Substacks recommended by ChinaTalk

Recommended by ChinaTalk

Leapfrog

By Rita Liao

Documenting migrant founders outside the American-centric bubble

SpyTalk

By Jeff Stein

Intelligence for Thinking People

The best coverage on the US intelligence community

- ChinaTalk

RealTime Mandarin

By Andrew

A weekly resource to help you improve your Mandarin every week, stay informed about China, and communicate with confidence in Chinese.

Interconnects

By Nathan Lambert

The cutting edge of AI, from inside the frontier AI labs, minus the hype. The border between high-level and technical thinking. Read by leading engineers, researchers, and investors.

Recode China AI

By Tony

China AI Spotlight: Your weekly guide to China's AI breakthroughs, trends, and stories.

Factory Settings

How to update the default settings of government, by former CHIPS Program Office leadership.

Zixuan Ma’s Blog

A collection of essays on China’s political economy, aiming to improve the world’s understanding of China with holistic perspectives and broad-based analyses.

Interconnected

By Kevin Xu

On the intersections of tech, investing, geopolitics, and US-Asia relations

Kevin Xu does a fantastic job exploring China + tech

- ChinaTalk

Political Currents by Ross Barkan

This is Ross Barkan's newsletter - original essays on politics, society, and culture

I've spent 25 years living in nyc, and could not get invested in local politics until I started reading Ross' newsletter. He's a fantastic reporter and analyst whose left-wing views push me to question my assumptions.

- ChinaTalk

SemiAnalysis

By Dylan Patel

Bridging the gap between the world's most important industry, semiconductors, and business.

Choosing Victory

By Ryan Fedasiuk

Decision points at the heart of technology, geopolitics, and U.S.-China relations.

The Intrinsic Perspective

By Erik Hoel

Natural philosophy, belles-lettres, polemics.

Erik is a deeply original thinker who is particularly strong on the impact of technology on society.

- ChinaTalk

Consensus Drift

By Pablo Chavez

Consensus Drift is a newsletter about the politics and political economy of the digital stack, focusing on how government decisions are reshaping these markets over time.

Hello China Tech

By Poe Zhao

Decoding China tech for global minds

McFaul's World

By Michael McFaul

Explaining international politics, and especially the fight between autocrats and democrats in the world today.

Strange Loop Canon

By Rohit

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” ― Albert Einstein

Reading the Waves

By Yunan

Reading the waves beyond Silicon Valley

What Is Called Thinking?

By Zohar Atkins

Philosophy, Religion, and Culture

zohar's newsletter makes me think harder about more important topics than anything else that shows up in my inbox

- ChinaTalk

Recent Works by Chang Che

Recent Works by Chang Che arrives in your inbox sparingly. It's purpose is to notify you of new articles by Chang Che.

Directed Divergence

Weekly updates on numbers, news, and nations. Making sense of Kondratiev, Kuznets, and Kitchin cycles

Hanson hurts my brain he's very smart.

- ChinaTalk

Michael Kovrig's Strategic Narratives

Comment and analysis on the intersection of geopolitics, geoeconomics, global security, strategic communication and human values with a focus on China, the Indo-Pacific and great power rivalry from an ex-diplomat and current policy adviser.

波士頓書評 Boston Review of Books

讀嚴肅的書，做有趣的人

Global Cyber Digest

By Justin Sherman

Leading analysis of technology, policy, and geopolitics—from Global Cyber Strategies, a Washington, DC-based research and advisory firm.

Justin Sherman is the first person I turn to for cyber policy questions

- ChinaTalk

DeLong's Grasping Reality: Economy in the 2000s & Before

By Brad DeLong

One of the best ways to learn to make sense of money, work, communication, production, distribution, and more. Betting that in the course of human things the future must resemble even if it does not reflect the past, people being much the same over time.

a living legend! What I would give to know as much and think as synthetically as brad does...

- ChinaTalk

Stanford SCCEI China Briefs

A biweekly brief series from the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions that translates data-driven research on China into evidence-based insights

Fantastic digestible breakdowns of policy-relevant academic research on China

- ChinaTalk

Noahpinion

By Noah Smith

Economics and other interesting stuff

Noah is one of the best in the game. He's really unparallelled in his ability to deep dive into econ and econ-adjacent questions. We explore similar themes around industry policy and technological progress. About once a month he puts out a really strong piece on China and, having previously lived in the country, is particularly good on Japan.

- ChinaTalk

Tech Taiwan 胡說科技

Exclusive and in-depth semiconductor trend analysis, covering technological breakthroughs, supply chain shifts, with a strong focus on Taiwan's strategic position :exclusive insights from tech columnist Liang-rong Chen in Taiwan.

Sinocism

By Bill Bishop

Get smarter about China

what can you say, Bill is the GOAT

- ChinaTalk

Value Added

By JS Tan

Value Added is a newsletter about the political economy of innovation.

China Story

By Phil Cunningham

Commentary, photo essays, opinion, fiction

Eating Policy

By Jennifer Pahlka

In business, culture eats strategy. In government, culture eats policy. Here we'll talk about the problems of state capacity (government's ability to achieve its policy goals) and how to fix them. From the author of Recoding America.

Breaking Beijing

By Tony Stark

The Blueprint for How We Win the 21st Century

Moly’s Substack

By Chinese Doom Scroll

A translation of all the hottest Weibo posts!

Peking Hotel

By Liu He

Stories of what China used to be and what it is capable of becoming.

Deep interviews with lifelong China watchers--Liu He spends over twenty hours each with each subject, painting a fascinating window into modern China through the foreigners who have invested most into understanding its evolution. One of the best new China newsletters of 2024 can't wait to see what he does with it.

- ChinaTalk

Culpium, by Tim Culpan

Culpium: noun [U] — a cure for lack of knowledge, understanding or clarity. *taken by those seeking to improve comprehension of technology, semiconductors, and supply chains especially in Asia. *See your therapist if stupidity persists

Foreign Policy Expertise

By Dan Spokojny

We walk like experts, we talk like experts, but does that really mean we know what we're doing? This substack explores the nature of expertise in foreign policy in the 21st century.

on a scale from 1 to 10

By vlad chituc — on a scale

understanding how we understand minds

Derek Thompson

A newsletter about abundance and building a better world.

Shakespeare News

By Kate Pitt

A weekly newsletter about the world's most popular playwright.

Daniel Petkevich

History, geopolitics, technology, and culture.

Comment is Freed

By Sam Freedman

Politics, policy analysis, and foreign affairs from Sam and Lawrence Freedman

Eurasia Dispatch

By Daniel Balazs

Your weekly go-to source for analysis and data-informed insights on Europe-Asia relations. Views are personal.

The Counteroffensive with Tim Mak

A war correspondent's open notebook, reporting live from Kyiv. Human stories that illustrate what’s happening during the war in Ukraine, and elsewhere on the frontlines for democracy. Issues 3x a week!