topic that can be discussed in China.

And so there’s examples of this where the government has gotten worse over time. But the irony for me is that China has gotten richer and more successful in that same period. It’s been a curious thing. I also share your intuition, which is that surely when you become more powerful and more successful, you should open up the space for free expression.

But what I’ve noticed in the past few years in China has been this kind of strange paradox where the government has become more successful but they’ve started to tighten up more and become more oppressive.

And I think that it has to do with the way that they relate to the world, especially the United States. In times when they felt that the United States was in a more collaborative posture, they were more willing to open up society, let people talk. But then now they feel like when the US is more anti-China, when the government voices are more anti-China, there’s more repression domestically. I’ve talked to a lot of dissidents who say that they feel their experience with the security state always gets worse whenever Nancy Pelosi visits Taiwan, or when someone says that we’re gonna have to defend Taiwan from Chinese attack, or when politicians say these things that create tension within the relationship diplomatically — that creates more repression domestically.

Hasan: No, it totally makes sense. I’m going to Cuba with a humanitarian aid flotilla. And much has been said about Cuban governance and the repressive nature of the Cuban government, right? And I think it’s a lot more understandable, especially when I judge it by the American standards of moments of repression of political speech in American history, in times of war, right? Whether it be the Cold War, World War I, World War II. There have been a lot of instances where the American government has considered speech to be disruptive and has punished people criminally, right? Draft dodgers, conscientious objectors, things of that nature. People were branded as communists. Or even civil rights leaders, right? Sometimes they were directly assassinated.

So the way I see it — it’s almost seen as a necessity by some of these countries that exist in the periphery or outside of the scope of America, that have been branded as foreign adversaries. Because there’s so much outside interference from America that’s super direct too. It’s not like they hide it, especially with Cuba. The government, as a mechanism of sovereignty, tries to do its very best to just clamp down on dissent. Maybe in some instances, they also like that, where it’s like, we can use outside intervention as a reason to say you can’t say certain things. So that’s the way I interpret it. Because at the end of the day, all manner of leadership still want to at least manage their nation-state. It’s not like people are doing it specifically so they can eat lobster rolls or whatever as the people suffer. They want to thrive, they want to have sovereignty.

This is one of the lines of self-defense that these countries engage in, which is why I think China is in a unique situation, because it is becoming this incredibly powerful force around the planet.

Therefore, I almost see it as a burden to have any sort of limitations on speech, or at least have such strict controls over the speech of its own citizens. Because especially given the surveillance mechanisms that exist, figuring out what’s valid criticism or valid dissent coming from within versus hatred being fomented by outside influences like the CIA is probably fairly easy to distinguish.

The more powerful you become, the more ridiculous it almost becomes that you would have such a strong censorious approach.

Chang: I was reading some of your commentary about China, and you do mention there’s a history in China of foreign intervention, right? It’s been invaded many times by the British and by the Americans. And Shanghai is still — you can see the remnants of the concessions in Shanghai. So China has always felt like their regime is kind of vulnerable to foreign adversaries. And so what you see in China and in a lot of authoritarian countries is that they see this through that lens in any kind of situation where the regime is in trouble. So when there’s a protest among the citizenry, they assume that there is some kind of black hand, American forces that are sowing discord.

And I think that kind of paranoid thinking — I don’t know if it’s maybe it’s just propaganda — but I think that there’s a kind of confident, patriotic Chinese person who thinks, we did so much for you guys. If you guys are actually pissed off at us, it must be because the CIA has helped. I’ve seen this before. And I don’t think that kind of thinking is amenable to what you’re saying about this kind of gradual enriching process that softens the public sphere.

Hasan: No, I get it. There’s also validity for that fear due to the historical reasons. But also on top of that, here, it’s valid to say, hey, the uncertainty surrounding the lockdowns is terrifying for the average person, right? Then on the other hand, you’ve got the New York Times writing about it. So then when the New York Times is writing about it, they’re like, see, they’re trying to foment instability in the country. So we gotta be extra hard in cracking down on this sort of speech. This is not even a justification for the actions of the government. I’m just saying that I can see why, if I were to put myself in the shoes of someone leading a country branded as a foreign adversary, that kind of stuff plays a role in the heavy-handed approach the government takes.

And then, they probably don’t mind that this is a repressive force that makes it easier to control the public.

Chang: So I wanted to get your thoughts on — do you think that China is socialist, in your definition and value system?

Hasan: I’m much more pragmatic than someone who is an orthodox Marxist, and that’s why I stress the controlling-the-flows-of-capital thing in terms of the way that the Chinese economy has developed. Do I believe that China is a transitional socialist state? I think it’s an attempt in that direction. It’s not a communist state.

Obviously, there’s no such thing — it’s never really existed. But I think the state has found this very unique structure where they still take some of the valuable lessons of decentralization in terms of developing stuff, right? Manufacturing goods, especially light goods. It feels like it’s much less restrictive in terms of what you can produce. I explain it as the Chinese government wears capitalism like a sleeve almost, where there’s still control over the productive forces — a lot more control over the productive forces than what you get in comparison to the American system, where we have subsidies.

But if a company wants to use subsidies to engage in stock buybacks, they can do so, right? Whereas in terms of the five-year plans that they set in motion, they’re like, we’re gonna move on from real estate, right? That’s what happened in the last decade. They were like, all right, we built a lot of housing, we’re moving on from real estate. We’re gonna move into what direction? Renewable energy and also electric vehicles. So then boom, all of a sudden, flows of capital move in that direction. And then everyone’s like, it’s time to build, it’s time to make EVs. I feel like that’s a unique system that doesn’t exist in the western world at all, which is why they constantly complain about it and say China is actually cheating in international trade. And it’s a major point of contention with the European markets, because they’re impossible to compete with.

Chang: One thing that I feel is really different about China from what you would expect in a kind of Anglo-American socialist perspective is that all of this government intervention and interaction with the productive forces — so to speak — they don’t tend to end up in just ordinary people’s hands. What you mentioned about high-speed rail — high-speed rail is public. So there is an argument to be made that there’s a lot of investment in public infrastructure, and that is a kind of common good. But EVs, right? This intense focus on EVs and climate change — these are long-term things that drive China’s technological edge. It probably looks cool, right? When China’s government supports robots — if you saw the Spring Festival two days ago, there’s this enormous push about robots.

Hasan: I don’t much care for robots and stuff, but everybody here thinks it’s super cool.

Chang: So one thing that I think is almost contradictory to the view that China is a socialist country is that Xi Jinping has said himself that he does not like welfarism and he wants Chinese citizens to “eat bitterness,” and he doesn’t like this kind of direct cash transfer.

So a lot of this is abundance. It’s China focusing on the supply side and not on the demand side. I was wondering whether you were aware of that.

Hasan: No, I fully agree. I don’t think welfare is necessarily a socialist concept anyway. I think it might have been Lenin who said — no, it was definitely Lenin who said, you’re gonna still work, right? At the end of the day, it’s a totally different approach. Welfare is a social democratic approach that in many instances offers a lifeline. My focus is more so about having some kind of control over capital. We have these mechanisms in America as well. We just never apply them — the Defense Production Act and things like that will only be seen as a last resort. And in most circumstances, they’re never deployed. We have eminent domain. We rarely ever use it unless it’s super necessary, I guess. And I feel like the Chinese system is more efficient for that reason, because the state is more powerful than capital. Whereas in America and in the western world, capital dominates the state.

So the state will dish out funds at the behest of capital, rather than at the behest of a vision that they might have. That’s what I mean as far as dominating the forces of capital. However, I’m sure there’s a distribution process that still rewards people who are within the party structure. But at the end of the day, it’s still done for a different purpose. The industrial focus is done with a higher purpose in mind. And the surplus value is then still allocated back to development projects — building out the tier-one cities, and then also building out the tier-four cities and modernizing the countryside, for example.

Chang: Right. My view of China is that there’s this constant focus on development and making things look nice and things that the public can share, like roads and bridges.

And there’s a lot less — there’s almost no appetite for a kind of redistributive policy that provides spending cash for ordinary citizens. That has been a really big pain point for a lot of leftists in China — people who have similar views to you.

Hasan: I’ve heard that there is a Maoist resurgence almost, where there are more people saying, the class struggle continues in China.

Chang: Absolutely.

Hasan: That’s fascinating, because the established cultural attitude is not capitalist inherently, whereas in America, the solution when there’s a problem is more capitalism. Whereas in China, the solution when there’s a problem is, let’s do socialism, let’s do more socialism. And that is fascinating to me — someone who grew up in both Turkey and then the United States of America, a person who has only known one way of doing business is severely limited in their political approach to fixing problems — it’s always like, we gotta bring in private enterprise, private enterprise is the solution to this.

Chang: I want to get your view about what kind of a message you might have to an establishment Democratic figure, somebody — I think that you had talked to Lina Khan [former FTC chair] about their attitudes towards China. Now that you have come back from China, what would you say to her?

Hasan: I don’t really talk to American politicians about China at all, because no one knows anything about China. And they not only don’t know anything about China — if they are curious about what’s going on in China, they have a very different approach than I do that I think is not as open-minded, or even—

Chang: A security mindset, right?

Hasan: National security concerns trump all. And this is analysts that I talk to who are not even analysts in America — analysts around the globe all share the same concerns. When it comes down to talking about China, they can be the most woke person. They immediately shut it out where there is a sense of Orientalism in their approach, 100 percent, where they think, no, they’re just different. Their attitude is different, their worldview is different. You can’t trust them. That’s oftentimes the sense I get. Which is great for me because it has helped me make better predictions — even with the tariff war that was taking place with China.

The Chinese government is pretty open about what they’re going to do, especially when it comes to matters of international affairs, where they’re just like, this is unacceptable, this is our red line, don’t cross it, right? And I’m also more aware of what kind of manufacturing behemoth they are than the average American analyst is, who is constantly talking about how China is in a state of collapse any moment.

That’s given me an upper hand, I guess, in terms of my analysis. But usually I don’t talk to American politicians about China as much. But I think I’ll probably be talking to them a lot more in the next five years, because the New York Times article was like, I just came back from China and they’re dominating us. I never thought I would read that in the Times.

So I think that is going to open up more opportunities for people to look at what they’re doing differently and what kind of lessons we can learn from their development.

Chang: That’s my last question. There’s a kind of trend, as you’ve noticed, of people — including you — going to China and coming out and being like, I saw the future. Tom Friedman has done it. Several people in the New York Times have done it. This has intensified since last year.

I wanted to get your thoughts on the timing of that. Why do you think it’s happening this year? Is it reflective of something about America that you’re noticing?

Hasan: It’s American material conditions deteriorating. It’s an inevitability. It feels like you’re a party apparatchik visiting an American grocery store for the first time after leaving the USSR and going, wait, this is available for everyone? What the fuck. That’s what it feels like if you go to China. You’re like, what do you mean, you’ve got an abundance of different options of travel? People aren’t even using the airlines that much, because even though China is so vast, high-speed rail is so accessible. When you go there, you’re like, it doesn’t make sense.

We thought that this was a country that was extremely poor not that long ago. How did this development take place in such a short period of time? They must be utilizing their resources a lot better than we are here in America. And I think it’s impossible not to have that be your main takeaway. You would have to have been propagandized so exceptionally to go to China and say that what they’ve done in the last four decades is anything short of a miracle. If you were to look at that and be like, no, this still sucks, and I think the American way is actually the right approach — you would have to be deluding yourself. Five years ago, even six years ago or ten years ago, when I used to talk about China, they would say all the tier-one cities are fake, right? It’s just bells and whistles.

Now, when I came back from China, I thought it was fascinating that they were like, the tier-one cities are actually much nicer than ours, but you didn’t go to the rural countryside. You didn’t see how underdeveloped the rural countryside is. And it’s true — the countryside, obviously, there are certain parts of the Chinese countryside that aren’t as developed as the tier-one cities, certainly.

But in comparison to the trajectory of development in areas that are still being built out, they clearly have a positive trajectory. As opposed to going to Buffalo, New York, going to all of these forgotten towns in the heartland of America, where you realize that there was industry here in the past.

And it’s gone now. They’re ghost cities. That’s how I felt traveling around the country, there used to be people here, there used to be commerce here, there used to be economic activity here.

Now it’s all gone.

Chang: So here’s a hypothetical for you. Let’s say that there’s a Democratic president in the next few years, 2028. And they are thinking about China and they call you up and they say, Hasan, what can you tell me about what we can do concretely in terms of policy, either domestically or foreign policy-wise, with regards to China? What would you recommend them?

Hasan: I would immediately reverse the decades of anti-China hawkery and move to a cooperative agreement with China.

Chang: What do you mean by that? Economically?

Hasan: Economic cooperation, which already exists, obviously. But I would take a much less hawkish approach.

Chang: You’d take the tariffs down?

Hasan: All of that stuff, I think, is so frivolous. And in any case, it’s almost helped Chinese development in that area as well, because then they just find a way around it. And then the indigenous production is an inevitability. I find it ridiculous to try to approach foreign nations as adversaries. I believe in internationalism. So I would tell them, no more. We’re only focusing on international cooperation from this day on — if I had the magic wand to somehow overcome decades, if not centuries, of hatred that the average American has, and oftentimes the economic interest that they have in complete domination of all of these other countries.

Within the confines of permissibility, I would say that I probably would move the IMF-World Bank structure that has existed, that has dominated the Global South, to a more tolerant approach as well. No more focus on austerity, no more forcing developing nations to have to work with foreign capital and foreign investments, and just allow them room to develop. I would try to get America to become more Chinese, is what I’m saying. If you wanna quote-unquote beat China, you have to become more like China.

Now, do I think that we have enough time to even engage in such competition? No, I don’t. So I think international cooperation is the way. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m foolhardy about this. But I do think that, as you’ve said as well, it kind of feels like China wants things to just be stable on the international front. They value stability quite a lot more than they want to engage in any sort of militant posture against the United States of America.

Chang: One context that is important is that this kind of anti-China posturing — there are many sources, but one of the genuine sources of anti-China posturing has been cybersecurity. China has been really aggressive in the past few years on spying. There have been major spying efforts in the US, and that has really alarmed a lot of policymakers.

So when you talk to people in the Trump administration, in the first term, when they were initially starting up their anti-China posture, which has kind of continued to now, they cite these genuine concerns about espionage. Have you thought about that?

Hasan: I’m very aware of it. There was a New York Times report about how the Chinese government has basically infiltrated the telecommunications grid in its entirety.

Chang: What do you think about that?

Hasan: From what I understand, even the New York Times takeaway was they were more so invested in trying to figure out which of their people were compromised — as far as the actual ambassadors or agents they have. That’s what they were more so tracking, rather than finding compromising information.

But I think all of that is a direct consequence of the militant posture that America engages in, where I don’t think that there’s any reason for countries to truly engage one another in this militant fashion, even countries that have been historically considered foreign adversaries.

Maybe I have a naive approach to it, but I always think about the European continent, which was at war with one another for centuries until not that long ago, including World War II.

And now there is a mutual understanding, a security cooperation there, and a much more tolerant approach to these nation-states. And I feel like we can expand on that mentality across the board — not just through different continents, not just through the European Union, but I have a more global approach to that kind of security arrangement that revolves around mutual respect and understanding of both differences, and isn’t so heavily focused on trying to go to war with one another all the time.

Chang: Thanks, Hasan.

Hasan: No problem.

We’re joined by , an analyst of elite Chinese politics with the Asia Society, to unpack the logic of Xi’s military crackdown, the risks of perpetual “self-revolution,” and what this means for the future of Taiwan.

Chang:
About a week ago, we got the news—announced by the Chinese military and also reported on Tsinghua—that two generals, Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, were purged. As someone who’s been following this closely, I’m curious how you reacted to the news?

Neil:
I’d say I was surprised, but maybe not shocked, given just how much of a knife Xi Jinping has taken to the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] high command.

Over the last few years, there have been rumors that Zhang Youxia might have been in trouble for two or three years now, dating back to 2023, when the first big “tiger” of the PLA fell—the defense minister Li Shangfu, who disappeared from public view for several months and caused a huge international story at the time.

Li had worked for many years in the PLA’s procurement department. He was a deputy to Zhang Youxia during Xi’s first term, when Zhang ran that department. That department sat at the nexus of the major corruption scandal in the PLA during Xi’s term, centered on Rocket Force procurement—huge inflows of money and weapons programs. The Pentagon has reported that China is trying to increase its nuclear arsenal from the low hundreds to around 2,500 warheads by 2030.

So even though Xi has been trying to crack down on corruption, there’s been a huge increase in opportunities for corruption during his tenure. What was shocking, though, was how quickly Zhang’s purge happened. In the past, there’s often been a kind of theater: someone disappears from public view, misses key political events, and then there’s endless speculation—inside and outside China—about what happened to them.

This time, Zhang missed a speech at the Central Party School in early January that he should have attended, and just days later came the announcement that he was formally under investigation. That speed—from first indication to official confirmation—was unusually fast, and that was shocking.

Ian:
When very high-ranking military officials are purged, is it ever only about corruption? Or is it ever even mainly about corruption? Or do you always have to look for a political reason?

Neil:
That’s a fantastic question, and one we don’t have a definitive answer to. At this level, there’s always a political dimension. If Xi felt there was a political need to keep Zhang around, it wouldn’t matter if Zhang was corrupt or skimming money on the side.

But Xi is now in a position where almost anyone is expendable—especially in the military, which has been the focus of elite purges in recent years. The fact that he can do this shows how powerful he is in Beijing.

I don’t think it was purely political in my view, triangulating all the evidence I’ve seen. There wasn’t an attempted coup or a major clash over invading Taiwan in 2027, as some of the more entertaining social-media rumors suggest. The PLA was very corrupt before Xi took power—the buying and selling of posts was routine—so I’d be shocked if Zhang Youxia wasn’t implicated in some of that.

What was probably most offensive to Xi is that corruption in procurement and the Rocket Force continued after he took office and after he promoted people he trusted, like Zhang, into positions of responsibility.

Corruption is no longer just a criminal offense; it’s a political sin. Xi is on a mission to reform the Party into a more effective and internally accountable institution—one that can escape what he sees as the historic cycle of dynastic rise and fall, avoid the fate of the Soviet Union, and rule China indefinitely.

That, I would argue, is his number-one domestic political priority.

Chang:
Neil, how do you chronicle the different stages of this purge? You mentioned the Rocket Force in 2023, and now we have this shocking news, which feels like a crescendo—Zhang is basically number two in the military, right? Do you see this as chapters in one book of military purges, or how do you taxonomize these different developments?

Neil:
I think it’s a purge that has gained momentum as it’s expanded through the military leadership.

In 2023, we saw Li Shangfu, the defense minister, purged—most likely over charges related to his time running the procurement bureaucracy. During Xi’s second term, the Central Military Commission announced investigations into procurement abuses covering the five years Li Shangfu led that department. That’s pretty strong circumstantial evidence, especially alongside the removal of Rocket Force generals at the same time.

Then in 2024, we saw the downfall of Miao Hua, the top political commissar in the PLA—the Party’s enforcers inside the military, whose job is to ensure the PLA doesn’t turn against the Party. His fall, and then in 2025 the downfall of He Weidong, the number-two general after Zhang Youxia, are murkier.

Both had served earlier in their careers in the 31st Group Army, headquartered in Fujian, where Xi Jinping spent decades of his early career. It’s possible they were promoted because of personal ties or shared experience. But how they fell—we just don’t really know. There were accusations that they undermined the chairman responsibility system, which is code for Xi’s personal control over the military.

They were also connected to senior generals from the Jiang Zemin era, like Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong, who famously turned the PLA into a personal fiefdom by buying and selling posts. [These were two generals who were brought down in the first few years after Xi Jinping took power in 2012.]

That brings us to early 2026 and the simultaneous purge of Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli. Liu Zhenli’s purge has received less attention, but he was the chief of staff of the Joint Command and the top operational commander. If you add all this up, the Central Military Commission started with seven members in 2022 and is now down to just two: Xi Jinping himself and Jiang Shengmin, the military’s top anti-graft investigator—not coincidentally, I think.

Ian:
I understand what you’re saying about Xi wanting to reform the Party, but to what extent does this point to a deeper problem inherent in dictatorship—that there are always tensions between military commanders and civilian dictators? This was true in Nazi Germany, under Stalin, and elsewhere. To what extent in China is this just inherent to the system?

Neil:
That gets to the heart of the dictator’s dilemma. Political science shows that the biggest threat to dictators usually comes from within—from elite rivals—rather than from mass uprisings.

In authoritarian systems, there’s no independent authority to mediate elite disputes. Ultimately, it’s the threat of violence that determines who can lead and which decisions are made. Xi’s grip on the military and internal security services has been critical to his consolidation of power over the past fourteen years.

China does have distinguishing features. It’s a revolutionary one-party regime, so the military has always been a Party army rather than a national one. There’s also been a separation between military and civilian bureaucracies dating back to Mao. Xi, as Party leader and military commander, is the only real link between the two.

Civilian leaders on the Politburo Standing Committee can’t issue orders to the military. That separation helps coup-proof the regime and solidify the top leader’s authority.

The big question is whether this purge spreads to civilian leadership. The result of this separation between military and civilian government is that Xi’s ties to civilian elites—people like Li Qiang or Cai Qi—are much deeper. They worked together closely for years. Xi never had that kind of relationship with Zhang Youxia.

If the purge stays in the military, we’re probably seeing the culmination of trends that will lead to a full leadership refresh at the 21st Party Congress in late 2027. If it spreads to the Politburo or Standing Committee, that would mark a qualitatively new phase in the anti-corruption campaign—one where no one is safe—and that would be deeply destabilizing.

Ian:
Is it fair to assume that if you’re very high up in the PLA—or even in the Party more broadly—whether you want to or not, you almost have to be corrupt, simply because everybody around you is? And that if you refuse to participate, you’d actually be seen as untrustworthy by your peers?

Neil:
That was certainly the case in the pre-Xi era. You basically had to pay your way through the system—to pass promotion exams, to get appointed, even to very senior positions, including combat positions.

One of the big reasons Xi, in his first term, focused so heavily on revamping the PLA—through both purges and institutional reorganization—was that the United States and other Western intelligence agencies had developed very good contacts, very good sources, inside the PLA and in Beijing more broadly. They were often providing the money that officers needed to pay bribes in order to move up the system. The cadre benefited by getting promoted and becoming more powerful; the U.S. benefited by getting information and intelligence from them.

That entire ecosystem was broken fairly early in the Xi era. And it wasn’t a civilized or procedural crackdown, like something you might see in Western intelligence dramas that I enjoy watching. This was brutal. People were being shot in government compounds for betraying the country.

And I think that if Zhang Youxia or Liu Jianli—these generals—were really betraying the PRC and working with the U.S. or other foreign intelligence agencies, as some of the more extreme rumors suggest, they’d probably be in a much stickier situation than they are now. They’re under investigation, they’ll likely go to prison, but as far as we know, they’re still alive. And I take that as a signal, at least, that some of the crazier rumors probably aren’t true.

The harder question is how much those corrupt practices—buying and selling positions—are still the norm in the PLA during the Xi era. We have less clarity on that. We do know that Li Shangfu was accused, in his official charges, of both accepting and giving large bribes. It’s possible that included bribing Zhang Youxia to be promoted to replace him as head of the Equipment Development Department. We don’t know. It could also refer to corruption earlier in Li Shangfu’s career, when this kind of behavior was simply how everyone got ahead.

Anecdotally, my impression is that both the PLA and China more broadly are less brazenly corrupt than they were in 2012, when Xi took office. It’s incredibly hard to measure. But it’s clear there’s still enough corruption—especially in sensitive areas related to combat readiness—that Xi feels he needs to keep cleaning out the top brass.

Ian:
Buying positions is one form of corruption, but the military has also historically been involved in all kinds of business activity—real estate, commercial ventures, self-enrichment. To what extent has Xi actually been able to deal with that side of the problem?

Neil:
Exactly. And that was another part of the crackdown that Xi launched early in his term, right? We know that those kinds of charges were being leveled at generals and other people in the PLA—the fact that they were leasing military land to developers, that they were diverting funds meant for arms purchases into their own pockets.

So we know that was happening. And we know it’s probably still happening, given the extent of the purges over the last few years. The PLA does still have some business interests, but it’s different from the late 1990s, when Jiang Zemin passed reforms that basically got the PLA out of the broader economy. So it doesn’t quite have the same commercial empire that it used to.

But another telling aspect of the purges in recent years is that it hasn’t just been generals, commanders, and political commissars who’ve been taken down. It’s also been dozens and dozens of executives at state-owned arms manufacturers, particularly those that produce rockets and nuclear weapons. These are state-owned enterprises that aren’t necessarily owned by the PLA, but they’re heavily embedded with the military. The PLA is their main customer—and in some cases their only customer.

The fact that so many of those executives have also been purged suggests that this kind of bribery is still pretty rampant, at least in the Rocket Force. And what’s interesting is that the purges so far haven’t just targeted the Rocket Force, but also the Army and the Navy. The Air Force had escaped a lot of scrutiny, and many Air Force generals were promoted to replace people who were purged elsewhere. But just recently, in the past few weeks, there’s been a new directive issued to investigate graft in the PLA Air Force as well. So it looks like the purge is continuing along these lines.

Chang:
What do you think about the criticism that these anti-corruption purges are just never-ending—that somehow the more you purge, the more corruption seems to come out?

Neil:
As far as Xi is concerned, I don’t think he sees that as a criticism. He sees the anti-corruption campaign as part of a broader effort to strengthen discipline within the Party and to carry out what he calls a self-revolution—ziwo geming—which is his answer to the problem of how to avoid the historic cycle of rising and falling dynasties that I mentioned earlier.

And it’s interesting that on this point, self-revolution is one of the very few—maybe not the only—areas where Xi has placed himself on the same level as Mao. He hasn’t appointed himself chairman of the Party, he hasn’t adopted some of the other trappings of Mao’s rule, but this idea of self-revolution is something he talks about through what’s known as the “cave dialogues.”

In 1945, Mao was in Yan’an and had a conversation with the famous educator Huang Yanpei. Huang asked Mao: how do you plan to carry out this Communist revolution successfully? How are you going to escape the historic cycle of dynastic rise and fall? Mao’s answer at the time was “people’s democracy,” which, clearly, was a bit of a bullshit answer, because it’s not what he ended up doing. But Xi has seized on that dialogue and elevated it within Party ideology.

Xi now says Mao’s answer was the first answer. Self-revolution is the second answer—the answer for a new era—to this fundamental problem the Communist Party faces.

And I think this was very much top of mind for Xi when he came into office in 2012. You had just had the Bo Xilai scandal, which laid bare internal rivalries and infighting within the Party, as well as a real sense of moral crisis—given that a top leader’s wife, Bo Xilai’s wife Gu Kailai, had murdered a British businessman.

There were corruption stories breaking every other week. On social media, you’d see stories about low-level officials—watch bros or LV bros—wearing Rolexes. There was a pervasive sense of moral decay within the Party, and a fear that the failure to rein in corruption, and the failure to deal with visible problems like pollution that were making life unhealthy and difficult in China, was eroding the Party’s ability to stay in power.

Xi had been in Beijing for five years before becoming leader. He was a leader-in-waiting on the Standing Committee and vice chairman of the Central Military Commission from 2010 to 2012. So he saw these problems and political maladies of the Communist system up close.

When he first came to power, I think anti-corruption in his first term was used primarily as a way to take out rival networks and eliminate potential political challengers. In his second term, it slowed down somewhat, partly because of the twin shocks of Trump’s trade war and the COVID pandemic. There simply weren’t as many high-level purges as in the first term.

Now, in Xi’s third term, after the 20th Party Congress—having established dominance over elite politics, removed rival networks, and emerged from those two major external shocks stronger than ever—I think he’s leaning into this broader vision of anti-corruption: remaking the Party, making it more accountable, ensuring that it stays connected to its Communist roots under his leadership and historic mission.

There’s clearly a political loyalty component to this, but also a belief that this is necessary to make China a stronger, more effective country—one that works for its people—and that this is what you need to be a great power.

We can obviously quibble significantly with the means he’s using. But one thing Xi often says about the Soviet Union is that when it collapsed, no one was man enough to stand up; no one was ideologically committed enough to resist Gorbachev. He’s also said the Soviet Party became divorced from the masses and stopped governing effectively. There were empty shelves in Soviet supermarkets in the 1980s—that’s very far from where China is today.

So Xi is trying to revolutionize the Party. I think this approach has many negative effects. It spreads fear. It might not work or last. But I do think his zeal here is sincere. The real question is whether it’s actually going to be effective.

Chang:
I’m wondering what you think about the risks of this kind of constant self-revolution. One impression I’ve had living here is that moments like the White Paper protests showed real societal anger toward the leadership. And that moment really impressed on me the importance of having the rank-and-file police and security forces on your side.

In those situations, when people are out on the streets, the rank and file can be more malleable in their loyalties—they’re far from the leadership and often closer to ordinary people. So it makes sense to me that Xi Jinping is so serious about ensuring the political system is robust and loyal to his orders, especially when society tests him, like during the lockdowns and then during the White Paper protests.

It gave me this sense that if you really achieve what Xi is aiming for—a rigidly loyal security force and military—you might be able to get away with a lot. Society might be able to withstand a lot. It’s like a pressure cooker, and the walls of the pressure cooker are very thick, making it hard to erupt.

Xi is clearly taking this self-revolution idea to a whole new level. Are there risks you see with this approach?

Neil:
Absolutely. It’s created a much more brittle bureaucracy. Anecdotally, there’s a huge degree of fear and uncertainty in the lower levels of the system. There’s a lot of resistance and disagreement with the direction Xi is taking the country, both within the system and in broader society.

Some sectors are doing well—the high-tech industries are world-leading, and there’s a lot of money flowing into them—but other parts of the economy are really not doing well. House prices have been falling for years, and that’s people’s main source of wealth.

So there’s a lot of disagreement in society, and increasingly fewer ways to express it. Civil society, if it’s not dead, is certainly on its knees compared to the pre-Xi era. That does create risks for a leader.

That said, Xi has been very effective at stamping his authority on the coercive apparatus—both the military and the domestic security services, which underwent their own major purges in 2020, 2021, and 2022 ahead of the 20th Party Congress. He’s successfully installed his people in those agencies.

Opposition—both within society and within the Party—faces a formidable collective-action problem. It’s extremely difficult to organize without being detected. Everyone is monitored and surveilled, including senior serving and retired Party leaders. The General Office of the CCP knows where people are and what they’re doing. You can’t just meet a friend on the Standing Committee to chat about economic policy or military purges.

The White Paper protests at the end of the zero-COVID era were remarkable: simultaneous protests against COVID policy—and in some cases against the government more broadly—across multiple cities and social groups. But it’s also remarkable that this is the only time something like this has happened under Xi’s rule.

They were relatively small—probably a few thousand people across a few dozen cities—and they were allowed to happen for 24 to 48 hours. The system may have been momentarily shocked, but fairly quickly the security apparatus kicked into action and, from Xi’s perspective, successfully neutralized the threat. Nothing like it has happened since, despite all the economic problems we’ve discussed.

The presence of formidable surveillance technology makes it even harder than before for either society or elites to organize and exert political pressure on Xi at the top.

Ian:
Can I ask about East Asian security? Until the Trump era, the United States was the main guarantor of security for countries like Japan and South Korea—and to some extent Taiwan. In the Trump era, that guarantee has become very frayed. Japan and South Korea are drawing closer together, and Japan may play a more prominent military role.

China, especially under Xi, has made clear it doesn’t want the U.S. to remain the regional policeman. But what do you think they fear more: the U.S. as regional policeman, or a resurgent Japan with a much stronger military posture?

Neil:
I think China is, at the moment, actually maybe a little more comfortable with the status quo than we might assume. Obviously, Beijing opposes what Takaichi is saying [Her comments about supporting Taiwan in a security crisis], but the United States is increasingly uncertain in its commitment to the Indo-Pacific. It’s focusing more on the Western Hemisphere and the Middle East. So if Japan is relying more on an unreliable partner in the United States, that kind of works as the best of both worlds for Beijing.

There’s obviously a live debate here in D.C., and I think it would be a mistake to conclude that the U.S. wouldn’t become involved if there were a Taiwan invasion or some other contingency. And in the future, there could even be a recommitment to Taiwan and a stronger military focus on the Indo-Pacific, depending on who becomes president.

But ideally, from China’s perspective, the U.S. would withdraw its commitment to the region while Japan continues trying to rely on an America that just isn’t really there. I do think it would be a nightmare scenario if Japan acquired nuclear weapons, for example, which is the direction it might pursue in an extreme scenario of U.S. withdrawal—though, again, I don’t think that’s the most likely outcome. China certainly doesn’t want that, because nukes in Tokyo and Seoul would make China’s strategic environment much harder and would likely precipitate some kind of regional crisis.

