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PODCAST

The Little Red Podcast

Graeme Smith and Louisa Lim

The Little Red Podcast: interviews and chat celebrating China beyond the Beijing beltway. Hosted by Graeme Smith, China studies academic at the Australian National University"s Department of Pacific Affairs and Louisa Lim, former China correspondent for the BBC and NPR, now with the Centre for Advancing Journalism at Melbourne University. We are the 2018 winners of podcast of the year in the News & Current Affairs category of the Australian Podcast Awards. Follow us @limlouisa and @GraemeKSmith, and

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All Episodes

45:19

Leveraged to the Limit: Power Shifts in Xi Jinping's...

The Little Red Podcast ·

2019/03/25

The Chairman of Everything Xi Jinping has emerged from the annual parliamentary meetings facing a rough year ahead. China's economy is growing at its slowest in nearly three decades, amid a massive trade war and spiralling local debt, with rumblings of discontent from delegatesabout everything from the Belt and Road Initiative to Made in China 2025. Louisa andGraeme are joined by Andrew Collier of Orient Capital Research and Ryan Manuel of Hong Kong University, who argue thatboth political and

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36:19

Step Up or Be Overrun: China’s Challenge for the Pacific

The Little Red Podcast ·

2019/03/05

The Pacific is seeing a flurry of diplomatic activity: Australia is ‘stepping up’, New Zealand has ordered a ‘Pacific reset’ and even Great Britain is reopening missions in its former Pacific colonies. The reason for their sudden interest is simple: China. If Beijing comes good on $4 billion in aid pledges, it could overtake Canberra as the largest donor to the Pacific. Often missed in this new Great Game are the concerns of Pacific Islanders, looking to make the best of this fresh interest in their

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35:08

Hotpot Wars: Tensions bubble in the battle for...

The Little Red Podcast ·

2019/02/04

China has been engulfed by a controversy that strikes at the very heart of the nation—forget the South China Sea, rampant human rights abuses, even a looming economic crash. Last month food critic Chua Lam, otherwise known as the Food God, called for the end to the PRC’s most beloved dining craze: hot pot. The backlash has been immense, with enraged Weibo users calling for Chua Lam’s abolition. To discuss whether hotpot is indeed an uncultured blight on China’s rich culinary landscape, cookbook

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35:50

#XiToo: Chinese Feminism and The Party’s...

The Little Red Podcast ·

2019/01/08

China is becoming a more unequal place for women, in 2018slippingfor a fifth consecutive yearin the World Economic Forum's Gender Gap index. Chairman Mao may have proclaimed that women can hold up half the sky, but the Communist party under Xi Jinping holds a far narrower view of female roles, cracking down on feminist activists and backing traditional values. The impact is economic too, withresearch showing that being born female in China has a bigger impact on your earnings than any other

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36:50

Keeping the Faith? Xi's Deal with the Holy See

The Little Red Podcast ·

2018/12/05

The Vatican and China have signed a deeply controversial agreement on the appointment of bishops, ending the cold war that has frozen ties since 1950. That deep freeze led to schisms between the official and underground churches, with some clergy persecuted for decades and the church refusing to recognise Beijing's handpicked bishops. But the new agreement has divided the faithful yet again, with some fearing Catholicism is facing calamity as President Xi Jinping tightens control over religion.

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41:33

Xi Jinping’s War on Uighurs. Part 3: The Endgame

The Little Red Podcast ·

2018/11/06

"Domestically I don't think the Uighur culture will survive." China now acknowledges the existence of mass indoctrination camps in Xinjiang - which it calls 'vocational training centres' - after months of denial. Its latest propaganda campaign showcases Uighurs inside the camps thanking the Party for teaching them skills and saving them from Islamic extremism. In this episode, Louisa and Graeme are joined by Nury Turkel, chairman of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, and James Leibold of La Trobe

