The Xi-Putin meetings

Politics & Current Affairs

This week, a bonus episode to keep you caught up on the week's biggest China story: Xi Jinping's two days of meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Maria Repnikova, a Latvian-born native Russian speaker who is also fluent in Chinese and who teaches Chinese politics and communications at Georgia State University, joins the show again to talk about what each side hoped for, what each side got, and the asymmetries of power on conspicuous display in Moscow.

Illustration for The China Project by Alex Santafé

Below is a complete transcript of the Sinica Podcast with Maria Repnikova.

Kaiser Kuo: Welcome to the Sinica Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China, produced in partnership with The China Project. Subscribe to Access from The China Project to get access: access to not only our great daily newsletter but to all of the original writing on our website at thechinaproject.com. We’ve got reported stories, essays and editorials, great explainers and trackers, regular columns, like James Carter’s “This Week in China’s History,” and, of course, a growing library of podcasts. We cover everything from China’s fraught foreign relations to its ingenious entrepreneurs, from the ongoing repression of Uyghurs and other Muslim peoples in China’s Xinjiang region, to Beijing’s ambitious plans to shift the Chinese economy onto a post-carbon footing. It’s a feast of business, political, and cultural news about a nation that is reshaping the world. We cover China with neither fear nor favor.

I’m Kaiser Kuo, coming to you from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

This week, a bonus episode for you, listeners, and we will try to keep it short and sweet. Today is Wednesday, March 22nd, and Chinese President/General Secretary Xi Jinping has wrapped his two days of meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. For smart perspectives on what this summit meant, who better to turn to than Maria Repnikova? Listeners to the show will know her from her two previous appearances on Sinica. She is associate professor of global communication at Georgia State University and is a specialist in Chinese soft power, in Chinese media. We talked about her great book on Chinese media, and of particular relevance today, of course, China-Russia relations. Maria, great to see you at AAS last week, and thank you for taking the time to join me.

Maria Repnikova: Great to see you, Kaiser, and great to speak to you today.

Kaiser: So, last time you were on the show to talk about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That was about this time last year, just a few weeks after February 24th, if I recall. You had written this piece that argued that for Chinese looking at the war, it was really still all about the United States. To what extent do you think that is still true today?

Maria: Well, I think the theme of blaming the United States or thinking about this war as a proxy war between Russia and the U.S. has remained quite present in Chinese official statements as well as social media discussions, and of course, turning to the meeting between Xi, President Xi and President Putin, that theme was also prevalent there as well as they declared this friendship once again, and cooperation as that really attempts to realign the global geopolitical order, and very much hints at the overstretching of power by the West. So, there’s still that kind of a signaling, and I think they do, the two leaders really do inherit they believe that the West has gone too far; that the United States is too powerful, and that there needs to be more rebalancing.

So, I think in the context of the war, but also in terms of how the war is discussed and how we see China-Russia relations evolve in the past year, this theme of kind of orienting the discussion towards the West, or having the U.S. as being the key player in it has remained very much at the heart of the discussions.

Kaiser: Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more. I mean, I think that it struck you as much as it struck me that both Putin and Xi were mainly playing to domestic audiences with this meeting. There were other audiences, and I think we should get to that, but can you talk about the images that Putin and Xi hope to project to their domestic Russian and Chinese audiences respectively?

Maria: Sure, yes. What I found quite interesting in the context of this meeting is how the two leaders were sort of signaling legitimacy of each other’s systems, political systems and governance systems to domestic audiences respectively. So, for example, Xi Jinping has written, I don’t know if he wrote it himself, but nonetheless, his op-ed has appeared on the front pages of Russia’s main newspaper, addressing Russian people. And Putin has written for the Chinese public, so that they both kind of wrote for each other’s audiences where they’re addressing them directly. And then in their conversation with each other, both have praised each other’s governance styles and systems. So, Putin has even admitted that he’s a bit jealous of how far China has gone, how much it has accomplished, and how much it has awed the world in terms of its economic accomplishment.

And he really praised the unique system of governance of the Chinese Communist Party. So, he praised it, but also declared confidence in Xi’s continuous leadership. And Xi has praised Putin and his leadership style, and he, in effect, has launched his presidential campaign during this visit by stating that Russian people will support Putin in the next election. So, he really was kind of his PR contain manager in a way, which I thought was quite unique. I haven’t seen this happen before. And it was a really interesting insight into the relationship between these two leaders.