Chang:
Neil, last question. What’s your best guess about what happens next?

Neil:
There are a couple of options. To appoint new members to the Central Military Commission, appointments need to be confirmed at a plenum of the Party’s Central Committee, which usually meets once a year. You could convene a special plenum just to refresh the CMC, but I think that’s very unlikely.

Xi has declined to fill vacancies created by previous purges, which is why only two of seven CMC members remain. There will likely be a regularly scheduled Fifth Plenum in October, which could be an opportunity to promote some remaining generals.

You don’t technically have to be a Central Committee member to sit on the CMC, though it’s been the norm for decades. The Central Committee has been hollowed out of PLA representation—there are very few generals left.

The most likely scenario is that Xi waits until the 21st Party Congress next year to fully replenish PLA representation and create an entirely new CMC—one that’s younger, more loyal, more directly tied to his leadership, and less connected to Jiang-era patronage networks. He’ll also likely promote officers more familiar with modern technology and joint warfare.

That’s the schedule going forward, as best as I can tell.

Chang:
If that’s right, and Xi plans to replenish the military at the 21st Party Congress, does that mean there’s much less chance of something happening over Taiwan before then?

Neil:
I think it’s unlikely. Removing top commanders—especially figures like Zhang Youxia, who had combat experience, and Liu Zhenli, who ran joint operations—weakens near-term readiness.

Joint commands are critical for any Taiwan scenario, coordinating the army, navy, air force, Rocket Force, and other units. The U.S. military is very good at this; China is still early in building a truly joint force.

China hasn’t fought a war since the Sino-Vietnamese conflict in the late 1970s and early 1980s. A Taiwan operation would be vastly more complex—an enormous amphibious assault, arguably more complicated than D-Day in 1944.

So purging the top brass makes a near-term escalation less likely. Longer-term, if Xi succeeds in building a more competent and loyal leadership, the PLA could become a more effective tool for coercion and deterrence. But rebuilding leadership, experience, and morale takes years.

Even after the next Party Congress, it wouldn’t be immediate. From Xi’s perspective, it may make more sense to wait until conditions look more favorable—Taiwanese politics are shifting, the DPP president is becoming less popular, polls show slightly less enthusiasm for independence, and the West is distracted by other crises.

Let those trends continue, and it may be less costly to try to compel Taiwan to negotiate five or ten years down the line.

Chang:
So time is on Xi Jinping’s side?

Neil:
From his track record, domestic political considerations are his number-one priority. Shoring up political control and cracking down on corruption in the military matter more to him than Taiwan in the near term.

We often assume Taiwan explains everything because it’s what we focus on most. It’s extremely serious, but it doesn’t always explain what’s happening inside China. Domestic political considerations are paramount.

Ian:
Thank you very much.

Neil:
Thanks so much.

We talked about:

• Complex history of Korea–Japan relations and the symbolism of Lee’s recent visit

• How Trump’s unpredictability is unsettling the East Asian security order

• China’s role in reshaping regional alignments in East Asia

• The limits of U.S. security guarantees in the Trump era

• What a more self-reliant East Asian security order might look like

Transcript:

___________________________

Chang: Today we’re going to be talking about diplomatic relations between Korea, Japan, and China. East Asia is quite tumultuous right now, given the changes in the international order. Donald Trump, in early January, executed an abduction of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, and in recent weeks there has been a diplomatic row in Greenland. All of this is happening while South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung has visited Japan on his first major diplomatic trip there.

I’d like to talk to Ian about his initial thoughts on the visit last week. Ian, what were your first impressions?

Ian: Well, the visit was very unusual in several respects. For one, it’s probably the first time a South Korean president and Japanese prime minister have sat down and done K-pop renditions on the drums.

We know that Takaichi Sanae, the Japanese Prime Minister, is a great fan of heavy metal music, but it was an unusual sight. In some ways heartwarming—both were clearly trying their best to foster warm relations, which hasn’t always been the case between South Korea and Japan, and is very much welcome.

Now the question is why this should be. Why are they making such an effort? Especially since, traditionally—certainly since South Korea became a democracy—politicians on the left (in this case the president himself, from the progressive party) have been rather antagonistic toward Japan. They’ve been keen to bring up issues like the comfort women and the colonial period, etc.

It’s usually been the conservatives—including former President Yoon Suk-yeol, who’s now imprisoned for having declared martial law in a very inappropriate manner—who were more hawkish, more inclined to make common cause with Japan, and more hawkish on Taiwan as well. So here we have a progressive, left-wing South Korean leader who is clearly keen on better relations with Japan.

Chang: Before we get there, maybe we should go back a little bit and talk about Lee Jae Myung and how he became president. These are both quite new leaders in each country. Can you talk a little bit about him—just summarize what party he belongs to, the traditional political positions his party holds?

Ian: He’s the leader of the Democratic Party of Korea, the progressive party. The left has usually been associated—like the left in most countries—with trade unions and that kind of thing. But one of the key distinctions between left and right is that the left has been more inclined to have diplomatic relations with North Korea, to try to find a diplomatic solution rather than immediately saber-rattling. They’re also more inclined to have better relations with China—more accommodating—whereas the right, the conservatives (who are more pro-Japanese on the whole), are much more hawkish on North Korea and China.

This makes it such an interesting development: the leader of the left is trying to dampen down the anti-Japanese tradition of left-wing Korean parties and wants warm relations with Japan as well as talking to the Chinese. President Lee visited China before he visited Japan and was not completely accommodating—a lot was left unsaid, for example on the Taiwan question. He did acknowledge there is only one China (which a conservative leader might not have done), and that “one China” of course includes Taiwan. But clearly he wanted good diplomatic relations without giving the Chinese very much, and neither side gave the other very much either. Still, Xi Jinping is clearly very keen to court South Korea, and he does it by using history—one of the ways he does it. This notion that we were all fighting the Japanese empire, that you were a colony of Japan, we must be wary of revived Japanese militarism, you have to be on the right side of history. I think Xi even used those words—he says the same thing to Americans often.

So the Chinese very much want to isolate Japan. And I think Lee Jae Myung’s visit to Japan showed that the South Koreans are not going to fall for that. The efforts to have better relations actually came from both sides—it was interesting that Takaichi personally went out to welcome the South Korean president and bowed deeply when he arrived.

So clearly the Chinese are trying to isolate Japan. The South Koreans and Japanese—so far without being completely committed—are trying to make common cause.

Chang: When President Lee Jae Myung became president last year, there’s a typical ritual where the new South Korean president visits the United States as their first diplomatic maneuver. But Lee instead visited Japan first to meet Ishiba [former PM Shigeru Ishiba], which was kind of a shift in the usual order. It shows he’s quite serious about his relationship with Japan.

With regard to Takaichi’s motives, I think it’s pretty clear that—given the diplomatic row with China (for listeners who don’t know, there’s been this freeze in China-Japan relations since last October when Takaichi made comments supporting Taiwan in the case of a security crisis in the Taiwan Strait, which was basically a red line for the Chinese government)—the Chinese have since imposed serious economic sanctions against Japan.

So I can see why Takaichi is very keen to reconnect with the South Korean president. As you say—well, actually before we go there, maybe we should talk about why liberals in South Korea tend to have a frosty relationship with Japan.

Ian: That really is a historical question. Many South Koreans—this is still a delicate topic in South Korea itself—but many members of the South Korean elites (bureaucratic, academic, business) in the days of the Japanese Empire, when Korea was part of the empire (it wasn’t strictly a colony; citizens were treated as second- or third-rate, but part of the empire), a large number of Koreans cooperated with the Japanese, collaborated—sometimes not for particularly bad reasons. Like all colonial powers, the Japanese did some good: they built infrastructure, universities; they had a big impact on the economy.

After Japan’s defeat in 1945, this caused a great rift in Korean society. First, of course, it split North from South, but inside South Korea there was a rift somewhat like the splits you still see in countries like Italy and Greece, where elites that collaborated with the Nazis often came back to power, while those who resisted were sidelined.

There was a lot of bad blood from occupation, colonialism, and war. In South Korea, many members of the old elites who collaborated with Japan—after 1945, with the connivance of the United States—came back into power. The best example is the South Korean strongman Park Chung-hee (assassinated in the 1970s), who had been an officer in the Japanese Imperial Army. Many who worked with him had roles in the Japanese Empire.

Those who resisted—dissidents under military rule and later politicians who came to power—saw themselves as on the right side of colonial history, as patriots who resisted collaboration. People who were part of the collaborationist elite—including Park, his daughter, other conservative politicians—had better relations with the Japanese than those in progressive or left-wing parties.

This is what makes the current rapprochement (if that’s what it is) between the Japanese Prime Minister and the South Korean president so remarkable.

Chang: There’s an interesting backdrop: during the Biden administration, one of the greatest legacies of his four years was brokering better relations between Korea and Japan. When President Yoon was in power, he spearheaded the decision to resolve the forced labor issue—what’s the term? The fund to compensate forced labor victims?

Ian: Yes, there are two main sticking points. One is the comfort women, and the other is the larger number of Koreans forced to work in Japanese industry, coal mines, etc., under intolerable conditions. There are continued demands that Japanese companies that employed them as slave laborers compensate them, and that the Japanese government compensate former comfort women—women forced or tricked into prostitution for the Japanese Imperial Army.

The Japanese response has always been that they paid a large sum to the South Korean government in a formal arrangement under Park Chung-hee (himself a former Imperial Japanese Army officer), so there was no need to revisit it. The fear among the Japanese is that opening that can of worms means endless demands for compensation. “It’s been done; we’ve paid the money; let’s move on.” That’s the Japanese attitude on slave laborers.

The companies don’t want responsibility for similar reasons—no endless lawsuits—and they say responsibility lay with the government, not company policy. On comfort women, the Japanese government says the opposite: this was not government policy; private entrepreneurs and businessmen were responsible for recruiting the women.

A famous Japanese historian, Professor Yoshimi Yoshiaki, dug into archives and found documents showing it was Japanese government policy—especially during the occupation of China, where soldiers’ rapes were stirring up resistance. To curb mass rape, they organized prostitution and brothels, recruiting from Koreans, Taiwanese, Southeast Asians, etc. Some women were tricked with job promises, others went willingly for money, others were forced.

It’s a murky, fraught issue, easily used for political ends—and often is.

Chang: The brokering of the alliance between US, Korea, and Japan during the Biden administration was predicated on a breakthrough. Yoon made it so South Korean companies would pay to compensate forced labor victims, and that was the beginning of the reconnection. Then we had that photo of Yoon, Kishida, and Biden at Camp David. How big was that in the scheme of Japan-Korea relations, you think?

Ian: Yoon himself, regardless of forced labor, was a foreign policy hawk on China, Taiwan, North Korea, and wanted better relations with Japan. He found a way to appease South Korean opinion while pursuing what he wanted.

Traditionally, the American attitude has been that there should be a strong security relationship in East Asia, guaranteed by the U.S.—security treaties with Japan (if attacked, U.S. defends) and South Korea (lots of U.S. bases, tripwire against North Korea). Taiwan has no formal treaty, but ambiguity about U.S. response. All three relied on U.S. guarantees.

That’s now changing under Donald Trump, who seems to believe the world should be run by superpowers in their spheres: U.S. in the Americas, Russia in its sphere (including Ukraine?), China in its. That leaves Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan out in the cold if he’s serious. They can’t rely on the U.S. the way they could under Biden.

That’s probably the main reason both Japanese and South Koreans—whatever their political backgrounds—are keen to cement closer relations. Only serious cooperation—including military—between Japan and South Korea (and by extension Taiwan, Southeast Asia, possibly India) can balance China without active U.S. participation.

Chang: What do you think about Lee Jae Myung visiting China before Japan? Is it just keeping enemies close?

Ian: It’s a very traditional Korean balancing act—one power against another. He wants to be friends with China to keep them from getting aggressive, while needing friends with Japan. Korea has always been a bit like Poland—stuck between larger powers (Russia, China, Japan, the Japanese Empire). One way Koreans dealt with dominant powers (especially China historically) was paying tribute.

I think he’s serious about closer ties with Japan, but he has to pay tribute to the emperor in Beijing to keep them off his back. Anyone leading North or South Korea has to play this balancing game. The Chinese use it by saying, “You’re better off with us—look what the Japanese did to you; stick with us and you’re on the right side of history.” But I don’t think they’re buying it, which is why he went straight to Japan after China.

Chang: Another contemporary reason Lee might want to say hi to Xi on his way to Japan: China can weaponize supply chains, as we’ve seen. One key trump card is rare earths, used in electronics. Korea is an electronics powerhouse—Samsung, Hyundai—highly reliant on Chinese rare earths. Lee doesn’t want to be on the wrong side like Takaichi accidentally put herself.

Ian: Even Takaichi’s diplomatic gaffe—and in some ways, of course, it was a gaffe—she was saying things out loud that other Japanese leaders had also believed but were always wise enough to keep to themselves and not rile up the Chinese unnecessarily.

But I don’t blame her quite as much as some critics have. To what extent it was a spontaneous response to a question in the Diet or whether it was calculated, I don’t know. But that too, I think, was partly the result of shifting power relations. Former Japanese prime ministers could afford to be more diplomatic and not say things like “the fate of Taiwan directly involves Japan’s security, and we would perhaps have to do something to protect ourselves” and so on.

Many of them believed that—and they’re quite right—but they could afford to be discreet and quiet, not upsetting China, because they knew America had their back. As long as the security treaty with the United States was entirely reliable, they could afford to be diplomatic.

And I think—this is only speculation because I don’t know what goes on in Takaichi’s head—but in the current atmosphere, the Japanese realize, just like the Europeans, that they can no longer reliably count on the United States. Under Trump, the U.S. is too erratic and whimsical, and wedded to this idea of dividing the world into power blocs. So she can’t really afford to be that diplomatic anymore. She has to spell it out to the Japanese people: “Look, we’ve got to get serious here.”

In that sense, she’s no different from Mark Carney in Canada and other Europeans who are beginning to say the same sort of thing.

Chang: Do you think there’s been a fundamental break in East Asia’s security architecture thinking? Where would you date it?

Ian: I don’t think it’s fundamental yet. The U.S. bases are still there; the security arrangements are still intact. So I don’t think it’s a fundamental break. But again, because of Donald Trump’s rhetoric and his behavior and what he thinks of as his long-term goals, it means that sooner rather than later, the East Asians and the Europeans have to start thinking about a post-American era. They can’t afford to be taken by surprise. Ever since 1945, in the American-controlled world order that we lived in, West Europeans and East Asians could afford not to be blunt or frank about things like military defense and security because the Americans took care of it. The Pax Americana allowed the Europeans and the Japanese to fall asleep in some ways and bask in their prosperity. Nobody wants to pay more tax toward building more tanks and fighter planes and so on.

All that is changing, and it needs leaders to tell people that the world has changed—that it’s no longer as comfortable as it was. The Europeans and the Japanese and the South Koreans have to do more to take care of themselves. In Japan, that means having a serious discussion about the constitution—changing Article 9 perhaps, which would mean Japan could take part in combat abroad. It has all these consequences. But none of this had to be faced as long as the United States could be depended on, as long as Pax Americana was alive.

So there is a fundamental shift in thinking—not yet a fundamental break. But the thinking has to start before that break could come at a very inopportune moment.

Chang: There’s a similarity in the way that the United States—not just under Trump, but previous administrations—has treated the security bargain between Europe and East Asia, and especially Japan: they need to pull their own weight. That has always been the kind of theme, and Donald Trump has made that the case in Europe. Ian, could you talk a little bit about what you think is different in the East Asian case compared to the European case? One thing I remember you mentioning to me before is that in East Asia, unlike Europe, the one country that can really take a leading role in the security architecture is Japan—and Japan is constitutionally constrained from doing so.

Ian: Yes, and not only constitutionally—it’s also a question of public opinion. One of the foundation stones of the post-war Pax Americana, both in NATO and in East Asian security arrangements, was that Japan and Germany should never become aggressive, belligerent powers again.

I can’t remember who said it—I think it was George Kennan about NATO—but the idea was to keep the Americans in and the Germans out. Most Japanese and Germans were perfectly happy to go along with that. Their memories of World War II were pretty awful. They did not really want this to happen again, either.

They were quite happy to let America take care of security so they could concentrate on their economies. They had no desire to be a military power again or to play a big military role. And to this day, I think that is probably the opinion of more than 50% of the people in both Japan and Germany.

Now, as you said, if Europeans are going to stand on their own feet—and if East Asian countries are to balance the great power of China without the guarantee of American intervention—then Germany, as the biggest economic power in Europe, and Japan, as the biggest power in East Asia, will have to take leadership roles in whatever security architecture emerges.

The problem is that neither the Japanese nor the Germans are comfortable with doing so yet. Even though I think there’s a generational issue here. It’s interesting that Takaichi’s remarks on Taiwan—which so upset the Chinese—were relatively popular in Japan, especially among young people.

So I think the younger generation in Japan would be much more open to a discussion about revising Article 9 of the Constitution and changing the pacifist constitution than people over 50, who either still have memories of the war (or fewer and fewer do) or grew up with parents who had those memories.

Something like that may also be true in Europe: Germans are gradually waking up to the fact that they can’t just bask in American protection and not think about these things. It’s interesting that in Germany, the most fervent supporters of real support for Ukraine came from the Greens—the progressive party—not from the Christian Democrats. So things are changing.

Until not so very long ago, most Europeans—again, this is generational—would have been deeply uncomfortable with the idea that Germany could play a major military role again. That, too, is changing.

Just as most Europeans don’t mind so much when Germany wins a soccer championship, they don’t really mind the idea that Germany might take a leading role again. But in East Asia and Southeast Asia, I think that’s a more open question.

Despite President Lee’s visit to Japan and their relatively warm relations, many Koreans would not at all be comfortable with Japan taking a leading role. The Taiwanese would be perfectly comfortable, as far as I can see. In Southeast Asia, it’s harder to tell. I think the Singaporeans and the Filipinos probably could go along with Japan taking a more active role in military affairs. Indonesians—maybe, it’s harder to know.

But if East and Southeast Asia were to build a new kind of security arrangement to balance China, it would have to mean that Japan takes an active role. And so all these things are going to come into play: public opinion in Japan and public opinion in other countries.

Chang: We should maybe bring up this term that we’ve sort of been toying with—the idea of an East Asian NATO. Do you think it’s harder to imagine an East Asian NATO, as you say, because of that historical baggage people have with Japan—compared to a self-sufficient European security architecture?

Ian: Yes, I think it is more difficult—because essentially what it would mean is reviving echoes of the East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, which was the Japanese imperial venture during the 1940s. At the time, of course, many Southeast Asians went along with it because they saw it as a way to use the Japanese to liberate them from European or American colonialism.

But yes, I think it would be more difficult in the Asian context than in Europe—though not impossible. Minds are being concentrated, I think, by the fact that America is so erratic and by the fact that China is increasingly aggressive.

In the end, those kinds of fears and prejudices might diminish as people see the necessity for some kind of security cooperation—which might include India. And yes, I also think this kind of architecture would require generational change within Japan and Korea and the major powers.

But I think that’s already happening. Like everywhere else in the world, active memories of the past fade. What’s left are movies, comic books, school textbooks, and so on—but the memories themselves do fade. So yes, it means generational change, but I think that’s gradual and already visible.

The generation that experienced the war in Japan was very much in favor of Article 9—overwhelmingly. There was a nationalist minority that wanted to change it, but they were never in the majority. I think people under 30 or under 40 in Japan now—more than 50%—would be open to changing it.

Chang: Just to add an economic dimensions to the post-American order. I was reporting for The New York Times in Seoul in 2022, and my experience at the time was that—this was during the period when the Biden administration was pushing South Koreans to join sanctions against China on semiconductors. One of the big questions was whether Samsung was willing to stop—Samsung has a few semiconductor plants in China, and the U.S. was basically trying to prevent Samsung from continuing to work with the Chinese.

Throughout that period, the general sentiment—especially from Samsung businessmen—was “Absolutely not, we’re not doing that.” But the South Korean government ultimately stepped in and stopped Samsung from doing so because they felt the pressure from the American side.

So generally, when it comes to these kinds of economic relationships, it’s usually the Americans who are the most gung-ho about imposing economic sanctions, severing ties, and pulling back from China. Meanwhile, these middle powers—or smaller powers—tend to be a lot more pragmatic and willing to work with whoever is there. China is nearby; it’s right next door.

I think we’re going to see a lot more willingness to participate sector by sector with China. And that’s a great outcome for the Chinese, because they’ve always despised this kind of light-versus-dark, democracies-versus-authoritarians framework. They hated that binary, and they’ve been constantly trying to push the world to see it as much more multifaceted and multicolored—where the Americans are actually the ones who are the hegemon and the bully in the world.

And it’s starting to look more and more like that.

Ian: Well, and there’s another difference with Europe: China is a serious economic power. The Japanese, the Koreans, and the Southeast Asians all have a stake in the Chinese economy—and to some extent depend on it. This is not true in Europe vis-à-vis Russia.

Russia is not a serious economic power. They have a lot of oil and resources, sure, but it’s not an economy that other European countries can’t do without. And so that does make the situation in East Asia more difficult in some ways than in Europe.

Chang: Great. Thank you Ian. I think that’s a good place to end.

This is especially true in China’s cities, where young people are learning how to live in fin-de-siècle limbo. Unlike the world inhabited by earlier generations, jobs are hard to come by, consumption is depressed, and housing prices are prohibitively high. In the West, podcasters and populists tend to soak up these frustrations, but in Xi Jinping’s China, youth are turning to a less cynical, more refined figure: a soft-spoken anthropologist named Xiang Biao.

Xiang Biao is the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany and previously a professor at Oxford. He has also become one of the most recognized public intellectuals in China in recent years. Last month, I followed Xiang on a tour across China. As we walked along the streets of Beijing, he was routinely stopped by fans. At a university in Hubei, students packed lecture halls to hear him speak. Afterwards, they lined up for autographs and ask him for advice on deeply personal matters—how to navigate unemployment, cope with family trauma, or whether their boyfriend was wrong in an argument.

I first heard of Xiang Biao in 2020, when he helped popularizei the Chinese term “involution,” or neijuan (内卷). Neijuan refers to a type of extreme competition in which a system traps participants in a cycle of endless exertion without reward. Xiang has cultivated a brand out of proposing vivid metaphors to describe Chinese reality. He described neijuan as a “spinning top that must keep whipping itself to stay up.”

At a time when the Chinese government seems incapable of offering youth an alternative source of hope, Xiang has managed to break through. He is working with similar source materials to those of Western populists, but he’s channeling discontent in creative, though somewhat unorthodox ways. I wanted to find out what he is doing.

Xiang recently visited Tokyo, where I am based now, so this conversation was recorded live at the One Way Street Bookstore in Ginza. We hope you enjoy the episode.

Summary of Interview:

• Xiang’s one year of mandatory military school after the crackdowns in Tiananmen Square (03:41)

• Xiang’s fieldwork in Zhejiang Village in Beijing (07:36)

• Xiang’s discontent with the Chinese “new enlightenment” intellectuals of the 1980s (10:43)

• Parallels between post-Cold War American elites and 1980s Chinese elites (15:10)

• The roots of youth unhappiness in China and West (21:11)

• Is youth disillusionment not the Communist Party’s fault? (30:29)

• Xiang’s concept of “the nearby” and rebuilding one’s attention to local life (37:22)

• Parallels between Xiang’s philosophy and Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone(43:40)

• Xiang’s issue with claims of universal values, the Nobel Peace Prize selection, and lectern-style politics (51:17)

• The spirit of the “nearby” in Zohran Mamdani’s politics (01:00:06)

• Similarities between American involution and Chinese involution (01:01:12)

• Why young Chinese aren’t protesting like their counterparts in other countries (01:02:38)

• The role of intellectuals in an age of political disaffection (01:07:38)

• Curriculum reform at Chinese universities on the “nearby” (01:10:25)

• Where Xiang hopes to lead his intellectual movement (01:13:45)

____________
Chang: Xiang Biao, welcome to Tokyo and the Into Asia podcast.

Xiang:
Thank you. Very happy to be here.

Chang:
I want to begin in the year 1990. This is the year you entered Peking University. It’s also the year after the protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and the subsequent crackdowns. In your book Self as Method, you wrote: “the political atmosphere was very ambiguous and unclear—no one dared say anything.” Can you describe what that climate was like, and whether it influenced your trajectory or your intellectual interests?

Xiang:
The 1980s was a time that was often described as an era of “cultural fever.” There was a lot of debate, including many radical views, which you could read in official newspapers and also see on TV programs.

Then 1989 came. Peking University decided to send all first-year students to a military academy for training for a whole year. So I spent my first year, from 1990 to 1991, in a military academy. So I arrived in Beijing in 1991.

After one year in the military academy, we were really eager to enter a university campus for the first time—and it was Peking University. We had all these images of its association with the May Fourth Movement, with library debates, with all kinds of radical and unorthodox views.

We expected a very lively atmosphere of debate and exchange. But in 1991 it was very quiet. There were hardly any seminars. I remember the very first public talk was about how to prepare for your English-language test. So I felt a bit sad at that time.

Then in 1992, Deng Xiaoping made his Southern Tour, saying that China must open up again. The whole nation plunged into this market economy. Suddenly there were lots of talks about how to make investments.

There were many more lectures and seminars, but they were about how to prepare for TOEFL, how to prepare for GRE, and how to go to the U.S. for study, and so on. The courses were, to be frank, very boring. It was a politically very careful and conservative period. Everyone thought: now we have to be pragmatic, we have to “jump into the sea”—xiahai 下海—which means joining market forces. That was my undergraduate experience.

Chang:
You mentioned the military school. What did you do there?

Xiang:
What we did was a lot of bodily discipline. For instance, you were supposed to stand in the proper posture for thirty minutes without a single movement. Or you practiced how to hold and aim your rifle in the right position—but without any real bullets. You never fired, you never pulled the trigger. You just learned how to carry it and how to aim. So it was very tedious.

Chang:
You entered what is really a critical stage of your life—when you’re supposed to absorb and learn about the world—at a time when the political system contracted and became much harder. Yet you somehow found a way to satiate your intellectual interests. Can you talk a little bit about how you managed to do that?

Xiang:
I could not do anything during the first year in the military academy. But once I came back, I was very disappointed and disillusioned—first by the total quietness on campus, and then by this feverish mentality of “jumping into the sea” and making money.

What did I do? I did something slightly unusual for an undergraduate. Starting in my second year, in 1992, I began my own fieldwork in a migrant community in Beijing, more than two hours away by bus from the university campus.

Actually, it was not far from Tiananmen Square. It was a migrant community formed by peasants from southern China—actually from my hometown. So I had no problem communicating with them because we shared a very distinct southern Chinese Wenzhou dialect.

They gathered there to make garments and sell clothing. All of this was supposedly illegal at the time. You were not supposed to set up workshops in cities without a special permit. Every year—before National Day, before the Chinese New Year—they were periodically ousted by the local police and government.

But soon after being chased away, they would come back and restart their businesses. Over the years they grew very quickly. By the time I began my fieldwork in 1992—about six years after the first families arrived—the population was already more than 10,000 people. The community had started in 1986.

Over the following years, I observed how it grew very fast and became economically very successful.

You asked how I found space to do my own observations about what was going on in society. It was through fieldwork—through having a space like that, which was not political. It gave me a lot of material, a lot of fuel, for me to think.

Chang:
And freedom.

Xiang:
Yes freedom, but this freedom was not freedom defined as antithetical to what you were supposed to follow. It was freedom of practice, freedom of experiment—or you could say, freedom of experience.

Chang:
For listeners who may not know: Xiang Biao published a book, based on his dissertation and fieldwork on Zhejiang Village called Going Beyond the Boundaries. And he became a kind of young intellectual star. He was already quite well known in the 1990s for this work—precisely because he was able to do serious intellectual work at a time when many intellectuals felt that nothing of substance was possible.

There’s also an interesting background here. You weren’t satisfied with the intellectuals of the “cultural fever” era of the 1980s. This was just after the Mao years, when intellectuals had been labeled the “Stinking Old Ninth,” the lowest tier of society—one of the so-called black categories. [NB: intellectuals were not part of the original five black categories, but during the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong expanded them into nine with intellectuals at the bottom.]

Then suddenly they were very free, discussing subjectivity, human rights, and all these ideas associated with a new Enlightenment. What was it about that era that left you unsatisfied?

Xiang:
When I was a high school student, from age fourteen to eighteen, I was very excited to read all kinds of things: discussions about alienation, discussions of property relations, discussions about the essence of Chinese culture. Some of these topics were carried over from the May Fourth Movement: a radical rethinking of the nature of Chinese civilization.

Even as a high school student, I felt that this discourse was quite removed from what I saw and heard from my parents, neighbors, and teachers—my parents were middle school teachers, my grandmother was an illiterate housewife, and my grandfather, a retired factory worker.

Their primary concerns at the time were inflation and food prices, because in the 1980s the rationing system was gradually being replaced by a market system. [NB: in the late 1980s, inflation spiked 20 percent nationwide, one of the destabilizing conditions that fueled the Tiananmen protests.] I remember very vividly how they talked about going to the food market. The state-run stores had hardly any food. It was very cheap, band you had to queue for a long time to buy things according to ration coupons. At the same time, peasants would bring their own produce to sell. That wasn’t entirely legal, but it happened anyway. The prices were much higher, but the quality was also much better.

So people were discussing these very concrete questions: high quality but high price, or low quality but more affordable. But when I read all these books, and when I listened to discussions at school, nobody told me how to think about the kinds of questions my neighbors were asking. That probably indicates my greatest dissatisfaction with the 1980s intellectual atmosphere—its elitist tendency.

And this also explains why I was particularly fascinated by illiterate peasants: how they could travel so far to Beijing, the capital city, overcome all kinds of obstacles, and create their own businesses.

Chang:
When you talk about 1980s intellectuals and your criticism of them, you remind me of the way American right-wing—or MAGA-aligned—intellectuals talk about the liberal intelligentsia or technocrats. You’ve told me before that since the Cold War, you feel that intellectuals have grown increasingly out of touch.

You’ve described Western academia—fields like postcolonial studies and race and gender criticism—as important and valuable, but also as speaking in the language of radical systemic critique that became “abstract, repetitive, and disconnected from life.” Are these similar criticisms?

Xiang:
There is some similarity. First of all, we should talk about the post-1990s academic world—why post-1990s? Because after the Cold War, there was no longer a real debate about which path human society should take. The “end of history” thesis meant that socialism was no longer seen as a viable alternative.

As a result, political economy and class questions were no longer central topics of debate. Questions became narrower, turning toward identity politics and symbolic gestures rather than larger policy questions.

At the same time, universities became increasingly managerial institutions. They became producers of credentials, capital, and certificates, rather than spokespeople for social consciousness. Tenure-track positions and academic career trajectories became more competitive. Young scholars had to spend more time on narrow, technical work. That’s the background explaining why academia after the 1990s became removed from real life.

Yet within their own system, academic discourse became increasingly radical in its rhetoric and language—to the extent that people not only felt alienated, but sometimes even scared, because the language sounded very revolutionary.

Second, you mentioned whether my impression of the 1980s resembles contemporary populist resentment and criticism. I do see the connection. But we must remember that populism has a long tradition. The progressive movement in the nineteenth-century United States laid the ideological foundation for Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s. Without that populist movement, the Democratic Party would not have had its social base.

That populism brought universal suffrage, public education, libraries—it also laid the groundwork for the civil rights movement in the 1960s. So if we take a long historical view, populism has often been a positive force.

The problem today is that populism in the Trump era has become a crude, raw resentment, without articulating a progressive alternative, and it plays into strongman fantasy politics. That is a serious issue. The real question is how to rescue the progressive elements of populism under current conditions.

So what I want to say is populism itself is not necessarily a bad thing. The question is how to speak a language that touches the public soul, mobilizes collective capacity, builds a united front, and focuses not on the most progressive or maximalist ideas, but on feasible action plans to begin with. That was the strength of nineteenth-century populism.

Chang:
Do you think elites affiliated with the Democratic Party before Trump—people like Joe Biden or Jake Sullivan, these meritocrats—were disconnected from the American people?

Xiang:
That comparison might not be entirely fair, because in the U.S. case these people hold real political and military power. They can make a phone call and order a bombing.

Chang:
So maybe the correct analogy would be academics.

Xiang:
Yes, that comparison can be made—and it’s valuable precisely because the Chinese intellectuals in the 1980s and U.S. intellectuals after the 1990s and 2000s are often very committed and sincere scholars. They believe in what they are saying. They see real enemies, and they devote their careers to their causes.

As I mentioned, the university system exacerbates certain unhealthy research practices, but that is a secondary issue. What is more interesting is how should we take their sincerity seriously? Their sincerity is real. If they were simply lying, we wouldn’t need to worry too much. But they are sincere intellectuals who position themselves as representatives of social consciousness and believe they are speaking truth to power.

