The Future, Made in China: Evan Osnos on America's Reckoning

Welcome to the Cynical Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China. In this program, we look at books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural threads that can help us better understand what's happening in China's politics. Foreign relations, economics, and society. Join me each week for in-depth conversations that shed more lights and bring less heat. to how we think and talk about China.

I'm Kaiser Gwal, coming to you from my home in Beijing. Listeners, please support my work by becoming a paying subscriber at SenecaPodcast.com. I know there are a lot of substacks out there and they start to add up because there's so many good ones, but this one really does deliver value for money with great content from wonderful partners like Trivium and the China Global South Project. So please do subscribe so I can continue to bring you these conversations and lots more. Today on Seneca, I am delighted to welcome back Evan Osnos of The New Yorker. Evan, as many of you know, was in Beijing for a good stretch during that oft nostalgized golden age in the capital. As a correspondent first for the Chicago Tribune from

2005 and then after 2008 for the New Yorker until he headed back to the States in 2013, I believe. He is the author of the outstanding Age of Ambition, which won the National Book Award in 2014 and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist the following year. He's since written a couple of books, Wildland, The Making of America's Fury, which is just a fantastic one, and The Haves and the Have Yots, which I have yet to read, but I'm really looking forward to, in addition, of course, to dozens and dozens of widely read profiles on important American political figures, mostly named Joe, Joe Matchin, Joe Biden. Uh earlier this month. Evan published a marvelous essay chronicling a recent tech focused trip back to China, his old stomping ground, uh, where he spoke with people ranging from grandees of the Chinese tech scene like Li Kaifu, uh, to delivery drivers, visited all manner of tech companies. and of course just sort of pounded the pavement and and checked out his old digs. The essay is called The Future Made in China. And if you've not had a chance to read it yet,

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