Monday

2 May 2022
Chinese Whispers
Does China want to change the international rules-based order?
35 min listen

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 this episode through looking at China's attitude to and involvement in international organisations, past and present. Professor Rana Mitter, a historian at the University of Oxford and author of China's Good War, points out that there's a fundamental difference in China's approach compared to, say, Russia. 'Russia perceives itself as, essentially, a country that is really at the end of its tether in terms of the international system.

Does China want to change the international rules-based order?

Thursday

3 Mar 2022
Could the Ukraine war save Taiwan?

The phrase wuxin gongzuo – ‘working with your mind on Ukraine’ – has been trending on Chinese social media network Weibo. Essentially what it means is ‘distraction from work because you’re obsessed with the war’. One blog that monitors the site, What’s on Weibo, reports that shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a page with updates on the conflict had received more than two billion views. Censorship, of course, limits what Chinese social media commentators can say, but there is clearly plenty of sympathy for the dying civilians and fleeing refugees. There’s little doubt that in Zhongnanhai, the leadership compound in Beijing, Chinese Communist party higher-ups are, in a more literal sense, working with their minds on Ukraine.

Could the Ukraine war save Taiwan?

Monday

24 Jan 2022
Chinese Whispers
Politics and language: decoding the CCP
59 min listen

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 adopt a rational outlook on the Party’s history....We need to strengthen our consciousness of the need to maintain political integrity, think in big-picture terms, follow the leadership core, and keep in alignment with the central Party leadership. In other words, full of platitudes and dense Marxist terminology. So what is, then, the purpose of official Party documents? Can they ever reveal division within the Party, or say anything new at all? And throughout the fusty rhetoric, who is the audience, who are these words designed for? On this episode, I’m joined by two guests expert at reading the Communist tea leaves.

Politics and language: decoding the CCP

Monday

5 Apr 2021

Monday

7 Dec 2020

Thursday

22 Oct 2020
Xi’s world: Covid has accelerated China’s rise

Back in February, the Chinese state appeared to be in trouble. A terrifying virus had infected thousands of people and the country’s social media exploded in anger against the authorities faster than Chinese censors could scrub away the critical comments. Like governments elsewhere, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) turned to the emergency analogy of choice, the second world war. Channelling Mao Zedong’s guerrilla campaign against the Japanese in the 1930s, state media declared that China was fighting a ‘people’s war’ against the virus. As in that earlier war, China’s conflict with the virus has shifted from a defiant retreat to a declaration of victory. Nor is this just bluster. The latest economic figures suggest its economy is the only one in the world that will make a full recovery from the virus — growing by 2 per cent while America’s falls by 5 per cent, the eurozone by 8 per cent and Britain by 10 per cent.

Xi’s world: Covid has accelerated China’s rise

Thursday

11 Jun 2020
The secret behind South Korea’s Covid success

At the start of the pandemic, the situation in care homes looked particularly grim. One report on 19 March said: ‘Experts warn that hundreds of substandard long-term care facilities could serve as hotbeds for the contagious coronavirus.’ The alert came not from Wiltshire or Manchester, but from Park Chan-kyong, Seoul correspondent of the South China Morning Post. There was real fear that the residents of the city’s care homes would become victims of the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet three months on, South Korea as a whole — let alone its care homes — has suffered fewer than 300 deaths nationwide. The world is asking: how? Things have looked slightly worse recently — 49 new cases discovered last week — but this is nothing in comparison with Europe.

The secret behind South Korea’s Covid success

Saturday

15 Feb 2020
The Korean wave: how Seoul film and music won over the world

If you think that Boon Jong-ho’s Parasite (which won four Oscars this week, including Best Picture) is pretty black as comedies go, you should try the South Korean film The President’s Barber. Set in 1970s Seoul, a working-class hair clipper is appointed to tend the dictatorial leader Park Chung-hee, and tensions grow between his family and the upper-class presidential entourage. The barber becomes convinced that the head of state is a vicious, violent maniac, and his son ends up as the victim of an electrode punishment — played onscreen for laughs of the bleakest kind. Parasite is the latest example of the Hallyu, or ‘Korean Wave’, or a cultural phenomenon that has been emerging over the past quarter century in South Korea’s cinema, pop music and literature.

The Korean wave: how Seoul film and music won over the world

Thursday

13 Feb 2020
The Edition
Is Europe’s centre-ground shrinking?
41 min listen

As Sinn Fein enters coalition talks with Fianna Fail, economist Fredrik Erixon writes that the encroachment of fringe parties on the mainstream is a part of a wider European trend. What's more, he argues that the only the mainstream parties that adapt can survive. On the podcast, Fraser Nelson bats for Fredrik's thesis, and debates with Anne McElvoy, senior editor at The Economist. Plus, is citizenship a privilege that can be revoked, or a right to anyone who identifies as British? Earlier this week, a group of Jamaican nationals - all of them holding criminal records - were due to be deported. A last minute judicial review saved some from boarding the plane, but a wider debate is raging about whether these people should be deported at all, with Jeremy Corbyn accusing the government of racism.

Is Europe’s centre-ground shrinking?