Yet they face such a backlash now. We must learn some lesson from that.

Chang:
Let’s move on to youth problems—something you’ve been grappling with over the past few years. The first thing I want to say is that young people are quite unhappy–

Xiang:
Everywhere.

Chang:
Yes, haha. It’s not just a China problem. Surveys show alarming levels of anxiety, depression, neuroticism, and loneliness among youth in developed Western societies as well. You focus mostly on Chinese youth, but to what degree do you think this reflects global unhappiness, and how much is specific to China?

Xiang:
Obviously its both. Chinese youth are part of a global picture, but with specific Chinese characteristics.

What’s interesting is that if you look at objective criteria—economic and material well-being—Gen Z and those slightly older are the most materially abundant generations in history.

In China, there are also tensions across generations, which contribute to confusion and anxiety about how to live with and communicate with parents. Historically, however, Gen Z and those born in the 1990s actually experienced the smallest generational gap since the nineteenth century.

Think about people born in the 1940s and their children born in the 1960s or 1970s—the worlds they lived in were completely different. The older generation was often illiterate; some women still had bound feet.

My parents’ generation experienced enormous change. They never imagined having passports or traveling overseas as tourists. For my generation and the next, their lifestyle, material conditions, and expectations about how the world works are largely the same.

Yet psychologically, the gap is the largest. I bring up this paradox to shed some light on the current unhappiness. Why are they so unhappy when they are materially well-off and they actually are continuing their parent’s lifestyle?

It indicates that their unhappiness is not their fault, its that in society, the old model of organizing the economy and society is no longer sustainable. It has to change. Yet young people don’t know how to live through this transition. That’s the real question: what transition means, and how individuals should live within it—or even lead that transition.

Chang:
I think what you’re pointing to is that: on an absolute level, you’re right that financial conditions have improved, but many young people feel they can’t move forward or do better in the future.

Xiang: Right.

Chang: We’ve seen youth protests across Southeast Asia, Mexico, Madagascar, Bulgaria, it’s remarkable how widespread this youth discontent is. Factors like job scarcity, inequality, and cost of living are common everywhere. But you’ve also said the Chinese case is unique or more extreme. What makes it different?

Xiang:
I wouldn’t say it’s unique. I’d say the Chinese case manifests general contradictions in a particularly sharp way.

Chang:
I personally feel like it’s just more extreme.

Xiang:
Yes. In some aspects more extreme so therefore it really deserves our attention. It’s not unique in a sense that it is isolated from the world, but more representative, casting a sharper light. There are many contradictions [that characterize the youth problem in China]. One key contradiction is between heightened self-consciousness— produced by longer education and material abundance—and the lack of accumulated lived experience and practical tools to handle the reality that the economy cannot continue to grow at the rate that their parents experienced, and also that their parents taught them to expect.

Chang:
I thought you were going to say that in the 1990s and 2000s, there was a clear template for becoming wealthier. But the contradiction is that this didn’t necessarily lead to a satisfying well-lived life. It’s not just about getting rich. So economic accumulation advanced faster than social life—which is the idea of the “nearby,” as you call it.

So I think the contradiction is between material accumulation and young people’s need for something beyond material goods. Is that fair?

Xiang:
That’s part of it, but for me the question is more practical. It’s not that people hafe money and then ask “What’s the meaning of life?” The immediate cause of unhappiness is people are going:

“I have studied for twenty-two or even twenty-five years. I studied hard. My parents told me that if I behaved well and studied hard, I would find a middle-class job in the city and live better than they did. I fulfilled my part of the promise. What do I get? No job—or no quality job. That’s not the life I was promised.”

And this problem is not only a question of bad luck. It is structural, right? If the whole society can no longer provide as many good job opportunities as the parents once enjoyed. And it’s not like I’m going to die immediately, because I can still find some precarious job. My parents still have savings. They can still give me a roof. If you look at life in China, things still appear quite normal for most people on the surface.

And materially, the world is actually suffering from overcapacity and overproduction. So we are not short of goods. There is enough to keep everyone fed and clothed. And then people start to think: what have I been doing? Why did I follow that kind of promise? What did that promise mean? And what kind of promise should I look for now—or should I stop looking for promises altogether?

It’s not that now you have to convert to some transcendental faith to satisfy a spiritual need. But what you need instead is a new type of practice—a new way of relating yourself to neighbors, to colleagues, to your neighborhood—and a rethinking of how everyday life should be organized. I think the solution will come from this kind of practice, combined with reflection, but not as a purely spiritual or mental exercise.

Chang:
Let me give you a more conventional—or perhaps a popular—view of why youth are disillusioned in China today. One view is that after Deng Xiaoping, the economy opened up, became more marketized and privatized, and society grew very quickly.

During this period, there was a lot of optimism about the future. There were studies showing that many Chinese believed their hard work would lead to economic security and rewards—that a kind of American Dream, so to speak, was operating.

Then the question becomes: who ended that dream? One view is that it was the Communist Party. Beginning around the mid to late 2010s, society started to contract. Xi Jinping began to crack down on civil society as well as the marketplace, prioritizing security over economic growth. Jack Ma and the tech titans were jailed. [NB: Sorry, they weren’t jailed. Many were quietly disciplined; some detained.] Relations with the West worsened. China began to close itself off.

For many people who hold this view, the crystallizing moment was the pandemic—when, during the lockdowns, the Party chose an extreme form of control, rather than the kinds of debates that took place in Western societies about keeping the economy going. After the lockdowns, we entered a period of stagnation that China is still in today.

So the Party clearly had a hand in this downturn. Why isn’t youth disillusionment tied more directly to the responsibility of China’s political leaders?

Xiang:
I think definitely youth unhappiness is tied to the general situation in Chinese society and the economy, and Chinese society and the economy are directly tied to the Party–

Chang:
Political leaders steer the economy and politics.

Xiang:
But my contribution would not be to make a normative assessment, because a normative assessment is something everyone is entitled to make. My work is to think more analytically: how does this structural condition emerge?

Empirically speaking, the Party has always had control of the economy, since 1949, but at different phases it manifests itself very differently, with different consequences. How should we understand that?

If you look at the last forty years as a whole, it is largely a story of success—with lots of problems, of course. But by and large, if you look at poverty decline, increases in living standards, infrastructure, and technological advancement, it is a story of success. And in my thinking, the Chinese success comes from something that is an important lesson for many third world countries: very strong state capacity—state capacity to organize the economy and society, a coordinating power.

This connects to another issue. In the academic world, so-called liberal thinking often starts with the question of how we can resist public power, because public power always has a tendency to abuse—which is absolutely true. But if you go to Africa or Latin America, the biggest question is often: how do we have more functional, better public power—public power that can organize the economy and society more effectively?

China organized very efficiently, but with a lot of inequality and control. Yet for a long time there was enough energy coming from society, bubbling up here and there—especially in Shanghai and Guangzhou, but also places like Chongqing and Chengdu. You could see a match between a rigid top-down framework and bottom-up energy. There were tensions, but they matched, and the whole thing grew.

What has happened now is that the bottom-up energy—the content that generates from society—is really declining. But the framework that coordinates this energy itself has become more rigid, more powerful. So society is left with a huge, very sophisticated framework of monitoring and coordinating, but without enough real activity to coordinate. Very often it becomes control for the sake of control, monitoring for the sake of monitoring–

Chang: Are you talking about the surveillance system?

Xiang: That’s part of that yeah, but there are many other mechanisms: fiscal transfers, how resources are redistributed, how the banking system is managed. These are less visible, but in some ways more powerful.

Chang:
And you see that happening both in China and other places as well?

Xiang:
In this regard, I think other places are quite different. Elsewhere you also see declining growth rates because the previous models are not working, but in many places there is still a lack of basic coordinating power.

So society becomes chaotic. In China, unhappiness is not so chaotic, and people say this is partly because it is controlled. That’s true—it is controlled. But in other places, which don’t have that capacity, unhappiness can lead to uprisings. And I must say that uprisings contain very valuable potential energy. But uprisings themselves are not going to lead to anything substantial. We have to work on that.

Chang:
Let’s make this more concrete—or to start using your own vocabulary. In 2019, you appeared on this very popular celebrity TV series Thirteen Invitations (十三邀). You’re in Wenzhou, your hometown, being interviewed by an intellectual named Xu Zhiyuan, who also runs the bookstore that we’re in. In that conversation you were toying with this idea of “the nearby.”

And I think this connects to what you were saying about grassroots energy. This concept went viral. It was viewed around sixty million times on the main platform. It was shared everywhere on Little Red Book [China’s instagram] and other places. People started using “the nearby” in art exhibitions in China. There was a bookstore was named after “the nearby,” so it clearly resonated. What is “the nearby”?

Xiang:
First of all, when I proposed the idea, it was associated with an observation: the disappearance of the nearby. It’s a kind of negation.

What is the disappearance of the nearby? Young people’s perception of the world is increasingly occupied by two extremes. One extreme is the self: my academic scores, looking for a job, my romantic relationships, relationships with parents, even health. Now there is a lot of anxiety about health and the body—very near.

And then, at the other extreme, you have social media. Every day you’re glued to it, receiving all kinds of dramatic messages about incidents happening in different parts of the world—events you don’t have direct access to. You don’t really know what’s going on, but you receive them packaged in emotionally charged, and sometimes ideologically divisive ways.

This is what I observed. Young people’s emotions become very unstable. One day you receive certain messages and you feel very low. Tomorrow you see something different and you suddenly feel high. So you swing constantly. The mind is occupied by the very near and the very far.

What is in between? Who are your neighbors? Who cleans your street? How is your condominium managed? Who lived here before—and where did they go when they were asked to leave to clear the land to build these apartments that you now live in? These people and activities disappear from your consciousness.

That is the disappearance of the nearby.

Why did it go viral? Partly because it described a reality people recognized. But I think that’s only a small part. The real reason people wanted to talk about it is that they wanted something they could hold on to in their lives. It evoked a desire. It wasn’t only naming an existing truth. People feel their lives are suspended—everything becomes uncertain, feeble, abstract. They want something concrete—something they can see themselves in, something they can put their hands on, and act on.

Chang:
I also felt it became especially popular after the pandemic. You’ve described Chinese society very vividly in this respect: you once told me that Chinese people often don’t want to be where they are now—they always want to go somewhere else.

The pandemic lockdowns crystallized that problem, because everything was severed. You couldn’t leave your house. You relied on delivery for everything. I remember in Shanghai during the lockdown, I got to know my neighbors for the first time. Before that, why would I need to know my neighbors? I could just order what I needed. I took the train, I didn’t talk to anyone next to me.

But during the pandemic, it became a realization for many people in China that we need some connection to our surroundings. Otherwise, what happens in a crisis? That’s when I heard a lot of people saying they appreciated your work. That’s when I heard “Xiang Biao” everywhere—after the pandemic.

Xiang:
Yes—two things. First, absolutely, during the pandemic, people suddenly realized how much their lives relied on delivery. This also explains why there was hunger in places like Shanghai during the pandemic. Partly the system didn’t manage it well—that’s the main reason. But also, many young people didn’t keep much food at home because they relied so much on instant delivery. That made everyone vulnerable.

But I think the deeper reason the pandemic made people more aware of the nearby is that people wanted more control of their lives. The pandemic disrupted a particular way of managing your life, the virus made you no longer the master of your daily activities. So there is a desire to come back, to be more grounded.

Chang:
When I mention your work to my editors in the U.S., they tend to associate you with Robert Putnam’s book Bowling Alone. Putnam is the well-known political scientist at Harvard who argued that in the second half of the twentieth century in America, social organization declined significantly.

He looks at many metrics: church participation dropping, bowling clubs—people literally bowling alone, which is his metaphor—unions deteriorating, and political organizing slowing down. Putnam became, in a way, the poet laureate of declining civil society in the United States.

And you now seem to play a similar role in China—though I know you may not want to use the phrase “civil society.” But your Thirteen Invitations interview evoked the kind of hunger you just described: a hunger for deeper connection and control—similar to what Putnam’s book evoked when it first came out.

First, are you familiar with Putnam’s work? There are similarities in the structural forces. For example, Putnam talks about technology—television—as one driver of social deterioration because it’s enormously attention-absorbing. In China, smartphones and the internet are enormously attention-absorbing too, right?

Xiang:
There’s no longer one screen shared by families. Everyone has their one small screen–

Chang:
–which has probably made things even worse right? But China has been an enormously capitalistic, market-oriented society since the 1990s. From the 1980s to now, what you see in China is a kind of accelerated version of a process of urbanization and the expanding role the market plays in a society.

What I think is different is that Putnam tends to focus on communal gatherings—groups of people: Bowling leagues, unions. You don’t really evoke that. You focus more on seeing, on encouraging young people to look at local society differently, to interact one-on-one with people. Your work isn’t Mahjong Alone or Sipping Tea Alone in the teahouse, right? So why this difference between you and Putnam?

Xiang:
We are facing some fundamental issues of modernity. But I think, partly from Tocqueville, American democracy is really about associational life. That idea is very attractive, but it’s also a description. The idea that democracy doesn’t come with one single system; it comes with many associations, and public issues emerge from below. That is a U.S. characteristic.

But when you ask why (laughter) I don’t go in the direction of “mahjong alone,” it’s because I’m more interested in Chinese young people’s thinking agency. I’m not simply describing how lifestyles changed. This is not just a descriptive project.

Putnam’s work is empirically very rigorous and very solid. He describes how television, women’s participation in the workforce, suburbanization, and middle-class migration to suburbs weakened public life—no public transport, no neighbors.

Some of that may be relevant in the Chinese context, some not. But what really urged me to talk about “the nearby” was not to say that life is declining or decaying, or to feel nostalgic. I felt that young people themselves are actively unhappy.

They actively say: why am I constantly in the swing of emotion? I feel lonely. I’m so sensitive. I want to be a nice person, but precisely because of that, I don’t dare to talk to people anymore. I’m constantly worried I might offend someone or drag my interlocutor into discomfort. There is a lot of hypersensitivity involved.

That is the problem I wanted to tackle. I want not only to describe what is going on, but to provide some tools—some handles—that people who are already conscious, or half-conscious, of their dilemmas can use to move forward.

Chang:
Putnam can easily evoke a kind of nostalgia—for the church or the union. You don’t really evoke a nostalgia. Is there something in the past you imagine returning to when you think about "the nearby”?

Xiang:
I don’t. But my readers often bring up nostalgic reference points themselves. They talk about neighborhood life when they were young—how you could easily enter a neighbor’s home without appointments. You would meet neighbors, eat together, even sleep over.

Nowadays, children are picked up by parents, put into cars, and driven from one tutorial class to another. So there are nostalgic reference points. But nostalgia is not analytically important for me.

First, many young people can’t even feel nostalgia because they never had those experiences. They grew up without a nearby.

Second, going back is not a practical solution. In China, you cannot imagine returning to a 1970s-style neighborhood. So the challenge is we have to be creative—to think of new ways to organize our life.

Chang:
There’s another motivation in your work on the nearby. You often push back against national-level discourse—debates about the “China model,” China’s relationship with the West, these grand national questions that young people scroll through on social media. You don’t seem to like these overly nationalized discussions.

You sent me an email a couple weeks ago about the Nobel Peace Prize. I think you were disillusioned by the results this year. You were referring to Donald Trump wanting to win the prize and how instead it went to the Venezuelan opposition leader [María Corina Machado] and many people in the MAGA world discredited the results. [NB: This interview took place less than two weeks before the U.S. captured Nicholés Maduro.]

You wrote to me saying:

Society can no longer rely on heroic slogans and icons to build consensus. We are reaching the point that the specific selection [referring to the Nobel Peace Prize] is not only biased but also discredits the general principles and values altogether. These selections appear to prove again that universal values are little more than empty words. I believe universal values do exist, but need to be articulated differently from what is done now in order to make them real in public perceptions.

That stuck with me, because it suggests a retreat from some kind of public square where universal values are articulated, professed, pronounced and fought over. And there’s a fatigue there, that I can read in your email, one I feel maybe is relevant to our moment as an American. The populist era is very much characterized by this fatigue. Can you elaborate on what you meant?

Xiang:
Yes. That is precisely what you said: the question is how we rebuild the public. What is “the public”? We tend to think of the “public” as represented by thinkers, heroes, activists—people who articulate general principles on our behalf. And what institution is more powerful in representing a global public consciousness than the Nobel Prize committee?

But if you look at some decisions, for example, giving a prize to someone who openly called for foreign military intervention—that can be given a Nobel Prize? [NB: Machado didn’t call openly for U.S. military intervention before the U.S. captured Maduro, though she implied it. Then she praised Trump for Maduro’s seizure and gave him her Nobel Peace Prize. I initially thought Xiang didn’t like the way Trump politicized the Peace Prize, but he clearly objected to Machado’s selection.]

The post–Second World War global architecture for building public consensus has been dismantled. That architecture was based on universalism and elitism—you have some heroes and institutions who know the best way to articulate certain principles. But now I think the situation is changing.

First, the West itself is declining. The U.S. and Europe face serious domestic challenges, showing that the cherished principles based on the European and U.S. practices can no longer manage the social contradictions today. Therefore it does discredit these universal claims which is coming from Western history.

Second, global geopolitical tensions have intensified, partly because of the rise of the Global South, just the population growth and economic growth in places like India, Indonesia, and China. So it means that there’s such a large population, whose lives cannot be defined, articulated by ideals originating in a small corner of the world.

Third, you have technological change and the rapid massification of higher education—especially in the Global South—meaning many young people in Nigeria, Kenya, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Nepal, Bangladesh, as we witnessed, they want to articulate their lives in their own ways. These voices are by definition very diverse, by definition they are not coherent, and cannot easily be accommodated into some standard universalistic claim which originated in the 19th century.

What does this mean? It means that the old consensus is not necessarily wrong in its content, but it probably can no longer capture the most important concerns that people on the ground have today, nor the way those concerns are expressed.

I simply don’t understand how the Nobel Peace Prize selection committee could make that kind of decision, and the way they select representatives of the global ethos, for me, is very questionable. Therefore, the message of my email is that we need to find a new way of engaging in global communication.

Chang:
I also feel like we don’t have a consensus one a national level either.

Xiang:
Oh yeah yeah. In Europe and the U.S., that’s very obvious. Sometimes the divide within countries is more frightening than divisions between countries.

Chang:
Your focus on the nearby makes me wonder whether this concept can be applied, for example, in the United States. I’ll give you a very concrete example. Thanksgiving has become a horrific time in America these days, because national debates—around abortion, gun rights, whether you’re for Trump or against Trump—have moved into the home. There was a time when that was not the case.

When I was growing up in Michigan, national politics were not so toxic. But now a lot of my friends say they hate going back to their hometowns for Thanksgiving, because we’re always talking about politics, always talking about national politics.

Local politics has deteriorated. Local journalism is very weak.

Xiang:
Precisely.

Chang:
This isn’t really a question. It’s more a thought—that your idea of the nearby also resonates with me as an American who has lived through increasing political polarization. There’s like an “involution” in national politics, the more effort you put in, the less you feel you get back. There are too many people participating, and very few seats of power.

Basically, it all comes down to the presidency. Everyone is fighting over the presidency, and people place all their hopes for how society should behave on who the president is.

Xiang:
No, I would be very happy to explore this further. I think the recent election in New York probably gives us some sense of hope, and also a reference point for thinking about the applicability of the idea of the nearby. [NB: I think Xiang associates New York City, despite how big it is, with his preferred brand of local, touch-the-grass style politics, while debates at the national level often become more abstract and elitist.]

That election was genuinely political, in the sense that people made decisions, took risks, and took responsibility for their own votes. They participated in debates and actions that would shape their shared future.

There is a sense of a shared future: I participate, I make a decision, I take responsibility, and I care about the consequences—rather than simply declaring my position in order to distinguish myself from my enemies.

That is a future-building, community-building kind of politics. And that, I think, is very much the spirit of the nearby.

Chang:
I personally see a lot of similarities between young Chinese disillusionment and young American disillusionment. In fact, here’s a quote for you. This is from Patrick Deneen. He is one of the leading intellectuals of what in America is called the New Right—the intellectual wing of the MAGA movement. He’s describing the disillusionment among his students. He says:

“Far from feeling themselves to constitute the most liberated and autonomous generation in history, young adults believe less in their task at hand than Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the mountainside. They accede in the duties demanded of them by their elders, but without joy or love—only with a keen sense of having no other choice. Their overwhelming response to their lot…is one of entrapment and “no exit,” of being cynical participants in a system that ruthlessly produces winners and losers ” (Why Liberalism Failed 2018)

Xiang:
Hahaha wow. I’m very surprised by the similarities. Do you think it’s quite accurate?

Chang:
I think it really reflects the meritocracy in America. Deneen is a professor at Notre Dame University, so he’s talking about people trying to enter elite universities, trying to become part of the American elite or meritocratic system. The way he describes it—the cutthroat competition—feels very similar to what we call “involution.”

Xiang:
Yeah yeah yeah

Chang:
But my point is that while the symptoms are similar, what’s very different about America is that there’s a tendency to pull disaffected people into politics—into a different kind of politics. That doesn’t really exist in China. The Party is not very good at organizing young people, and so instead you have people…like you, [Xiang laughs] who are pushing them toward practices outside the political space.

So let me ask you this: disaffected youth exist everywhere, right? In America, many of them have begun to vote for Trump and the MAGA movement. In other places—Nepal, Mexico, Madagascar, Bulgaria—they go out onto the streets and protest.

This is a familiar pattern of thinking for me: my situation is bad, so clearly there’s something wrong with political leaders, and therefore we should replace them or criticize them. This happened in China in the 1980s. Why aren’t Chinese youths thinking this way today, do you think?

Xiang:
There is a reason: they just see that practically, there’s no such possibility, obviously unattainable. But there is also a very big social difference between the way disenfranchisement is felt in the U.S., China, and other parts of the world.

In China, development over the last forty years—and probably even since the 1950s—has been very inclusive, which may sound paradoxical. Chinese society has become very unequal, that’s true. Inequality has increased dramatically. But it is still a society where families at the bottom feel that if they invest a lot of money in their child’s education—now most families have only one child, at most two—there is still a chance to move up.

So nobody really feels directly excluded from the game of growth. That inclusiveness was real, I would say, at least up to the 2000s, because in my work on migrants, for example, I could see life had changed. And even now, at least ideologically and in terms of perception, they feel they are part of the game.

But now the future feels very uncertain. There is a sense of fatigue and disruption, and this feeling is widespread. I would say that the young people who feel this most strongly are actually relatively well-off, urban, middle-class, and educated—especially in tier-one and tier-two cities. They are the ones who feel the most disappointed. People at the bottom face much greater hardship, but they feel this disillusionment less intensely. So disillusionment is widespread, but it has a different character.

But I understand that in other societies like the U.S., the feeling that you are thrown out of the game—that you are excluded—that feeling is stronger. People who vote for Trump are not saying, “I’m gaining less than others.” They feel that they were totally screwed, that they are no longer part of the system at all.

That sense of being victimized and excluded produces deep resentment, and a particular kind of political energy and agency that we don’t see in China. This is not only because of political control. So this means we need different intellectual strategies on how to talk to young people in China—people who don’t feel completely excluded.

They are still in the game, but they are exhausted. They no longer want to carry on. That’s the situation.

Chang:
That’s a good segue into my next question. What do you think intellectuals should be doing in this era, specifically for young people? In the past, there was a very different group of intellectuals who believed democratization was the path forward for China. You clearly don’t feel that way. So what is the role now?

Xiang:
I think the role of intellectuals must change with reality. The biggest change, in my view, is the rapid massification of higher education in China. It began in 1999, so it’s very recent—only about twenty-five years.

This year [2025], more than 60 percent of high school graduates can go to college, something unimaginable forty years ago. These students are materially supported by their families, and their capacity for reading, thinking, and writing is no less than people like me, even though I’m older.

And so they ask all kinds of very deep and relevant questions. So in this era, if intellectuals still think their role is, first, to offer a systemic critique of the whole society; second, to act as truth-tellers revealing truths that others supposedly cannot access; and third, to set a clear direction for the future and ask everyone to follow it—I think that no longer works.

And even if everything you say is correct, young people don’t want to hear that. They want to be autonomous thinkers, to be sovereign in defining and understanding their own lives.

So intellectuals should no longer be preachers or teachers. They should become facilitators. You listen to young people, really understand what they are worried about, in very concrete and diverse settings. Then you analyze and offer tools—concepts, theories, perspectives, questions—that can travel back to them and help them think about their situation in their own way, but in a way that will be more productive and clarifying.

Chang:
Maybe we can be a bit more concrete about your prescriptions. You’ve participated in curriculum reforms at Chinese universities. My understanding is that you encourage students to engage with local figures they interact with every day—for example, the security guard near their apartment, or the person who sells them breakfast in the morning. [NB: Xiang sees “the nearby” as a new framework for young people to engage with their surroundings differently and he wants to “facilitate” this.]

These are people who, in an earlier era, when everyone was busy working and making money, tended to be ignored. Now you want students to engage with them and develop relationships. Is that right? Could you elaborate a bit?

Xiang:
Yes, this is part of a whole set of curriculum experiments. We want students to try to understand the people around them whom they hardly don’t pay attention to.

Many students say they can’t do this because they are so shy. They describe themselves as having what Chinese call “social phobia,” shekong –

Chang: –a widespread problem in China.

Xiang: yeah so we say: okay, don’t worry. If you really can’t talk to them, if you’re too scared, then first ask yourself why you find that person interesting. You can observe from a distance if you can’t speak to them. Pay attention to their way of talking, their actions, and how they affect you. Reflect first on your own feelings—fascination, nervousness, confusion.

Then we come back to discuss it. Teachers play an important role, and classmates also need to act in particular ways. This is intellectual work. It’s not just social work. It’s about learning how to analyze and narrate your experience, and how to make your experience more generative.

Chang:
Many young people since your interview on Thirteen Invitations have taken this idea and made it their own. I’ve spoken to young people who said that after your interview, they started filming their hometowns—especially after moving back because they couldn’t afford rent in big cities—and posting videos on Douyin or TikTok.

Others have started keeping notes or diaries about local malls, about conversations they have with people, and they feel their lives have been enriched by this. So here’s my last question: where do you think all of this is leading? What’s the end game?

Xiang:
I don’t have a clear vision or goal, but I know we shouldn’t stop here. As you said, people are developing a feeling for the nearby. That’s important because it gives you a sense that you are living in a concrete world—one where you can act and talk to people. You feel less powerless and vulnerable.

If another pandemic or crisis were to happen, people might be better able to organize quickly, help themselves, and resist unreasonable demands. In fact, much of China’s reform history worked this way—shang you zhengce, xia you duice [“When there are policies from above, there are countermeasures below.”]—so there are official policies, but there are always unofficial responses and people know how to circumvent real rules and regulations.

Still, formal policies are still important because they maintain the general framework and enable the coordinating capacity by the state. But below, many things happen. Right now, that bottom-up energy is weak. The idea of the nearby is, first of all, about rebuilding subjectivity—the feeling that I can do something, I can talk to people, and I know how to protect myself.

Then what are the next step? There’s no roadmap. But my idea is that when people engage in more activities like that, they may begin to develop some demands at the local scale. When we were together in Beijing, you saw the urban design program at Beijing universities. [NB: In December, Xiang and I visited a mental health support group led by rank-and-file bureaucrats at Peking University. They shared with us some guerilla-style tactics on how to convince their superiors to change local traffic design and other ways to better their community.] Students were making very concrete proposals—redesigning traffic lights, for example. These are very technical, but they are already acting effectively, and grassroots governments do respond within their scope.

Chang:
And these are people within the system—within the university system. [NB: In Chinese, this is called tizhinei, “within the system”]

Xiang:
Yes, we have to build alliances. The idea of the nearby is to cross the boundary between inside and outside the system. This is not an era where you can build a space completely outside the system and push from there—it won’t work. [NB: Xiang is effectively saying the only way to change China is from within]

I can’t prescribe where this will lead, but I do believe it’s important to follow these activities. I hope I can continue proposing ideas that make people feel more powerful than they think they are, at least in everyday life.

And gradually, it becomes hard to say whether the system itself is changing. If everyday life on the ground is already changing, can the system really remain exactly the same?

Chang:
So basically, co-opting the system from the bottom up, to do things that serve people in local communities.

Xiang:
Some people may empirically disagree about the feasibility of working with grassroots actors inside the system. But from my observations, it is entirely possible—and in fact necessary. Grassroots officials need to get things done. They want orderly, relatively happy communities, but they lack language and tools. If we can offer new language and programs that they can show the upstairs—ways of doing things differently—then there is a real possibility of changing the grassroots landscape.

Chang:
The perennial optimist, Xiang Biao. I think that’s a good place to end. Thank you so much.

Xiang:

Thank you

We discuss:

• How Taiwanese conscripts in the Imperial Japanese Army were deployed across Southeast Asia as translators and intermediaries, using proximity to local dialects (Taiwanese/Hokkien).

• How KMT rule and the White Terror shaped Taiwan’s postwar memory, leaving younger generations with an image of their grandparents as victims, while obscuring their roles in perpetuating violence.

• The postwar fate of overseas Taiwanese: stripped of Japanese citizenship, rendered stateless, and forcibly repatriated to a homeland some had never lived in.

• How Japanese occupation deepened ethnic tensions among Chinese, Malay, and Indian communities in Malaya, producing fractured wartime memories that persist today.

• Interview process: What Lau learned interviewing staff at Hiroshima’s Holocaust museums, the difficulty of interviewing Japanese and Taiwanese veterans and how some recalled their time in Southeast Asia.

• Taiwan’s pro-Japan consensus today, Southeast Asia’s lingering distrust of Japanese military power, the unresolved politics of comfort women.

Ian: So my first question to you would be: what motivated you to make this particular film?

Lau: Okay, hello to everyone. I’m so happy to be here. Regarding the question—how did I start this documentary—at the beginning I didn’t plan for the film to be so long, like five hours. And it wasn’t about the darker history of Taiwan—Taiwanese soldiers in the Japanese army—at first.

In the beginning, I read a thesis by a professor from Chengchi University. The thesis is about overseas Taiwanese who lived in Southeast Asia before World War II. They were already living in Southeast Asia before the war. But when the war broke out, they were treated as alien enemies, because they were citizens of the Japanese Empire. So they were sent to internment camps—in Japan, in Australia, and also in India.

At first, I tried to approach those people. They were still living in Taiwan—some had come back from the Australia camp, others from the India camp. At the same time, I was researching the World War II background—how Taiwan was involved in the war. As a Malaysian, growing up, we don’t read much about World War II in the history textbooks. But we do hear from the grandparents’ generation—they keep telling us how traumatic it was when Japan invaded Malaysia and Singapore. Even then, I didn’t imagine that within the Japanese army there were Taiwanese involved. We didn’t know about that.

When I was doing research, I tried to match the timeline—when Taiwanese soldiers were dispatched to Southeast Asia, and then the Malayan campaign and Singapore campaign. And then I realized they were already there from the very beginning of the war in Southeast Asia. That’s when I thought I should include all this knowledge I found, and put it into the film.

The film expanded from 90 minutes, to 2.5 hours, and then to five hours long, because there were so many things I discovered along the way.

Ian: Yes, and just for the listeners, we should point out that this is a story—rarely told—of Chinese being involved in a war against other Chinese, or at least Chinese speakers. Taiwan was part of the Japanese Empire, and as such Taiwanese were drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army. In Southeast Asia, they were involved in many things as interpreters and so on, and were often witnesses to torture sessions. And the Chinese of Southeast Asia were the targets of a lot of Japanese aggression.

So this is a Chinese-versus-Chinese story, isn’t it?

Lau: Indeed. If you look at Japanese army strategy at that time, they had to make use of a lot of Taiwanese people, because they spoke Taiwanese, which is very similar to Hokkien in Southeast Asia.

From the beginning, they knew they had to make use of this language fluency so they could manage and conquer Southeast Asia. They already tried this out when they conquered Hainan Island or some parts of China. They needed people who could understand the local language to run the government there. So from the beginning, a lot of Taiwanese soldiers were involved as interpreters—especially during massacres, and especially in interrogations, where they needed Taiwanese to do translation.

Chang: Yeah. It wasn’t just that they were useful. In the beginning of the film, you can see there’s also a kind of cultural attachment to the war in Taiwan. You can see celebrations, and people singing.

It’s really messy and complicated, the Taiwanese role in this kind of war—and you bring up so many of the complexities in the film. For listeners who haven’t watched it, I’ll just give a quick synopsis of this really long film. Basically, the film is centered on three main places: Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore. The film is recreated through interviews and archival footage, and through really creative film techniques that bring letters and diaries back to life. There are also reenactments. And all of them give different perspectives on the war.

