The Little Red Podcast

On 12 May 2008, a 7.9-magnitude earthquake hit Wenchuan in Sichuan, claiming more than 85,000 lives, many of them schoolchildren whose classrooms collapsed. It was a paradoxical moment of great tragedy and great hope, with a new sense of openness and civil society emerging in the quake's immediate aftermath. A decade on, its legacy has proved much darker including Great Leap Forward style urbanisation drives and an entrenchment of stability maintenance. In 2008, during the brief window of openness, Louisa reported on the quake for NPR. In March of this year, she convened a panel on the Sichuan Earthquake at the Association for Asian Studies in Washington D.C., featuring Colorado College's Christian Sorace, Georgia State University's Maria Repnikova, Emory University's Xu Bin and Yi Kang from Hong Kong Baptist University. A special issue of Made In China was also produced to mark the anniversary http://www.chinoiresie.info/PDF/Made-in-China-01-2018.pdf.

Universities in Australia have an addiction: overseas student fees. Nearly half of overseas students in Australia are from China, rising to 60% at some institutions. Against the backdrop of new legislation to counter foreign influence, we talk to Chinese students, who find themselves caught in a geopolitical battle—accused by some of acting as ‘spies’ and restricting intellectual freedom in Australia's classrooms, while others fear those student revenues are becoming a tool of China’s economic coercion. Louisa and Graeme and joined by Linda Jakobson of China Matters and Fran Martin from the University of Melbourne to discuss the future of Australia’s third largest export.

The Communist Party's shadowy United Front Work Department has emerged stronger than ever before after the most recent government reshuffle. This body, whose job has historically been to win hearts and minds among the Party’s opponents, is now also responsible for all work related to ethnic minority groups, religious management and contact with overseas Chinese. But exactly how does the United Front Work Department gain support for China abroad? In this episode, Graeme is joined by Gerry Groot from the University of Adelaide, who demystifies the inner workings of the body dubbed a Magic Weapon by Xi Jinping.

China's preoccupation with cartography now seems to be reaching into classrooms, websites and academic journals around the world, with an increasing number of demands for retractions and apologies for maps that do not comport with Beijing's view of its borders. In this episode, John Zinda, a sociologist from Cornell University, and James Miles, China editor for The Economist, join Louisa and Graeme to discuss the politics of cartography in China.

China’s aid and growing influence in the South Pacific is causing alarm with an Australian minister recently complaining about Chinese-funded 'roads to nowhere'. In this month's episode, Louisa and Graeme are joined by award winning journalist Jo Chandler to discuss the challenges brought by a wave of Chinese aid and migration to the Pacific’s largest nation, Papua New Guinea. From migrant shopkeepers and counterfeit drugs to rumours of bases and political corruption, China's footprint is expanding, leading to burgeoning anti-Chinese sentiment among ordinary Papua New Guineans.

Xi Jinping's Chinese Dream has a dark side exemplified by the emergence of villages specialising in a single type of crime from 'hand-cutting' pickpockets to 'cake-uncles' specialising in accounting fraud. Officially China boasts one of the lowest murder rates in the world, claiming a 43% drop in severe violent crime over the past five years. But Børge Bakken, a specialist in Chinese criminology, argues that all Chinese crime statistics are falsified for political, propaganda and administrative reasons. With the authorities focussing on clamping down on civil society and seemingly turning a blind eye to criminality, is China becoming an ‘uncivil society’?

Reviled in the West, the slimy bottom-feeders known as sea cucumbers or bêche-de-mer (BDM) have recently been described as the ‘the gold of the sea’. Skyrocketing demand for this prized feature of Chinese wedding banquets has driven up the price of bêche-de-mer (lit. ‘worm of the sea’), causing knock-on impacts ranging from sea cucumber smuggling rings to a collapse in sea cucumber stocks to starvation in some parts of the world. In this episode we examine the cautionary tale posed by the fate of the sea cucumber with Kate Barclay and Michael Fabinyi from the University of Technology Sydney. China’s growing appetite for these slow-moving slugs has sparked ecological and social crises, with at least 24 countries trying to close their sea cucumber fisheries following the sudden collapse of stocks. Photo credit: Sarahhsia, flickr.

A new brand of Chinese political artists is using the once borderless expanse of cyberspace as a virtual studio, a collaboration space and a digital museum, crowdsourcing and sharing work about China that could never be shown there. But as Beijing’s influence - and censorship – extends beyond China’s borders, being in exile is no longer is a guarantee of safety. As these artists struggle to find ways to vault the Great Firewall, the Chinese government is developing increasingly sophisticated censorship methods. In this episode, Graeme and Louisa talk to the mysterious Chinese artist, Badiucao, who works under a pseudonym, and Sampson Wong from Hong Kong’s Add Oil Team about how the Chinese state corrals and controls the imagination of its people.

