Podcast
A fortnightly podcast hosted by Cindy Yu on Chinese politics, society, and more
A fortnightly podcast hosted by Cindy Yu on Chinese politics, society, and more
Chinese Whispers
Three years ago, as people across China welcomed the Year of the Rat, a new virus was taking hold in Wuhan. In London, the conversation at my family’s New Year dinner was dominated by the latest updates, how many masks and hand sanitisers we’d ordered. Mercifully, Covid didn’t come up at all as we welcomed
Play 48 mins
Chinese Whispers
Should Confucius Institutes be shut down? There are hundreds of these centres across six continents, funded by the Ministry of Education, with the stated goal of public education on and cultural promotion of China. They offer classes on language, history and culture of China, and some would say they help to plug a crucial shortage
Play 30 mins
Chinese Whispers
Over the last few hundred years, China has had a difficult and complicated relationship with foreigners. On the one hand, they added to the country’s intellectual richness by introducing western philosophy and science; and on the other, these contributions often came accompanied by guns and gunboats. And today, out of a country of 1.4 billion,
Play 39 mins
Chinese Whispers
Comparisons with 1989’s Tiananmen Square protests are too often evoked when it comes to talking about civil disobedience in China. Even so, this weekend’s protests have been historic. It’s the first time since the zero Covid policy started that people across the country have simultaneously marched against the government, their fury catalysed by the deaths
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Chinese Whispers
When the city of Zhengzhou, home to the world’s largest iPhone factory, locked down recently, some of its factory workers had nowhere to go. Hoping to escape Covid restrictions, many of them walked miles along motorways to their hometowns, their journey captured by video and shared on social media in China and out. This episode
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Chinese Whispers
This week Xi Jinping has taken his new Politburo Standing Committee on a group trip – to Yan’An, the base of Mao Zedong’s Communist revolution after the Long March. The symbolism is easy to see. On this episode of Chinese Whispers, I’ve asked back Bill Bishop, author of the popular Sinocism newsletter, and Professor Victor
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Chinese Whispers
I recently caught a rare viewing of a 2001 Chinese film, Lan Yu. It tells the story of two gay men falling in love and finding domestic life throughout the reform and opening years of China. The filmmakers never bothered to apply for approval from the censors, knowing that its homosexual storyline would never make it
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Chinese Whispers
Every five years, Beijing goes into heightened security as senior members of the Chinese Communist Party gather. The National Party Congress is an occasion for the party to review its track record and determine its future direction, but most crucially, it’s a moment to unveil future leaders. Older members of the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee
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Chinese Whispers
In the last four decades, hundreds of millions of Chinese have moved into cities. Today, two thirds of the country live in urban areas (compared to just one third in 1985), and many of these are hubs with tens of millions of people – mega-cities that many in the West have never heard of before.
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Chinese Whispers
After a long summer of hustings, Liz Truss has finally been confirmed today as the next leader of the Conservative party. As she gets the keys to Downing Street, she’ll finally be able to carry out her vision of Sino-British relations. But what is that vision? On the latest Chinese Whispers, I speak to Sam
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Chinese Whispers
What does China want with Xinjiang? Its systematic repression of the Uyghur people and other regional minorities has shocked the world, eliciting accusations of genocide from politicians and activists across the West. The Chinese Communist Party claims that its re-education camps are an anti-terrorism measure, but surely if anything is going to radicalise vast swathes
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Chinese Whispers
Nancy Pelosi’s controversial trip to Taiwan made headlines across the world this week, after President Xi’s warnings to the US ‘not to play with fire’. Furious, Beijing has responded with economic sanctions and a flurry of missiles over and around the island, as well as sanctioning Pelosi and her family. But as the West frets
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Chinese Whispers
China’s property market accounts for something between 20 and 29 per cent of the country’s total GDP. The seemingly never-ending rise of residential blocks were how ordinary people like my family could see and touch China’s miraculous economic growth. Home ownership was to be expected, especially for young men looking to marry and start a
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Chinese Whispers
Semiconductors are the most important thing that you’ve never heard of. These little computer chips provide the processing power for everything from cars and iPhones, to unmanned drones and missiles. In Beijing’s Made in China 2025 industrial strategy, through which China seeks to move up the value chain to become a high-tech superpower, semiconductor self-sufficiency was
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Chinese Whispers
You probably wouldn’t expect to see the Cultural Revolution in Chinese films, or the Great Leap Forward, or the Tiananmen Square protests. But for a certain generation and a certain corner of the Chinese film industry, these were actually common themes to deal with. Their films weren’t always welcome to the censors, but they weren’t
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Chinese Whispers
China’s social credit system is notorious. This Black Mirror-esque network supposedly gives citizens a score, based on an opaque algorithm that feeds on data from each person’s digital and physical lives. With one billion Chinese accessing the Internet and the growing prevalence of facial recognition, it means that their every move can be monitored –
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Chinese Whispers
All eyes are on the Communist leadership this year, as the months count down to autumn’s National Party Congress, where Xi Jinping may be crowned for a third term. But how much do we really know about the Party’s leadership? In particular, can we better understand them through looking at the experiences that they’ve had?
