China 21 is produced by the 21st Century China Center at UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy. We are a leading university-based think tank that produces scholarly research and informs policy discussions on China and U.S.-China relations. This podcast features expert voices, insights and stories about China’s economy, politics, society, and the implications for international affairs. Learn more at china.ucsd.edu
In this episode, recorded in November 2025, Victor Shih sits down with Sarah Beran to discuss key developments in U.S.-China relations and how the relationship has evolved and may continue to evolve in the second Trump administration.
Center Executive Director Lei Guang recently sat down with Tyler Jost to discuss his new book, Bureaucracies at War. This podcast features highlights from their conversation, focusing on how Jost’s analysis sheds light on the dynamics of today’s U.S.-China tensions.
In this episode, UC San Diego Professor Barry Naughton talks globalization and economic development in China, Russia and India with Temple Professor Roselyn Hsueh.
21CCC Assistant Director Harris Doshay sits down with Syracuse Associate Professor and UCSD Alum Dimitar Gueorguiev to discuss his latest book, Retrofitting Leninism. In it, they explore the logic of popular participation in authoritarian regimes and the ongoing struggles faced by the CCP.
Susan Shirk, Chair of the 21st Century China Center, and former U.S. Attorney Carol Lam sit down to discuss the ways the China Initiative, from flaws in its inception to views towards the future of DOJ espionage prosecutions.
Micah Muscolino interviews James Millward, a leading scholar on China and Central Asia at Georgetown University. They connect the history of Xinjiang in the Qing Empire, to assimilationist policies and terrorism of the 2000s, and to present day large-scale repression and cultural genocide of Uighurs under Xi Jinping. This episode is adapted from the China Throughlines web series, which features UC…
This episode is an extended interview adapted from the China Throughlines web series , which features UC San Diego’s China historians in conversation with their colleagues on the echos and connectedness of China’s storied past to the twenty-first century. Mary Augusta Brazelton is University Lecturer in Global Studies of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of Cambridge. Her book,…
The 21st Century China Center is premiering a new web series: "China Throughlines" - featuring UC San Diego’s China historians in conversation with their colleagues on the echos and connectedness of China’s storied past to the twenty-first century. In this audo excerpt from the pilot episode, Paul Pickowicz interviews Perry Link, esteemed cross-disciplinary China scholar and translator of the…
Since the novel coronavirus outbreak in the megacity of Wuhan in December 2019, lockdowns were also implemented across China’s vast countryside, home to more than 700 million people. Dr. Scott Rozelle, senior fellow at Stanford University FSI and co-director of the Rural Education Action Program, presents his latest study to assess the effects of local and nationwide disease control measures on…
As we are living through a historic pandemic and ever more turbulent U.S.-China relations, we revisit a conversation recorded at our last public lecture right before the lockdown. 21st Century China Board Chair James Kralik interviews investor and best-selling author Weijian Shan about his memoir of living through the trauma and turmoil of Mao’s Cultural Revolution to become one of Asia’s most…