The Little Red Podcast

For the past year, China has been in the grip of a crackdown on niangpao, or ‘sissy men’, with the People’s Daily warning that effeminate men are ‘corrupting a generation.’ It’s a movement that is having a chilling effect well beyond influencers having their social media accounts closed, with the Ministry of Education even issuing guidelines on how to ‘cultivate masculinity’ in boys from kindergarten onwards. To discuss what lies behind the masculinity crisis, Louisa and Graeme are joined by UNSW’s Kam Louie, the author of Chinese Masculinities in a Globalising World, Ting Guo, researcher of gender and politics at the University of Toronto and co-host of the podcast Shicha, and Xiaogang Wei, a filmmaker who is also a board member of the Beijing LGBTQ centre. Image: Three men walking on the street, c/- Peijia Li on Unsplash.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As Australia’s Defence Minister warns his nation to ‘prepare for war’ with China, there’s a growing feeling of inevitability about a future conflict between China and the United States. Against this rather bleak backdrop, we hear from one global figure who has had unusual access to China's leaders: Australia's former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. The President and CEO of the Asia Society, he describes himself as a Sinologist at the tables of power.  He's probably the only Mandarin-speaking world leader to have one-on-ones with Xi Jinping and hear Jiang Zemin's rendition of O Sole Mio at Sydney Opera House. Rudd is publishing a book called The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict Between the United States and Xi Jinping’s China. This episode is a live recording of his Melbourne book launch, hosted by Louisa. In it, Rudd unpacks the logic of a future war, warns of Xi's biggest vulnerability and predicts a rocky few months ahead.  This event was co-hosted by the Asia Society, the Wheeler Centre and RMIT Live.  Image: Kevin Rudd and Louisa Lim at the Capitol Theatre c/- The Wheeler Centre, 2022See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How is Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine redrawing the geopolitical landscape?  In this episode, we examine China’s interests in the conflict and explore the limits of their ‘no limits’ agreement with Russia. To ask whether the geopolitical balance is shifting in favour of an ‘axis of autocracies’, Louisa and Graeme are joined by Alexander Gabuev, senior fellow and Russian chair in the Asia-Pacific Programme at the Carnegie Moscow Centre and Maria Repnikova, assistant professor in global communication at Georgia State University.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

America's elites love to talk about China's '5000 years of civilization', but such language - which could come straight from the pages of the China Daily - serves to amplify Beijing's talking points. In this way and due to their own business dealings with China, some American elites are helping Beijing grow more powerful. In his book, America Second: How America's Elites Are Making China Stronger, journalist Isaac Stone Fish zeroes in on the case of the former US secretary of State Henry Kissinger, casting him as an agent of Chinese influence. In this episode, Louisa and Graeme talk to Isaac about how the CCP exploits the blurred line between politics and business to capture US elites. Image: c/- Wikimedia commons. Henry Kissinger and Chairman Mao, with Zhou Enlai behind them in Beijing, early 70s.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

By any metric, China's rural residents face massive disadvantages compared to their urban counterparts.  More than half of rural teenagers are cognitively delayed, and longstanding policies restrict their mobility and access to vital services.  China's peasants were one of Chairman Mao's favoured classes and the backbone of his Revolution, but what place is there for the half-a-billion rural dwellers in Xi Jinping's China?  To discuss whether common prosperity can trickle down to the countryside, Louisa and Graeme are joined by sociologist Mindi Schneider from Wageningen University, and economist Scott Rozelle, the author of Invisible China: How the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China's Rise.  Image: Rural primary school in Anhui, c/- Graeme SmithSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As China's economy slows down, Xi Jinping's charting a new economic course that will redefine the country's future.  From reining in tech giants to redistributing wealth in the name of “common prosperity”, the Party's economic policy is moving away from the Deng reform era.  Economic analysts are sharply divided on what it portends for China and the world.  This month, Louisa and Graeme hear two completely opposed takes on China's economic strategy, from Andy Rothman, an investment strategist at Matthews Asia, and Anne Stevenson-Yang, the co-founder of J Capital Research.  Image: Caofeidian, Hubei Province. c/- Anne Stevenson-YangSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Become an instant expert on the new historical resolution issued by China's Communist Party for all your cocktail season smalltalk needs. It's only the third such move in the party's century-long history, and the first in forty years. This resolution introduces a new slogan: Xi Jinping's Two Establishments, signalling the Chairman of Everything's elevation to helmsman status. In this episode, Louisa and Graeme turn to two authorities on party history for elucidation: Patricia Thornton of the University of Oxford and Geremie Barmé, editor of China Heritage and the founding director of the Australian Centre on China in the World. Image: Great Wall of China at sunset, c/- Usukhbayar Gankhuyag on Unsplash.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

China’s Communist Party’s rewriting of history doesn’t stop at their own borders, but has even reached as far as Wandiligong, a town of 453 people four hours north of Melbourne. It’s home to a memorial bridge to Chinese goldminers built with the assistance of the Australia China Friendship Society. The information panels use racist language for the Chinese such as “chinks and chows to be ridiculed and baited”, illustrating one example of how the CCP is exporting the notion of a century of humiliation to other countries. In this episode we ask whether various attempts to rewrite Chinese Australian history represent a coordinated campaign and to what end. Louisa and Graeme are joined by Karen Schamberger, vice President of the Young Historical Society, historian Louise Edwards from the University of New South Wales and Paul Macgregor, former curator at the Chinese Museum of Melbourne. Photo credit: Louisa LimSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The purge that followed the killings by PLA soldiers in and around Tiananmen Square three decades ago has continued into the present, even permeating Western academia.   A host of new sources, including leaked diaries by Chinese leaders, have emerged in recent years, but few Western scholars appear willing to break the taboo surrounding June 4.  The jailing this month of nine Hong Kongers, for as much as ten months, for taking part in a banned Tiananmen vigil indicates how the purge is spreading to Hong Kong, where police raided the Tiananmen Massacre museum, confiscating exhibits as evidence.   Against that backdrop, Louisa speaks to Simon Fraser University's Jeremy Brown, whose recent book June Fourth: The Tiananmen Protests and the Beijing Massacre reframes the events of 1989, shifting the focus from elites and students to ordinary people.   This is a recording of a live conversation that was hosted by Harvard University’s Fairbank Centre for Chinese Studies. Image: Tiananmen Square, c/- Nick Fewings on Unsplash. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nationalism in China seems to have taken a feral turn, with Chinese netizens viciously turning on Olympic athletes, celebrities and even the über-nationalist Global Times for letting down the motherland. This month we’re talking about the evolution of Chinese nationalism and the factors driving the emergence of a new cadre of aggressive diplomats known as wolf warriors. Louisa and Graeme are joined by Bloomberg journalist Peter Martin, who's just written China’s Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy and Cornell University’s Jessica Chen Weiss, who’s also the China editor at the Washington Post and has written a book called Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations.   Image: Vladimir Putin with Wang Yi, website of the President of the Russian Federation, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 LicenseSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.