After two long months, Shanghai's brutal lockdown is over in name, but Xi Jinping is telling officials to ‘unswervingly adhere’ to Zero COVID, despite the costs. Shanghai’s lockdown brought chaos to global supply chains and torpedoed China’s once-sacred economic growth targets. It’s also taken a toll on the city’s residents; once the nation’s most privileged, they had a front row seat to the arbitrary nature of government decrees. To unpack what happens next, Louisa and Graeme are joined by Jenn...
Jun 06, 2022•46 min
For the past year, China has been in the grip of a crackdown on niangpao , or ‘sissy men’, with the People’s Daily warning that effeminate men are ‘corrupting a generation.’ It’s a movement that is having a chilling effect well beyond influencers having their social media accounts closed, with the Ministry of Education even issuing guidelines on how to ‘cultivate masculinity’ in boys from kindergarten onwards. To discuss what lies behind the masculinity crisis, Louisa and Graeme are joined by UN...
May 11, 2022•38 min
As Australia’s Defence Minister warns his nation to ‘prepare for war’ with China, there’s a growing feeling of inevitability about a future conflict between China and the United States. Against this rather bleak backdrop, we hear from one global figure who has had unusual access to China's leaders: Australia's former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. The President and CEO of the Asia Society, he describes himself as a Sinologist at the tables of power. He's probably the only Mandarin-speaking world lea...
Apr 28, 2022•42 min
How is Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine redrawing the geopolitical landscape? In this episode, we examine China’s interests in the conflict and explore the limits of their ‘no limits’ agreement with Russia. To ask whether the geopolitical balance is shifting in favour of an ‘axis of autocracies’, Louisa and Graeme are joined by Alexander Gabuev, senior fellow and Russian chair in the Asia-Pacific Programme at the Carnegie Moscow Centre and Maria Repnikova, assistant professor in global communi...
Apr 06, 2022•45 min
America's elites love to talk about China's '5000 years of civilization', but such language - which could come straight from the pages of the China Daily - serves to amplify Beijing's talking points. In this way and due to their own business dealings with China, some American elites are helping Beijing grow more powerful. In his book, America Second: How America's Elites Are Making China Stronger , journalist Isaac Stone Fish zeroes in on the case of the former US secretary of State Henry Kissin...
Mar 09, 2022•44 min
By any metric, China's rural residents face massive disadvantages compared to their urban counterparts. More than half of rural teenagers are cognitively delayed, and longstanding policies restrict their mobility and access to vital services. China's peasants were one of Chairman Mao's favoured classes and the backbone of his Revolution, but what place is there for the half-a-billion rural dwellers in Xi Jinping's China? To discuss whether common prosperity can trickle down to the countryside, L...
Feb 02, 2022•46 min
As China's economy slows down, Xi Jinping's charting a new economic course that will redefine the country's future. From reining in tech giants to redistributing wealth in the name of “common prosperity”, the Party's economic policy is moving away from the Deng reform era. Economic analysts are sharply divided on what it portends for China and the world. This month, Louisa and Graeme hear two completely opposed takes on China's economic strategy, from Andy Rothman, an investment strategist at Ma...
Jan 02, 2022•49 min
Become an instant expert on the new historical resolution issued by China's Communist Party for all your cocktail season smalltalk needs. It's only the third such move in the party's century-long history, and the first in forty years. This resolution introduces a new slogan: Xi Jinping's Two Establishments, signalling the Chairman of Everything's elevation to helmsman status. In this episode, Louisa and Graeme turn to two authorities on party history for elucidation: Patricia Thornton of the Uni...
Nov 21, 2021•51 min
China’s Communist Party’s rewriting of history doesn’t stop at their own borders, but has even reached as far as Wandiligong, a town of 453 people four hours north of Melbourne. It’s home to a memorial bridge to Chinese goldminers built with the assistance of the Australia China Friendship Society. The information panels use racist language for the Chinese such as “chinks and chows to be ridiculed and baited”, illustrating one example of how the CCP is exporting the notion of a century of humili...
Oct 13, 2021•40 min
The purge that followed the killings by PLA soldiers in and around Tiananmen Square three decades ago has continued into the present, even permeating Western academia. A host of new sources, including leaked diaries by Chinese leaders, have emerged in recent years, but few Western scholars appear willing to break the taboo surrounding June 4. The jailing this month of nine Hong Kongers, for as much as ten months, for taking part in a banned Tiananmen vigil indicates how the purge is spreading to...
