The Little Red Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Viral Disruption; The Pandemic That's Rewriting the Global Order Mar 28, 2020

Show notes

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 diplomats try to sow doubt about whether the outbreak began in Wuhan. To discuss the geopolitics of COVID-19 against the backdrop of deteriorating US-China relations, we’re joined by Ian Bremmer, president and founder of the political risk consulting firm Eurasia Group and G-ZERO Media, and host of the podcast “GZERO World with Ian Bremmer”, as well as Bill Bishop, the founder of the Sinocism China newsletter, and Simon Rabinovitch, the Economist’s Shanghai-based correspondent.

Photo credit: “Corona Virus” by danielfoster437 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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"Round Up All Those That Should Be Rounded Up": State Violence in China Mar 10, 2020

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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 President Xi Jinping's China becoming a thug state? To address this question, we're joined by Lynette Ong, associate professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto, and Michael Clarke, associate professor at the National Security College of the Australian National University.

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High Noon for Xi Jinping: The President Vs The Virus Feb 19, 2020

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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 world. To discuss what happens when a leader obsessed with control faces an uncontrollable foe, Louisa and Graeme are joined by Orville Schell, the Arthur Ross Director of the Centre for US China Relations at the Asia Society, Shaun Roache the chief Asia-Pacific economist at Standard & Poors, and from Wuhan by the New York Times’ Chris Buckley.

Image: COVID-19 virus close-up, c/- Viktor Forgacs on Unsplash.

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Seedy Business: The Future of China's Industrial Espionage Feb 05, 2020

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Judging by the news headlines China is ramping up its industrial espionage efforts: secret payments to high-profile scientists, massive hacks of foreign universities and clumsy attempts to steal trade secrets the old-fashioned way. Intelligence agencies in the US and Australia have both issued dire warnings about the existential dangers posed by this sort of activity, but how much of a risk does China's espionage even pose? And should the FBI be devoting huge resources to protecting multinational corporations when they can be acquired by Chinese interests through mergers and acquisitions? In this show, Graeme and Louisa talk to Mara Hvistendahl, the author of the newly released book The Scientist and the Spy, as well as Yun Jiang, a former Australian civil servant and now co-editor of the Neican China newsletter about the future of Chinese economic espionage.

Image Credit: rabesphoto, Flickr

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Freedom is Restraint: How Core Socialist Values are Changing Language and Remoulding Humans Jan 06, 2020

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In the Xi Jinping era, China is quietly embedding core socialist values into every aspect of life, including the judicial system. When core socialist values were introduced in 2013, they sounded like one more slogan in the pantheon of forgettable party dogmas, but now they're gaining teeth. In this episode we examine how core socialist values are recoding language, legitimising CCP rule and could even pose a threat to Western civilisation. To explore what these values mean and how they are reshaping the way China is governed, Louisa and Graeme are joined by Delia Lin of the University of Melbourne.

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Ten Years Becomes Four as Life Imitates Art in Hong Kong Dec 03, 2019

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When the Hong Kong film Ten Years (Sap nin) came out in 2015, it was pulled from cinemas after Chinese state-run media described it as a 'virus of the mind'. Once seen as dystopian with its scenes of mass protest and police brutality, it now looks prophetic in a world where 88% of the Hong Kong population has been exposed to teargas. In this episode, we explore post-election, post-dystopian Hong Kong, and whether it's already too late for Beijing to reassert its control over an 'independence movement that cannot say its name'. This month Louisa Lim hosted a live recording after a screening of Ten Years with a panel consisting of Monash University anthropologist Kevin Carrico, Melbourne University's Victor Yim who studies Hong Kong's pan-democratic movement and Eric Lai, Vice Convenor of the Civil Human Rights Front.

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Power Projection: China’s Hollywood Dream Nov 13, 2019

Show notes

With cinema takings in the United States at a 22-year low, Hollywood moguls are looking to an unlikely saviour: China. With box office revenues growing at 9 percent, Hollywood is scrambling to find the formula for movies that make the cut of China’s 34 approved films and appeal to Chinese audiences. For every surprise hit, like The Meg and Warcraft, there are flops like The Great Wall. Like many an autocrat before him, Xi Jinping is enamoured of the silver screen, elevating film above radio and television in his 2018 overhaul of the propaganda apparatus. To discuss the special place of film in China’s global soft power push, back in March Louisa and Graeme were joined by City University of New York’s Ying Zhu and Variety Magazine’s Beijing bureau chief Rebecca Davis.

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Hong Kong Burning: The Rise of a Nation Oct 03, 2019

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As China's leaders gathered in Beijing to survey troops, fireworks and their latest missiles, a different scene was unfolding in Hong Kong. Police shot an 18-year old protestor in the chest and unleashed a staggering 1400 rounds of tear gas on the population. The protests originally targeted the extradition bill and then grew into democratic protests, but now protestors increasingly identify as a Hong Kong nation. What does this mean and how does it affect the endgame? Graeme and Louisa hear voices from the streets including the Civil Human Rights Front's Wong Yik-mo, activist Johnson Yeung Ching-yin and Brian Fong from the Education University of Hong Kong.

Image: Hong Kong protesters on the streets of the city from above, c/- Joseph Chan on Unsplash.

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Big Bad China? The New Cold War Sep 30, 2019

Show notes

On the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, has CCP Chairman Xi Jinping overreached? He's facing blowback everywhere from Hong Kong to Xinjiang amid an escalating trade war with the US. Even his signature infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative, has run into trouble. Is the world entering a new cold war? We ask former Obama administration Asia advisor Charles Edel, now with the University of Sydney, and the Lowy Institute's Richard MacGregor, who is the author of Xi Jinping: The Backlash.

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Should I stay or should I go now? Inside the Solomons’ Big Switch Sep 09, 2019

Show notes

The South Pacific nation of the Solomon Islands may be on the verge of switching diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to China, which would leave only sixteen nations recognising Taiwan. When Manasseh Sogavare was appointed prime minister of the Solomons for the fourth time in April, he vowed to review the country’s relations with Taiwan, even though he has been a longtime supporter of the Republic of China. In this episode, Graeme speaks to all the major players in the Solomon Islands, including the Prime Minister, to investigate the reasons behind the switch. He found the background to the switch was far murkier and more complicated than has been previously reported.

Photo credit: Terence Wood. Solar panel batteries, given to every Solomon Islands MP

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