So we have Taiwanese soldiers who participated in the war. We also have Taiwanese who aided the Japanese in various ways—as translators and doctors—their memories of the war, how they understood it, and how their descendants grapple with it. And then we also have Malaysians and Singaporeans who recollect the war from their perspective, as well as their descendants.

And often there are horrific massacres that come up in the course of the film, ones that are not recorded in official ways. Lau, you said something earlier that I’m curious about: when you heard about these memories through your grandparents’ generation, I can imagine how they might feel about the Japanese—but what was their attitude toward the Taiwanese?

Lau: Because after the war, we had a Malay-majority government. The history book narrative is mainly a Malay World War II narrative. So there’s not much about the Chinese suffering during World War II. We have to rely on grandparents’ oral stories to remember it.

And after World War II, the Chinese community didn’t really have the strength or power to build out this narrative publicly—to collect testimony and make it part of official memory.

Ian: And Singapore presumably would be different, right, with the Chinese majority?

Lau: If you talk about “Chinese,” there are different groups—English-educated Chinese, and what you might call Chinese newcomers. The English-educated Chinese came to Southeast Asia earlier and were educated in English. They pledged loyalty more to the British colonial government.

The newcomers came later, and some still thought of themselves as from China and needing to return to China. When the Japanese army came, they targeted mostly the China-oriented Chinese—because those were the people who donated and supported the war against Japan in China. Before they came to Southeast Asia, they already saw this group as an enemy, because they were funding the war in China.

So before they came, they already had lists of names—Chinese they wanted to kill. And this is why the Chinese were the most suffering group during the war.

Ian: Were there any Taiwanese who actually joined the resistance—who switched sides?

Lau: There were—especially Taiwanese who had already lived in Malaysia or Singapore before the war. Some were daughters, musicians. When they lived in Southeast Asia, they didn’t really differentiate themselves as Taiwanese. Mostly they would describe themselves as Hokkien, because we all speak Hokkien—alongside other groups like Cantonese and Hakka.

So it was easy for them to blend into the Chinese community in Malaysia and Singapore. Only when the war broke out did citizenship suddenly become something very important. Then it became: if you are Taiwanese, you are Japanese; if you are Indonesian or Malayan, you are treated differently.

I did hear testimonies that some people joined anti-Japanese guerrillas—that they supported, or tried to help, the Communist Party in Malaya.

Ian: And in Taiwan—you were saying in Malaysia, people don’t really learn much about the fate of the Chinese-speaking population. What about Taiwan? I assume that when Taiwan was still ruled by the KMT, the Japanese were depicted as the enemy. Since Taiwan became a democracy, how is that history taught—the history of the Japanese empire and Taiwan’s collaboration?

Lau: Taiwan is very complicated. After the war, the KMT took over Taiwan. Under KMT rule, those who were educated in Japanese, or who wanted to join the Japanese army, tried to hide their identities, because they would be targeted by the government. They hid their identity, they hid their memories.

During the long White Terror—from the 1950s to the 1990s—people involved with the Japanese army or Japanese government tried not to tell their descendants, not to tell anyone, their real identities.

In the 1990s, we started interviewing Taiwanese veterans, but the focus was more on what they suffered during the White Terror or the 2/28 Incident in Taiwan. It was a selective memory—remembering them as victims. But we didn’t really ask what they had been involved in before they came back from Southeast Asia, or what they witnessed in Southeast Asia.

So this part of history is long forgotten, and unknown to younger Taiwanese. When my film screened in Taiwan, for the younger generation it was a shock. They remember their grandfathers as victims; they don’t remember them as collaborators of the Japanese imperial army.

Chang: Lau, could you talk a little bit about the ending—where after the war, Taiwanese basically become stateless, right? Because they’re no longer Japanese citizens, and they’re not accepted by the Chinese population because they were collaborating. That’s a really complicated and interesting part of the film.

Lau: After the war, Taiwanese lost their citizenship—they were no longer citizens of the Japanese Empire—and Taiwan was taken over by the KMT. But what we’re talking about is also a totally different official language. People who grew up in Japanese education suddenly became illiterate. They were trained to speak and write in Japanese.

Then suddenly, after KMT takeover, everything changed into Chinese, and you had to use Mandarin as the official language. For people trained professionally—doctors, and other professions—you suddenly lost the ability to use that knowledge, and you had to relearn Mandarin and Chinese.

And we have to bear in mind: during the war, they saw Chinese as an enemy language, because Japan was at war with China. So if you wanted to carry on with your profession, you had to pick up this “enemy language.” That’s psychologically complicated for Taiwanese.

As you mentioned, nowadays Taiwanese still have a kind of pro-Japan culture—Japanese pop culture, and so on. One reason is that the grandparents’ generation compares Japanese rule to KMT rule. They would say Japanese rule was much better than KMT rule, because of the White Terror and the targeting of Japan-related people. That’s why memory in Taiwan is so divided—there are competing narratives.

Chang: There’s a section in the documentary where one Malaysian interviewee says that during the occupation there was already ethnic conflict between the Chinese and the Malays, and that some Malays started to support the Japanese. Could you speak a little bit more about that? What were Malays doing in support of the Japanese?

Lau: In Malaysia, we have three main ethnic groups—Chinese, Malay, and Indian. During British colonial times, there was already a divide-and-rule system, which meant they made use of rivalry between ethnic groups, so people didn’t understand each other well.

During the Japanese occupation, Japan carried on with this strategy—and actually made it worse. They intensified rivalry between Malays and Chinese, and also Indians.

Chang: How did they make it worse? Do you know any specific examples?

Lau: They recruited Malays to join the Japanese forces. And many civil servants were Malay under British colonial rule, so they continued using Malays as policemen and government officers.

When Japan carried out massacres, you can see in war crimes court documents that many witnesses are Malay—because they were the ones who could bring soldiers to where they wanted to go. Japan made use of Malays’ local knowledge so they could access Chinese communities and carry out killings.

This made the gap between Malay and Chinese worse. After the war, there were serious killings between Chinese and Malays, because there was distrust.

Ian: And before the war, professionally—was the division that most Chinese in Southeast Asia were merchants and in business, and Malays were largely rural? Isn’t it quite like that?

Lau: For Chinese, as I said, many supported the war in China against Japan. But identity was often based on the region you came from—Hokkien, Hakka, Cantonese—depending on what language you spoke.

For Malays, they were the local ruling group, and local chiefs were important. They were more united by religion—Islam. They saw themselves as Muslims.

And in my film, if you remember, there’s Japanese propaganda. They tried to connect an Islamic “holy war” with Japan’s imperial war. They claimed the emperor was connected to Muhammad, so if Malays joined the Japanese army, they were doing the same holy war. This was unknown to many Malaysians.

When we released the film in Malaysia, we worried because it’s sensitive. In Malaysia today, religion is untouchable—it’s taboo. We don’t talk about it. But luckily we got through censorship, and this part screened. It shocked Malay audiences, because they could see it as provocation from a Chinese director—relating Islam to Japanese war propaganda. But we got through.

Ian: That’s fascinating. But my question was really about professional roles. In Thailand and Indonesia, many Chinese or people with Chinese backgrounds were in business, associated with money, and that created resentment. Is that true of Malaysia as well?

Lau: Yes, it’s also true in Malaysia and in Singapore. Many Chinese were businesspeople. They were wealthy and had economic power, but they didn’t really have political power. Under British colonial rule there might be a “head of the Chinese community” appointed to govern Chinese affairs, but not much political power beyond that.

Meanwhile, Malays were more employed in government roles—as civil servants. Chinese were mostly doing business.

Chang: Sorry—I wanted to go back to the Taiwanese after the war ended. There’s a section near the end where you interview Taiwanese who had lived in Southeast Asia. After the war, most of them were resettled back to Taiwan, right? And some of them had never lived in Taiwan, so they didn’t want to go back. What is that about?

Lau: They lived in Southeast Asia before the war. When the war broke out, they were captured and sent to camps, which meant their properties in Southeast Asia were confiscated by the government. After the war, they were forced to go back to Taiwan. They had no say in whether they wanted to stay or leave—they had to leave.

All of them were sent back to Taiwan, and they became Taiwanese in the political sense when they arrived. Later, under KMT rule, some tried to go back to Southeast Asia to reclaim property, but it failed, because it had already been confiscated. So most couldn’t resettle there again, and stayed in Taiwan.

Ian: How were they treated by local, native Taiwanese? Were they treated badly?

Lau: Not really. They could still speak Taiwanese, and some still had families in Taiwan, so they relied on their relatives. There was also a lot of intermarriage within this group that came back from Southeast Asia, because they understood each other.

Chang: Can I ask a journalistic question? As a journalist, I can imagine you had to knock on a lot of doors to get this story. And the film shows you were successful in interviews—people said yes, people were willing to be filmed. I’m curious: how difficult was it to get the story? What were some of the obstacles? You’re asking people about really difficult things. How often did people say, “I don’t want to remember this period of my life”?

Lau: One of the most difficult parts was interviewing Japanese-Taiwanese soldiers. They were interviewed, but most of what they shared was about suffering during 2/28 and the White Terror.

But I guess I’m one of the first people to ask them: what did you see, or participate in, when you were in Southeast Asia? That shocked them, because no one really asked those questions.

In the beginning, a lot of them were friendly and willing to talk. But slowly, as they found out my Southeast Asia accent—or found out I came from Malaysia—they would reject the interview and refuse to see me. So I had to use strategies to approach them.

Many interviews you see in the film were not done by me. For example, there’s one soldier, Yang Fu-cheng. I found a young Japanese woman who came to Taiwan to study—she was about granddaughter age for these old soldiers. I listed three major questions I wanted to ask. The rest of the conversation was done by her. She approached the Taiwanese veteran as a grandpa, and asked, “Grandpa, what do you remember? What did you see? Please tell me.” I tried to create this intergenerational setup. I played a third-party role—observing and filming.

Ian: And she spoke Japanese to him?

Lau: Yes—she spoke Japanese. I think language is one of the most important points. If you ask the same question in Japanese, Taiwanese, or Mandarin, they will answer differently.

If you speak in Japanese, you bring out their memories of youth—when they were young, joining the army, full of hope. If you ask in Taiwanese, the memories that come back are White Terror and 2/28. If you ask in Mandarin, they might scold you, because for them it’s an enemy language.

So with different languages, it’s like they become different people. That’s why I needed someone close to them, who understands the language close to them, to ask the questions. Some soldiers were interviewed by their own daughters. When they face their families, they’re more willing to reveal memories.

Another difficulty was interviewing descendants of soldiers, or of people preparing to join the Japanese army—like Simon in Penang. He knew his grandfather was from Taiwan, and his grandfather was sentenced to death after the war. He did a lot of bad things to local people. Imagine growing up in a community where everyone remembers your grandfather as a collaborator of the Japanese empire—it’s a shameful family story.

When I approached Simon, he had unsettled feelings. Sometimes he agreed to an interview, sometimes he rejected it—quite a few times. And as you see in the film, although he had heard stories about his grandpa, he had never seen the real documents.

When I showed him the real documents, it was a shock. It made everything concrete. Ethically, if Simon had collapsed emotionally and couldn’t handle it, I wouldn’t have put it in the film. If someone breaks down, I won’t put it in. Luckily, Simon could overcome it, and he could talk.

And Simon wasn’t the only descendant. Many descendants I approached stopped me in the middle of interviews, stopped the camera, and said, “Please leave my home and don’t come again.” That was a fairly common reaction.

Chang: I wish that was in the film, because it would give a sense of how difficult these topics are for some people. But the Simon interview was really memorable.

This is actually a question for Ian. Ian, you’re familiar with the German case, and there are interesting parallels. What’s striking is Simon grappling with the legacy of his grandfather. There’s a line where he says something like, “I have no choice—he’s my grandfather—I have to respect him.” And as soon as you go into his house, you see an ancestral shrine.

I wondered if there’s a cultural reason—filial piety, and the idea that Chinese culture emphasizes respecting elders. In Germany, I know the generation after the war was often much more critical of the Nazi-era generation. Do you see a difference between how Simon behaves and how Germans behaved?

Ian: They may be more critical of German behavior under the Nazi period, but I think it’s human to have feelings about your parents or grandparents that are separate from what they may have done outside the family.

In other words, you had concentration camp commanders responsible for mass murder who were very kind fathers and took their children out for picnics on the weekend. It’s entirely natural for those children to remember these figures—who may have been hanged for war crimes—as their fathers. That’s a universal human thing, not related to one culture or another.

It’s the same in Japan. I once spoke to the daughter of somebody who was very high up in the Japanese imperial army in Manchuria, probably responsible for all kinds of crimes. And she remembered him as a doting father. Knowing what he did, she wasn’t trying to excuse him. She was just saying: the man I knew is not the man being accused of all these crimes. That’s a reality people have to accept.

Lau: I agree. It’s human nature. Someone can be a killer and also a kind father at the same time—it’s not a contradiction.

But if you compare Germany and Asia: after the war, German governments put people on trial. Even now, they still put Nazi collaborators on trial. It sends a message to society: we have to face this, we have to acknowledge it.

That doesn’t really happen in Japan, or even in Taiwan. After the Tokyo Trial, it’s like the government didn’t really acknowledge it anymore. So it didn’t create an atmosphere where Taiwanese people feel: we were involved in this, we have to face it, we have to analyze it. Instead there’s an ambiguous space where people selectively remember some things and ignore others. That’s the difference between Germany’s public atmosphere and Asia’s.

Ian: Yes, people always say that, but West Germany and East Germany were very different in how they dealt with war memory. And it took Germans at least a generation to come to grips with it, because in the 1950s they didn’t want to face it at all.

And the Japanese, in some ways, did. There were more movies and novels written in the 1950s by Japanese about their experiences during the war than was true in Germany. So a lot of this is political, more than cultural.

Lau: During my research, I read a lot of memoirs written by Japanese soldiers. Before they passed away, many wrote about what they had seen and done, and reflected deeply on humanity and democracy.

But sadly, if I read memoirs by Taiwanese soldiers, most of the time it doesn’t reach that stage. They remain focused on suffering under KMT rule—the White Terror, 2/28. They hardly mention what they witnessed in Southeast Asia. As a human being, that’s regretful. Even in old age, people kept those memories as secrets, and passed away with them—without telling their families.

I interviewed one descendant of a doctor who was involved with chemical weapons in Southeast Asia. I found the name and went—

Chang: Unit 731

Lau: Yes, in Southeast Asia. I went to the family and interviewed the descendant. He told me that after his father came back from Southeast Asia, he became very silent. He didn’t talk much to the family. But he became a very kind doctor—he went to poor regions and treated patients for free, and did many good deeds.

They didn’t really know what he experienced in Southeast Asia.

Ian: Yeah, I think there may be a difference between Taiwan and Japan, though. In Japan, even though it was an authoritarian government, it was their country that was responsible for all this. As a Japanese, you’d feel your country was responsible. Whereas Taiwanese—it was a Japanese colony. They had no political responsibility for what happened, really. And even their collaboration—they didn’t feel that same responsibility.

Lau: Indeed, that’s true. They weren’t really decision-makers. They weren’t central decision-makers. They were kind of forced to be involved. So we have to understand it. As I say, I’m not trying to point fingers—we’re trying to understand.

And I think it’s important for us to realize how we’re slowly involved in structures—how we become accomplices. When do we realize we’re slowly getting involved? That’s important to know, in human terms.

Chang: Back to the topic of Japan not confronting its atrocities in Southeast Asia—near the end of the film you go to Hiroshima, or one of your crew goes, and you interview the director of a Holocaust museum there. That was a really interesting interview. Can you talk about what you were hoping to ask him, and what he told you?

Lau: I found out about this museum along the way. It surprised me—there are actually four or six museums in Japan that commemorate the Jewish Holocaust, but there are no museums talking about the Southeast Asia massacres. And as someone from Southeast Asia, I felt angry: why aren’t you letting young people know about this?

But I didn’t ambush the director. I sent him the questions before the interview. I listed the questions I wanted to ask and gave him time to prepare how he wanted to respond.

When I went to the museum, I hired a translator—she later appears in the film. She’s from Hiroshima. People who grew up in Hiroshima are heavily educated in peace education, to remember Hiroshima as a victim of the atomic bomb. So people in Hiroshima can be reluctant to talk about Japan as an invading country—it’s too heavy for them.

Chang: Let’s slow down. Can we go through how Japanese people—especially people in Hiroshima—are educated about what happened during the war?

Ian: I think it’s complicated. Quite a few people in Japan, certainly just after the war—and even the Japanese emperor, Emperor Shōwa, who was emperor during the war—later endorsed the view that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a kind of just punishment for what the Japanese had done.

Another view is that the bombings wiped out Japanese guilt. In other words, the Japanese did terrible things during the war—in China in particular, and in Southeast Asia—but the atom bombs were so terrible that in some ways they cancelled each other out. That’s another fairly common view.

There are also Japanese who feel they suffered more than anybody else, though I’m not sure that’s the dominant view.

Chang: Lau, how was Ayano educated growing up?

Lau: For her education, she was educated mainly as Hiroshima being a victim of the bombing. She saw many pictures of victims. She remembers innocent people—women and children suffering during the atomic bomb.

They don’t really remember that Hiroshima was also an important military center.

Ian: It’s a big base.

Lau: The funny thing is: when I asked Ayano to be the translator for that interview, and I gave her the questions I wanted to ask, she refused to translate for me. For her, she said it was impolite to ask elder Japanese those questions, and she found it hard to translate into Japanese.

That’s why, as you see in the film, the interview is conducted by me in English. It wasn’t originally planned that way. Along the way, she refused to translate for me quite a few times. But even for young Japanese today, it takes time to slowly understand the situation and acknowledge it. That’s what happened for her as well during the filmmaking process. It was difficult for her in the beginning.

Ian: But I don’t think Hiroshima being a big military base was the reason for the atomic bomb. They had run out of cities to bomb—most Japanese cities had already been completely destroyed. There was a list of cities left, and Hiroshima was one of them. So it wasn’t necessarily related to the fact that it was a military center.

But I think there’s another reason Japanese memories don’t involve Southeast Asia as much: Japanese who recognize war crimes focus mostly on what happened in China, because that’s where the bulk of the crimes occurred. China was clearly invaded by Japan.

Whereas the war in Southeast Asia is often seen as a war against European empires and American empires, like in the Philippines. So it’s seen as a conflict between colonial powers, or Japan against colonial powers. That’s why, to the extent there are feelings of guilt in Japan, they may be less pronounced regarding Southeast Asia than regarding China.

Lau: There’s one more interesting thing. During interviews with veterans, there were two kinds of responses. The first kind: as I mentioned, they rejected interviews or stopped in the middle, saying they had headaches or were old, and tried to escape the scene.

The second kind: there was one veteran in Hiroshima. When I went there, he prepared Malay song lyric books, and he tried to speak Malay to me. He had been in Malaysia before, and he spoke Malay. He tried to welcome me as a friend. He said, “I know how to speak Malay, but my children don’t. I was once in Malaya, and you are the first person who came after so many years. I want to practice my Malay with you.”

He kept singing Malay songs in a really happy mode. He stood up, tried to dance, singing in Malay. The scene was chaotic for me—it was totally outside my imagination. I didn’t know what was happening. And you could feel the soldier’s nostalgia for his youth.

This happened with a lot of Taiwanese soldiers as well. They recalled Southeast Asia more like travel. They would say they drank coconut milk, met local girls, fell in love, saw nice houses and scenery—but they didn’t mention war scenes or killings. It’s strange, but it’s also a kind of soft way they tell their memories.

Ian: But it’s not so hard to imagine. Most of those people were very young. They’d never been in another country. Not all of them saw war crimes. It’s easy to imagine that these are memories of youth and adventure. They never really thought about the horrible things that happened, or that they may or may not have witnessed. And to the extent they knew about it, they preferred to forget.

Lau: A lot of that—especially when they mention Manila. Many of them went to Manila before they were sent elsewhere in Southeast Asia. They would say Manila was the most beautiful city they ever saw. Comparing Manila to Taipei at that time, Manila was a totally different cosmopolitan city.

And then imagine after the war—after the Manila massacre—the whole city was almost wiped out. But nowadays, in Taiwan, very few people know about the Manila massacre at all. Yet in these Taiwanese soldiers’ memories, Manila is a beautiful city. They keep mentioning it.

Ian: I wonder how many of those troops would have been involved in the massacre, because that came right at the end of the war. And it was the Japanese marines, I think—and it may very well be that a lot of those Taiwanese were there.

Lau: If you look at the places where Taiwanese soldiers were sent, Manila was one of the biggest hubs. A lot of Taiwanese were there—

Ian: Right, until the end.

Lau: Even former president Lee Teng-hui’s brother was in Manila as well. We know many soldiers sent to Southeast Asia didn’t come back. But we don’t know about the Manila massacre, or how terrible the war was.

Ian: Can I bring it a bit up to date? Relations between China and Japan are very tense. The Japanese prime minister has said Japan might have to use military force if Taiwan were attacked by China. If you think about this, and about attitudes in different parts of Southeast Asia—specifically Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore—how do people react? What is public sentiment toward Japan, and the idea of Japan using military force? What do Taiwanese think, and how does that compare to people in Malaysia?

Lau: If you look at Taiwan, in mainstream media you see slogans like: “If Taiwan is attacked, Japan will help.” This kind of slogan is very popular, and Taiwanese people welcome it.

I guess this is one obstacle for us to recall World War II memory and to acknowledge it. Because if we discuss Japan’s military involvement in Southeast Asia, it would hurt diplomacy between Taiwan and Japan.

That’s why people shy away from discussing these issues—comfort women, and compensation for Taiwanese soldiers. The government isn’t really in a position to discuss it.

For example, we do have comfort women in Taiwan. And as you mentioned, in my film it was treated like a business—stakeholders, businessmen involved in the comfort women system. But we don’t talk about this structure at all.

Even today, there is a comfort women museum in Taipei, but it relies on fundraising every year; it’s not funded by the government. The government doesn’t want it to be a permanent museum for people to remember. If they run out of funds, they can’t operate. That shows what kind of memory the government wants people to have.

In textbooks, comfort women might be mentioned, but only very simply. Meanwhile, a lot of archives and testimonies have been collected by the museum. Taiwan is a developed country—we are rich enough to build a permanent museum—but we don’t really do that.

Ian: And in Malaysia and Singapore, how do people there regard this?

Lau: I think it’s even worse in Malaysia and Singapore. Malaysia has mainly a Malay narrative of World War II. Different ethnic groups remember in different ways—Malays keep silence.

Chinese memory is mostly within the Chinese community. Some volunteer scholars try to write about it, but there isn’t funding to set up memorials. It’s only within the community. I think it applies to the Indian community too. We have separate and divided narratives of World War II memory.

In Singapore, after the war, there was more focus on national development. Even comfort women issues were only brought up more recently. There were comfort women in Singapore, but there isn’t really organized collecting of testimony or research. And Lee Kuan Yew even said openly it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing to have comfort women in Singapore, because he said the system stopped Japanese soldiers from raping local girls.

With that kind of thinking, people are effectively told not to bring up this history too much.

Ian: Yes, but many people in Southeast Asia are worried about China. Are they so worried that they would welcome a stronger Japan, or would war memories still make it difficult for them to accept a stronger Japanese military?

Lau: It’s different from Taiwan. Taiwan is pro-Japan in a very strong way. In Malaysia and Singapore, people are more doubtful about Japan’s intentions. We have traumatic memories passed down. We don’t really trust Japan that much, overall. Taiwan is different—there’s a group of people who believe a stronger Japan will help keep peace in the region.

Chang: Lau, can I ask about how official history is remembered in Malaysia and Singapore, and what you feel hasn’t been confronted yet? In the Japan case, the contrast with Germany is a big topic in the film—the Japanese evasion of their role in Southeast Asia, as well as China. As a Malaysian, what do you think the Malaysian government hasn’t confronted yet, and what would you like them to confront?

Lau: First: how Malays were involved with the Japanese army isn’t really mentioned or discussed. And for the Indian community, how Indians joined the Indian National Army to fight for independence—joining with Japan to “free” Indians—this part of memory isn’t really discussed in Malaysia either. People think: this is just an Indian story, not something to discuss nationally.

And even for Chinese communities, some elements in my film challenge Chinese thinking as well. The mainstream Chinese narrative is that Chinese were totally innocent, and Japanese were evil—it’s a stereotype. “All Japanese are evil, all Chinese are innocent.”

But in my film, as you can see, there’s a village head who was forced to make a decision—if he handed over twelve girls, his village would not be massacred in return. People had to make hard choices. Even within the Chinese community, people faced moral dilemmas—who collaborates with Japan, who doesn’t. But we don’t really discuss that. We keep using memory for nationalist narrative, instead of focusing on individual memory and individual suffering.

That’s also what I’m trying to show with Simon’s grandfather. He was a musician before the war. He was recruited as a translator for the Japanese army, but that doesn’t mean he was born evil. During the time, normal civilians had demands and requests to the Japanese army. Simon’s grandfather was the person they approached, because he could speak Japanese. He was one of the only people who could speak Hokkien and Japanese.

People would bring gifts and ask, “Can you say some good words for us? Can you find out news about someone who was taken?” I’m trying to say: don’t think of him as born evil. He faced tests—moral dilemmas about what kind of person you want to be. He saw Japanese officers taking property from people, and he slowly got involved in the system. That’s what I’m trying to show.

Chang: I have another question, just practically, about screening the film. I’m especially curious what it’s like trying to screen this film in Japan—whether you’ve experienced resistance—and also what it’s been like in Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan.

Lau: It’s very interesting—there’s a lot I can share. There was resistance even in Taiwan. When I screened in Taiwan, some Taiwanese audience members were shocked and frustrated. Some raised their hands and asked me: “Who do you think you are, a Malaysian? Why do you come and dig out our history?” I did face that in Taiwan.

At the same time, when I screened in Malaysia and Singapore, some audience members saw me as Taiwanese. A Singapore audience member raised his hand and said—very angrily—“You Taiwanese, please tell me exactly how many Taiwanese were here during World War II.”

I’m the same person, the same director, the same film. But in Taiwan, I’m treated as Southeast Asian; and in Malaysia and Singapore, they see me as Taiwanese. That’s identity politics. They project an identity onto you.

When I travel to different countries, people see me as the opposite identity. You can see how dominant national war narratives are—how quickly people project “enemy” onto you.

In Japan, there was also resistance. People asked: “What evidence can you show? Is it really true, what you show in the film?” Some accused me of political motives—again, projecting politics onto you.

Chang: That’s a sign that you did a good job. Thank you, Lau. I really appreciate the talk.

Ian: No, it was wonderful. Thank you very, very much.

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Transcript:

Ian:
Hello, I’m Ian Buruma. Today we’re discussing the first female Japanese prime minister, Takaichi Sanae. She’s a hardliner on foreign policy and a social conservative. Her hawkish views on China have unsettled Chinese leaders enough to cause a serious rift between the two countries less than a month after she was elected to lead the governing Liberal Democratic Party.

We’re delighted to discuss the new prime minister and her policies with Matsuda Tokujin, professor of law at Kanagawa University. He has written articles for many publications, including the Los Angeles Times. Professor Matsuda, there are great tensions today between China and Japan. This is nothing new—there is a long history of these tensions—and we’ll get into the details in a minute. But what were your first reactions when you heard about the Chinese response to Takaichi rather hardline views?

Tokujin:
First, good morning to you and everyone. I think in recent decades, what’s happened in Japanese constitutional politics is about the reinterpretation of Article 9. So what is happening today was already warned by many of my colleagues almost 10 years ago—that if the security legislation pushed by Abe was finally passed in 2015, someday a crisis like this would likely happen. So I won’t say I was surprised considering Prime Minister Takaichi’s basic position and her very hawkish style. Of course, she is a spiritual heir of Shinzo Abe. So I don’t think it’s surprising, but still, it happened very, very quickly—right after she became prime minister. I think it was surprising for most Japanese intellectuals or lawyers, because this happened within just one week.

So I think that’s a big difference between her and Abe. Abe basically worked quite quickly to shift the constitutional argument on these basic policies, but even so, it still took two years after he returned to power at the end of 2012.

Ian:
Yes. Just to make clear to everyone what this constitutional issue is about: after World War II, the Americans rewrote the Japanese constitution and inserted the famous Article 9, which bans Japan from using military force in its foreign policy.

Right-wingers, including Abe’s grandfather Kishi Nobusuke—who was a minister during the war—have wanted to change this ever since. It’s not a new policy. She is following, as you say, earlier efforts to change the constitution, but she has been perhaps less diplomatic in her utterances.

Chang:
Before that—talking about 2013—Tokujin, you mentioned there was a shift. Can we go over what that shift was? That was the collective self-defense reinterpretation of the constitution under Abe?

Tokujin:
Yes. As you mentioned, the drafters of the postwar constitution were American lawyers and intellectuals, and most of them were New Deal–minded people. They put the pacifism into the constitution, but they also knew that there was no reason to deny Japan’s right as a nation-state to defend itself. So from the very beginning, Article 9 was never meant as a “suicide clause.”

We use the term “right to individual self-defense,” and that is still constitutional under Article 9. There is no controversy about that. But what Abe did was reinterpret the UN Charter’s notion of “collective self-defense,” and they argued—especially bureaucrats close to Abe in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—that there is no essential difference between individual self-defense and collective self-defense.

But constitutional scholars argued 10 years ago that the idea of collective self-defense is basically a new name for a military offense-defense alliance. As you both know, before World War II, Japan had a military alliance with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. That kind of alliance just has a different name now—“collective self-defense.” And that is not allowed under Article 9.

Ian:
We should perhaps add that some Americans very quickly regretted the constitution they themselves had written. Richard Nixon, when he was vice president under Eisenhower, said it was the biggest mistake the Americans made. But by then, most Japanese were in favor of the pacifist Article 9.

Tokujin:
Yes. In fact, as early as 1948—just one year after the new constitution took effect—the American authorities approached Prime Minister Yoshida and said: the constitution is now in effect, but you will have time to reconsider whether it suits your real politics. If you wish, you can amend it. And Yoshida said no.

Chang:
Let me bring listeners up to what happened. This all starts in early November, when Prime Minister Takaichi is in the Japanese parliament talking about the budget. She’s asked about what circumstances national security spending could be used for. She says that if China were to use force to bring Taiwan under its control, that could constitute a situation threatening Japan’s survival. That’s a key phrase referring to something in the constitution. We can discuss that in a moment. But that triggered a tremendous reaction from China.

The first really surprising reaction was from a Chinese diplomat in Japan—the consul general—who used language suggesting that her head should be cut off.

Ian:
He said, “If a filthy head sticks its neck out, it should be cut off.” It was vulgar and violent—part of what the Chinese call “wolf warrior diplomacy,” but still far more violent than anything Takaichi said.

Chang:
Right. And there’s a standard Japanese phrase he was riffing on, which is… what was it again?

Tokujin:
“Kubi wo tsukkomuna” (首を突っ込むな).

Chang:
“Kubi wo tsukkomuna”—which metaphorically means “don’t stick your nose into others’ affairs.” It’s common, and no one imagines literal heads being stuck anywhere. But he added, essentially, “If you do, it will get cut off.” He turned the metaphor literal—that’s why it went too far.

Tokujin:
I would say it was a mistake. He is an excellent Japanese speaker—very few Chinese diplomats communicate with ordinary people on social media. He was trying to use expressions ordinary people understand. But that’s very risky for a diplomat.

Chang:

So he used a Chinese sensibility but brought it into Japanese—and for Japanese speakers, it sounded extreme. And the English translation sounds just as crazy.

Ian:

But did Takaichi actually mean to deny that Taiwan is part of China? Or did she mean that a military attack on Taiwan would threaten Japan’s security—for example because China would dominate the sea lanes? Isn’t that more what she meant?

Tokujin:
If you’re familiar with postwar diplomatic history between China and Japan on Taiwan, it’s clear she crossed a red line. There’s no doubt. In that parliamentary exchange, she referred to China as the “Beijing authorities”—a wording not used since 1972. That implies equivalence between the governments in Beijing and Taipei.

Ian:
Do you think if China were to attack Taiwan, it would in fact be a serious threat to Japan?

Tokujin:
That’s controversial. Western intellectuals like to ask such theoretical questions, but I don’t think even Takaichi takes that claim seriously. Ten years ago, Japanese constitutional scholars already pointed out that if you say an attack on a third state constitutes a threat to Japan’s survival, you are essentially treating Taiwan as part of Japan’s security sphere. That’s a revival of a pre-war idea. In 1972 Japan agreed there would be no such security sphere.

Ian:
But after World War II, the deal was that Japan could focus on rebuilding its economy while relying on the U.S. for security. Now, with Trump, many countries aren’t sure the U.S. would defend them. If Taiwan were attacked, we don’t know whether a Trump administration would defend it. In that case, Japan becomes more perilous.

