Keynote Address

Kaiser Kuo

Topic: Important Maxims for Examining China Today

Kaiser Kuo will share his key precepts for studying China in the modern day. A former rocker and tech employee and a current podcast creator, Kaiser will share his unique perspective on how the U.S. should both confront and cooperate with China. He believes that to truly understand China, people must put themselves into the minds of Chinese officials. Come to the conference to learn more about his maxims for examining China in 2019.

Kaiser Kuo (郭怡广) is the host of the Sinica Podcast, the leading English-language podcast on current affairs in China, and editor-at-large of SupChina.com. Kaiser is a Chinese American freelance writer and musician. He served as director of International Communications for Baidu, China's leading search engine, from 2010 to 2016. Prior to that he was a reporter focusing on technology and media in China, and is perhaps best known as one of the founders of China's first and most successful heavy metal band, Tang Dynasty. He left the band in 1999, and later co-founded Spring & Autumn (Chunqiu), another Beijing-based and ethnically-oriented Chinese heavy metal band, in which he played guitar. Kaiser's musical involvement also involved playing bass for Dirty Deeds, an AC/DC cover band based in Beijing.

He repatriated to the U.S. in 2016 after living in China for over 20 years. He currently lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with his wife and two children. Kaiser is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and received an MA in East Asian Studies from the University of Arizona. 

Photograph: Penn WICS