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Chinese Whispers
It’s clear now that Vladimir Putin didn’t expect his army to perform quite so badly when invading Ukraine. As much as that is celebrated in much of the world, it will be a cause for concern – or at least a moment for learning – amongst Beijing’s military leaders. Because Russia has always been a
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Chinese Whispers
China is often accused of breaking international rules and norms. Just last week at Mansion House, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said: ‘Countries must play by the rules. And that includes China’. So what are its transgressions, and what are its goals for the international system? My guests and I try to answer this question in
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Chinese Whispers
‘One Shanghai courier uses own 70,000 yuan to buy necessities for people’, one Weibo hashtag trended last week. Instead of being seen as a damning indictment on what the state’s strict lockdown has induced people to do, the courier was lauded as a community hero and the story promoted by the censored platform. These kuaidi
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Chinese Whispers
After defeat in the Second Opium War, Chinese intellectuals wracked their minds for how the Chinese nation can survive in the new industrialised world. It’s a topic that has been discussed on this podcast before – listeners may remember the episode with Bill Hayton, author of The Invention of China, where we discussed the reformers
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Chinese Whispers
Taiwan is not Ukraine. But despite the very important differences in their situations, the Russian invasion can still shed much light on Taiwan’s future. Even many Taiwanese think so – and have followed the developments closely, with solidarity marches held for Ukraine, protests at the Russian embassy and the Ukrainian flag lighting up Taiwanese buildings.
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Chinese Whispers
This episode of Chinese Whispers is slightly different – instead of taking a look at a theme within China, my guest and I will be seeing China through the eyes of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Professor Craig Clunas, chair of art history at Oxford University, has curated a new exhibition at London’s Freud Museum, which
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Chinese Whispers
China’s population is ageing. It’s estimated that a quarter of Chinese people will be elderly within three decades. The relaxing of its one child policy – first to two children in 2016 and then to three last year – hasn’t stimulated fertility rate, which is still stagnant at 1.7 births per woman. In November last
Play 46 mins
Chinese Whispers
In 2008, President George Bush was the star guest at Beijing’s opening ceremony. Fourteen years later, under a cloud of diplomatic boycotts led by the US, the guest of honour spot was filled instead by President Putin. Under a confluence of factors over the last decade, China and Russia are closer now than they have
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Chinese Whispers
All political parties have weaknesses for jargon and buzzwords, and the Chinese Communist Party more than most. It’s why Party documents – whether they be speeches, Resolutions or reports – can be hard going. Sentences like the following (from the Resolution adopted at the Sixth Plenum) abound: All Party members should uphold historical materialism and
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Chinese Whispers
‘If table tennis set the stage for China’s international diplomacy, then volleyball rebuilt the nation’s confidence’, ran one article in the People’s Daily around the time of the 2016 Rio Olympics. Sports has had a long political history in China, my guest in this week’s Chinese Whispers tells me. She is Dr Susan Brownell, Professor
Play 41 mins
Chinese Whispers
When the tennis star Peng Shuai had a row with her former lover, the retired Party cadre Zhang Gaoli, she took to Weibo, the Chinese social media platform, where she had half a million followers. It was in that statement that she accused Zhang of starting their affair with sexual assault. The statement was taken
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Chinese Whispers
Sun Yat-sen was the founding father of China’s first republic, when the Qing dynasty was overthrown. Here he sits, with his successor Chiang Kai-Shek standing behind. They were two among many intellectuals and politicians whose agitations helped contribute to modern Chinese national identity. In his book, The Invention of China, journalist Bill Hayton argues that
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Chinese Whispers
Deng Xiaoping used to say, ‘let some people get rich first’. Four decades on from the start of his economic experiment with marketisation, Xi Jinping is, these days, talking about ‘common prosperity’ instead – prosperity for the many, not the few. But what does this new economic direction mean in practice, and could it, in
Play 31 mins