The Little Red Podcast

New Zealand is in Beijing's good books, attracting state media praise as setting 'a good example' for other countries in its ties, as Prime Minister Chris Hipkins jets into China.  He's said his message is crystal clear: New Zealand is open for business.  But critics say the country's policy is muddled and ambiguous, despite Chinese encroachment.  Two ethnic Chinese MPs have been expelled over their links to Beijing, and a prominent New Zealand China academic was targeted with office break-ins. To unpack what the future holds for China-New Zealand relations, Louisa is joined in Auckland by writer and sociologist Tze Ming Mok and journalist Sam Sachdeva, author of The China Tightrope: Navigating New Zealand's relationship with a world superpower. Image: c/- Michal Klajban. Solidarity Grid by Mischa Kuball (Wuhan, China), Christchurch, New Zealand. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 InternationalSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the final episode exploring China's Strategic New Frontiers, we are investigating China's growing cyberpower ambitions. On the National Cyber Power index, Beijing is already the world's number two cyberpower, behind only the US. Its cyberdoctrine includes promoting cybersovereignty, constructing internet standards and infrastructure, and playing a bigger role in cyber governance bodies. To ask what this means for the future of the Internet, Louisa and Graeme are joined by Konstantinos Komaitis, a non-resident fellow at the Lisbon Institute and the Atlantic Council, as well as Julia Voo, cyber fellow leading a team at Harvard University’s Belfer Institute who publish the National Cyber Power Index. Image: IPad with keyboard, c/- 绵 绵 on Unsplash.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

China appears to have restarted construction on its fifth Antarctic station for the first time since 2018. It’s just one sign that Beijing is trying to increase its footprint in the world’s coldest regions. It already calls itself a near-Arctic state and is planning for an ice-free shipping route across the top of the world. This month, to discuss the drivers behind China’s polar ambitions, Graeme and Louisa are joined by Eyck Freyman of the Arctic Initiative at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, the University of Washington’s Mia Bennett and Singapore Management University’s Nengye Liu. Photo credit: Wikimedia commonsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

China's reaching not just for the stars, but also for the deepest ocean depths.  It's even parked its deepwater submersible in the Mariana Trench, the deepest point in the world's oceans, and planted flags on the ocean bed.  This month, Graeme and Louisa are joined by China Ocean Institute CEO Tabitha Mallory and Tiffany Ma, the senior director of Bower Group Asia, to talk about how the Great Game is playing out on our seabeds.  Image: Caulophryne pelagica [Angler Fish] D. Shale, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia CommonsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In a new series of episodes, we’re examining how China is pushing the boundaries of science and territory. First up, China’s space program, the envy of space scientists worldwide for seemingly bottomless pots of funding from government, and increasingly, venture capital.  China's space programme, with a space telescope that is constantly being upgraded and its uber-for-satellites, is no longer just cloning Soviet tech. To explore the ecology of China’s space sector and ask what’s driving their massive space spend, Louisa and Graeme are joined by Brad Tucker, an astrophysicist and cosmologist at the Australian National University and Blaine Curcio, the co-host of Dongfang Hour, a podcast about China and space, and co-founder of Orbital Gateway Counselling.    Image: c/-  Jamie Gilbert and Brad Tucker (ANU), View from a balloon at 32km (105,000 ft.), 2019.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In a few short months, Chinese officials have gone from COVID cover-up to competing over who has the highest number of infections. After urbanites flocked back to the countryside for lunar New Year, the Party that ran the world’s strictest prevention regime now presides over the world’s largest and most ambitious experiment in herd immunity. To explore how this dramatic change unfolded, Louisa and Graeme are joined by Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of Governing Health in Contemporary China and Vivian Wu, co-founder of the Mighty Voice media studio, who has worked at a host of media organizations including BBC Chinese and Initium.  Image: Abandoned Isolation House in Shenzhen with Dynamic Zero Slogan, c/- Wikimedia CommonsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Finally, China’s sloughing off the Zero Covid policy it’s embraced for three years. This followed a spasm of discontent, with people taking to the streets to demonstrate against Zero Covid, in protests that quickly spilled over to demand democracy and Xi Jinping's resignation. Beijing’s adaptive authoritarianism is in full sight, as the state eases Covid controls and reverses three years of rhetoric on the dangers of the virus. To ask whether the protests were a flash in the pan, we’re joined by William Hurst, Chong Hua Professor of Chinese Development at Cambridge University, Chenchen Zhang from Durham University, producer and co-host of the Shicha Podcast and Zeyi Yang, China reporter at MIT Technology Review. Image: Vigil at Southwest Jiaotong University, c/- Wikimedia CommonsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Josh Chin and Liza Lin, Wall Street Journal reporters and authors of *Surveillance State*, join Aynne Kokas, a digital sovereignty expert from the University of Virginia. They delve into China's ambitious data control efforts, highlighting the role of American tech firms in aiding these strategies. The discussion examines the consequences of biodata collection, especially in Xinjiang, and the rampant surveillance techniques accelerated by COVID-19. The podcast also contrasts China's smart city initiatives with the regulatory challenges faced by Western democracies in managing surveillance and AI.

China's political event of the decade - its 20th Party Congress - will confirm Xi Jinping's third term as leader of the CCP and could even bestow on him the title of ‘chairman’. With an economy crippled by zero-COVID and global public opinion about China turning precipitously negative, it seems an age since China’s leaders promised a ‘peaceful rise’. Was this peaceful rise stymied by hardliners, or was it all an elaborate influence operation orchestrated by China's spies?  For two very different analyses of developments inside the black box of Chinese politics, we’re joined by Susan Shirk, Research Professor and Chair at the 21st Century China Centre at University of California, San Diego, whose much awaited new book is Overreach: How China Derailed its Peaceful Rise is just out, and Alex Joske, Senior Analyst at Australian Strategic Policy Institute, who’s just written a book called Spies and Lies: How China’s Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World. Image: c/- Wikimedia Commons. President George W. Bush is greeted by Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping Sunday 10 August 2008. White House photo by Eric Draper. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Southeast Asian nation has historically been seen as China's first client state, with the Khmer Rouge's hardline interpretation of Maoism leading to the horror of the Killing Fields.  Four decades on, Cambodia still enjoys the best and the worst of what the People’s Republic can offer.   While aid from Beijing has built world-class infrastructure and provided clean drinking water to Cambodians, Chinese companies are also responsible for a tidal wave of scams, illegal casinos and even recent cases of human trafficking. China's building a military base at Ream on the Gulf of Thailand, only its second overseas base, amid public denials from Cambodian officials.  To delve into the history and complexity of China’s relationship with Cambodia, we’re joined by Matthew Galway of the Australian National University and the author of The Emergence of Global Maoism: China’s Red Evangelism and the Cambodian Communist movement 1949-1979, and Andrew Mertha, director of the SAIS China Global Research Center at John Hopkins University and the author of Brothers in Arms: Chinese aid to the Khmer Rouge 1975 to 1979. Image: Prince Sihanouk visits China, November 1964. c/- Wikimedia Commons and People’s Daily.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.