Tokujin:
If the majority of Japanese people want that, they should amend the constitution. They should tell China they regret the 1972 consensus and want to renegotiate. But Takaichi’s government says they haven’t changed the 1972 interpretation.

Ian:
The Yomiuri or the Asahi—I can’t remember—tried in the 80s or 90s to start a national debate on amending Article 9. It didn’t take. Would you favor such a debate?

Tokujin:
I think, as a constitutional scholar, there should be a debate. On this, Professor Bruce Ackerman has a very good line of argument. He always says there should be a referendum on the postwar constitution; otherwise, there will always be doubts about its legitimacy—because it was imposed by the United States, and so on.

But on the other hand, if you look at the polls, especially for Article 9, it still enjoys very, very high popularity among the Japanese people. So why not have a debate and put it to a referendum? And if a majority of voters choose to keep Article 9, then it will have stronger legitimacy.

What has happened in the political history of modern Japan, unfortunately, is that most structural changes are never put to public debate. Politicians always try to do it by reinterpretation, or by changing the wording.

I told Chang yesterday that I first noticed something bad might happen right after the APEC summit, when Prime Minister Takaichi met Xi Jinping. After that, both sides released a press statement. Normally those statements say the two leaders have confirmed the “four documents” from 1972 onward that constitute the consensus. But this time, on the Japanese side, the press release did not mention that both sides confirmed the four documents. As a lawyer, I found that unusual.

Chang:
This is the 1972 Sino-Japanese Joint Statement, where Japan said it “fully understands and respects” the position of the People’s Republic of China.

Ian:
You grew up in Taiwan. What is your sense of Taiwanese public opinion on this? Would they support Takaichi’s statement? Would they welcome it, or does it alarm them?

Tokujin:
Taiwan is very politically divided now. Those who support the current government—the DPP—basically share Mr. Lai’s sense that both the United States and Japan should assist, or potentially even dispatch military forces to defend Taiwan.

Mr. Lai personally has a strong preference for Japan. After he assumed the presidency, his cabinet appointed a retired Japanese military officer as an advisor. That’s in strong tension with the 1972 consensus. But that is the DPP’s stance: they want Japan to join this kind of military alliance.

On the other hand, there is a large population strongly opposed to the DPP, who do not want war with China. Some of them, especially those with mainlander family backgrounds, feel very deeply hurt by the desire to have a military alliance with a former enemy state. So it’s deeply divided.

Ian:
You’re talking really about the Kuomintang, the Nationalist Party, and its voters. The last time I was in Taiwan—during the 2020 election—I was told that among younger Taiwanese there’s less distinction between those whose grandparents came from the mainland and those whose roots are in Taiwan: even those with mainlander grandparents feel mainly Taiwanese now.

Tokujin:
Yes, but I think there’s an important difference between Tsai Ing-wen’s approach and Mr. Lai’s. President Tsai has focused more on a Taiwanese consensus, regardless of family history. Mr. Lai is more “localist”; he has stronger personal feelings against mainlanders.

Ian:
Can I come back to what I said earlier? The Trump administration has really changed perceptions. One reason the current government in Taiwan might be more pro-Japan is not only nostalgia or anti-mainland feeling, but fear that the United States would not defend them if they were attacked. So they feel they have to be closer to Japan because that would be their only defense.

Tokujin:
That trend began about 30 years ago, under Lee Teng-hui. I think he was the first Taiwanese leader to try to get Japan deeply involved in Taiwan issues. In his later years, he faced a situation where President Clinton visited China and US–China relations seemed very good, so he worried that Taiwan would be abandoned by the United States.

Lee was a very good Japanese speaker. He appealed to ordinary Japanese by saying: you have lost the “Japanese spirit” after World War II. That’s why so many Japanese right-wingers were so enthusiastic about him.

Ian:
And that “Japanese spirit” is also part of Takaichi’s politics, isn’t it? Like Abe, she wants to revive the Japanese spirit, promote patriotic education, and so on. How far do you think that will go in Japan?

Tokujin:
I don’t think, if she pushes it as a general issue—“we should go back to prewar values”—that it will work. That’s too broad. But I think she’s “lucky” in a sense because now you have Trump. Trump appeals to a kind of xenophobic, ethnic-nationalist sentiment. If you translate that into the Japanese context, today’s Japan is very inward-looking and closed. People are not used to interacting with foreigners, even if the government tries to cope with globalization. Japanese people are still very local, very inward-looking. They’re not willing to learn about international politics in depth.

And now they see so many foreigners on the streets speaking languages they don’t understand and behaving in ways they don’t understand. So there is a concrete sense of anxiety: “These foreigners are now here, just in front of us—like aliens from Mars invading Earth.”

Ian:
And many of those “aliens” are Chinese. Abe, as you say, encouraged tourism and foreign workers because the country needs them. Would you say Takaichi—at least rhetorically—is more xenophobic and hardline than Abe?

Tokujin:
At this point, I can’t say exactly where she will go. There are contradictions in her own background. She was born into a conservative middle-class family, but she went to the United States and worked as an assistant to Pat Schroeder.

Chang:
Pat Schroeder, by the way, is a Democratic congresswoman from Colorado.

Tokyjin:
Yes, and a feminist. I almost laughed when Takaichi said, right after she was elected LDP president, that she would “abandon work–life balance” to do everything to save the country. The idea of work–life balance was exactly what Pat Schroeder introduced into US law.

So it’s difficult to judge whether Takaichi is really a right-wing ideologue, or whether she is playing the role of a right-wing politician. Abe endorsed globalization, but he also understood conservative anxiety. So he emphasized prewar values, spiritual mobilization, militarization, and so on.

Takaichi now faces a more difficult situation, because people are suffering from the legacy of Abe’s policies. Globalization cannot be reversed, and she has no real power to change that trend. But the LDP’s conservative base is weakening. It’s like what a common-law scholar at Harvard Law School—Andrew—said about Trump: critics missed the point; this is no longer a question of right vs. left but of upper vs. lower.

Japanese society is entering a dangerous phase: many former middle-class people are becoming lower class economically. They are conservative, and they don’t want to rely on social welfare. They want to say, “I have a job, I run a business, I did well, so the government must protect us from foreign pressure and competition.” Because of this, Takaichi will be pushed to rely more on spiritual mobilization and premodern slogans.

You may see a very interesting coexistence in her government: postmodern economy and premodern spiritual mobilization living side by side.

Chang:
We’ve talked a bit about this spiritual mobilization and about Takaichi’s hawkish views. I want to ask, going forward, what you anticipate.

Back to what happened after her comments: China has encouraged its citizens not to travel to Japan. For context, about half of Japan’s GDP growth last year—around 1.5%—came from tourism, and a large share of that tourism was Chinese. So there will be a significant economic impact. I asked a Chinese friend yesterday whether she thought these government warnings would work, and she said she believed a significant portion of people would obey them. We’ll see.

There is also the seafood ban, reimposed after the Fukushima water release. Japanese films have been canceled. I was in Beijing and planning to go to a show by a Japanese jazz musician. The band was rehearsing when the police came in and told the venue it had to be canceled—and that happened across the country.

So clearly there is a significant impact. Based on Takaichi’s views—and she has not really walked back her statements—Tokujin, what do you think is in store over the next few months? Will this pass? Will it escalate? If it escalates, where? Economic sanctions back and forth? You have a pretty pessimistic view, right? You told me you think this is the new status quo.

Tokujin:
Yes. I don’t think there is room for the Chinese Communist Party to walk back. Their legitimacy now almost entirely comes from a 100-year narrative of Chinese nationalism—a sad story of unfortunate conflicts between Japan and China. Taiwan is the most symbolic issue. So I see no room for either side to walk back.

Ian:
Do you think Takaichi should walk back? Should the Japanese government soften its stance on China?

Tokujin:
Two days ago, the Chief Cabinet Secretary held a press conference and clearly said that Takaichi’s statement went beyond the traditional government interpretation on Taiwan. And because of that, it created misunderstanding for the Chinese government. So, as a matter of logic, the Japanese government has admitted that she said something different—maybe a bit too far—from the traditional scope.

If that’s the case, I think she should walk back.

Ian:
There’s another potential problem. One way wars can be avoided is when governments clearly understand each other’s intentions. In this case, everything is very fuzzy. The Chinese government, as you say, is highly nationalistic and wants to expand its power—that’s fairly clear. But the US government has deliberately left it unclear whether they would defend Taiwan. The Chinese don’t know; probably Donald Trump himself doesn’t know.

The Japanese are constrained by their constitution. They reinterpret it, but as you pointed out, it still doesn’t allow overseas warfare. Takaichi’s government clearly feels Japan should be able to defend Taiwan, but nothing is certain. So these countries don’t really know one another’s intentions, and that’s risky.

Tokujin:
I agree. If China were trying to impose its political or social system on Japan, I would say clearly: we don’t want that. But China is a neighbor. It’s a foreign country. Since the Bandung Conference, there have been “five principles” of peaceful coexistence, including non-interference in internal affairs. Japan made such a promise to China in 1972.

Some argue that warfare in the Taiwan Strait could threaten Japan’s economy and constitute some kind of emergency, but this is not something a new prime minister should announce in her first week. When you stand up in parliament and make your foreign and domestic policy preferences clear, and the first thing you mention is Taiwan, what does that mean for Japanese society—given there is no consensus on this?

And the polling questions are misleading. They’re like asking, “Would you like a new house after 80 years?” Most people will say yes. But that’s different from asking which part of the house they want to tear down and what to rebuild. Constitutional change is like that.

Ian:
I think that’s a very interesting way to end. Chang, do you have any more questions?

Chang:
I wanted to pause on the question of intentions with respect to Takaichi’s comment. I don’t think she expected this kind of reaction from China. I think she was speaking mainly to a domestic audience. She has branded herself as the first female prime minister, an assertive figure in Japanese politics. It’s part of her political DNA to say something a bit provocative.

I’m curious what you think about her as the first female prime minister—what that means for Japan. Ian, you’ve written about her and compared her to Thatcher. She has explicitly said Thatcher is a role model: a woman willing to be as assertive and confident as the men in the old boys’ club of England or Japan. What do you both think about her and the meaning of having a first female prime minister?

Tokujin:
I think Ian wrote a very interesting essay about her, and I mostly agree. I wouldn’t label her as a “natural” right-winger or say she’s ideologically hawkish. The deeper problem is structural. In Japan’s social structure, there is very little room for a woman like Takaichi who is not from a political dynasty, is smart, is ambitious, and wants to enter politics.

For such ambitious newcomers—men or women—there is a very strong incentive to act hawkish and right-wing. That’s how you get votes. My friend and colleague, Professor Koichi Nakano, talks about “air nationalism”: a nationalistic mood in the air. For politicians who are not as secure in their districts as someone like Ishiba, they need votes from organized conservative groups—such as religious right-wing organizations like the Unification Church—and then they add on this “air nationalism” to secure their political success.

Professor Ueno Chizuko, a famous feminist intellectual, has said she’s not happy that the first female prime minister is so conservative, like Thatcher. I understand that. But I also think this is a structural problem.

Ian:
There is one good thing: she has proven that a woman can become prime minister of Japan. That’s already a breakthrough. Otherwise, I agree with Ueno—she’s not going to do much for women’s rights.

On her statement, I’d add that there is a perennial problem in Japan: so few people outside Japan speak Japanese, and many Japanese don’t speak other languages. Because Japan is so inward-looking, politicians often speak as though nobody outside Japan will ever hear or read what they say. That’s happened before. Prime Minister Nakasone once said that America’s problem was that it had so many non-white citizens, which held the country back. He assumed no one abroad would understand the Japanese, but of course it was picked up immediately.

I suspect when Japanese public figures talk, they assume no one outside Japan can read or understand Japanese, so it will go unnoticed. It’s possible that Takaichi, aiming largely at a domestic audience, did not think through the consequences abroad—especially in China. I don’t think she could be that naïve; she probably knew the Chinese would react, just not so strongly. And some reaction may actually work to her advantage domestically, because it shows she’s standing up to “big China,” which many Japanese will applaud.

Chang:
She’s certainly made her mark internationally, too. Her audience may also include Americans, who have clearly come in to back her. So it’s not necessarily a bad thing for her.

Ian:
No, but Americans have always been ambivalent about Japan’s security role. On the one hand—like Trump—they tell the Japanese to rearm, to take more responsibility, to be more hawkish. On the other hand, they want to keep control over what happens in East Asia and don’t want the Japanese to become too independent. This puts all Japanese governments in a bind.

Chang:
That sounds like a great place to end. Thank you, Tokujin. I really appreciate it.

Ian:
Thank you very, very much.

Tokujin:
Thank you very much.

For over a century, that idea has found converts in East Asia. In this episode, Ian and I talk about how beliefs about Jewish power manifested in Chinese and Japanese life from the 20th century to the present. If you would like to support the production of this podcast further, please consider donating using the button linked in this post. If you want to provide continuous support, please consider pledging.

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Chang:
I want to start with the article you wrote for The New Yorker about antisemitism, which doesn’t really touch on East Asia specifically. Let’s begin with how you got into this topic. I know you have Jewish ancestry on your mother’s side and you’ve written a book about your maternal grandparents. Did you ever experience antisemitism growing up?

Ian:
No, not directly. My mother was Jewish by origin, but her family wasn’t religious at all, so we didn’t lead a Jewish life or observe traditions. I didn’t personally experience antisemitism. I might have heard the odd antisemitic remark, but I grew up in the Netherlands, which had been occupied by Nazi Germany. For a long time — certainly when I was growing up — overt antisemitism was taboo. That’s changed a bit now as memories of World War II fade; we’re already in the third generation since the war, and people don’t feel quite so constrained. But when I was young, you didn’t hear much about it.

It was really when I went to Japan, at age 23 or 24, to study, that I first encountered it in a sort of naïve way. In Europe, people didn’t talk much about Jews; the word itself would sometimes be spoken in a lowered voice, as if it were embarrassing. But in Japan, there was no such embarrassment — they had no experience of Nazi occupation or the Holocaust. Their historical problems had more to do with what Japan did in China and the rest of Asia.

If people heard that I had Jewish ancestry, they would say things like, “Oh, that’s interesting — Jews are very clever, very good at making money,” and so forth. It was all said in a completely naïve spirit, not hostile. A few years before I arrived in Japan, there had been a bestseller called The Japanese and the Jews, written by a right-wing Japanese author, arguing that the Japanese and Jews were “kindred peoples,” discriminated against by others, outsiders in the world, “people of the book,” and so on. It had a somewhat sinister overtone, as he was a nativist who thought in racial terms. But again, he admired the Jews as an admirably tribal people — and saw the Japanese as similar.

Chang:
The point of that book was to elevate the Japanese — to say they were on equal footing with this kind of tribal and talented Jewish people.

Ian:
Yes, very much so. And this idea — that Jews are clever, powerful, tribal people who “pull strings” behind the scenes — has a long history in Japan. The logic was: one should try to stay on their good side.

Chang:
How did reactions to your Jewish ancestry differ in other parts of Asia?

Ian:
Not at all, at least not personally. But what was interesting — and disturbing to some — were the periodic scandals, usually picked up by the Western press, when naïve fascinations with Hitler or Nazi imagery were discovered. For example, there was a coffee shop in Seoul that called itself “Gestapo.” Western reporters jumped on it as proof that Koreans needed to be educated. The Israeli embassy protested, and so on. Similar things happened in Taiwan, even though the government discouraged such things.

There’s a fascination in parts of East Asia with uniforms and with Hitler as a strongman — “厉害,” as the Chinese might say. And remember, the biggest source of neo-Nazi memorabilia is actually the United States, because of First Amendment protections. But in the West, Nazi symbols are never innocent — they’re used by actual neo-Nazis. In East Asia, the fascination is often naïve, because people aren’t aware of how painful the associations are, especially with the Holocaust.

Chang:
When the Japanese reacted to your Jewish ancestry positively, it came from a stereotype — one that you write about in your article, which goes back to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Can you explain how modern antisemitism emerged and why the term was coined in the late 19th century?

Ian:
It emerged really in the 19th century. Antisemitism, or forms of prejudice or hatred against Jews, are very old — and they used to be primarily religious. When there was a plague in parts of Europe, for example, it was often blamed on the Jews. But the modern form of antisemitism was really a reaction to the modern state: the rise of the rule of law, equal citizenship, large cities as centers of finance, and the emancipation of Jews from their former status as a discriminated minority without the same rights as the majority.

This caused resentment among people who felt that the nation-state, as it evolved in the 19th century, should not simply be a political entity based on law and equal rights. They believed the nation-state should be rooted in ancestry and bloodlines. And the fact that Jews were now citizens of these nation-states posed a problem for them, because Jews were not considered part of the “real people.” They were seen as infiltrators — impostors or parasites. That’s the basis of modern antisemitism in Europe and, to some extent, in the United States.

Now, this is why The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a tract written by a Russian in the late 19th century, was so powerful. It was a falsification suggesting that the real power in the world was wielded by a secret cabal of Jews acting behind the scenes and pulling the strings. And this fit perfectly with the antisemitic notion that Jews were infiltrators who secretly held real power.

The connection with Japan is that Japan fought a war with Russia in 1905. During the war, Japan was running out of money and was bailed out by a Jewish banker in New York, Jacob Schiff, who floated war bonds and kept Japan financed until it defeated Russia. Later, Japanese officers encountered Russians who introduced them to the Protocols, and Japanese “Jewish experts” in the army put two and two together: Jacob Schiff had bailed them out — so that, to them, proved the enormous power of Jewish finance. Their conclusion, interestingly, wasn’t that the Jews should be exterminated, but that Japan should stay on their side.

This had consequences in World War II. When Jews were fleeing Europe, one of the few places they could obtain visas for was Shanghai. When the Japanese occupied Shanghai, the Germans asked them to hand over the Jews so they could be sent to death camps — and the Japanese refused. Partly they didn’t want to be ordered around by the Germans, and partly because they believed Jews were powerful and should not be made into enemies.

That didn’t mean being a Jewish refugee in Shanghai in the 1930s and ’40s was a picnic. There was an area called Little Vienna with pastry shops and synagogues, but many people were poor and life was rough — though still far better than Europe.

Chang:
Right. And the reason Shanghai was relatively open to Jewish refugees was that it was run by foreign concessions. China didn’t control immigration there at the time. So tens of thousands of Jewish refugees were able to go to Shanghai as a refuge. Have you heard of the Fugu Plan? It refers to a plan Japan had, I think in the 1930s, after occupying Shanghai, to resettle Jewish refugees in Manchuria. Are you familiar with that?

Ian:
Yes, I’ve heard of that. There were tensions between the Jewish community in Manchuria — Manchukuo, this supposedly “independent” multiracial state that was really a Japanese colony — and the Jews in Shanghai. In Harbin, there was a large Russian Jewish community that had fled Russia. The Japanese made friends with them; there are photographs of banquets hosted by the local Japanese military governor with Jewish notables, Star of David flags crossed with the Japanese flag, and so on. The Russian Jews were keen to keep this relationship warm for their own protection.

But the Jews in Shanghai were appalled. They said: how can you collaborate with an ally of Nazi Germany? This is wrong — stop. It caused a major conflict between the two communities.

Chang:
In your article, you talk about this traditional Jewish effort to combat antisemitism that you associate with what you call the left-liberal universalist tradition. Could you explain that and connect it to what was happening in France during the Dreyfus Affair? My understanding is that this idea emerged partly in reaction to the right-wing conservative approach to antisemitism. Is that right?

Ian:
Yes. In the late 19th century, there was a lot of violent antisemitism in Eastern Europe and Russia, and some in Western Europe. The Dreyfus case brought everything to the surface. Captain Dreyfus, a patriotic French army officer from Alsace — sometimes part of Germany, sometimes part of France — was bilingual, from a Jewish family but not religious. First and foremost, he was a French patriot.

France had lost a humiliating war to Prussia in 1871. When someone in the army was found to have betrayed secrets to the Germans, elements in the French army immediately accused Dreyfus because he was Jewish, spoke German, and was considered untrustworthy. There was a trumped-up trial based on falsified evidence. He was convicted and sent to Devil’s Island, where he endured solitary confinement under horrific conditions.

Public opinion split. The Dreyfusards, who believed he was innocent, were generally liberal, republican, pro–rule of law. The anti-Dreyfusards tended to be conservative, authoritarian, Catholic, monarchist, anti–French Revolution. It wasn’t just about Jews — it was about two competing visions of the nation-state.

Jews themselves were shocked. Theodor Herzl, covering the trial as a reporter, concluded that the only way Jews could be safe was to have their own state — the beginning of Zionism. Others drew the opposite conclusion: that Jews should find common cause with other oppressed peoples in an internationalist movement. Many on the left embraced this universalist approach.

Those two visions remain alive today. You see them in American politics: right-wing populists who see the nation as belonging to the “real people” versus liberal and internationalist traditions. And the same dynamics appeared during the pro-Palestinian demonstrations after the recent attacks and war.

Chang:
I was interested to read that when Zionism was first proposed, many Jews were skeptical. They worried it would reinforce the idea that Jews were not loyal citizens. Can you explain those reservations?

Ian:
Yes. Many established Jews — successful professionals in France, Britain, Germany — were strongly against Zionism. They feared founding a Jewish state would undermine their standing as loyal citizens, suggesting their ultimate loyalty lay elsewhere. So they opposed it. And as Israel became more right-wing over time, admiration for Israel shifted to right-wing nativists in other countries, who appreciated its “tribal” aspects. Meanwhile, many Jews today support Palestinians for internationalist reasons rooted in that older tradition.

Chang:
This universalist tradition begins to weaken around World War II as the Holocaust unfolds, and the idea of a Jewish state becomes more necessary, right?

Ian:
Yes. Many Holocaust survivors had no homes to return to. Immigration was difficult. Creating a state became a tragic necessity. Another factor is that, in the eyes of German and French antisemites, America had long been associated with Jews — even before Israel. America welcomed immigrants; citizenship wasn’t based on bloodlines. So antisemites saw America as a “mongrel” nation where Jews had too much influence — in Hollywood, Wall Street, everywhere. This imagery predates the modern US–Israel relationship and shaped East Asian perceptions too.

Chang:
You write that antisemitism and Israel eventually become inseparable. When did that happen, and why?

Ian:
Around the 1973 war. Jews in America and elsewhere felt Israel’s survival was existential. Before that, most Jews didn’t strongly identify with Israel unless they were Zionists. But as Jewish religious tradition weakened — more secularism, more intermarriage — identification with Israel and the Holocaust partly replaced older forms of Jewish identity.

Chang:
Fast-forward to the present. You write that roles traditionally held by those resisting antisemitism and those perpetuating it have reversed in some way. What do you mean?

Ian:
Israel has become more tribal. But there is also antisemitism among some pro-Palestinian demonstrators — treating Israel as uniquely evil, comparing Jews to Nazis. That connects to anti-American sentiment. But many demonstrators are motivated by genuine solidarity with persecuted people, consistent with older internationalist traditions.

On the other side, those who defend Israel “tooth and nail” are often right-wing tribal nationalists. This mirrors the split of the Dreyfus era. And similar dynamics appear in Japan, Korea, and China — between liberals who favor rule of law and those who favor blood-and-soil nationalism.

In China, ideas about “true Han identity” go back to resistance against Mongol and Manchu rule, but modern racial thinking was heavily influenced by 19th-century European racial theories, often transmitted via Japan.

Chang:
In your article, you mention campus protests. Where do you draw the line? What would you consider antisemitic?

Ian:
Support for Hamas, certainly. But I think people who believe that the Jewish state does not have the right to exist can be classified as antisemites. People who feel that it does not have the right to exist solely because of the way that the Israeli jews treat the Palestinians, I think is wrong because other countries have had terrible atrocities, but nobody feels that they don’t have the right to exist.

So I think that’s a line. I don’t know how that is linked to views expressed in East Asia. I think back to the first Gulf War, which I think illustrated something that is quite common in East Asia. And this is, again, the notion that there are people, there’s a hidden hand behind the scenes that is really pulling the strings.

And during the first Gulf War, when Iraq invaded Kuwait and an international coalition led by the United States pushed Iraq out of Kuwait, I wrote an article about how people in Germany and Japan responded to the war. And I interviewed a conservative politician in the conservative Japanese ruling party, the Liberal Democrats. We talked about oil and the reasons for the war in Iraq. And then he suddenly cut me off and he said, “Look, we’re adults. We know what this is really about. I saw Henry Kissinger on television. We know what the real story here is. We just can’t really say so.” I think that says a lot about what is perceived as antisemitism in East Asia.

And that goes back to a long history of Western colonialism and Western dominance — that in confusing times, people find comfort in conspiracy theories that clarify where the real power lies. The Jewish conspiracy theory is one of these stock theories that keeps being trotted out in times of confusion in East and West. In East Asia, it’s particularly appealing because it’s so tied to the United States. And so, where people feel that they’re being dominated by American power, many people are persuaded that this American power is really Jewish power.

Chang:
Yeah, so I’ll talk a little bit about the Chinese case. So in my experience, similar to you, I think when Chinese generally think about the Jewish people, ordinary Chinese think these people are really rich and they’re really good at making money.

And I think there’s a kind of fascination and admiration for them. The times when I see Chinese move closer to antisemitism tend to be among nationalists, people who generally take a worldview that is predicated on seeing American power through the lens of something more nefarious than the American view, which tends to have a much more moralizing tone.

Nationalists in China hate that. They want to change that view and they want to say, no, America is powerful because of capitalism. And that kind of view, to just sort of flatten America’s moral — the kind of moral cushion that hovers around American power — and flatten it to capitalism, that kind of instinct grafts really easily onto an antisemitic view among nationalists. So they can easily say, instead of “capitalists,” it’s the Jews who are controlling the American media and Hollywood, because that’s the instinct of the nationalists in China.

I think the first kind of really big burst, or the most recent big burst, of antisemitic content in China really started with October 7. There was a famous commentator who said Hamas was too gentle, because what Israel was doing is effectively playing the role of the Nazis today. That kind of classic association was actually quite popular in the Chinese media at the time. You certainly don’t hear that among actual political leaders. But it’s interesting to note that these accounts were not censored. Because in China they have a tremendous amount of censors; you can censor anything that they feel is a little bit too far. And recently there was a social media influencer that was censored because he said something a little bit too strong on Taiwan. He said something like, the minute China invades Taiwan, I’m going to donate X thousands of dollars to the Chinese military. And he got censored because of that.

So clearly the Chinese government has red lines — even on the nationalist side, there’s a bit of a limit to what can be said in the Chinese media space. But I haven’t seen any of the antisemitic comments being censored, which I think is quite interesting. I wonder if it’s because it might serve some kind of function. I haven’t really thought about exactly the reasons why. But one possibility that I’ve read is that over the past five, ten years, the Americans have been pushing China on its human rights abuses in Xinjiang and against Muslim minorities.

And so there’s a little bit of whataboutism going on, which is like: look at the American Jewish role in Israel and what they’re doing to the Palestinians. How can the Americans lecture us on our treatment of Muslim minorities when America is supplying bombs to Israel to bomb Palestinians? So there’s a little bit of that, I think, and allowing the Chinese nationalists to really go after America on that, I think, is helpful from a kind of moral, diplomatic perspective.

Ian:
Yeah, no, that’s very interesting. But we haven’t mentioned this, that China is the only country in East Asia that had a Jewish minority, a Chinese Jewish minority.

They’ve died out now, but since at least the Song dynasty, there’s been a community of mostly, apparently, Persian Jews who settled in Kaifeng. I think by the 19th century, they completely assimilated into the Chinese majority, but there were families, I think still, I’ve heard stories where people say, in our family, we never eat pork. There are little bits left of it, but not much.

Chang:
The last question for you, Ian, is that you live in New York. There is a mayoral race. Zohran Mamdani has said that he doesn’t support Israel as long as it’s specifically a Jewish state. And recently, there has been this massive criticism from rabbis who wrote this letter saying that Mamdani being elected is going to imperil the safety and dignity of Jews everywhere.

First, I want to get your thoughts on that. So what are your impressions of Mamdani and the debate about Mamdani threat to Jewish safety? Do you buy that?

Ian:
Mamdani, in public, has somewhat softened his stance on his views on what he called, I think, global jihad and so on.

But I think whether one agrees with Mamdani politics or not, I don’t for a moment think that he’s a danger to the safety of American Jews. I think that’s an absurd overreaction. I don’t see how, even if he’s openly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, highly critical of Israel, even if he believes that Israel should not be defined as a Jewish state, that’s his belief.

He’s not in the Israeli government. He’s never said that the Jews are not fully fledged American citizens with the same rights as other Americans. If he were to say that — if he were to say Jews, by definition, are sympathetic to Israel, and since I think Israel should not be a Jewish state, Jews should not have similar rights in New York, which he doesn’t say and would never say — then I would also feel that he’s a threat. But that’s not the case. That will never be the case; that never was the case. And so I don’t think he’s a danger to Jews in America.

Chang:
Great. Thank you, Ian. I appreciate it.

Ian:
Not at all.

Yun Zhou is a social demographer at the University of Michigan who specializes in family policy and gender in contemporary China. She joined us to discuss:

What makes East Asia’s demographic decline different from that of the West? As women entered the workforce in Asia, how did they define and discover freedom and fulfillment between the expectations of the family and the workplace? And in China, how has the one- and two-child policies—and the parallel tide of economic reforms—reshape desires in marriage and child-bearing among young adults?

Summary:

• 02:37 – What makes demographic challenges distinct in East Asia

• 06:24 – How men and women differ in approaching cohabitation.

• 09:41 – Does the rigidity og nuclear families in East Asia explain lower birth rates?

• 10:41 – Childbearing as an “unmet desire”

• 18:23 – The universality of the “two-child ideal”

• 21:12 – Evolving conceptions of masculinity in China and Japan.

• 26:24 – Why East Asia lags behind the West in alternative forms of family arrangements (e.g., LGBTQ+ rights, single parents).

• 29:24 – The roots behind “leftover women” and “leftover men”

• 35:58 – Do China’s pro-natalist policies work? (e.g., subsidies, retirement age hikes)

• 39:25 – The growing political divide between men and women.

• 41:29 – The Taylor Swift “betrayal,” and the 4B movement.

• 45:30 – Reasons for optimism around demographic decline.

Transcript:

Chang: In May 2021, China rolled out its three-child policy, which allowed women to have three children without the fines and penalties associated with the previous two-child policy. It was in response to a deepening demographic crisis where birth rates have fallen well below replacement level. The problem is already visible in Japan and South Korea and increasingly in the United States and Europe.

The three-child policy also reveals the sometimes explicit ways that modern governments get preoccupied with the most intimate spheres of our lives—whether we have children or not—regardless of whether you’re in a liberal or autocratic government. Reproduction has been intimately connected to a state’s economic vitality, its financial health, and social stability. Given the intensity of the low birth rate problem in East Asia, the region is something of a bellwether for how Western governments might successfully—or unsuccessfully—respond to demographic decline.
Everyone is watching.

To help us make sense of this landscape, we’re joined by Yun Zhou, a social demographer from the University of Michigan. Yun specializes in the demographics of East Asia. She’s currently writing a book about gender and population politics in China. We’re lucky to have you.

Yun: Thank you for having me.

Chang: So first, I wanted to ask if you could just talk a bit about your main research interests.

Yun:
So for me, the question has always been: What does it mean to be an independent, autonomous person with the possibility of living a life of one’s own when that life is constantly under the scrutiny and control of some kind of autocratic forces—be that government, be that the patriarchy, be that the market—and how do people, and women especially, carve out spaces for themselves?

Chang: So you mentioned that you’re interested in some of the ways that women are being restricted, either through patriarchy or autocratic authoritarian governments. That’s quite broad, and that makes me think that in some ways, that’s happening everywhere, right?

So I’m wondering: When you talk to other social demographers who focus on the United States and Europe, are you noticing anything that might be distinctive when you look at specifically China, Japan, and Korea—these three countries that have been influenced by Confucian culture? Is there anything that stands out to you looking at those three countries relative to the West?

Yun: One thing that I think is quite distinctive, especially to China, is the place of the market. How do these women, in particular, see themselves in relation to market forces? For example, when we talk about neoliberal democracies, a lot of the social critiques come around the social ills that are engendered by the unencumbered forces of market advances. And we kind of see the state’s social provisions as a kind of solution to that. But when we talk about China, in particular, it becomes quite interesting how these women see the market as kind of a way in which it becomes a countervailing force to the patriarchal family demand.

So it becomes almost like, by being engaged in the market and being, quote-unquote, “commodified,” one at least gets herself out of the dependence on family for life, for her livelihood.

Ian: But when you say “commodified,” you mean that women get jobs and become part-players in the marketplace and therefore less dependent on men and family relationships?

