The sacrifices and rewards of a Chinese-style education
Tiger mums and dads are infamous in the West, but in China the pressure is ramped up several times higher. From kindergarten to university, exams form the structure of a disciplined and competitive ed...
8 Mar 202131min
Is China 'eating America's lunch'?
After getting off the phone with Xi Jinping, Joe Biden warned his senators that on infrastructure 'and a whole range of other things', China was spending much more than the US, and America risked bein...
22 Feb 202130min
How Hong Kong became what it is today
As the first BNO passport holders begin to make their way to the UK and start the path to a new citizenship, I take a look back at Hong Kong's history and how that special city-state formed its own id...
8 Feb 202140min
The Chinese backlash against Big Tech
In November, the IPO of Jack Ma's fintech company Ant Financial was abruptly stopped by Chinese regulators (listen to the episode of Chinese Whispers from then here). But while the move has been seen ...
25 Jan 202134min
What's behind Beijing's treatment of the Uyghurs?
Since 2017 a succession of re-education camps have sprung up across Xinjiang, the home of the Uyghur people. It's estimated that one in ten Uyghur people are incarcerated to be subjected to patriotic ...
11 Jan 202151min
Is China turning away from the world?
2020 is drawing to a close but none of us will forget this year anytime soon. For China, has it also been a watershed year? Western rhetoric hasn’t been so hawkish on China in a very long time, with t...
21 Des 202023min
China's long history of student protests
When thinking about Chinese student protests, you'll inevitably think about Hong Kong or Tiananmen. But there's one that kicked it all off in modern Chinese history, and its reverberations are still f...
7 Des 202029min
Has China really beaten Covid?
As the UK and much of the West continues to struggle against Covid, in China, things largely seem back to normal. Pictures from the 'Golden Week', a week of state holidays to celebrate the People's Re...
23 Nov 202059min