Kaiser: Yeah, yeah. That was very odd to talk about the election. As I said, there were multiple audiences for this. One of your areas of research about which you have a book coming out is about Chinese soft power, specifically in Africa. And I know you spent quite a bit of time in Ethiopia looking at Chinese activity there. In fact, everyone that I’ve ever met from Ethiopia seems to know you from there.

Maria: I don’t know if it’s a good thing!

Kaiser: While the U.S. is obviously, as you said, very much still on China’s mind as it thinks about Russia and Ukraine, it’s also thinking increasingly about the Global South. Language in the joint statement, that we’re going to talk about, actually speaks quite directly toward Africa saying that “China and Russia will strengthen communication and coordination on African affairs” and “support African countries’ efforts to independently resolve African issues.” Can you talk a little bit about how China’s position on Russia and Ukraine looks to the rest of the world, beyond the developed West and Japan, and how this meeting might have looked?

Maria: Well, I think overall it seems like there’s some alignment between the perceptions of this war in the Global South at large. And of course, I don’t want to generalize all of the global south, but a large proportion in terms of the countries in Africa and other parts of the global south have been more ambivalent in terms of official statements and their behavior at the UN when it comes to condemnation of Russia. So much more kind of ambivalent statements, even Lula in Brazil was also suggesting, in one of his major statements, that both Zelensky and Putin are responsible for this war. So, these statements are very different from what we hear [in] the West, especially the U.S., but also other western liberal democracies that really unequivocally blame Russia. Right? It’s a very different stance that we hear from a lot of these Global South countries, much more ambivalent, and oftentimes also pointing at the West, at NATO as being in part responsible, but at the very least, hypocritical.

Maybe it’s not completely to blame here, but it hasn’t had pure intentions in its other dealings in conflicts that have to do with the Global South. So, there’s suspicion and resistance towards believing and buying into the narratives of the West when it comes to this war. I think the statements made by Putin and Xi, they speak to those sentiments. They echo them. So, I wouldn’t say necessarily that Xi is influencing necessarily those countries’ leaders to speak on those terms, but I think there’s some alignment between China and the larger Global South in how they see this war. And this kind of middle ground position seems to be present across different contexts here. But the statement about Africa here was interesting.

 

The one you read out that China and Russia are going to collaborate, helping African countries. I think it’s an interesting statement because the two are also, arguably, competing at least for some audiences in Africa. And China is certainly a lot more active than Russia in Africa. It’s just a much more present player, it’s probably the most present player at the moment. And Russia is sort of catching up, but by no means are they kind of equal when it comes to their influence in Africa. So, it’s interesting how they’re making those statements together that they’re going to somehow align. I’m curious about how it’s going to actually materialize. Is there really going to be an alignment or is it just more rhetorical that they’re going to be supportive of certain initiatives, but not so much of material or any kind of tangible alliance, or help with assistance?

Kaiser: If they wanted to underscore American hypocrisy, there was probably no better date on the calendar to choose to have this meeting than the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Maria: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I’m surprised they didn’t bring that up more.

Kaiser: Yeah, I think maybe they thought that it would do the talking for it. Anyway.

Maria: Right. It’s already in the news. Yeah.

Kaiser: Yeah. I think anyone looking, though, for a substantive discussion on the biggest issue, obviously the war that Putin has prosecuted against Ukraine now for 13 months, would’ve been totally disappointed, right? There’s so little that was actually said about it except a kind of pro forma acknowledgment of China’s so-called peace framework by Putin. Even the joint statement left out that first point in that framework, though, about respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity. What is your explanation for why in the public statement there was so little about the war?

Maria: Yeah, I was very struck by that as well, looking at the statements, but also those opinion pieces by the editorials that they published in their respective newspapers. Ukraine was kind of shuffled to the end of those statements. It’s like you read about China-Russia relations from all these different dimensions — economic relations, geopolitical relations, all sorts of different aspects of their increasingly close corporation, and yet Ukraine, and the actual issue at heart here, as you say, is really not quite there. It’s just really the last paragraph, the last two paragraphs, which, to me, rhetorically suggests that it’s really given much less prominence, much less significance in their discussion. And of course, one can interpret it in multiple ways. One which we’ll probably never find out because we aren’t privy to those actual discussions is that maybe they didn’t agree on very much, right? That maybe Xi came in with more expectations of certain steps from Putin and certain kind of more definitive steps about how to go about this peace negotiations. And Putin did not succumb to any of these ideas. So, the best they could do was, again, give out this very vague statement. It seems like Putin is grateful for the peace plan, and he’s open to talking, but Ukraine wouldn’t agree to talking. So, everything’s deflected once again. And there’s really no particular steps that are being discussed here. But one might wonder that they met for so many hours, I think it was, what? Five hours in a row or something. I don’t know how much of it was devoted to Ukraine, but of course, they must have talked about it. And if that’s all that came out, it seems like not a whole lot of agreement has been reached or not a whole lot of progress has been made between the two leaders.

