Summary: As Xi Jinping has stepped back into the public eye this week, the reappearance of China's heir apparent has been upstaged by large demonstrations across the country as tensions mount over territorial claims to the Diaoy (or Senkaku) Islands. As memories of earlier episodes of over-exuberant patriotism resurface, the events have the Sinica folks recalling with some nostalgia that the last time both Xi Jinping and a bunch of islands were in the news, the excitement was over Xi's vacation stopover in Fiji on his way to a state visit to Latin America. This week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo is pleased to host new guests: Damien Ma, analyst with the Eurasia Group, who also contributes frequently to the Atlantic Monthly, and Ian Johnson, former Beijing bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal, now with the New York Times. We are also thrilled to be rejoined by Tania Branigan, ace correspondent for the Guardian in Beijing and soon-to-be member of our "stalwart" class of Sinica supporters. On a final note, we would be remiss not to mention that subscribing to Sinica via RSS is the easiest way to catch up on developments in China. To get started, either sign-up for an account on Popup Chinese or open iTunes, click on the Advanced file menu in iTunes and select the option "Subscribe to Podcast". When your computer prompts you, provide the URL http://popupchinese.com/feeds/custom/sinica and iTunes will take care of everything else, downloading new episodes automatically as soon as they are available. And for the less adventurous or iTunes poor, we're pleased to bring you this show as a standalone mp3 file as always. We hope you like it!