Yun: Absolutely. And they see jobs and they see employment as kind of the ticket out. So when Chinese women, in particular, talk about the incompatibility between childbearing and work, there is a strong sense of not wanting to jeopardize one’s career, and there is a strong sense about labor market discrimination being front and center in their calculations about whether and when to have children.

Another thing that’s interesting about China, Japan, and South Korea is women viewing childbearing—or the retreat from childbearing—with a kind of feminist ethos: whether this possibly could be a way of rejecting the heteronormative patriarchy. Could the very private act of having or not having children, entering or not entering into heterosexual marriages, could these very private acts—within the context of China, Japan, South Korea being deeply patriarchal—could these private acts become an act of resistance? And that is something that I think is particularly salient and striking about the East Asian context as we are observing.

Ian: But I think I read something that you wrote about this, and you made the point that men—and we’re talking about educated people, obviously—but that men in China, and possibly in other countries in East Asia, were more keen than women to live together before they get married, and that men didn’t seem to find it all that important whether it would end in marriage or not. Whereas women did, and women did want to see even cohabitation as a way to get married. Is this the case, and why would you think that’s true?

Yun: Yeah, that’s a paper that I wrote a couple years ago about how women and men attach different meanings to cohabitation. And one of the backgrounds for that paper was: Oftentimes, people think about changing families and whether family has become in some way deinstitutionalized, meaning that the norms and the scripts and the rules surrounding family are becoming less solidified.

One of the telltale signs of family becoming deinstitutionalized is there is a rise of cohabitation, and people kind of see cohabitation as either a replacement of marriage or a precursor to marriage. But in any case, cohabitation becomes more prevalent, and that’s indeed kind of the story that we see from the United States, North America, Western European context.

But in China, what was interesting was: On the one hand, there is somewhat uptick in cohabitation, but still men and women are attaching deeply contradictory meanings to cohabitation. They see cohabitation so differently.

So for men, it was indeed that cohabitation—it would be nice to cohabit and test out whether the marriage can be compatible—but it’s not really a big deal if cohabitation falls apart. Basically, the men see themselves as really having not much to lose.

Whereas for women, there’s—despite these being highly educated women, despite these being women who have more or less liberalizing attitudes toward cohabitation—still they see themselves as having something to lose. That something could be reputational damage. And very interestingly, a lot of the concerns and hesitation surrounding reputation was about unplanned pregnancies and disease.

So for those women who then decide to cohabit, the stake was higher. And for those women who then do decide to cohabit, there was a strong incentive about: This cohabitation has to lead somewhere. So it kind of tells a story that, despite the liberalizing attitude and behavior surrounding cohabitation, the underlying gender scripts are still deeply entrenched and strong.

Chang: So I wanted to get to this because I think that this is probably—from my experience—it seems like this is a really big difference between the West and these East Asian countries, which is that this kind of rigid nuclear family seems to be still relatively prevalent, even among young people. I think in the US, it’s become—I think there was a statistic that says that 40% of all births in the US are to unmarried women, and those numbers are in the low single digits in East Asia.

So that’s a really big difference. It seems to be getting to what you’re saying, which is that in East Asia, these different kinds of arrangements—like cohabitation, having a child out of wedlock, maybe even adoption, right?—these aren’t as prevalent. Do you think that difference also explains why birth rates are lower in East Asia compared to the West? I think they are slightly lower, but I think the US and Europe are also catching up.

Yun: The picture of cohabitation, childbearing, and marriage in the US is deeply complicated by differences by social class, by ethnic-racial lines, by immigration status, by religion and religiosity, so on and so forth. It’s really interesting. You mentioned that because I teach a course for undergrads at the University of Michigan on gender and marriage.

And one of the course activities that we always do at the beginning of the class is: I ask students to write down three words that they would associate with marriage. So these are American college students, and then we do a word cloud based on the answers that they come up with every time. And again, in all the iterations that I’ve taught the class, people associate with marriage—the three words that kind of jump out to them—are commitment, love, and children. So you kind of still do see that this social norm that links marriage and childbearing might not be as porous or tenuous in the US as we might assume.

But one commonality among US adults, Chinese young adults, Japanese young adults, and South Korean young adults is: Oftentimes, we kind of think about people’s retreat from marriage, from childbearing, as this grand ideation or shift that people are actively—their desires about family lives, their aspirations about the future have fundamentally shifted somehow.

But there is another layer to it: A lot of times, the lack of marriage that we observe on the aggregate level, or the decline of fertility that we observe on the aggregate level, also reflect a sense of unmet desire. In other words, the desire for marriage, the desire for a two-child family, the desire for having children—it’s remarkably sticky, but oftentimes, time, finances, those kinds of constraints, job market, labor market gender discrimination—those kinds of practical constraints get in the way.

Ian: Don’t you think that these things change also a little bit with time? For example, there was a period in the ‘60s and ‘70s in Japan. But in Japan, one reason why many women started resisting marriage was not only because of the patriarchal relationships and having to wait up until midnight until your husband comes home drunk from company parties and that kind of thing. But it was also because people often lived in extended families still. Many young married women would be bullied by their mothers-in-law. There was a great move then to start nuclear families in small apartments, which led to different problems of loneliness, secretive drinking, and that kind of thing.

So it’s not just patriarchy, is it? There are other social reasons why the more educated women become, the more they shy away from the traditional family arrangements.

Yun: One could make an argument that those multi-generational co-residences—residing with both parents before one’s marriage—is precisely symptomatic of the patriarchy.

Ian: Can you explain that? Why do you think that?

Yun: So for young adults to be well on the way to independence, it necessitates one’s own family, and before having that, one is still seen as a part of this extended family.

So again, family is very much built around heterosexual marriages, family is very much built around a certain kind of—not necessarily equal—power dynamics between parent and child relationships, family built around having children as one of the core functions of family. One could make the argument that the imaginary of family in that way is precisely symptomatic of the patriarchy.

Ian: Yes, I see your point entirely, but I think fewer and fewer people now live in those extended families, certainly in Japan and possibly in South Korea, too. And yet the problem persists. Even now that more and more people live in nuclear families—or more and more we’re shying away from getting married.

Yun: Part of the reasons for that is: Think about the conflict or the incompatibility that women—especially highly educated women—now must negotiate with family demands on the one hand and workplace demands on the other.

So these are also three countries that we see increase at different levels, to different extents, in women’s labor force participation. China, in particular, given its socialist legacy, there is a relatively high level of labor force participation among women. For these women, then, the question becomes: How do I balance the demands of being a good mother with the demands from employers, the demands of being an ideal or a good worker? So for women, in particular, these are the constraints that they navigate.

And for men—for East Asian men as well—the norm about a good, responsible, worthy East Asian man is a man who can be the breadwinner, who can provide. This kind of breadwinner norm is remarkably sticky and salient in China, in South Korea, in Japan. And that plays a certain kind of constraints on men and on men’s time as well. The expectations of being breadwinners, being ideal workers, being working long hours, working overtime, vis-à-vis the desire and expectations of undertaking an equal share of housework and childcare. This kind of work-family conflict—it manifests in women’s and men’s lives, and that kind of contradiction and conflict becomes one of the crucial constraints when people make calculations and strategize about whether they want to have children and how many children they want to have.

Chang: Can I get you to just clarify something that you said about unmet desire. What I take that to mean is that let’s just say in China, a lot of young women in China will say that they may still have a kind of idealized hope of having to marry and have kids, but because of more pragmatic reasons like housing costs, education, and maybe just the gender roles within the family—those expectations—they’re not able to; it’s sort of delayed. That happens in America as well. I know that’s certainly the case in America, but I’m wondering: To what extent is this idea of like the unmet desire is distinct? Is there any way that’s unique to East Asia? Are you suggesting that in the United States and Europe, maybe the idea is changing—like people have different kinds of ideals? It’s more maybe pluralistic?

Yun: The two-child ideal is actually highly salient in the US, in Southern European low-fertility countries, and in East Asian low-fertility countries. Oftentimes, in surveys, we ask people: In an ideal setting, how many children, ideally, would you like to have? Demographers call that fertility ideal. And time and again, we observe people across gender lines, across social class lines, across educational levels answer two as their fertility ideal. You see that in China, or in survey data on China, too. And in interviews, they would specify that they really want a boy and a girl, a daughter and a son.

This unmet desire is actually quite universal—or at least it’s not idiosyncratic to the East Asian context. But what drives or what prohibits people from meeting their desire, that is variable across social context. For example, in studies on the US, or studies on Southern European low-fertility countries, oftentimes scholars focus on financial uncertainty as one of the key drivers of this unmet desire.

Whereas in the East Asian context, scholars—myself included—often highlight gender inequality, or work-family conflict, and gender discrimination in the labor market as one of the key drivers of this unmet desire.

Ian: Can I challenge you a bit more to talk a bit more about the patriarchy? Because again, in something I find fascinating about Japan is: Some decades ago, Korean soap operas became hugely popular in Japan. And one of the reasons women liked them, as I understand it, is that Korean men seemed to Japanese women still to be like real men, whereas their own Japanese partners seemed to them often rather wimpish in comparison—and men who needed to be mothered all the time, which was a role that again educated women—certainly ones who had jobs and so on—really didn’t feel like doing any longer.

The notion of the patriarch as this sort of manly figure who provides for the family and so on—may be slightly out of date. Certainly in Japan, that seems to be the case.

Yun: Japanese men still work some of the longest hours. As we look at work hours in this East Asian context, and we look at the share of housework hours, it’s still predominantly women in all of these East Asian contexts that we are talking about.

But what you are saying is really interesting because it gets at the question of: What exactly is masculinity, and what exactly are the masculinity standards in these contexts, and are there changes in these masculinity standards across time and across these geographic spaces?

It’s also really interesting that you mentioned the South Korean TV shows and dramas because one of the interesting kind of developments or news in China over the past few years was this idea of trying to project a certain kind of masculinity among Chinese men that rejects a version of men being quote-unquote “wimpy”—so that the idea of Chinese men really should step up and be quote-unquote “a real man,” and that is based on a certain kind of masculinity ideal that is more or less congruent with what we typically think of what masculinity is.

Chang: You mentioned the difference—or that the gender divide, at least around labor distribution and others, are changing in Japan, presumably China, but I’m actually wondering: To what extent that’s true? Like, when you study this, are sociologists thinking there’s been a lot of liberalization in the family, or is it more of like a kind of stubbornness? Is that considered something that’s relatively not keeping pace with other kinds of social, economic changes for example.

Yun: Sociologists are infamous for often ending their punchline with, “Well, that’s complicated.” In some ways, there is profound social transformation in these contexts, right? There are rising female educational attainment, and in South Korea, in particular, there is this profound shift to some preference toward female [sic] offspring. And in China, social, economic development, all that.

But on the other hand, gender in the family becomes some of the last institutions that are still operating within profoundly heteronormative norms. So the question often becomes: What is the mismatch between socioeconomic liberalization on the one hand and the lack of gender egalitarianism on the other?

So there’s always this tension: On the one hand, we see rising female educational attainment, but particularly in the case of China, women now outperform their male counterparts in tertiary education. But after college education, there still remains a gender gap in employability. There still remains a gender gap in who gets hired. So you do see these kinds of imbalance between progress on the one hand and a stalling on the other.

Ian: I think that’s absolutely right. But if you look at the West—and most Western European countries, in the United States—more and more, there are alternative ways to have children and have families. You have gay couples who adopt children. You have more single mothers, and so on, and it is becoming more and more acceptable to do that. Why do you think East Asian countries are lagging in that respect? You yourself have written about the lack of tolerance towards same-sex relationships in China. And I think perhaps to a slightly lesser extent, but I think that’s probably true in Japan and South Korea too. What is your explanation? Why are these things not evolving as quickly as they seem to have in Western countries?

Yun: In the case of China, there’s the elephant in the room, that is the party-state and the party-state’s politics, family, and population policies. And in the case of China, family policies deeply revolve around heterosexual marriages. Parental benefits often are predicated upon heterosexual marriages. Childbearing is often regulated through heterosexual marriages. To the extent of: Is there space, and there is development in, for example, same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ rights? East Asian societies are also not necessarily monolithic.

So one of the developments in Japan is, for example, certain parts of Tokyo, the recognition of same-sex unions that at least provide a semblance of legal protections for those couples. And in the case of China, attitudes towards same-sex unions, toward same-sex sexual behaviors, are also evolving. And that pattern of change follows what we would expect as we’ve observed of how social progress happens: You see younger individuals have more liberalized attitudes. You see people with higher educational attainment have more liberal attitudes. You see people who are more supportive of women’s equal rights also have more liberalized attitudes toward LGBTQ+ rights. In that sense, non-normative families and how these non-normative families are seen—or attitudes toward these non-normative families—those are quite heterogeneous within the East Asian context as well.

Chang: How do you think about the sheng nu—”leftover women”—in Chinese, and the “leftover men” problem in China?

So the way that I understand it is: One of the really big changes in Chinese society, along with its economic rise, has been its educational attainment. And it’s been especially pronounced in women. I think you had told me earlier that there’s this tendency for women to, or maybe pressure, for women to ”date up.” And so as women get more and more educated, the size of their options narrows, and this leaves kind of an imbalance on either side, right? I’m just really curious how you think about that issue in China.

Yun: As a social demographer, three of my favorite terms—which are a mouthful to say—are homogamy, hypergamy, and hypogamy. Homogamy refers to marriage sorting patterns that happen when women and men are of similar social standings or similar socioeconomic standings. Hypergamy refers to a situation where, as you said, women quote-unquote “date up” or “marry up,” and hypogamy is the reverse—that refers to the pattern where women quote-unquote “marry down” or “date down.”

And in China, in Japan, in South Korea, predominantly the marriage sorting patterns are largely homogamous and largely hypergamous. Again, the predominant pattern is the similar marrying similar, and women tend to marry up. You can imagine in a society that is the dominant marriage sorting pattern, then there really is a mismatch between the quote-unquote “leftover women” vis-à-vis the quote-unquote men who are squeezed out of the marriage market.

And in China, the picture is further complicated by the deeply imbalanced sex ratio, which is a result and a legacy of the one-child policy, which resulted in sex-selective abortion, abandonment, and the maltreatment of baby girls.

So in the case of China, given that, first of all, the sex ratio is deeply imbalanced, and second of all, marriage sorting is still largely either homogamous and hypergamous—then you do see actually the “leftover women,” despite the attention that we tend to give to this issue—it’s really the men who are disadvantaged in terms of their socioeconomic status. And to some extent, that is also the pattern in Japan as well. Then the question becomes: Why do we still see these prevalent marriage sorting patterns that follow the line of homogamy and hypergamy? And that goes back to what we talked about earlier about how do we think about masculinity in these contexts, and what are the expectations? And central to those expectations is this demand of a worthy, a productive, a quote-unquote “good man” being a good breadwinner.

Ian: Could you see a future in which educated and successful women start behaving more and more like the patriarchal men in the past? And what I mean is this: Can you conceive of women who are successful and have enough money and so on wanting to have a male companion or a male partner who is attractive and a little younger and who could take care of the household and perhaps cook, but would not be of the same educational standard or class?

Yun: That’s a really interesting thought experiment, but to push back a little bit: We have seen the rise in women’s education across the world. Given that context, what we are also seeing is what sociologists like Paula England would call a “stalled gender revolution”—meaning women’s entry into the labor market, women’s entry into higher education, that is not matched by men’s entry into the private sphere as co-caregivers.

So women indeed nowadays are increasingly becoming co-breadwinners, but the changes in men’s behavior has not kept pace. So this results in what sociologists often like to call the “unfinished” or the “stalled gender revolution.”

And to some demographers, indeed, the question becomes: Given the changes in educational composition by gender, does that lead to changes in marriage patterns? Does that increase the likelihood of hypogamy given just who are available in the marriage market—who they are and what kind of educational background they have—or does it lead to different kinds of family and marriage decision-making?

And my answer to that is: People make decisions about marriage; people make decisions about dating based on a multitude of reasons that are often not necessarily fully reducible to the mathematical composition of the marriage market—that is not fully reducible to a purely rational choice decision-making model. And who we see as an ideal spouse, and what we want from marriage, and what kind of parent we want to be—those are deeply ingrained within the cultural, normative, social context that we live out our lives.

So it kind of becomes psychological in that: Without a norm change, will we see behavioral change? And once behavioral change reaches a certain tipping point, perhaps they will bring about a norm change. I don’t necessarily have a very clear answer.

Chang: I was wondering whether we could move on to the topic of what the state is trying to do to raise birth rates. Obviously, this has been a big issue for the past couple of years, and in 2024, China said it was gonna raise the retirement age for about two years. I think it was from 60 to 63 over the next 15 years.

And then this summer, there’s been like a national effort in July for childcare subsidies, which are about ¥3,600—so $500, I think. I wanted to just ask you: Is this working? Is this useful? How do you think about Chinese policy to raise—what is it like “pro-natalist policies”? And in general are they effective?

Yun: In general, giving people cash in the hope that they will have more children does not produce more children. So China has undergone a series of pro-natalist policy shifts since 2016 with the universal two-child policy. So right after the universal two-child policy came into effect in 2016, there was a very—ever so slight—uptick in the number of new births, and that is oftentimes attributable to people who previously had an unmet desire in having two children—now got a chance and had two children. That boost was since absent all through the universal relaxation of the two-child policy, universal relaxation of the three-child policy, and a series of central and/or local government subsidies.

The current subsidies that was just rolled out, for those who already have children, these subsidies are indeed embraced. But these kinds of subsidies also hardly move the needle in changing people’s ideas.

Ian: I’m not sure I entirely understand because you made the case that one barrier towards having children—or towards getting married at all—was the financial one; that it was too expensive for many people. So why wouldn’t the fact that there are cash incentives and that could make it more affordable—why wouldn’t that work better?

Yun: Because the financial barriers and the financial burdens and obstacles that these people—these young adults—experience and express are on a much larger scale than $500 or ¥3,600 a year.

So when young Chinese adults talk about financial barriers, they think about all the costs that go into raising a child that would ensure this child to at least not experience downward social mobility as they grow up—all the extracurricular activities or the schooling fees or the enrichment activities. Those go way beyond what childcare subsidies as they stand now can provide.

Chang: I had a question about political polarization, so there was this Financial Times article in January that was talking about how globally we’re seeing women and men polarize in different directions in politics—that men are becoming more conservative and women are becoming more liberal. And this is just so obvious to me in the Chinese context. It’s crazy. Like, when you see online the feminists battling the nationalists, I guess it’s just a very obvious thing that’s happening in China and everywhere.

And I was wondering whether you might have like a sociological demographic perspective on that.

Yun: I know in the US context, there is also changes in how political—how salient political ideology is nowadays as people seek out potential partners. In the Chinese context, I do see this—again, this goes back to our earlier discussions about the “stalled gender revolution,” about how women’s advancement in the public sphere far outpaces men’s entry into the private sphere as co-caregivers.

At the end of the day, I think the stalled gender revolution might be the most apt and prescient sociological theorization and analysis that helps us understand this kind of polarization: As half of the population is moving toward one direction, and the progress of that is not matched by the other half. And you would see that ending in a certain kind of polarization.

Chang:
Yun, I wanted to get your thoughts on one thing. So I was wondering whether you could just talk a little bit about the idea of not having children—or choosing not to have children—as an act of political protest. This was something that was quite viral during the pandemic lockdowns. There was a scene in Shanghai of health workers who were representing this young couple, where they said: “If you don’t come with us to a quarantine center, we’re gonna take you; you’re gonna be punished, and your kids will be punished, and the rest of your younger generations will be punished.”

And the couple responds: “We’re the last generation,” and just slams the door—and that became really viral because it seemed to suggest that there was this kind of interest in not having kids as a way of sort of reacting to government policy. Do you see that in your interviews, or is that something that’s maybe a little bit more peripheral to what’s really going on?

Yun: I see that to some extent, in my interviews—as parents or as prospective parents talking about not wanting their children to face the similar pressure or dilemma or uncertainty that they are facing now. And another interesting parallel observation that is just happening is: As you may know, Taylor Swift got engaged.

And on Chinese social media, I saw young Chinese women feeling really disappointed in her. This idea of: this is a female or woman idol that they adored and listened to and loved, also entering heterosexual marriage—and it’s almost a sense of betrayal, and some do use the word “betrayal.” To me, that was really interesting as how young women kind of think about marriage and think about heterosexual marriage and think about its rejection.

And then in the South Korean context, it was the 4B movement—this rejection of heterosexual sex, heterosexual marriage, heterosexual dating, and heterosexual childbearing—as kind of almost a way to reject—to embrace a certain kind of feminist ideal.

And if you think about it, also there is a certain kind of echo as we think about, for example, Adrienne Rich when she wrote about kind of lesbianism and compulsory heterosexuality and what is possibly a feminist utopia. And I think at the end of the day, it’s really marriage and sex and childbearing and dating and love. Those are thorny issues, and people just all come at it viewing them with different meanings. And certainly there isn’t necessarily one vision or one version of a feminist utopia. But we do see in the case of East Asia—and in the case of contemporary China—as young women trying to figure out what they want, and as they’re trying to figure out whether and how equality can be possible, we see different methods of trying, and we see different solutions and different experiments being proposed.

Chang:
So this has been generally like a pretty sad topic around just like a lack of having less kids and societies that are going through demographic crisis. I was wondering whether there was anything—in any trends in East Asia, specifically in China—that you found optimistic, like any signs of trends that are changing or something that was surprising to you.

Yun:
I have a two-part answer to that. First, there is a promising or optimistic trend that is very straightforward: We do see fathers becoming more involved in childcare in China nowadays compared to previous generations. So that’s a very straightforward optimistic outlook. Women still shoulder the lion’s share of housework and care work, but men’s involvement in childcare in China—at least the ideal of it—is indeed increasing somewhat.

And the second part to it is: I do not necessarily see fertility decline as a problem, or I do not necessarily problematize it in a way that is typically problematized—for example, population policies.

Fundamentally, one of the most optimistic things about human nature is this desire to live free and this desire to live as one’s own person—this desire to have a life of one’s own. And we do see that desire coming out and manifested in people’s changing decision-making about family.

So in some sense, a retreat from marriage and a retreat from childbearing can also bring a certain kind of optimism to it if we stop and ponder about: What are these people saying, and what are these people aspiring to? And we realize it’s an aspiration toward freedom, toward independence, and toward autonomy.

Chang:
Okay, all right thank you!

Ian:
Thank you very much.

Yun:
Thank you for having me. This is a really fun conversation.

Takehiro Masutomo was a former Caixin journalist who has been following this development from the very beginning. He is the author of a new bestselling book called Runri: Tracking the Mass Exodus of Wealthy Chinese to Japan. Ian and I talked to him about the Chinese immigrants behind Japan’s right-wing turn.

Transcript:

Chang: When I returned to Japan recently, I was struck by how little had changed. The convenience stores still had the same boxed lunches I remembered as a kid in Tokyo in the 1990s. The train stations still played the same melodic chimes. China had completely switched to digital payments, but in Japan, cash was everywhere.

But one thing was different: the number of foreigners. I saw them everywhere—at airport customs, in restaurants, and on the streets. In places like Shinjuku, the share of foreign residents has surged from roughly one in a hundred in the 1990s to about one in ten today.

Alongside that demographic shift, a new and energetic right-wing populist movement has gained traction. Founded in 2020, the Sanseito bears striking similarities to Trumpism. It promotes a “Japan First” message, calls for stricter border controls, and rails against a political establishment it claims is compromised by global elites. The party gained momentum during the pandemic with its opposition to Japan’s vaccine mandates and made splashes in the recent upper house elections, winning broad support among a younger, male, social media–savvy urban base.

In October, Japan welcomed its first female prime minister, Takaichi Sanae, who was elected by tapping into some of the national security and anti-immigrant sentiments of the Japan First movement. This podcast was recorded before her election, but the themes of the discussion have only grown more relevant.

Ian, the Sanseito just won 15 seats in the upper house of the Japanese parliament. It’s still modest, but this is the first time a Trump-like populist party has broken into the national legislature. You just wrote about this in Project Syndicate. You want to tell us a little bit about what you wrote?

Ian: In the first place, it shows the influence of the American president, who has given license to and encouraged similar right-wing populist parties all over the world—or at least all over the democratic world.

These parties all exploit similar things: anxieties about economic inequality and the sense that the world is changing so fast people feel they no longer have a grip on it.

And the easiest explanation—the most demotic one used by all these parties—is to blame foreigners: immigrants, tourists, whoever.

What makes Japan a little different from many other countries, such as Italy, is that the numbers are still very small. The Sanseito can exploit this notion that there are suddenly lots of tourists and immigrants, particularly Chinese. We’ll talk about that later. But compared to Europe, the United States, or Australia, the numbers are still modest—just high compared to what they once were. And that’s enough for a right-wing populist party to exploit.

Chang: We’re going to talk about some of these issues with Hiro later, but first, about what you said on the right wing:

People who’ve been to Japan usually have a general impression of what the right wing is. When I lived here, I’d see those white vans blaring slogans about constitutional revision on loudspeakers. That’s the kind of association most people have with the Japanese right. How do you think this new brand of right-wing populism differs from that old-school version?

Ian: I think it’s very different. The old far right was really focused on the postwar constitutional arrangements, as you say.

During the American occupation, the U.S. had to figure out what had gone wrong in Japan. In Germany it was easy—it was the Nazis, Hitler, et cetera. In Japan it wasn’t so clear, because there was no Nazi Party, no Hitler. They decided the problem was Japanese militarism. That’s why, with the consent of most Japanese at the time, they wrote a pacifist constitution that took away Japan’s right to use military force in foreign policy.

There’s been resistance to that from the start—from the right wing of the mainstream parties and also from the far right. It became a historical issue. The left, which represented the majority of Japanese at the time, insisted Japan needed a pacifist constitution—like an alcoholic who must refrain from drinking to stay safe—because of the terrible things Japan had done during the war.

The far right responded by claiming Japan hadn’t done anything particularly wrong. It was an honorable war. War is terrible, and all countries do terrible things, but Japan was no different. That’s what the old right was about—along with the Northern Territories, the islands the Soviet Union seized after the war.

Now, the Sanseito—the modern form of right-wing populism—is very different. It’s much closer to its counterparts in Europe and America. Its focus is on immigration and the perceived unfair treatment of the local population. The rallying cry is: Let’s get our country back. Let’s get our identity back.

Chang: Do you think there’s a little bit of the bread-and-butter issues component to it? That was kind of the whole point, that one of the takeaways from the 2024 election in the US was about the price of eggs. And it’s funny because in Japan, we’re talking about the price of rice, this kind of economic corollary here in Japan as well.

Ian: Yes, absolutely. So because people feel the pinch and they feel there are all kinds of problems that they feel in the sense that they’re not on top of. It makes it all much clearer and easier if you can blame it all on foreigners, on immigrants, on people who are treating your country unfairly and so on.

So in America, you get this resentment that Trump exploits—the world is playing us as suckers and so on. And in Japan with the Sanseito you get this notion that foreigners are being coddled, that the local population is being neglected and so on.

Chang: Let’s talk to Hiro about his views on the elections. Hiro Masutomo was a former journalist at Caixin, a reputable financial news outlet based in Beijing. He has since moved back to Tokyo where he is the author of Run to Japan, a book that has been sold out in bookstores and Amazon in the first few months. It was published this year as immigration has become a hot topic in Japan. Hiro, thanks for joining us.

Hiro: Thank you for having me.

Chang: I’d love to learn a little bit about your experience living in China and how you came to write a book about Chinese immigrants.

Hiro: So as a Caixin reporter, I have been covering Japan as a whole, covering everything from politics to economy, even maybe to society.

And then the reason why I wrote this book is because I was one of the earliest to notice this emerging trend: Run to Japan. Back in 2022, some of my friends I got to know in Beijing started to move to Japan. So that’s one thing. And then also in Tokyo, I witnessed this massive gathering of Chinese protesters to echo the ongoing white paper movement, the anti-lockdown protests in China in November 2022. I used to have the impression that all Chinese immigrants here are not protesters and sometimes it’s quite pro-CCP. That was my impression, but that time I thought maybe newly arrived Chinese people are different. So that’s how I started to realize maybe some other Chinese people are now arriving in Tokyo.

Ian: Can I ask you to follow up on what you’re saying? That in your book, you describe many of the new Chinese immigrants as wanting more freedom, being very critical of the Communist Party, but there are others who tend to be quite nationalistic, and especially may living abroad, become more nationalistic, because they feel that they have to defend China and so on.

Of those two groups, who would you say is the more dominant?

Hiro: At least for those newcomers over the past few years, especially after the Shanghai lockdown in 2022, these people really “run” to Japan. So by definition, many of them are tired of or were fed up with the economic and political situation in China.

So, by definition, there’s a distance between these new immigrants and the CCP.

Ian: And why Japan? How does it compare to countries like Singapore or Australia, or maybe even Europe that such Chinese might want to go? Because after all, there’s a strong anti-Japanese mood in China, too.

Hiro: That’s right. So that’s a good question. Many of those new immigrants coming to Japan, they had been to Japan as tourists. So they don’t necessarily synchronize with this kind of anti-Japanese propaganda in China. And they have seen how Japan looks like with their own eyes. So they could imagine living in Japan.

Ian: Do you think because there are so many Chinese tourists, that even the tourists are affected in their political views by experiencing Japan?

Hiro: To some extent, and that was, part of the motivations behind Japanese government’s decision to relax tourist visas toward Chinese people.

Yeah, so it was a strategic move in a way.

Chang: Just for listeners who don’t know, “run” is actually a Chinese word. The reason why it’s used to symbolize this kind of exodus of Chinese leaving the country is because it sounds like the English term “run.” But what it’s referring to is basically Chinese thinking about ways to get out of the country. This is a term that became popular in 2022 because of the pandemic controls. And the lockdowns in China were especially harsh compared to other countries. And Chinese netizens—people online—are extremely creative.

And so they came up with this term that it became a kind of buzzword, and Hiro used that buzzword in the title of his book. And the book is currently only in Japanese. But hopefully maybe there’s an English translation in the future. But for listeners who don’t know, it says Run which just means run to Japan—the character, the second character is the same character for Japan.

Hiro, you mentioned that a lot of the people that you were interacting with were fleeing or you’re leaving China for some kind of economic situation? Is there a way that you have tried to categorize like the types of immigrants? I’ve noticed that you’ve done a little bit of that in your book. Can you tell me a little bit about how you would sort of categorize the Chinese immigrants that are coming to Japan?

Hiro: If I could divide this group by their motivations to come to Japan, there are three kinds:

One, these people want to secure their assets, especially overseas. And then, secondly, these people want to have access to better education. And thirdly, some other people want to have freedom of expression. So that’s my understanding.

Chang: And are those the same people? Or are they different?

Hiro: Sometimes these motivations overlap.

Chang: But there’s also presumably those that don’t overlap. So there are some who are mostly trying to have a better education and is not too focused on the political freedoms.

Hiro: And I could add that these new immigrants are quite different from previous generations. It’s really clear because, for example, their origins are quite different.

For example, for the older generation, many of them are from places like Fujian province. For this new wave, many are from big cities in China.

Chang: Meaning Shanghai and Beijing.

Hiro: And also by profession, they are quite different. Nowadays, those new immigrants include entrepreneurs, engineers, academics, or even cultural figures.

Ian: In your book, you draw very interesting comparisons with the Chinese that came at the end of the 19th century in the beginning of the 20th century. When many Chinese intellectuals and so on came to Japan and learned not only about Japan, but really learned a lot about the Western world through Japan, right? They came to study and so on.

The situation seems to be different now because in many ways, in terms of technology and modern science and so on, the Chinese are sort of ahead. Even coming to Japan to learn about that is probably no longer an issue. Politics maybe is. And perhaps you could say something about that, but also what effect is it having on Japan? Is there any effort on the Japanese side to learn something from these Chinese who come to Japan? So that it’s no longer Chinese learning from Japan, but then Japan can actually learn something from the Chinese.

Hiro: Yeah, you’re right. So the situation is quite different from early 20th century. And for example, in terms of learning from China, for example, I notice there is this emerging trend. The Chinese AI companies are coming to Japan. And also there’s also influx of Chinese engineers coming to Japan.

And so their presence is getting bigger and bigger in Japan’s, for example, startup industry sector.

Ian: So people are paying attention to them, because in your descriptions and the many interesting encounters that you describe in your book, that you personally have—Chinese bookshops in Tokyo and so on and so forth. You often seem to be the only Japanese.

So I’m wondering how much attention Japanese are paying to the Chinese in a serious way.

Hiro: Yeah, I would say over the past year or so many Japanese people started to realize those Chinese newcomers are really different. And compared with previous generations, they are much wealthier, for example. And if you live in Tokyo, almost everybody knows that they are buying up real estate on a big scale. So people certainly realize now this emerging trend.