Kaiser: Right. I mean, with five hours, you could cut it in half for the translation, of course, and then…

Maria: That’s true. Yeah, but still a long time, though.

Kaiser: And then at least one hour of that was spent saying, “Dear friend, dear friend, dear friend. My good-”

Maria: Yeah, praising each other. All the pleasantries. Yeah.

Kaiser: Yeah. So, I was engaged in a little conversation on Twitter yesterday, and you had actually weighed in as well. It started with someone taking issue with the usual framing of Putin as the junior partner in the Sino-Russian relationship. And I had also expressed sort of skepticism of the senior junior partner thing. I pointed out the way that Russia’s appetite for risk, its general kind of pugnacity and bellicosity, its willingness to sort of disrupt the order and its lack of a stake in the international order meant that China often found itself reacting to things that Russia did. Now, this is something that I crib directly from something that Susan Thornton said. Susan, for those who don’t know, was the acting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific. And that stuck with me for a while.

For me, though, this definitely complicated this idea that China is the senior partner, but there’s clearly a whole lot more to it than that. I mean, the one thing that you had remarked on as the asymmetry of the power relations, it was very clear from this visit, and it’s also obvious, I think, to any observer. Can you talk about what was so unbalanced, so asymmetric, and maybe how we can square this with what Susan had observed about the other aspects of their relationship?

Maria: Oh, yeah, sure. I saw the discussion as well, the kind of senior, junior framing, I think what Susan also pointed to, from what I remember, is this idea that Russia can be this very unpredictable actor, right? As you said as well, it’s this actor that is not quite obliging or going by the norms. So, in some ways, it can catch China off guard and lead it into, not quite wrong direction, maybe that’s not the best way to put it, but in a direction it wouldn’t otherwise maybe follow, it wouldn’t otherwise be succumbing to engaging with them and so forth. So, I think there is something about the unpredictability of Russia that’s not always a welcoming thing for the Chinese leadership. And that means that maybe seniority, and juniority is not really the best framework as senior leaders or senior partners suggest somebody’s leading the other.

Like, China is leading Russia. And you don’t really see China leading Russia in this context at least. And even if you think about the peace negotiations, again, going back to your previous question, not much has come out of this meeting. It just makes you wonder like, could more have happened? Well, did Xi try and didn’t work? We don’t know, of course, but the fact that so little has been revealed suggests that, again, there isn’t quite the leadership, there’s not the senior brother coming in and saying, “Hey, you got to sign on to this.” That doesn’t work. So, that’s something that I think is worth just being kind of cautious about in terms of how we define this. But the asymmetry, the unequal nature of this relationship, I think is, to me, is very interesting.

And there’s several levels to this asymmetry. In my own analysis, I’m interested in propaganda, right? Political communication, symbols. When you look at symbols, which is maybe the more subtle arena, but I think still an important one, there is some asymmetry that’s even notable there. For example, it’s a very subtle example, but it was noticeable to me, was that Xi Jinping’s article was placed at the very forefront, front page of the Russian newspaper. His picture was there, was really kind of very much at the center. And Putin’s article was not at the forefront of Renmin Ribao, the People’s Daily. There was no photo, and it just seemed to be, again, kind of like it’s somewhere in the middle, but it’s not really at the heart of the coverage.

So, it’s not given the same prominence. So, even in terms of symbolic placement, we see that Xi is placed much higher or at the much more central, much more central position than Putin when it comes to how they’re communicating with each other’s audiences. So that was very noticeable. When it comes to the language they used, Xi and Putin, what they said about each other and the friendship, and there was an interesting article actually in Russia’s Tatarstan paper. It’s sort of a business, fairly professional business daily, and they had all those bullet points of who said word and the takeaways from Putin and from Xi. And we see that Putin, I think he noted that the friendship is at the highest peak, kind of at the top peak in its entire history.

