Understanding China has become more difficult than ever, yet also more important than ever. Hardening geopolitics has made travel to China more difficult, but not impossible. Join host Scott Kennedy, the Senior Adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at CSIS, for an on-the-ground look at China, for conversations with people shaping China and scholars exploring the country firsthand. What makes China tick? Where is the country going? How should the U.S. respond to the China challenge? We’ll dive into all of that and more on China Field Notes – with Scott Kennedy.
China’s Changing Commercial Landscape on the Eve of the Summit: A Conversation with Eric Zheng
In this episode of China Field Notes, Scott Kennedy talks with Eric Zheng, President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai. After describing his pathway from growing up in Shanghai to working in consulting and the insurance industry, Zheng assesses China’s evolving business climate, including the challenges facing American companies, why China remains an important market and manufacturing base, and how American firms are adapting their global strategies. The discussion concludes by Zheng explaining the value of greater predictability in U.S.-China relations.
1 Sept 2026
Complicating China’s Soft Power: Maria Repnikova on China’s Image-Making Efforts in Ethiopia
In this episode of China Field Notes, Scott Kennedy talks with Communications Professor Maria Repnikova of Georgia State University. She explains how China seeks to build influence in Africa through tangible enticements, ideational power, and defensive image-making. Although she points to a variety of areas of success, Repnikova also highlights the ways in which China is encountering obstacles to expanding its influence. She concludes that China is not effectively “exporting” its model of governance to countries in the Global South. The discussion also covers her experiences of carrying out fieldwork in the two countries, where she found both important similarities and differences.
Maria Repnikova, an expert on Chinese political communication, is an Associate Professor in Global Communication, and the inaugural William C. Pate Chair in Strategic Communication at Georgia State University. She is the author of Competing for Soft Power: China’s Image-Making in Africa (2026), Chinese Soft Power (2022), and the award-winning Media Politics in China: Improvising Power Under Authoritarianism (2017), all from Cambridge University Press. . Her writings have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Atlantic, as well as in many academic journals. Dr. Repnikova holds a doctorate in politics from Oxford University where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She is a recipient of several fellowships and awards, including the Wilson Fellowship (2020-2021).
11 Dec 2025
History from Below: Harvard’s Michael Szonyi on Fieldwork, History, and U.S.-China Relations
In this episode of China Field Notes, Scott Kennedy speaks with historian Michael Szonyi about why fieldwork matters to social historians and trends in U.S.-China relations. Szonyi unpacks the concept of “history from below” and how doing fieldwork in localities helps social historians understand history from the perspective of everyday people, their practices, and community dynamics that are less visible when looking through the lens of the country’s leaders or international politics. Drawing on years of research in places such as Quemoy and Yongtai (Fujian), he describes how local records, such as land deeds and genealogies, complicate familiar national narratives and reveal how ordinary communities experienced major political and geopolitical shifts. Kennedy and Szonyi conclude by discussing the role of historians as public intellectuals, the risks of scholarly decoupling, and why first-hand knowledge of China remains essential for navigating the future of U.S.-China relations.
Michael Szonyi is Frank Wen-hsiung Wu Professor of Chinese History and former Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. A social historian of late imperial and modern China, his books include The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China (2017) and Cold War Island: Quemoy on the Front Line (2008). His most recent works are The China Questions 2: Critical Insights into US-China Relations (co-edited with Adele Carrai and Jennifer Rudolph, 2022) and Making Meritocracy: Lessons from China and India, from Antiquity to the Present (co-edited with Tarun Khanna, 2022). He received his B.A. from the University of Toronto and his D.Phil. from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He has also studied at National Taiwan University and Xiamen University. He is currently writing a modern history of rural China and a study of a remarkable trove of local documents found in Yongtai County, China. In 2024, he was made an “Honorary Villager of Yongtai.”
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