Beijing's failed attempt to force Cambridge University Press to censor its own catalogue is just one prong in an escalating campaign to tighten control over China's recent historical record. Western scholars of China are struggling to function in an environment with little access to historical records and increasingly sophisticated censorship of electronic archives, as well as more overt surveillance of their activities and pressure on their Chinese research partners. With censorship and intimidation reaching ever-greater levels of intensity, some are even drawing comparisons with Emperor Qianlong's literary inquisition of the 18th century. Louisa and Graeme are joined by Glenn Tiffert from the Hoover Institution, Dayton Lekner from the University of Melbourne, and Timothy Cheek and Morgan Rocks from the University of British Columbia to discuss their recent experiences researching China.

Under Xi Jinping, history in China is a moving feast. This year, China’s Ministry of Education increased the length of the Second World War by six years, to ‘place a greater emphasis on China’s ‘red revolution.’ And from September, China's rolling out new school textbooks which claim disputed islands in the East China Sea as their own. To drill down into bitter history between the two countries, Louisa and Graeme are joined by Richard MacGregor, who is releasing a new book called Asia's Reckoning: China, Japan, and the Fate of U.S. Power in the Pacific Century and a scholar of Chinese nationalism, the University of Melbourne’s Sow-Keat Tok. In this episode, we unpick the toxic relations between China and Japan, and ask what role the United States has played in fueling tensions. Could the world’s three largest economies be sleepwalking towards war in the East China Sea?

The Chairman of Everything is tightening his grip over the media, pushing control into new spheres ahead of the 19th Party Congress. As the state-run media – traditionally the tongue and throat of the party – moves onto digital platforms, innovations in control include a welter of new regulations and theoretical concepts like the idea of cyber-sovereignty. Louisa and Graeme are joined by David Bandurski and Qian Gang of the China Media Project to discuss innovations in news production and control in China. Also the question of Xi: he’s no longer Xi Dada, but will President be Xi be defined by a Theory, a Thought or an Ism?

Chairman Mao urged the Chinese people to never forget class struggle. But they not only forgot, they stopped using the word at all. Louisa and Graeme talk to Wanning Sun from the University of Technology, Sydney and and Yingjie Guo from Sydney University about how class has become a dirty word in China. So much for the workers, peasants and soldiers; in today's China, everyone wants to be middle class, even the new rich. Class anxiety is rife as class mobility is ever harder as traditional routes of advancement shut down. And class is at the heart of one of the Communist party's biggest conundrums: how to square its official Marxist-Leninist ideology with the consumption-centered society that's emerging on the ground. Will President Xi Jinping, who often finds himself compared to Mao, ever be tempted to revisit this part of the Chairman's legacy?

As Hong Kong gears up to mark the 20th anniversary of its return to Chinese sovereignty, the country's number 3 leader Zhang Dejiang has made clear Beijing's intention to tighten its control over Hong Kong. He has spoken recently of the need to enact anti-subversion legislation and warned against any attempts to turn Hong Kong into an independent entity. But Hong Kong localists made a strong showing in the September 2016 election, winning six seats and securing 20 percent of the vote. In this episode, we look at the roots of the localism movement, and what impact China’s approach is having. As Beijing signals greater control, are parallels emerging between the Basic Law and the 17-point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet signed in 1951? Louisa and Graeme discuss Hong Kong’s future with Kevin Carrico of Macquarie University, who is writing a book on Hong Kong's localist movement.

Sydney academic Feng Chongyi, whose detention in Guangzhou created international headlines, warns that his experience is designed to intimidate academics researching topics deemed sensitive by Beijing. He describes heightened surveillance by China's state security apparatus and increasing curbs on his research into human rights lawyers. Feng, who is still a Chinese citizen and Communist Party member, attributes his release to the fortuitous timing of Premier Li Keqiang’s visit to Australia, combined with media attention and a high-profile campaign. He firmly rejects the notion that backroom negotiations were instrumental in securing his release. Feng is issuing a warning that China's influence risks influencing academic and press freedom in Australia.

Is President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign working, or is it simply driving corruption underground? This episode we're joined by Minxin Pei from Claremont McKenna College, who's released a forensic analysis of China's corruption market, with insights gained from an examination of court cases. Among his insights are the fact that 84% of convicted officials were promoted while engaged in corruption, those caught taking bribes had been doing so for an average of nine years, and the higher the level of corruption the longer officials get away with it. Pei not only argues that China has reached the late stage of regime decay, he's even willing to estimate how much longer he believes Communist rule can last.