Sep 20, 2021•37 min
Nationalism in China seems to have taken a feral turn, with Chinese netizens viciously turning on Olympic athletes, celebrities and even the über-nationalist Global Times for letting down the motherland. This month we’re talking about the evolution of Chinese nationalism and the factors driving the emergence of a new cadre of aggressive diplomats known as wolf warriors. Louisa and Graeme are joined by Bloomberg journalist Peter Martin, who's just written China’s Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf...
Aug 18, 2021•40 min
For our fifth anniversary, we’ve thrown the floor open to our audience. This month we’re doing an Agony Aunt edition for China nerds. We've gathered your burning China questions and then hunted down the world’s leading experts in search of answers. From support for the government to statistical elasticity, from clothing habits to tea-drinking titillations right at the very top, we are parrying listener questions. In search of answers, Louisa and Graeme are joined by Arunabh Ghosh and Anthony Sai...
Jul 19, 2021•52 min
China’s once untouchable tech billionaires suddenly find themselves in the unfamiliar position of being roughed up the state. Just at the time when the Party needs its homegrown tech firms to sell Xi Jinping’s new ‘lovable’ image of China, previously toothless regulators are issuing billion dollar fines and ordering companies to restructure—or else. To ask whether the state’s cozy relationships with companies like Alibaba and TenCent are on the rocks, we’re joined by Hong Kong University’s Angel...
Jun 21, 2021•43 min
For a Party chosen by history, the CCP spends a lot of money targeting foreign media outlets and governments. In this episode, a panel of researchers discusses why China—or any autocracy—cares what the world thinks of it, and how it tries to shape its global image. We ask whether the CCP’s media outreach and lobbying operations bear fruit, or are readily seen through as clumsy propaganda. This week, Graeme is joined by Louisa and the Little Red Podcast’s researcher Julia Bergin, discuss a survey...
May 10, 2021•53 min
China is home to 661 million online gamers, easily the world’s biggest market. Cities like Shanghai now boast some of the world’s most talented game developers. Yet the Chinese government has long been uncomfortable with online games, fretting about Internet addiction and young people wasting their energies on ‘spiritual opium’, leaving their schoolbooks for seedy Internet cafes. To explore how China is coping with the tension between molding productive citizens and cashing in on a hugely lucrat...
Apr 21, 2021•44 min
China is now remoulding Hong Kong at speed. Forty-seven Democratic politicians and activists have been arrested on national security charges for participating in last year’s primary polls, and only people Beijing deems ‘patriots’ allowed to run for office. One prominent pro-Beijing figure has even warned that the electoral reforms risk ‘killing the patient’. With the legislature muzzled, the authorities are turning their attention to the media, the arts and the education sector. This month we're...
Mar 24, 2021•41 min
With the world’s attention focused on industrial-scale oppression in Xinjiang, developments in Tibet are passing beneath the radar. But activists are warning of a full-spectrum assault on the Tibetan way of life, as Tibetan language teaching is outlawed and urbanisation campaigns relocate nomads from their ancestral pastures. The CCP has underlined its determination to choose the next Dalai Lama, and Tibetans were recently urged by their Party Secretary to ‘reduce religious consumption’ to build...
Feb 24, 2021•50 min
This month we’re delving into boys’ love or BL fiction. From niche online novels to TV shows such as the Netflix fantasy epic The Untamed , their storylines revolve around male relationships with a tinge of sexual tension. But there’s a quirk. It’s not gay fiction; the stories are often written by women for women. This genre is incredibly popular in China, making BL fans an intimidating political and economic force, creating and destroying celebrities and the brands they endorse. To unravel the ...
Jan 12, 2021•44 min
China's five thousand years of history has become a fact, repeated ad nauseum by the state-run media and Chinese textbooks alike, but could it be a national myth? In his recently published book, The Invention of China , Bill Hayton argues that “China” was cooked up by a small group of intellectuals who brought notions of sovereignty, citizenry and borders back from Europe just over 100 years ago, using a 'pick-and-mix' approach to history to invent their own past. But how does this interpretatio...
Dec 14, 2020•42 min
A quick glance at the headlines suggest that only one man seems to count in today’s China – the Chairman of Everything, as he’s been dubbed - Communist party leader President Xi Jinping. He’s helmed China’s reemergence as a world power through his aggressive foreign policy, while consolidating power at home. In this episode, we delve into his own princeling past, looking at his relationship with his father, former Vice Premier Xi Zhongxun, and how his family background has influenced his politic...