So, it’s still a very definitive and pretty dramatic language. And Xi has noted that the friendship is very important. It’s almost existential to the global order, but it’s not at the highest peak. He didn’t say that it’s like the best moment in Russia-China relations. The way that they characterize the friendship is different as well in terms of the language that they use, which was also quite interesting. And then, of course, in terms of economic relations, that was pointed out a lot by different observers. And some Russian commentaries actually suggested that Russia is being sold off to China. It’s an interesting statement because it presumes a certain passivity, like Russia is this passive actor and is being sold off. I don’t quite like that framing neither, but there were a lot of economic deals struck at this meeting.

Kaiser: Sure.

Maria: And most of them appear to basically give kind of a discounted access for China to Russian market, whether it’s agriculture, oil, energy, resources. China is getting a good deal, right? It’s getting a good deal because Russia doesn’t have many other major countries to trade with. So, that kind of is this big fear also, many Russians, I think the society at large; that they’re somehow going to become part of China, endure its imperial vision, and they’re being basically shipped off to China. It’s actually a very sore point in public opinion, and even in novels and fiction, you read about that a lot. To see this happen in real time and seeing people comment on that was just really fascinating to observe this idea of economic asymmetry. And of course, that’s not to say that Russia is not benefiting. They’re still getting a market. So, you don’t want to say that it’s just China is gaining something, but I think there is still an unequal gain here that’s worth highlighting.

Kaiser: Going back to this junior-senior business, Evan Feigenbaum, who always has very smart things to say, he suggested that this isn’t the right way to look at it, that it’s about optionality, he called it. In other words, just how financially, commercially, diplomatically — even to some extent, he says, strategically, China just has more choices, more potential partners, and Russia just has very limited choices. And that’s obviously true. Do you think that Putin got what he wanted out of this summit? I mean, some of this was clearly not.. I mean, look, you talked about the language. One of the phrases that was missing, and certainly not in the Chinese language, was this highfalutin February 4th language of 2022 of no limits partnership or no limits friendship. There was no deal on the Siberia 2 Gas Pipeline that would take gas through Mongolia and into China. 

There was very little of substance except for some agricultural deal and some hydrocarbons. But do you think that as his buddy, Xi Jinping, left town, he sees them off, that he felt disappointment?

Maria: Well, it’s a little hard to tell, but I think Putin did get quite a bit out of it. I mean, he had the major leader of the second world’s biggest economy in visiting him in time of major war. And of course, he’s facing persecution. Putin can be arrested at any time if he travels to any of the European countries, right? He’s really in a very fragile position internationally. He doesn’t have, as you mentioned, many “options or choices or allies.” So, having Xi Jinping visit and with this grandeur, this whole red carpet treatment and all the meetings and photographs and vast media coverage in Russian, I think at the very least, in the short term, signals to the domestic public that we’re not alone, right? There’s somebody standing with us, even if Xi doesn’t directly say that he supports the war, he does support this relationship.

He supports China-Russia friendship. He supports Putin becoming…continuing in the role of the president, right? So, he’s endorsing his “campaign.” So, there’s a lot there that I think is symbolically maybe powerful and relevant for Putin, even if he doesn’t gain everything on the economic front. And also he wasn’t forced to really move forward in any direction when it comes to Ukraine. I mean, he didn’t really definitively promise anything when it comes to peace negotiations. He said he’s ready to talk, but it almost sounds like a cop-out. He wasn’t really pushed in a corner to any concessions in this war. So, that also seems like indirectly a victory for Putin. It kind of buys him time to continue with his war.

Kaiser: Right. And what about for Xi Jinping? Do you think that he managed to come off looking to his intended audiences, like the potential peacemaker that he wanted to look like? Do you think that any of that landed with audiences beyond his intended ones? In other words, did anyone in the West see this as evidence that Xi is making a good-faith effort to mediate in this conflict?

Maria: Well, judging by the headlines and the articles that came out of Western Media, it doesn’t seem like there was a lot of appreciation for the peacemaker role that Xi was proclaiming to play here. At least we didn’t see very positive coverage or headlines that suggest that he did his best or he really accomplished something. If anything, there was either disappointment or some cynicism or a lot of emphasis on China-Russian relations going strong, which is not a really positive sign for the West.