Ian: But they don’t necessarily approve of it, right? Because it puts real estate prices up.

Hiro: That’s right. So when I started to write this book back in 2023, I thought this is definitely an upcoming megatrend. And this topic really deserves nationwide discussion, whether or not we should practically welcome these people. But unfortunately, I didn’t expect the debate to go like this, like it’s all negative these days.

Chang: Can you just lay out from your perspective what you think are the biggest tensions, the problems that you think have arisen? Certainly, this year, there’s been a lot on the news that I’ve read. And there’s already been policies that the government has rolled out. I heard about restricting funding for foreign PhD students. So clearly this is in the ether. Tell us a little bit about what you think are some of the tensions that you’ve noticed. You’ve covered a lot of sectors in the book. You’ve covered real estate, you’ve talked about education. So tell us a little bit about that.

Hiro: So real estate prices in Tokyo are rising quite significantly over the past few years, especially in high-rise condominiums. There are increasing number of Chinese residents these days in the city center of Tokyo.

And a lot of Japanese people here associate the rising real estate price with the influx of rich Chinese people. So yeah, that’s why this so-called foreigner issue became such a thing before the upper house election. And also speaking of education, there are many Japanese reports saying now percentage of Chinese students in top universities like Waseda or the University of Tokyo is rising maybe up to 15 percent-20 percent, so some Japanese people feel that these Chinese people are dominating top schools. So that’s also why foreigners became like a central topic in politics.

Chang: Hiro, you mentioned that your aim was to have a discussion, a sort of more healthy discussion about Chinese immigrants. Can you just explain what exactly you mean by that? I can understand what you mean by a sort of unhealthy discussion, but tell us what a healthy discussion looks like.

Hiro: For example, there are also this influx of Chinese intellectuals coming to Japan. And that’s why we see a lot of new Chinese-language bookstores these days in Tokyo, also at the same time, as I have been explaining. There are also a lot of wealthy Chinese people coming to Japan. So they are maybe contributing to Japanese economy as a whole. So you can still argue that they are playing a positive role. That’s what I mean by healthy discussion.

Ian: Can I follow up on that a little bit? If you think of the history of Tokyo, it’s always, already in the Edo period, it was a metropolitan city in that it was a very big city, very sophisticated, with a great culture and so on. But it was never a cosmopolitan city in the way that Paris or London or New York have been, where the whole world came to that center. Can you see the Chinese immigrants being kind of the vanguard of finally turning Tokyo into a cosmopolitan city?

At least in an Asian context that it will become a center for people from all over Asia to come and make it truly cosmopolitan and not just metropolitan.

Hiro: That’s a really profound question. The number of Chinese residents in Japan is going to hit 1 million soon. So that’s really significant in numbers. Not just Chinese people, but also a lot of Nepalese or Vietnamese, and more recently, Indonesians are coming to Japan. You could argue that, yeah, slowly but surely Tokyo or Japan is becoming more internationalized or at least becoming more Asian.

Chang: You mentioned in the end of your book that you kind of project a future scenario and you were just explaining this to Ian, but I wonder whether you can just tell me a little bit about this one line that you have. You say you compare the Jews fleeing Nazi Germany and arriving to New York and you say because of the Chinese immigrants now, we may have this future where there’s Chinese politicians and Chinese economic elites in Japan.

Presumably, you’re also thinking of maybe the children of some of the immigrants as they grow into Japanese society. Can you just paint that picture for me in the future and tell me if you were imagining a better future, or was this a kind of potentially a negative one. I’m curious sort of how you were thinking about it when you were writing that sentence.

Hiro: We can divide this into economic and political elites. When I talk about economic elites, what I mean are people with roots in China who are going to, for example, big Japanese corporations like Toyota, but it would take a lot of time, maybe several decades for them to reach the top.

So I don’t think it will happen so quickly, but like I explained earlier, they are slowly going into, for example, startup sectors. In the startups sector, there’s more room for them to play their roles. That is a positive future I would say. But for politics, I have mixed expectations. For example, maybe you also know that this time around some China-born people ran for office at the recently held upper house election. And I actually knew that maybe even more China-born candidates were trying to become politicians. And I have to say there are concerns, at least among intelligence people that we are not sure about their background, whether or not they are linked to the CCP. In other Western countries like Australia or Canada, there are many preceding examples where the Chinese Communist Party intervenes.

Japan has yet to learn how to deal with those aspiring Chinese politicians.

Ian Buruma: But this is going to become a much bigger problem if tensions between Japan and China were to really escalate.

If, let’s say China became really aggressive towards Taiwan, leading to all kinds of serious military tensions, you could imagine Chinese minority in Japan to come under great pressure, and the public mood could really turn against them.

So there is great risk there too isn’t there.

Hiro: Yeah that’s a real concern and I don’t really have sophisticated answer to that question. Yeah, you’re right. As the total number of Chinese people here increase—actually, meanwhile, it’s interesting that in China, the number of Japanese residents is decreasing. So there’s this asymmetric situation. So that’s also quite interesting, or maybe a bit worrisome. And then, but at the same time, I should note that there is this strategic way of thinking that we should try to cultivate so-called second Sun Yat-sens. Because those liberal-minded intellectuals are also coming to Japan these days. And if these people and wealthy Chinese people join forces, who knows, maybe in the far future, they could become like a potential alternative to the current government in China.

But at this moment, it’s still imagination, but some Japanese diplomats or scholars are seriously thinking of this possibility.

Chang: Just to clarify, Sun Yat-sen is a revolutionary from the early 20th century in China, who was the founder of the Republic of China and Hiro’s talking about how with this new wave of Chinese immigrants, there’s this discussion among Japanese elites as well as some liberal Chinese that maybe we’re kind of repeating something that’s happened in the early 20th century, whether there may be another Sun Yat-sen that can emerge and revolutionize China’s political system from Japan. This time around.

Ian: I have one final question, sort of from a historical perspective. If you think about the 1920s and 30s, many Japanese who took a serious interest in Chinese affairs tended to be people of the far right, like the Black Dragon Society and so on. Who are the Japanese now who take a serious interest in China? I there is yourself, but who would you say in Japan now are most serious about Chinese affairs?

Hiro: Actually the problem is not many people are interested in China these days.

Here it’s a global trend, especially in developed countries. There’s this apathy toward China. This is growing. To answer your question, some Japanese diplomats, for example, a good example is former Japanese ambassador to China, Hideo Tarumi. He’s kind of a mastermind behind these programs to invite a lot of Chinese intellectuals to Japan. So he’s one example. Other than him, I would say scholars like Professor Tomoko Ako of the University of Tokyo. She’s proactively welcoming these intellectuals from China.

Chang: Hiro. The last question that I have for you but before that I’m just gonna give a quick shout out to the book for people who may not be able to read Japanese, it’s got a really wide breadth.

It’s a survey of all kinds of different dimensions of Chinese immigrants in Japan over the past few years. He covers Chinese in the education system. The liberal Chinese that we just discussed, a bunch of different kinds of wealthy Chinese who are buying up tower mansions, who are buying up property in Hokkaido, those in Osaka. So it’s really trying to—correct me if I’m wrong—but you’re trying to uncover a kind of hidden world. It is a way of sort of showing that this was not as obvious to even Japanese who are living here.

My last question to you is, what has the reception been like from Japanese readers of this book. What are people saying to you? Including ordinary people, but also if there’s government officials or companies that are approaching you, I’m just curious of how the reception of your book has been over the past few months.

Hiro: So I have been receiving a lot of feedback from my readers, and mostly they are elites in Japanese society, like those in the financial sector or investors, other people in the real estate industry and so on.

I also got contacted by many government officials. Geographically speaking, I also noticed this trend that many people living in central Tokyo read my book, because they know it was happening! These people are buying tower mansions in central Tokyo, and maybe their kids are now competing with those Chinese students in schools.

So yeah, that’s the general overview, but it’s also interesting to point out that among these readers, there are some people who want to exchange ideas with me privately. Because they think this could be a new source of demand for them. Japan’s population has been shrinking, and this wealthy Chinese people could fill out this vacuum. So that’s what they are telling me.

Chang: So in other words, there are some who are asking you for some kind of consultation or discussion around business opportunities. There’s some who seem to simply resonate with your book, because they had always been experiencing this on the periphery of their life. And it has finally been revealed by you, for them.

Hiro: That’s the feeling.

Chang: You mentioned the government officials. What are they asking you about?

Hiro: They’re asking me what’s really going on on the ground, because the problem is there’s this lack of data, for example, people know Chinese people are buying real estate here, but there’s no official numbers, statistics. So they want me to tell them what’s really going on.

Chang: Hiro Masutomo. Thank you very much.

Hiro: Thank you so much.

Chang: Thank you to Hiro Masutomo for joining us today. You can follow him on LinkedIn and keep an eye out for the English translation of his book Run to Japan. For those who understand Japanese be sure to check out his new podcast Asia Frontline, hosted by Masutomo himself. Each episode features experts on the front lines of the region diving deep into the politics, economics and cultural currents shaping Asia. We’ll leave the links in the show notes. It’s definitely worth a listen.

If there’s one analyst’s opinion I trust, it is Rui Ma, the founder of Tech Buzz China, a research and community platform that brings together anyone interested in deep dives into the Chinese tech sector. She spent over a decade as a venture investor and has long been one of my go-to guides for understanding China’s tech economy. Recently, she hosted a several tours for her members to China, where she met with a number of AI and robotics startup founders. Here is our conversation:

Below is a transcript:

Chang:
Let’s start a little with your background. How would you summarize your work — what you’ve been spending most of your time thinking about over the past few years?

Rui:
I’ve worked pretty much in finance for my whole career, which is now — shockingly — over 20 years. Tech Buzz China was originally started as a hobby in 2018. It’s now, as you said, an investor-facing platform where we do bespoke research, organize trips to China, and more. I’m also working on a few personal projects, including a book on EVs.

Chang:
I’m interested in how you’d describe the development of AI in China. In the 2010s, there was a lot of talk about AI — the AlphaGo moment, when China became really excited about artificial intelligence. China has always been part of the conversation, given the quality of its engineers. Is there a difference between that phase and what we’re seeing now, with the rise of ChatGPT and large language models?

Rui:
It’s completely different. So I actually don’t remember exactly which year the book came out, but I think it was AI Superpowers or something by Kai-Fu Lee. So that was about machine learning, and Kai-Fu made the argument that the U.S. and China were the two superpowers to watch in terms of artificial intelligence, which at the time was more defined as machine learning — much more deterministic models — and computer vision, etc.

At that time China was actually leading in computer vision, and that was what the dialogue was primarily about. LLMs obviously completely changed all that, and generative AI as a discipline kind of caught China off guard. I remember very clearly, right when ChatGPT came out, there was a unicorn AI founder — his company was from a famous AI company from a decade ago — and he came to Silicon Valley and was like, “there were a few years where none of us in China were interested in Silicon Valley at all, because we felt like we had sort of surged past all the innovations that Silicon Valley had to deliver. And lo and behold, I’m here trying to learn from this place again, because it seems like while we were in China celebrating our successes in mobile internet, we completely missed the boat on generative AI.”

And that was very much the sentiment in 2022, 2023.

Now I think it’s a little bit less anxiety-ridden. People have said that generative AI stuff, we’re also beginning to figure it out. We’re also expanding into even broader aspects, which is one of the key points I’d probably like to bring up for this podcast: in China, AI is not seen as just purely software manipulation, but also manipulating the physical environment via robotics and what they’re calling embodied intelligence.

Ian:
And would you say that they’re ahead of the United States in that? Or are they still playing catch-up in that respect as well?

Rui:
So I think it’s really difficult to pinpoint AI as one measure. Even if you look at the LLM benchmarks out there — there are tons — because intelligence itself is quite multifaceted, right?

For AI, it’s becoming much more obvious that there are some tasks that Chinese companies are quite good at — maybe not yet world-leading, but quite good — and that typically revolves around image/video generation. And then there are some tasks where the U.S. still leads by a notable margin. And I think, like many other areas, we’re constantly sort of neck-and-neck in the narrow space we’re calling generative AI and LLMs. Overall, the gap has certainly narrowed — coming from the end of 2022, where Chinese researchers and entrepreneurs really felt ChatGPT came out of the blue and they were unaware of its power, to now, where there’s so much investment and talent devoted to this area that they’ve made significant strides and are actually doing really well in certain aspects of the technology.

Chang:
I wanted to get back to how China’s AI systems evolved. You mentioned computer vision — an earlier paradigm of AI that has to do with recognizing things in the visual space. A lot of these systems are associated with surveillance technology, right? You mentioned SenseTime as one of the leading companies supplying surveillance technology. That was how many people thought about AI in the 2010s. Then after ChatGPT we moved into what Rui said was this generative-AI paradigm. It also involves images and vision, but it’s more closely associated with ChatGPT — models that can spit out information, can hallucinate, are closely associated with “intelligence,” and now we can actually communicate with them with language. That has become the new paradigm.

When we talk about foundation models, I think we’re referring to these big companies — OpenAI, Meta, Google — who have used basically the entire internet to produce these language machines that sound very convincingly like humans. And China has created their own versions, the most famous being DeepSeek.

Tell us a little bit about the recent trip you did with your community in July. You went to the World AI Conference. First of all, what was that like? What were your impressions from being there? I know there were some pretty high-profile people there — U.S./AI space — and just share a little bit about some of the other conversations you had.

Rui:
The trip was amazingly informative. We actually did not intend initially for the World AI Conference to be a super big part of the trip — that’s why we only spent, I think, a little over half a day. But this year it really blew up, partly because there was support from the central government in the form of, like you said, the Premier going and making remarks and getting Nobel Prize winners to talk about global AI safety and collaboration.

And this year was really big for robotics — specifically humanoid robotics. That’s actually where I ended up spending most of my time at the venue. So there were panels (none of which we attended because we had a lot of private meetings set up), and then there was the actual showroom floor, which we did go to. There was a very, very large building completely filled with booths of various AI and robotics companies. I spent most of my time on the robotics floor. It was probably the first event I’ve been to where there were robots running all around you — they weren’t even staying in their booths; they were just walking willy-nilly everywhere.

The conference — I think I read — had 300,000 or maybe 350,000 people attend over four days. I know it sounds unbelievable, but having been there for a few hours over two days, it certainly felt like that. It was extremely well attended and very, very high energy. And it really goes to show how much enthusiasm there is — not just from the government and businesses, but also from the general public — about AI.

Ian:
Since you bring up Chinese government involvement, what is the effect of politics in the United States and in China on the development of AI? In the U.S., there’s pressure to deregulate the AI industry and not export certain things to China; the government is getting involved now in companies like Intel. In China, especially under Xi Jinping, there are big efforts to regulate opinion — what can be said and what can’t be said. Is this irrelevant, or does it affect AI development in both countries?

Rui:
I’m sure it does, but at the business level we were interacting with, it came up very little. One of the people on our trip, who was at the conference as a speaker — Paul Triolo — spoke on AI safety, and he said that was a big part of the conference. However, in everyday investor-facing business conversations, it never really came up.

So I think regulations, export controls — all these things — definitely affect the industry’s development and are on certain people’s minds. But for the most part, as a business person, the major growth areas and the major areas of interest for most AI entrepreneurs and investors don’t involve that just yet. It’s such a new and burgeoning industry. Regulations and hardware-stack limitations — sure, important — but people are trying to figure out how to get their first customers, get to their first million dollars of revenue.

Ian:
Right. But safety is one thing, and people have different interpretations of what “internet safety” means. What about robotics, which almost inevitably will have a political side because it’s going to take people’s jobs? Do you think the Chinese will have less trouble developing robotics than Americans, because there would be less concern about people losing jobs — or possibly more concern?

Rui:
That’s really interesting. We talked to a few robotics companies. Right now, the level of robotics development is definitely as an augmentation to human labor and not really displacing human labor. The few types of jobs they can displace are largely jobs that are either very dangerous or very uncomfortable for humans to do.

For example, we saw a vertical-climbing robot that can climb caves and bridges and the outside of buildings to do inspections and light maintenance. Obviously cleaning — those are things currently very dangerous or inconvenient for humans. So no one’s going to complain about these robots “taking away” human jobs because that’s not the reality. I’d say most robotics is at that level of “job annihilation.”

The one near-term big question mark is autonomous driving. When we were there during the World AI Conference, they made a big announcement that a few select, high-profile companies were granted licenses to do truly driverless robotaxis in China, and that was really exciting — but it’s still a relatively small area they’re allowed to operate in. I think it will be a while before they really take over drivers’ jobs. You do see some media mentions of drivers expressing worry, because that’s a very big gig-economy job in China right now.

Ian:
What about industrial jobs? Is it having an effect there?

Rui:
I would say industrial jobs — really not yet. A lot of the very labor-intensive things — it’s not economical yet for robots to take over. I’m talking about honestly low-value labor, like sewing clothing, etc. The robots that are commercializing tend to be much larger industrial robotic arms.

For example, we do an EV investor trip, and the EV factories are often “dark factories” now, where you have huge robots moving parts from one place to another and putting them together. These are jobs that wouldn’t have been done that much by a human anyway. So I don’t see them net-replacing human workers, but I do see manufacturing lines that, in the past decade, have been redesigned from the ground up because of these machines.

Ian:
And do you detect — because you spend a lot of time in China — differences in anxiety or optimism between Chinese attitudes and American attitudes? Or is it pretty similar?

Rui:
I think everywhere there’s a mix, right? I live in Silicon Valley — lots of optimists, lots of doom-sayers. In China, it’s the same, except I think the mix tilts more optimistic. There’s more of a sense of, “Hey, AI is a great business opportunity — let’s master it and use it to our advantage,” versus “AI is going to render me useless,” which in the U.S. is a little more prevalent. But, like I said, it’s a mix.

I do think acceptance of new technologies tends to be a little easier in China, partly because in the past 30 years there’s been so much change in the economy and daily life that people are used to that kind of change. Whereas the U.S. has been more developed and therefore stable for longer, so people are less at ease with change.

Chang:
Rui, you had mentioned on a tweet after you came back that “the energy problem is not a problem,” or something like that. Could you elaborate — maybe start with what you’ve been noticing in the United States in terms of energy as a potential bottleneck for AI development?

Rui:
I’m not an energy expert — I want to preface this — but I went a little bit viral for saying that in China, electricity generation for AI data centers (which are predicted to be huge power consumers) is considered a “solved problem.” Multiple people said that. We spoke to one company that actually runs AI data centers and went into more detail. That’s very different from what you hear in daily conversation in Silicon Valley, where I live — a lot more hand-wringing about not having enough power to run all the AI capacity we want to bring online.

And it’s true: in the U.S., in the past one or two decades, electricity generation has been largely flat. In China, it’s almost doubled in the last 10 years and is continuing to become cleaner and more efficient. Electricity prices are lower than the average here — at least pure generation. I think that’s a big difference in how people think about opportunities and challenges to make society fully intelligent and connected.

Chang:
You mentioned wanting to focus on this podcast about the diversity in conceptions of AI in China. One thing I thought back to is something Kai-Fu Lee popularized — in the U.S., the tech industry often goes for big moonshots, trying for an AI takeoff (basically what OpenAI is going for). And Kai-Fu has always said China’s strength is in applications — using major technologies and diffusing them through society. In this iteration of the AI arms race, do you see what he said holding up? What are you noticing?

Rui:
Any time you look at what businesses are doing — you could include academia too — it’s about who is funding these activities (whether pure research or commercializable work) and what their expectations are.

That explains a lot of Chinese entrepreneurs’ behavior. Their incentives were tied to the fact they couldn’t get funding without showing really good cash flow, tied to the exits available to them and capital-market conditions.

Whereas for U.S. entrepreneurs, you tended to have more buyers if your company failed (talent acquisitions), more patient capital, and a stock market willing to evaluate you based on your story and future prospects versus only what you’ve already accomplished.

All that led to what Kai-Fu rightly noted — more U.S. companies willing to go for bigger moonshots. That said, as the Chinese ecosystem has matured, you see diversity. The most notable example is DeepSeek: they’re clearly not trying to be a $100–300B valuation company like OpenAI. They’re highly focused on R&D. They have very little staff on go-to-market, sales, or even customer support — bare-bones people doing that, just enough to understand if their technology is any good. That’s very much a moonshot company, whereas OpenAI has become more of a commercialization company — putting out products, building an ecosystem, lots of sales and GTM.

So you can make generalizations, but I don’t think they’re “cultural truths.” They’re indicative of the funding conditions under which these businesses survive.

Chang:
We didn’t really get to open source. I remember that being a pretty big difference between Chinese AI and the American one. Could you share how you think about open source in China? And you mentioned with that company using DeepSeek — why do all the apps I use in China have DeepSeek built in, whereas Siri on my iPhone is still as awful as it was several years ago? Is that related to open source, or what’s going on?

Rui:
I think a couple of things are going on.

The most important is DeepSeek — a company that philosophically believes AI should be open source, because they’re not trying to compete on commercialization. They’re primarily a true research company and sell services at basically a hairline profit. That said, there are companies like Alibaba that are also open-sourcing — and Alibaba has been a big proponent of open source for almost two decades. That’s also a philosophical position. Not all Chinese AI companies are open source — quite a few are not, or they only open-source their least advanced models. So it’s not a cultural universal; it’s specific actors.

It’s helped by the fact that the government is a big proponent of open source, and Chinese businesses trust open source more because they want more control over their own implementation.

Why does the Chinese government like open source? Because from their perspective, they don’t care about creating one super-giant profitable AI company (or a handful). They care about unleashing the power of AI throughout the entire economy — that’s a much bigger impact and what they’re going for, versus just creating trillion-dollar companies. That’s why the government likes it. It also helps that open source establishes credibility globally and helps diffuse the technology across borders.

Chang:
We’ve talked a lot about the U.S. and China tech sectors, but can I ask about the social component — how AI is impacting daily life? There’ve been reports about AI girlfriends in China. Have you noticed any impact at the social level, or is it too early?

Rui:
From usage numbers, you see a good portion — Tencent, ByteDance, DeepSeek’s models — tens of millions of users. Like in the U.S., it’s not always obvious: few people talk about how they’re using AI; they’re just using it. For consumers, and for businesses, they’re using AI to market products more.

Basically every consumer-electronics company is trying to become an AI company. I don’t know if you saw this, but Midea, the appliance company, was promoting an air conditioner with DeepSeek. I don’t know why you need DeepSeek in your air conditioner, but clearly they think it differentiates them and maybe gets a premium.

You see things like that. Day-to-day life doesn’t look that different from here: people share AI-generated pictures or videos, or use AI search to find where to eat or which tourist spots to visit — sharing within WeChat. Not really different from here. I don’t see any “higher-level” use of AI or closer integration yet.

Ian:
China has one of the oldest — perhaps the oldest — examination systems in the world. In the U.S., where I teach part-time, professors are more worried about students using AI to do exams or write papers. Is that something that worries people in Chinese education?

Rui:
Far less so. So much of Chinese education is testing, and you obviously can’t use AI for in-class testing. Sure, you can use AI to do your homework, but it doesn’t affect your standing much because the bulk is based on tests.

I see more use of AI to study — also to do some homework, but as a study aid. All the big ed-tech companies in China have integrated devices — basically a tablet — with AI curriculum and proprietary adaptive material. I’m personally looking into that because I want to educate my kids using AI. It’s less about cheating and more about studying.

And the government is putting some AI instruction into elementary schools starting this fall. I didn’t look into the details, but I think it’s basic concepts behind AI — explained to a fifth-grader.

Ian:
Can I ask you to generalize once more? Different philosophies, attitudes, strategies — which of the two countries is best placed to “win” the AI competition, if it is a competition: the United States or China?

Rui:
It depends on what you mean by “win.” A lot of people define it as having the most advanced model — but even defining that is tricky because these models do many things, and depending on benchmarks, datasets, languages, results differ. If you define it as the single most advanced technology, I think the U.S. system tends to incentivize that — it’s less about diffusion and more about the entity that can get the super-advanced tech and sell it.

Alternatively, “winning” could mean the general intelligence unleashed in your society: how smart is everything, and how much can everyone — even the poorest — benefit from AI? In that sense, I think the Chinese government has more incentives built around that. That is literally what they try to do with state capitalism. It doesn’t always work, but that’s the KPI they talk about.

To be great at AI, you need both: the most advanced tech and the widest access. The two societies have different strengths in how that happens. It’s like a 2×2 matrix — they’re in different boxes.

Chang:
I feel like in the U.S. everyone thinks about the AI race based on the frontier — there’s this idea of a runaway moment where AI can do everything. That’s not really as prominent in China, would you say?

Rui:
People talk about it, but Hollywood popularized that moment — AI becomes fully sentient, exponentially smarter, manipulates matter, hacks our systems, and we’re all prisoners of the superintelligence. I can see that happening, but I feel like you’d have a pretty long warning before that.

It’s like climate change — you can see where the tipping point will happen. It confuses me why people don’t believe in the climate tipping point (which we can forecast and feel with extreme weather) but are terrified of AI takeover, which is nowhere near as predictable. It’s irrational — thanks to Hollywood and sci-fi — and because we anthropomorphize robots/AI.

Chang:
Yeah, that’s a great point.

Ian:
There may be a cultural or religious element. I once heard a talk by the economic historian Robert Skidelsky, who wrote the biography on Keynes, who is a devout Christian. He denounced AI on religious grounds — a form of hubris, humans “playing God.” That’s an old Christian taboo — the Tower of Babel and so on. I wonder if the Chinese have anything quite that strong.

Chang:
I also feel like part of the reason people like Peter Thiel are against that kind of thinking is because “climate” has a negative connotation — tipping points are apocalyptic. Whereas a lot of people in that orbit in Silicon Valley are excited about a tipping point for AI — they’re racing toward it. That valence matters.

Rui:
Yeah, they probably think that if there’s superintelligence, robotics — subsets like exoskeletons — could extend quality of life as you age. And maybe superintelligence can figure out how to delay death — which all the billionaires here are super obsessed about.

Ian:
That’s absolutely true. But think of the Frankenstein story, which again has roots in the Christian tradition. There’s a deep suspicion in Western culture of people playing God — creating humans in ways not natural. That’s Frankenstein. It’s why there’s perhaps more resistance to robots in most Western societies compared to Japan and China — the “replacing God” idea is deep in Judeo-Christian thought, perhaps not as profound in East Asia.

Rui:
Exactly. It’s not. Modern Chinese society is quite atheist and non-religious, but even in pervasive mythologies, the concept of life is circular, with much less of a hierarchy — less binary, more circular. “Superintelligence” implies “more intelligent,” but it’s just a different form of consciousness or life. People believe you can be reincarnated into trees, rats, cats, whatever. There’s no concept like that in Judeo-Christian religions, where humans are humans and closest to God.

Chang:
There’s also the element that a lot of U.S. AI people literally went into the industry because they watched Star Trek or got inspired by those ideas. That’s not the case in China — AI engineers there aren’t like “I saw Frankenstein and wanted to repeat that.” Different cultural influences; a lot of them just want to do something that makes money — and right now AI makes money.

Ian:
But if any of them did this inspired by Frankenstein and thought “I want to do the same thing,” that would be deeply creepy.

Chang:
Yeah — motivations really matter. In Silicon Valley, there’s self-selection with heavy ideas coming in. For example, Yann LeCun — one of the godfathers of AI — I think he went into AI after watching a debate with Chomsky (and others) back in the day. You can trace influences. People are inspired by ideas within Western culture that frame AI as transformative — and people want to join that. There’s an evangelical dimension. In China the motivating drivers are completely different.

Rui:
Yeah. It’s much more just an engineering problem.

Chang:
I think that’s a great place to end it. Thanks so much, Rui.

Ian:
Thank you.

Rui:
Yeah no problem! This was a fun conversation.

Our first episode is about the politics of World War II memory in China and Japan. Our guest is Rana Mitter, historian and professor at the Harvard Kennedy School. We talk about how World War II is remembered differently in China and Japan, what purpose it plays in each country’s self-perception, China’s high-wire act with the Nationalists role in the war, the recent military parade in Beijing and the new nationalist movies, Trump’s assault on the Smithsonian, among other topics.

It’s early days, so I appreciate any feedback about the format or suggestion on what topics we might discuss. If you’d like to support this, please subscribe and add a pledge.

Subscribe now

Special thanks to Sydney Watson for producing, editing, and composing the theme music!

Transcript:

Chang: Hi, I’m Chang Che and I’m an American journalist. My co-host, Ian Buruma is a Dutch writer and specialist on the politics and culture of East Asia.

Ian and I have spent much of our lives living and writing about the region. We both spent many years in Japan and write regularly about China, Japan, and the Koreas for publications like The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. Into Asia is a podcast where Ian and I will be discussing what we think are some of the most pressing issues in the region—from demographic decline to the impact of AI to the unresolved legacies of World War II.

We’re living through a time when old political assumptions are in flux, and we believe Asia will shape the 21st century, much like the West shaped the 20th. Welcome to Into Asia.

Chang: So, September 2 marked the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. It’s a moment that remains central to both China and Japan’s understanding of themselves, their identities, their politics, and their relationship with each other. In China, during the 1990s, wartime memory was a tool for bolstering nationalism. In Japan, it continues to divide opinion along the left and right. To help us unpack how this history still shapes East Asia, today we’re joined by the inimitable Rana Mitter, one of the world’s leading historians of modern China and the author of several books on the memory of World War II in Asia. Rana, welcome to the show.

Rana: It’s great to be on the show with you, Chang. Great to be on the show with you, Ian.

Chang: Ian, you want to share an anecdote about your experience at the Nanjing Massacre Museum in the ‘90s?

Ian: Yes, I visited the memorial—I think the exact title is the Memorial Hall for the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre or something of that sort—which was built in 1982, at a time when the Nanjing Massacre was really discussed for the first time, seriously in China, because before that, it was a Nationalist thing; it had nothing to do with Communist heroism and so on. It didn’t really have a place in the Communist narrative. But in the ‘80s, when Deng Xiaoping was in power and opening China to business with the United States and Japan, it became important for the Chinese—and Deng Xiaoping himself—to present himself as a nationalist, and the Nanjing Massacre fitted into that narrative of China as the victim, and that only the Communist Party could make China great again, so that nothing like that could ever happen again.

Now, I visited in the mid-’90s with an old group of Chinese Americans, for whom the Nanjing Massacre was a kind of cornerstone of Chinese American identity, as it were. Iris Chang wrote in her book about how the Chinese Americans—or the Chinese, as she put it—needed their Holocaust to be paid attention to. So there were these activists. There were also some well-meaning Japanese activists who felt that their country should do more to acknowledge what it had done in the past and were perhaps slightly tediously contrite themselves, even though they had no role in it.

There I was, suddenly seeing in China this monument to victimhood, which is really what it was—stressing the new nationalism, which was very much based on the idea that China had been the victim of humiliation at the hands of foreign powers, specifically the Japanese. And this would never happen again if the Communist Party would be supported and made China great again. That was what I saw at the time.

Chang: You’ve spent a lot of time thinking about war memory in Japan. Can you say something a little bit about how the Japanese understand the Nanjing Massacre? And did they have a reaction to that kind of shift in narrative in China in the 1990s?

Ian: What sparked the new nationalism was the so-called textbook issue. What happens is that the government in Japan does not publish textbooks. Various publishers publish history textbooks, among others, and they have to be submitted to the Ministry of Education.

Now, Asahi Shimbun, I think it was—the sort of left-leaning Japanese national newspaper—reported that new textbooks had changed phrases like “invasion of China” to something sort of like “entering China.”

Rana: “Advancing into China” rather than “invading China.” So not shinryaku [invasion], but shinshutsu [advance].

Ian: That sparked a reaction in China. In fact, it was untrue—the change had never been made in Japanese textbooks—but there was a Nanjing Massacre debate. And rarely ever since the end of World War II, even the Japanese nationalists who saw the Pacific War as a just war against colonial powers in Asia, were always a little embarrassed about the Chinese angle, because China was not a colonial power, and much of the horror inflicted by the Japanese in the war was against Chinese—not only in China itself, but also in Southeast Asia.

The Nanjing Massacre was always brought up by the Japanese left as a symbol of Japanese militarism, how badly things could go. And this was used as an argument by the left to preserve the so-called pacifist constitution, which outlaws combat as a method of foreign policy in Japan.

Now, as long as the left did that, the right tried to counter that argument by saying, no, there’s nothing particularly wrong about what the Japanese did in World War II—it’s really all propaganda of Japanese leftists and Chinese. The Nanjing Massacre—well, a few people, I’m sure, were killed, but war is war and so on. And this was a battle over textbooks and history and so on. But it was rarely also a battle over the nature of the Japanese constitution. Those who want to change the constitution and strike out the pacifist aspect of it, on the whole, tended to favor a narrative that downplayed Japanese atrocities very much, including Nanjing. Whereas the other side tended to make a big thing of it.