Nov 02, 2020•51 min
Last year China's international state-run broadcaster, CGTN, spent millions opening a state-of-the-art London headquarters. Just one year on, it may already be scrambling for an exit strategy. CGTN may even lose its licence in the United Kingdom after the British regulator found it breached the broadcasting code. This episode we interview two people who have brought complaints against CGTN after it broadcast their forced confessions: Peter Dahlin from Safeguard Defenders and private investigator...
Oct 06, 2020•52 min
Even before they had seen its contents, Hong Kong's family-run firms - including two non-Chinese business empires that have shaped Hong Kong - were lining up to pledge support to the New National Security legislation. Even in 2020, Hong Kong remains an oligopoly with a handful of wealthy conglomerates controlling vast swathes of Hong Kong's economy. But these family-run firms no longer have the luxury of remaining silent about Chinese politics. To look at two of these commercial dynasties and th...
Aug 26, 2020•36 min
China-US ties are in a tailspin, spiralling ever deeper into an abyss. Just one short month has seen US sanctions on senior Chinese officials for atrocities against the Uyghurs, Hong Kong’s special status for trade and diplomacy revoked, and consulates closed in Houston and Chengdu respectively. There's even been talk of a travel ban on China's 92m Communist party members and their families. Is armed conflict really a possibility, and if so when? Louisa and Graeme are joined by Gady Epstein and ...
Aug 01, 2020•46 min
On June 30, Hong Kong will be subject to a new National Security Law. No one, not even Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, knows what will be in the bill, but details are slowly coming into focus. For critics, the legislation will create a ‘dual state’ that will undermine Hong Kong’s legal system and allow Beijing to target its opponents at will. For proponents, the bill will only affect a handful of people, and bring stability after a year of unrest. To ask whether the law spells the end of Hong Kong’...
Jun 26, 2020•52 min
For the first time since 1989 Hong Kongers are banned from holding their annual June Fourth vigil in Victoria Park. Despite this provocation, Hong Kong establishment figures—from vice chancellors to movie stars to religious figures—have been lining up to pledge their loyalty to China and their support for the proposed National Security Law that will be enacted in Beijing, bypassing the local legislature. Only one newspaper in Hong Kong opposes it: the popular Apple Daily. Today we speak to its c...
Jun 04, 2020•28 min
The byzantine rules and procedures of multilateral institutions form the backdrop for China's global power play, following President Xi Jinping's 2018 call for China to “lead the reform of the global governance system with the concepts of fairness and justice.” As the US pulls back from its global obligations, there's increasing evidence that China is simply changing the rules inside these global bodies. In this episode, we explore whether China is influencing three international organizations: ...
May 27, 2020•40 min
China's Covid diplomacy dispatching facemasks and respirators overseas is being hailed as the ultimate soft power play. But is this really soft power? To answer this question, we're joined by the man who coined the term, Joseph Nye, the former dean of Harvard Kennedy School of Government as well as Bates Gill, professor in the Department of Security Studies at Macquarie University, and Natasha Kassam, a research fellow in the Diplomacy and Public Opinion Program at the Lowy Institute. Image cred...
Apr 21, 2020•43 min
COVID-19 isn't just destroying economies, it's also reshaping the global order. In less than a month, the novel coronavirus has moved from being China's Chernobyl to being an advertisement for China’s brand of governance. As Western governments, in particular the US, fail to grapple with this enormous public health challenge, China is presenting itself as the world’s saviour. Beijing's multipronged approach includes using facemask diplomacy donating medical equipment to the West, while its diplo...
Mar 28, 2020•46 min
The “people's war” on COVID-19 has brought enforcers in hazmat suits onto the streets of Wuhan, where they're bundling ordinary citizens into vans, giving Han Chinese urbanites a taste of the kind of state violence that is normally reserved for dissidents and troublesome ethnic groups. In this episode, we discuss the changing nature of state violence in China, and how it manifests in the re-education camps of Xinjiang, on the streets of Hong Kong and on demolition sites across rural China. Is Pr...
Mar 10, 2020•47 min
The coronavirus that has infected 70,000 people is being compared to China's Chernobyl in its political and economic fallout, but just how much of an inflection point will it be? This crisis is threatening the previously unchallenged authority of President Xi Jinping. It could reshape domestic policy imperatives and embed techno-authoritarian tendencies at local levels. It also has ramifications far beyond China's borders, potentially accelerating Beijing's economic decoupling with the outside w...
Feb 19, 2020•48 min