Kaiser: No, indeed. And what about for his domestic audiences? How does this land at home?

Maria: It was one of the top topics or very popular topics on Weibo. People were definitely discussing it. And state media has pushed out quite a bit of messaging and pictures and so forth about the summit. So, I think domestically, it does highlight at least his attempt at making peace and his attempt at showcasing this kind of great power status of China in this meeting, and also going against the West. I mean, he did show up in Russia when no western country would dare to do so. And he kind of stands his ground in terms of how he engages with Russia and with the West. So, I think maybe domestically, at least amongst the more nationalistic audiences, it could play some part in enhancing his support.

Kaiser: How do you think that Volodymyr Zelenskiy is viewing this right now, and what are his expectations for this phone call that’s supposed to happen soon between him and Xi Jinping?

Maria: Yeah, it’s hard to tell how he’s viewing it. I imagine he must be not very pleased overall, but Xi Jinping going to Russia and all the proclamations of friendship and the positive words for Putin must not land that well in Ukraine. But at the same time, Zelenskiy has been very sort of patient and kind of viewing it, I guess, with this long game lens that he’s always grateful to China for playing a constructive role. He’s ready to talk. He’s kind of always signaling openers and being diplomatic, but he never blames China, right? He never said anything really negative about Xi, so it seems like he’s just playing the patient’s long game to see what happens, especially given that not much has been accomplished in direction of peace. So maybe hoping that Xi might turn towards Ukraine a little bit more in the future, but it’s hard to tell exactly how he’s interpreting it because we don’t see in very august revelatory or very honest reactions. He’s trying to be very careful about what he says.

Kaiser: Yeah, I mean, I think that the fact that so little was said about the war either reflects, as you suggested, just a lack of having come to any kind of a solid agreement on how to move forward with it, or it’s China just really signaling, subtly signaling a kind of displeasure with it just by not even bringing it up. That may be a hopeful sign that Zelenskiy might read. Anyway, that’s all speculation, and I look forward to exploring this once that phone call actually does happen, and we see readouts from it. 

Maria: Absolutely.

Kaiser:  Yeah. Do you think that there’s anything that the U.S. could have done or its NATO allies could have done differently to produce a different approach from Beijing? I mean, if its tone had been different, in other words, the U.S. had, rather than trying to cut China off from advanced semiconductors and ban TikTok and talk up, outbound investment restrictions, and the myriad of other things that raise Chinese hackles, is there a way they might have helped to dissuade Xi from moving closer to Putin as he seems to have done?

Maria: Yeah, that’s a tough question because it’s sort of requires completely overturning the existing U.S.-China relationship because it’s just so, at this point, going into such a negative direction; that doing something different almost means like going back and changing all the steps that have already been made. And it doesn’t sound like there’s any room for that in Washington in terms of the political climate to step back and reevaluate and shift gears. So, I guess something maybe could have been done differently in terms of being a little bit maybe more open or a little softer in China, or at least not as antagonistic, but also perhaps publicly appreciating or engaging China as a so-called peacemaker. Because when it comes to this war, I think for the most part, China’s efforts have been dismissed as ineffective.

The peace plan is too vague. Everything that China has done has not really been taken with kind of a much positive response from Washington. So, maybe there could be a little bit more encouragement. But I guess given how far the relationship has gone, even that encouragement, I think, wouldn’t necessarily change, fundamentally changed the direction of Xi. And his relationship with Putin have really been growing strong for many years now. So, it’s also kind of a relationship that’s growing, and it seems like there is some very personal affinity between them as well. I was a little bit skeptical of that point, but when I looked at the summit, I thought, but maybe there is something also about the two leaders that is really… some kind of bonding that is also significant. It’s not just all strategic, it’s not all a game. There’s something between them that’s also kind of present there. But overall, I think there’s little whole lot that the U.S. could do without overturning or really going fundamentally to different direction vis-à-vis China, which seems extremely unlikely.

Kaiser: Maria Repnikova, thank you so much for taking the time to join me and for sharing your very well considered perspectives. It’s just terrific, and I look forward to talking to you again soon. Hopefully, after the Zelenskiy phone call. But let’s move on now to recommendations. Before we do, just a very quick reminder that the Sinica Podcast and all the other shows in the Sinica Network are powered by The China project. And if you like the work that we’re doing with shows across the network, shows like Strangers in China, which is in its third season, and which you really need to be listening to, or the wonderful China in the Global South and China in Africa podcasts, then, by all means, please become an Access member. You’ll help us to keep the lights on. All right, Maria, what do you have for us?