Chang: Rana, you mentioned that you were in Beijing a couple weeks ago, and you had also spent some time at one of these museums that China is particularly interested in politically. So, can you tell us a little bit about your experience there?

Rana: I was actually fascinated to hear about your experience more than 30 years ago in Nanjing, because actually, just three or four weeks ago, I was in Beijing at what you might call one of the sister museums of that particular institution. The full name is the Memorial Museum for the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression—in other words, the museum of World War II as a whole from the Chinese perspective. And it is a museum that’s existed for quite some decades now; it was founded in the 1990s. Each time I’ve been back—maybe about every 10 years or so—it has changed significantly. And when I went this year, it was clear that, in commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the ending of the war, they put a lot of money and a lot of effort into changing many of the displays and also physically expanding the museum in a big way.

But what I found fascinating is that there was a combination of both stories that had existed before and new aspects. So, in terms of things that existed before, Ian was talking about the Nanjing Massacre, and that very much has its own place in the museum—that’s certainly there. I would say that the areas where there was a very innovative, as it were, political use of history struck me in two particular areas.

The first one was an expansion of an idea which has been seen for a few years now around World War II in China, which I think has now become very mainstream in China, which is the idea that China’s blood and treasure and sacrifice—millions of deaths and horrific experience in the war after the Japanese invasion—has earned China the right to a shaping of the global order from 1945, at the end of World War II, up to the present day.

In other words, just as—in the, I think, quite famous words of the former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson—the U.S. is associated with creating that order. And China wants to make it very clear that it too was a victorious Allied power that made sacrifices in World War II, just like the Americans. And it too should have the right to a deciding role in what happens to that order, just as it was present—for instance—at the signing of the UN Charter in 1945 in San Francisco.

Now, for a historian, there are all sorts of interesting anomalies in this narrative, because of course it was not the Chinese Communist Party of today that was principally involved in signing that charter in San Francisco in 1945. It was the Nationalist government, the Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai-shek. They sent then-quite-famous diplomats—Wellington Koo and others—to sign it. There was one Communist delegate, Dong Biwu, but his role is now given much more prominence on the grounds that they can then make a link to the CCP in 1945 and today’s global order. But the Kuomintang element is removed from that explanation.

The other element, briefly, historically, that appears in the museum now is the new prominence of Russia. The Soviet Union was important in supporting China in two specific areas during World War II. Right at the beginning, when Stalin sent Soviet fighter pilots to defend the skies over Shanghai for a year or so at the beginning of the war—unofficially, because the Soviet Union was not officially involved in the war at that stage—but it was a significant piece of air support for the Nationalists on the ground. That ended in about 1939.

And then, in 1945, the Red Army famously comes into Manchuria and was one of the factors—along with the atomic bombings—that ends World War II in Asia.

But again, not mentioned in this version of history is the fact that the Soviet Union was neutral against Japan for most of the intervening period, 1939 up to 1945. And that version of the story doesn’t fit today’s geopolitics, where Vladimir Putin stood in Tiananmen Square next to Xi Jinping as a very clear indication that today’s Russian-Chinese partnership is strong and will continue. So there again, World War II—and the museum and TV shows and other aspects of public education and propaganda around World War II in China—are being used to boost a very present-day story about geopolitics.

Ian: What about in the museum the role of the United States during the China war? Because one of the things in the film about the Nanjing Massacre—what’s the English title?

Rana: It’s called Dead to Rights in English, and the Chinese title literally translates as The Nanjing Photo Studio.

Chang: And just to give listeners some context, this is a movie that the Chinese put out this month as a way to kind of basically set up this military parade and to bolster this idea of its history.

And so there were actually two movies that came out. One is this movie about the Nanjing Massacre, and the other is another sort of famous incident. And that’s... Unit 731?

Rana: Unit 731, about biological warfare. [This is referring to Japan’s wartime biological weapons program in Manchuria]

Chang: Right. So that movie is apparently still in the works—it’s gonna be coming out soon—but there’s already been a lot of media reports about Chinese crying at the movie theater, standing up and applauding and singing the national anthem, and it’s become a really big deal in China.

Ian: What is interesting about The Nanjing Photo Studio is that it’s a propaganda film in Communist China in which no Communist really has any role at all, because the only people in Nanjing were the Nationalists. It’s not as crude as many propaganda films have been in the past, but it does one thing. The story of the camera store is of a brave Chinese hero who manages to smuggle out photographs taken of the atrocities taking place in Nanjing, smuggling them to the International Safety Zone. And that is what ended up in the world press, and it’s why we know what people at the time knew something about what’s going on. Now, that is a distortion, because it was an American missionary who did all that, not a Chinese. And so foreigners are shown and are not shown in a bad light. They’re shown as people who rescue refugees and so on. But their role is absolutely washed out of this whole story.

So I’m wondering, in the museum in Beijing, to what extent the American role in the war in supporting the Chinese against Japan is shown.

Rana: It’s a fascinating question, and the short answer to your question there, Ian, is that the American role is significantly downplayed. It’s not absent by any means. And I think you’ll see shots of Franklin D. Roosevelt and mention of the one body that is still, I think, very highly regarded in China in terms of this narrative from the American side.

And that is the Flying Tigers, the AVG—American Volunteer Group—under General Claire Lee Chennault, who were the American volunteers who came in and basically defended the skies over Chongqing, the temporary wartime Nationalist capital, for several years at a time when China’s own air force capacity was just simply not up to the job. China was then—and remains now, actually—appreciative and grateful. So the museum itself, I think, from what I can see, doesn’t say anything very much that is inaccurate in terms of the specifics of what happened.

But there’s definitely a change of emphasis: more on the Russians, who were, in reality, relatively marginal to most of the middle of the war; very little about the huge amount of financial commitment that was made by the United States—and the British Empire, to be fair—to the defense of China. At the same time as really stressing the element of Soviet presence, which was not really very active in the war. I want to make a distinction here, but you mentioned that essentially something that was done by an American missionary is sort of repurposed in the film as being a Chinese doing that. In a film, which is fiction—it’s not meant to be documentary—things are substituted, even in the West, in terms of narrative to make it smoother or to make a point.

I’d say there’s another film that’s just come out, actually, which is directed and produced by the huge producer Guan Hu, which is on the subject of the sinking of a ship, the Lisbon Maru, which had a lot of British prisoners of war on it. And they are rescued by Chinese fishermen. And this is based on a true story. Obviously, it’s made more heroic and fictionalized. But again, part of the phenomenon you’re talking about, I think, is encompassed in the way the plot is put forward. These are British sailors who are about to drown—become victims, essentially, of being prisoners of the Japanese—but they are rescued by Chinese sailors. And the wider message is that China is the active player. It is active in saving its allies. It’s not simply a victim waiting to be saved by the Americans or by the British.

I think that film again provides some of the leeway into that.

Ian: To what extent are the anti-Japanese and anti-American aspects still played up, because they were very much there at the end of the last century?

Rana: I think that’s right—exactly the 1990s into the early 2000s. I would say—and I’m not claiming this in any kind of scientific sense, but just from observation of the very recent last few months—the anti-Japanese part, at least the highly critical part on Japan, is quite strong. I again, with something like the Nanjing Massacre. You can’t really blame China for being highly critical of at least Japan in that era, which is very different from Japan for the Japan of today, which is a democratic and peaceful society.

But in terms of pointing up Japanese war atrocities, I’ll also actually mention the Tokyo War Crimes Trials—the IMTFE, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East—and a shout-out here actually to a wonderful book by Gary Bass published last year, Judgment at Tokyo, which is just brilliant and comprehensive on that trial. Those are very much brought up in Beijing and elsewhere in the museums, but I wouldn’t describe them really—I suppose it might sound counterintuitive—as anti-Japanese in the sense of simply being kind of random accusations. Both the war crimes trial and the Nanjing Massacre are presented with a certain amount of obviously emotional overlay, but on the basis of history. What I think is much more notable is that the Americans really have disappeared from the narratives as we were saying before. I wouldn’t say that it necessarily displays large amounts of explicit anti-Americanism, but the disappearance of much of the American contribution is a sort of negative criticism or criticism by kind of omission, rather than commission, you might say.

To give an idea of what I’m contrasting this with: if you go back to the 70th anniversary just 10 years ago, I think the explicit attacks on Japan as being supposedly a kind of eternally imperialist state that can never be allowed to have a role in postwar society was stronger then, because we were just one or two years out from that potentially very dangerous moment over the disputed islands—Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands—where literally warships from both sides were getting far too close to each other in 2011, 2012, 2013 even.

And in that period, I think the 2015 70th war anniversary became much more of an occasion to really kind of push on Japan. One of the other reasons was that the Japanese prime minister at the time, Abe Shinzo, took a much more strongly nationalist line in terms of Japan needing to deal with constitutional change and get on with it. I think it’s fair to say this time round, poor Mr. Ishiba—who, as we speak, is the outgoing Japanese prime minister, dealing with a loss of his majority both in the lower house and the upper house—he’s not such a good target in terms of being a kind of avatar of Japanese nationalism in that sense.

So I think the Chinese found that Abe, in a sense, was a worthy target from their point of view, and perhaps Ishiba-led LDP doesn’t really sit in that category.

Ian: What is the influence of this in academic life? Are people able to write academic books in which the role of the Kuomintang is perhaps slightly more honestly portrayed than would have been possible before?

Rana: Yes is the short answer. I would say that you might regard the portrayal of this World War II experience in the Chinese public sphere at the moment as a spectrum—or perhaps almost like a kind of cone or funnel-shaped thing—in the sense that for the kind of messages which are intended for a very wide and general audience—in movies, television, and so forth—the realm of discussion of difficult topics is quite narrow. It was probably wider about 10 or 15 years ago.

For instance, you got more dramas on TV in those days that had KMT heroes, or at least KMT characters who were not villains. And there are fewer of those now. There is much more emphasis on the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, and its wartime experience. And then as you sort of begin to go towards the narrower part of the cone, you find—actually, because the audiences are smaller—there’s space for a bit more nuance and expression of broader worldviews. And then if you go to what is really obviously for a specialist audience—scholarly academic journals—there is even now an awful lot of the debates and discussions that do involve questions about what was the KMT’s role? And where’s the evidence for these things? Also, volumes of documents, which often are a way of making a point without being too explicit. That’s something that’s still very visible. But I would note that some of the things that people discuss around these subjects actually are academic topics that even in the West are not necessarily at the sort of forefront of what people are most concerned.

Let me just give one example of what I mean by that. One subject that is still actually given a certain amount of leeway in Chinese academic discussion is the periodization of World War II. In other words, when does it start? When does it end? But there’s a big debate—the 15-year war debate—about whether it’s actually the occupation of Manchuria in 1931, or the Marco Polo Bridge incident [1937] when Sino-Japanese fighting breaks out on a national scale for the first time the beginning of the war.

I should say, just out of interest, that we are recording this literally on the 18th of September 2025, which is the exact anniversary to the day of 九一八, the September 18 Incident, the Japanese invasion and occupation of Manchuria back in 1931. In Japan, that’s largely a debate among the left amongst historians about Japanese war responsibility, the 戦争責任 debate. In China, I think there’s a lot of controversy around it in many ways. The state has made it very clear that they regard 1931 as the beginning of World War II. That’s the rule—that’s the law, you might actually say.

But in scholarly debates, there is some discussion about, in that case, how do you differentiate what happens in 1937?

Chang: You mentioned the invasion of Manchuria in 1931. That is one of the debated potential beginnings of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Importantly, before that, the Nationalists and Communists had already gone to war—they had already started fighting. In 1927. There was the Shanghai Massacre, is that right? And then that pushes the Communists out.

Rana: Basically, the Nationalist-Communist United Front breaks up with the killings in Shanghai and then Canton, Guangzhou, in 1927. That’s right. So Nationalist-Communist cooperation the first time ends abruptly at that point.

Chang: And then this expels the Communists out of the cities. And then when the war against—this is why their role is minimal when they’re fighting the Japanese in the 1930s.

Rana: What I’d say is that it’s secondary in the sense that there is—I think—guerrilla warfare is very significant, and a lot of that is led by the CCP. What it isn’t is decisive. And I think what the Party would like to say is that the Chinese Communist Party takes the leading role in terms of the war as a whole. I think actually what most historians, including, I think, most military historians in China, would actually say is that on the one hand, you have what are called the key battlefields—正面战场—which are KMT-dominated. If you think about the big names of battles in China during World War II—and these are often not well known outside China: Shanghai, Changsha, Hengyang, Tai’erzhuang—they are KMT battles. The only major set-piece battle the CCP do is the Hundred Regiments Campaign, 1940 under Peng Dehuai. But it is the case also that from base areas after 1937—and just to be clear to listeners, in 1937, hastily, a united front is set up again between the Communists and Nationalists who agreed to fight Japan rather than each other for the duration of the war—the agreement is more solid in the first years of the war against Japan than in the last years.

But in those first years, Chinese Communists do a great deal in terms of preparation in the rural areas, mobilizing a kind of guerrilla warfare. These are important in harassing the Japanese. During that period, what they can’t do is win the war. And this is actually expressed by Mao himself in his famous essay of 1938 “On protracted warfare,” where in some senses he endorses that kind of tactic. So what I’m trying to do is get out of the politically often sort of very polarized way in China of talking about either: “the Nationalists did all the fighting and the Communists did nothing,” or it was “all the Communists and the Nationalists basically sat around.”

And as you can imagine, most historians would say that life is a bit more complex.

Ian: Can I ask you a historical question? What you say is absolutely true, but the Communists, I think, were the main victims of some of the campaigns nearer the end of the war, when there were huge massacres—sort of anti-Communist massacres to wipe out the guerrillas. Why has there been relatively little attention paid to that compared to the Nanjing Massacre?

Rana: Do you mean the sankou三光 campaigns?

Ian: Yes.

Rana: This is sankou三光—essentially means “Three Alls,” which, if I remember correctly, was “kill all, burn all, destroy all.” And it is huge, as you say, a campaign by the Japan’s China Expeditionary Army—in other words, the Japanese troops—to try and launch a kind of slash-and-burn-type campaign, essentially to destroy the ability of guerrilla warriors to support themselves in the countryside.

So I think the answer to the question as to why we don’t stress it as much: first of all, it depends who the “we” is. I would say that reading Chinese historiography—which I do a lot—it is actually, I think, produced quite a lot. It’s probably true that Western accounts of the war perhaps have less about it, but perhaps it’s less stressed because there isn’t one single iconic event, you might say. The Nanjing Massacre—you can define it; there’s photographs, and you can say this is what happened at this point. Or even a big battle, something like Changsha or Tai’erzhuang. The Three Alls campaign: first of all, it was a sort of anti-partisan campaign that went on and on and on, but it probably doesn’t have one or two specific really kind of keynote events that can be drawn out on that front.

Second thing is, one of the things that is still not clear—because of the difficulties getting statistics—is how much of the massive drop in population in central China that’s attributed to the campaign is deaths, and how much is what happened a huge amount in wartime China, which is large numbers of people fleeing as refugees to other areas of the country. And that isn’t entirely clear either. But I would say that certainly that is another element: the idea that the Communists didn’t suffer during the war is also not at all the case.

And the guerrilla warfare element, I think, is important, it’s just important to differentiate that from the idea that this could be the decisive factor. In the end, amongst other things, the decisive factor was the entry of the United States and the British Empire as allies of China to bring the war to a conclusion against the Japanese.

Ian: The only thing is, in a way, the Communists are missing a trick in terms of propaganda, because not only were the Communists the victims of those “burn all, kill all” campaigns, but the general who was responsible for that very murderous campaign very soon after the war became the main military advisor to Chiang Kai-shek.

Rana: That’s Okamura Yasuji. Yes, that’s a fascinating story of what might have been. And again, it’s not often remembered that Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government, with its last few years in power—1945 to ‘49—actually very quickly takes, in some ways, a remarkable worldview, which is that it’s time almost to forgive the Japanese for war crimes in China and instead bring them on board, essentially as Cold War allies.

But in that pro-American Nationalist China that might have existed in that alternative world, Japan and China actually would have been pretty close to each other in certain ways.

And then we get into the areas that again you’ve written brilliantly about, Ian, which is sort of war memory and why Germany and France managed to reconcile, and China and Japan didn’t. I think the lack of capacity during the early Cold War in the ‘40s and ‘50s for China and Japan to talk to each other—because of the Cold War split—is one of the major reasons why even today that historical gap is huge and hasn’t really been reconciled.

Ian: If the Japanese really were to have a real debate on Article 9, which is the pacifist article of the Japanese constitution—which doesn’t allow Japan constitutionally to use armed force abroad—if they were to debate it and were to at least adjust it or reform it or change it, do you think that the war memory in China is still so present and so important in the political debate that the Chinese government would not be able to accept it, or would at least make a tremendous fuss?

Rana: I think there’s no doubt it would make a tremendous fuss about it. It would be an opportunity for China to claim that there was this military spirit emerging in Japan again and probably make a big meal of that. I don’t know that it necessarily—put this way: I think it would be in the gift of the Chinese government, which is able to control a lot of public opinion. You can decide what goes on social media and what doesn’t—not 100% by any means, but significantly influence that online world, which is really where a lot of this discussion happens in China, as in the rest of the world.

What we see at the moment, I think, is less directed anger against, state-directed anger against Japan—and more sort of populist, frankly, often very horrifying incidents of violence in China against Japanese, like the stabbing of a child, I think, just last year in Shenzhen. These are not common incidents—let’s not get it out of proportion—but whenever they happen, they are horrific, and they do suggest that there is a sort of—at least in some circles—a willingness to let that propaganda be out there and shape views about the Japanese.

I think it will be within the gift of the Beijing government if the constitutional position on Article 9 changed—either to downplay it and let it go, or to really ramp it up—but I don’t think it would be a purely sort of grassroots thing. I think that the state definitely would have a role in how it received particular news.

Chang: Can we talk also a little bit about Taiwan? We’ve mentioned it a little bit, but just to sort of follow this history all the way to 1945. So, in 1945, Japan surrenders, and Taiwan and Manchuria are given back to the Republic of China, the Nationalists. There’s the four-year civil war where the Communists become victorious in 1949; the Nationalists move to Taiwan.

And this is kind of where the tension lies, right? Where the current Communist Party of China is trying to say, no, Taiwan belongs to us, China—that the Allies gave the territories back to China. And there the Taiwanese are saying, no, they gave it back to the Republic of China. Is that where the fault line is?

Rana: It’s a large part of it. You can find an awful lot of people—and believe there are many volunteers out there—who will give you a very, very long chapter and verse on the legality of the Cairo Communiqués of 1943, and what various kind of postwar—in the 1950, ‘51, ‘52—Treaty of Taipei, and all sorts of other things that can be used in terms of this interpretation.

Essentially, one of the things that has become clear is that there is no accepted narrative that everyone will get behind. Beijing obviously has a very strong interest in playing a sort of— you might kind of say—a kind of Schrödinger’s international law: At some points, its predecessor state, in the shape of the Republic of China on the mainland—the Nationalist regime under Chiang Kai-shek—is regarded as being, by implication, a legitimate predecessor, even though it wasn’t acknowledged as such by the CCP, because it undertook various international discussions and agreements which today’s Beijing wants to take care of—or take advantage of. In other cases, most notably, obviously, the legitimacy of the PRC itself as being founded on October 1, 1949, as a successor regime that supplants an illegitimate regime. In other words, it defeats the KMT in the civil war. It doesn’t lose or win a general election, after all—that previous regime is regarded as being illegitimate.

So you have to maintain both these positions at the same time, depending on which part of the political story you need to tell. The problem is that since the rest of the world A) doesn’t have huge amounts of time to sort of spend dancing on the head of a pin as to the intricacies of Chinese historiography of the recent past, it creates an extremely confusing situation, since obviously Beijing needs to maintain that both of these historical interpretations are true at the same time, even though they point in different directions.

Chang: Rana, I was wondering whether you could just talk a little bit about the military parades and how—what you’ve observed is—their role in the Chinese context. And has it changed over time? Has anything stuck out to you about this year’s military parade compared to other years?

Rana: Military parades have now become part of the mainstream of the way in which the PRC and the CCP commemorate and celebrate themselves. Military parades as such are not particularly unusual.

Now, what is unusual about this one that just happened on September 3, 2025, and the one that happened exactly 10 years earlier in 2015, is that even now, I think they remain to date the only two occasions when there was a national-level parade held right at the heart of Chinese politics in Tiananmen Square that does not commemorate an event that’s either directly to do with an anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party or the People’s Republic of China. V-J Day—Victory over Japan—obviously is important for China as it is for the Russians and the Americans and British, but it’s not as such a Communist-specific event.

So that makes those two parades—and this most recent one among them—distinctive in and of itself. Beyond that, what I saw this time, say compared with the previous war parade 10 years ago, was, I think, quite notable. The first one is that I think there was less mention of history as a whole, actually—partly because 10 years ago, there were still more veterans and survivors, not very many, but even so, than there are today when there are very, very few people left who remember the war directly. While there were mentions of historical events, I think, more marginal this time than they were 10 years ago. That said, there were certain indications of things that I think did send signals, going back to things in the parade that seemed to chime with that wider set of messages we talked about earlier in the conversation.

The blue berets—in other words, the Chinese UN peacekeeping forces in the parade — obviously are a tip of the hat to that wider sense that China wants to project of itself as an originator of the United Nations at the end of World War II, and a maintainer of that global structure today—by implication, suggesting the United States is no longer interested in maintaining that structure and that China becomes the sort of owner, as it were, of that structure.

So the blue berets in the parade, I think, were nodding in that direction. And also the presence of none other than Vladimir Putin standing right next to Xi Jinping—alongside Kim Jong Un, the center. As I said, in historical terms, there is a Soviet role in World War II when it comes to China, but it’s not a singularly central one, as opposed to the Soviet role in World War II as a whole, which was massive. But nonetheless, the choice that was made at this point to have the Russian leader standing directly next to Xi Jinping was as much a statement about the meaning of that war in the present day as it was really about any historical accuracy about representation of allies in the parade itself.

So those were two things that sort of stood out to me. And maybe also wonder whether, in fact, they would go for a 90th anniversary. And if so, who would be involved and what symbolism would be put forward then.

Ian: Prime Minister Modi was there, too wasn’t he?

Rana: He wasn’t at the parade. He was there a week before, for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which again was an extraordinary moment as well. You’re right Ian in that, having been snubbed, at least in his own estimation—probably correctly—by the United States over trade agreements and other things, Modi decided unusually that he would go to China, to Tianjin, to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting and be seen very publicly putting his hand out and shaking hands with Xi Jinping, with Putin also there.

And that photograph has gone viral. But Modi, I think, not accidentally, declined to stay for the war parade. He was there for the SCO and then flew home before the parade actually started.

Chang: Can I ask both of you guys a question? So, I am American. So I know what it’s like to have a pretty simplistic view of World War II. I think in America, we have this kind of—Normandy is like the one story that we always talk about when we talk about—I know we saved the Europeans in World War II. These are—I wouldn’t say that they’re propagandistic, but when we talk about the Nanjing Massacre, that might be their Normandy.

And when we look at movies like Saving Private Ryan, there’s a lot of—there’s something self-serving and mythologizing in the American tale of World War II. We also have this kind of hero-villain: we have Russians and the Germans tend to be villains. We don’t really have them as heroes in our movies. I’m curious how war memory is similar between the way that Americans understand it and the way that China and Japan do it. And what do you think are really the differences in the way that the war memory plays out in the Chinese and Japanese systems?

Rana: First of all, I think there are many Americans who have noticed the disparity you’re talking about.

I think back in the mid-1980s, the great popular historian—oral historian—Studs Terkel published a book called The Good War. And it was about the U.S. experience in World War II, but it was an ironic title because it covered the way in which a war which was fought ultimately for the right cause—but in which, for instance, discrimination against African American GIs and so forth—was very much part of the experience—had been sort of homogenized into a story that this was a war purely about Western virtue versus Axis evil.

And I adopted that irony myself for a book I wrote a few years ago called China’s Good War, which is not about a war that China has carried out being a good thing. And it’s meant to be about the same phenomenon of making a very complex World War II experience in China and turning it into a narrative about how this is a virtuous, patriotic resistance and no other version of that story is really worth talking or knowing about.

And the ambivalence that comes from the fact that in China you have to deal with the fact that you have these Nationalist fighters who are not actually on the same side as the Communists after the war. And so historical reality and complexity versus a kind of propaganda story. In terms of—I think it is absolutely true that every country uses aspects of its World War II history to tell a heroic story about itself, or even perhaps as a consolation for decline. In some ways, the loss of the British Empire is, in some ways, explained by a narrative that says that the empire was sacrificed by the need to engage in a virtuous cause that ultimately kind of destroyed this structure.

In the case of China and Japan, I just go back briefly to what I was saying a little earlier, which is that because of the not entirely expected circumstances of the early Cold War, there was never really any opportunity for a shared dialogue—a meaningful one—while the war memories were still fresh, in a way that France and Germany essentially... So France and Germany came under American occupation/influence after World War II as part of what became then the EU, NATO, and all that.

So the ability of French and Germans to get together and essentially agree on what World War II had been about—which was Nazi aggression in Europe and its ultimate defeat and removal from European political ecology—that might or might not have happened after 1945 in Asia, in a world in which China and Japan were in direct contact, essentially both under American sponsorship, which could have been the case when FDR expected China to become a sort of leading policeman, as he put it, in the postwar world.

Because, in fact, the unexpected but ultimately transformative event was a revolution which basically put the Communists in power in China, and therefore put them on the other side—not only of the United States, but also of Japan. The ability for decades to have that shared dialogue was entirely lost, really, in a meaningful way. And by the time you get to some sort of ongoing engagement in the 1970s and afterwards, it’s a generation or two later; many of the key players are dead or much older, and the kind of fresh ground of the war being relatively recent current affairs was no longer really true in the ‘70s in a way that it would have been in the 1950s.

Ian: No, oddly enough, Taiwan is probably the one place where there has been a certain amount of dialogue and quite a lot of reason.

But I would say the following: I think the United States and Britain are the outliers here, in that they have a largely heroic view of World War II as the victors. Every other country in Europe—including Germany and China—I’ll get to Russia in a minute—has a tragic memory of World War II because of horrendous losses. And that tends to be the central narrative. It would be absurd—there is a certain amount of heroic stories of the French Resistance and so on. But basically, the emphasis is on collective suffering, which to you, Chang, as an all-American boy, *laugh* it may sound difficult to grasp. The Americans don’t have that experience—not except for the Civil War. This is what makes America and Britain different from the rest of the world.

Now, the Soviet Union is also a curious case, because there the anti-Fascist war is played up very much as a heroic story of the Soviets—the Red Army—having done the bulk of the fighting and so on, which is not untrue.

But they also had a huge amount of suffering, but much of the suffering took place outside the borders of what is now Russia—that the bloodlands in what is now Ukraine and Belarus and Lithuania and Poland and so on—which may be one reason why it’s slightly easier for Russians to emphasize the heroism over the tragedy, which is not to say that Russians also lost huge numbers of people in the fighting.

So I think the difference is that there are two countries in the world—and if you include Russia, three—that can confidently stress the heroic aspects of being victors. No other country that was involved in the war can rarely do that with good conscience.

Chang: But China is trying, right? China is trying to say that there is some kind of agency or heroism in their own...

Ian: They are trying. But I think again, if you’re honest about it, the memory of what happened to the Chinese—and I say that quite deliberately—is a tragic one, perhaps more than a heroic one. But you might differ, Rana.

Rana: No, I think both these things are compatible with each other, I think.

Yeah, I think I would say that actually I’m not against one aspect of what’s happened in recent years, which is the recovery of some element of Chinese agency. I do think that, for instance, in 1938—without going into sort of hugely complex details—1938 is a sort of turning point for Chiang Kai-shek and his government, in that it’s a year into the war after the kind of full-scale war begins in 1937. Finances are terrible; they’re running out of weaponry; it’s all looking very bad. Lots of diplomats look at China and say they’re gonna have to do a deal with the Japanese, because it’s just no way. If you see echoes of kind of Russia-Ukraine today and want to draw analogies, that might be interesting to think of that.

But sticking to the historical case example, Chiang Kai-shek essentially says no—he doesn’t quite use Churchill’s words, “never surrender,” but it’s pretty close to that—even though there’s a logical argument actually followed by his great rival Wang Jingwei, who sets up a collaborationist government with the Japanese because he believes exactly that: China is suffering, and that suffering will end if he does a deal with the Japanese. And Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists basically say, no, we’re gonna keep fighting. If it had not been for that continued Chinese resistance in 1938 and afterwards—and this is Nationalists and Communists essentially—I think you get into a very different version of war in Asia, where there’s a sort of compromise deal; there’s a sort of Japanese puppet state of one sort or another, perhaps run by Chinese technically, and actually it’s really under Japanese control. Then it’s very hard to get to Pearl Harbor, because American efforts to try and pressure the Japanese are less important if you’ve got a sort of semi-peace that’s in operation, which then means that the European war against Hitler—which of course is also ramping up separately across the Eurasian continent—is much harder to combine with the Asian war to create the global war that we now think of as World War II.

Chinese resistance isn’t the only reason that happens, but actually it’s a pretty central one, and one that tends to be underestimated because the standard historiography of World War II starts even now in 1939, and not ‘37 or indeed ‘31.

So I don’t—again, being historically accurate—I don’t want to exaggerate the Chinese role in China today; at least in its official version, it starts talking about China the key battlefield and several things. That’s difficult to just say simplistically without having quite a lot of qualifications. But talking about China having a significant role that actually gives agency, I think that is more meaningful. That said, the tragedy that you talk about, Ian, is absolutely, I think, evident looking at the numbers on the scale of devastation, which is the most besetting element of World War II in China. It was a horrific, destructive war to live through, that I think during the time that it’s being fought probably appeared to have very few heroic qualities. Though I think the reality of war is that people don’t necessarily feel very heroic at the time; they feel frightened, and they feel—in most cases—very inclined to bring it to an end by whatever means.

Chang: One last question: I would be remiss not to ask you both—what you see now in the U.S. with the Trump administration, there has been a lot of efforts to control history, especially with the Smithsonian Museum. I’d be curious if you guys have sort of any parallels that strike you about what Trump is doing, what the MAGA movement is trying to do to history in the given Chinese context.

And maybe Ian, you might be able to speak to the Japan context about just this sense that we need to sort of eradicate any sort of negativity or anti-American narratives, and we need to sort of bolster a kind of narrative of strength historically.

Rana: I think it is important to differentiate between what has been happening in China, which is a very, very top-down control of history for a very long time, and what we see at the moment, I think most historians will be concerned to make sure that when it comes to the free flow and debate of history, that it is as wide as possible. If you think about the war, one thing that’s worth remembering is that 30 years ago, in 1995, there was a massive row around the Smithsonian Museum because of—I think it was the Enola Gay, actually—the plane, the bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

There was such an argument then—a really very ill-tempered one—about precisely how this was going to be described, that in the end, I believe, the display ended up being extremely technical and quite a lot removed from there as well. I think the encouragement of debate in the historical sphere—through museums, through popular culture, and in universities and schools as well—really does need to be heavily encouraged.

And I think we have to see where we are at the moment in terms of that. I don’t want to be like Zhou Enlai and say it’s still too soon to say. But what I’d say is that you can see an awful lot of polities—India will be a good example—where there’d be more restrictions recently in terms of how history is understood. In China, history essentially is a state enterprise as a whole in terms of the boundaries that can be imposed on it, and that’s clearly a direction that we do not want to travel, I think, in the wider world.

Ian: I think that the impulses of Trump may indeed not be so different from authoritarians in countries where the state is able to impose that kind of uniformity.

But it is indeed true: things are not quite the same here [in the US], or indeed in Japan, because a lot of people rather loosely like to say the Germans face their history so honestly and so on, and in Japan it’s all swept under the rug, and you can’t talk about what the Japanese did and so on—which is entirely untrue.

For in the first place, in Japan in the ‘50s, people spoke more openly about Japanese atrocities than the Germans did about what they’ve done. And any Japanese bookstore will show rows and rows of books: some of them overtly nationalistic and denying that the Nanjing Massacre ever took place, or the books that take the opposite view. And as long as that’s the case, a country is in relatively good shape. That’s not true of China today and probably not of Russia either. India is probably in between.

Chang: Great, thank you so much, Rana. I really appreciate it.

Rana: Thank you both. It’s a great privilege to be on with you two distinguished gentlemen, and I hope that all continues to thrive with the podcast.

Chang: If you want to hear more on some of the turbulent issues involving the U.S.-China relationship, Rana also hosts his own podcast called Face Off with The New York Times journalist Jane Perlez. We’ll leave the link in the show notes. Thanks so much for listening.