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44:17

Xi Jinping’s War on Uighurs. Part 2: The New Frontier

The Little Red Podcast ·

2018/10/16

The language used by the Chinese state in Xinjiang pathologises Islam, seeing it as an "ideological virus" which needs eradication by transformation through education. In recent days, China has publicly justified the mass internment of Uighurs as necessary in its struggle against the "three evils" of terrorism, separatism and religious extremism. In part 1, Louisa and Graeme heard testimony from Australian Uighurs describing how Uighur communities are being destroyed by mass detentions. In part 2,

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48:11

Xi Jinping’s War on the Uighurs. Part 1: The Witnesses

The Little Red Podcast ·

2018/09/24

‘We seem to be normal, but we are not.’ A United Nations human rights panel says it has credible reports that more than a million Uighurs are being held in reeducation camps in the northwestern Chinese province of Xinjiang. As evidence emerges of massive human rights violations from satellite photos, procurement bids and state-run news reports, the voices that have not yet been heard are those of Uighurs themselves. In this episode, Louisa and Graeme hear how the close-knit Uighur community in the

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55:56

Stranger than Fiction: China’s Espionage Industrial...

The Little Red Podcast ·

2018/09/04

“Use your spies for every kind of business.” This 2500 year-old stratagem from Sun Zi's Art of War still informs Beijing’s modern day approach towards intelligence gathering. Today China’s espionage industrial complex appears to be taking spying mainstream by blurring the boundaries between spying, interference and influence projection. To explore the shadowy realm of Chinese spycraft, Louisa and Graeme are joined by two top-notch journalists-turned-spy-novelists who have

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47:11

The Han-Opticon: Social Credit and AI in the...

The Little Red Podcast ·

2018/08/07

China today is Black Mirror through the Looking Glass. A national video surveillance network is promised in just two years, while new technologies are being rolled out at speed on the frontier of China’s surveillance regime, in Xinjiang, ranging from iris scans to phone surveillance apps. Simultaneously the Chinese state is building a nationwide social credit system, to be launched in 2020, which provides incentives for citizens to participate in their own surveillance. To unpack China’s dystopian

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58:54

Come Dance with Xi: Who Can Resist the Belt and...

The Little Red Podcast ·

2018/07/11

There’s no escaping China’s Belt and Road Initiative. It’s been written into China’s constitution, and more than 70 countries from Pakistan to Papua New Guinea have signed up. But what is it? A modern-era Marshall Plan, a geopolitical bid for China to build a new international power bloc, a new model for Chinese colonialism, or an all-encompassing bumper sticker for Chinese-brokered development projects? To unpack the motivations behind Xi Jinping’s highest profile foreign policy initiative, Louisa

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41:36

All Maxxed Out: The Biggest Ponzi Scheme The World...

The Little Red Podcast ·

2018/06/12

China's recent impressive economic growth has been built largely on massive debt. According to some estimates, in just over a decade China has managed to rack up debt in excess of 300% of its GDP, effectively placing a ticking time-bomb under the world economy. Is China heading for a financial crisis, and if so when? In this episode, Graeme and Louisa are joined by Dinny MacMahon, the author of China’s Great Wall of Debt, and Tim Murray, co-founder of J Capital Research, who make predictions

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45:13

Shaken But Not Stirred: The Chinese State and the...

The Little Red Podcast ·

2018/05/11

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,

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38:37

Tinker, Tailor, Student, Spy? Inside Australia's...

The Little Red Podcast ·

2018/05/08

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

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44:24

How To Make Friends And Influence People: Inside the...

The Little Red Podcast ·

2018/04/09

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

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28:06

Policing the Contour Lines: China's Cartographic...

The Little Red Podcast ·

2018/03/08

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. Image: Map of China on globe, c/- CHUTTERSNAP on

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27:52

Bitter Medicine: China's New Pacific Frontier

The Little Red Podcast ·

2018/02/06

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,

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36:01

Lies, Damned Lies and Police Statistics: Crime and...

The Little Red Podcast ·

2018/01/08

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

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26:12

BDM: Not As Sexy As The Shark

The Little Red Podcast ·

2017/12/04

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

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33:19

Party Poopers: Can Art Bring Down the Government?

The Little Red Podcast ·

2017/11/06

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

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115 results

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