Maria: Sure. So, there’s a book that I wanted to recommend, which I’m looking forward to reading. I don’t want to say that I already read it because I’m in the process of just starting. It’s on my desk. And I want to, well, there’s a video showing it to Kaiser — nobody else can see it. So, it’s a book by Solomon Elusoji, and it’s called Travelling with Big Brother: A Reporter’s Junket in China. And essentially it’s a story of what he described as a China dream from the perspective of a Nigerian freelance journalist struggling to report, well, the truth while surviving on public relations stories. So, it’s all about these long fellowships that China funds, Chinese government funds for African journalists. And usually we hear only positive stories about this kind of fellowships, right? That everything is great and it’s a wonderful free trip.

But this author, Solomon Elusoji, actually present a more critical View. He talks about the challenges of this trips. And again, as he mentions, this kind of a story of surviving on public relations’ stories. I think it’s a really fascinating idea, and it’s a very rare glimpse into the experience of the participants themselves. Usually we just hear about it, again, indirectly or only through PR type content. So, I highly recommend everyone to check it out. It’s on Amazon. And I hope that this author actually comes to work with me here at GSU. He applied for PhD here, so I’m very excited. 

Kaiser: Great. Yeah. Good luck recruiting him. That would be great.

Maria: Yes.

Kaiser: I mean, it sounds like he’d be a perfect person for you to work on with your research. All right. My recommendation, so yesterday I had the great pleasure of hosting a young Sendai associate professor, a guy named Antoine Roth, who’s originally from Geneva, Switzerland. He wrote to me, he’s a fan of the show. He popped down to my neck of the woods from D.C. after he was there just to give a book talk. He has a new book, and I’ll talk about that in a second. But really, he’s got some family here in Chapel Hill. It just happened that he arrived on the very day that a band that both of us quite like. He’s a real big fan. I know them, but I’m not super familiar with their music.

It’s a Polish progressive rock band called Riverside. That’s my recommendation. They were playing the last show of their U.S. tour at a local venue here, the storied Cat’s Cradle, a really kind of great venue here in Carrboro, which is the little town that abuts downtown Chapel Hill. After a very, very nice Indian meal, we headed over and took in just great playing, really solid songwriting. The band has a singer who is also a very good bass player. And the guitarist who’s actually… he was a touring guitarist. He replaced the former guitarist who died in 2017. This new guy, though, fantastic tone, really, really tasteful. He’s not a flashy player. There’s not a lot of gratuitous pyrotechnics. It’s just kind of, if you like David Gilmour or Steve Hackett or Alex Lifeson, that’s the kind of guitar play, very much an ensemble play or kind of all about tone and melody.

I am now a fan. I’ve been listening to a lot of their stuff now. The band is called Riverside. They have a new album out called ID.Entity, which I guess is kind of a play on, ID.Entity or ID.Entity, right? Anyway, it’s a very tuneful album. Ed Sander, who is another loyal listener to the show and a big fan of progressive rock music, he told me that he really likes this record too. So, thanks to Antoine, very enjoyable to meet you. Great conversations. His book, which I’ll be receiving soon, I hope, it’s A Hierarchical Vision of Order: Understanding Chinese Foreign Policy in Asia, in which he looks at sort of some historical echoes from the way that China had previously conducted its relations with the neighbors and looks for continuities in that, and all the while without falling into the trap of essentialism. So, I’m looking forward to that book. So, Maria, thanks so much. That was really a pleasure.

Maria: Thank you. I just downloaded the album, so I’m excited to check out the music. It’s wonderful. Yeah.

Kaiser: Okay. Cool. So great to see you!

Maria: Great to see you, too.

Kaiser: The Sinica Podcast is powered by The China Project and is a proud part of the Sinica Network. Our show is produced and edited by me, Kaiser Kuo. We would be delighted if you would drop us an email at sinica@thechinaproject.com or just give us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts as this really does help people discover the show. Meanwhile, follow us on Twitter or on Facebook at @thechinaproj, and be sure to check out all the shows in the Sinica Network. Thanks for listening, we’ll see you next week. Take care.