The Little Red Podcast

Even before they had seen its contents, Hong Kong's family-run firms - including two non-Chinese business empires that have shaped Hong Kong - were lining up to pledge support to the New National Security legislation.  Even in 2020, Hong Kong remains an oligopoly with a handful of wealthy conglomerates controlling vast swathes of Hong Kong's economy.  But these family-run firms no longer have the luxury of remaining silent about Chinese politics.   To look at two of these commercial dynasties and their role in creating Hong Kong as Asia's global city,  Louisa and Graeme are joined by Robert Bickers who has written China Bound: A History of John Swire & Sons and Its World, and Jonathan Kaufman, former Wall Street Journal correspondent who examines the Sassoons and the Kadoories in the Last Kings of Shanghai: the Rival Jewish Dynasties that Helped Create Modern China.   Photo credit: Wikiswire.com, B&S Shanghai Staff 1883. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 License.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

China-US ties are in a tailspin, spiralling ever deeper into an abyss. Just one short month has seen US sanctions on senior Chinese officials for atrocities against the Uyghurs, Hong Kong’s special status for trade and diplomacy revoked, and consulates closed in Houston and Chengdu respectively. There's even been talk of a travel ban on China's 92m Communist party members and their families. Is armed conflict really a possibility, and if so when? Louisa and Graeme are joined by Gady Epstein and Stanford University’s Oriana Skyler Mastro to discuss the strategy behind the belligerence and the timeline for war. Photo credit: Flickr. USS San Antonio alongside USS Carter Hall. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Corbin J. Shea/Released) 130321-N-SB587-349See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On June 30, Hong Kong will be subject to a new National Security Law. No one, not even Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, knows what will be in the bill, but details are slowly coming into focus. For critics, the legislation will create a ‘dual state’ that will undermine Hong Kong’s legal system and allow Beijing to target its opponents at will. For proponents, the bill will only affect a handful of people, and bring stability after a year of unrest. To ask whether the law spells the end of Hong Kong’s autonomy, Louisa and Graeme are joined by NYU legal expert Alvin Cheung, Lingnan University’s Ho Lok-sang and digital activist Glacier Kwong. Photo credit: Jonathan van Smit, Hong Kong Protests 2019, FlickrSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For the first time since 1989 Hong Kongers are banned from holding their annual June Fourth vigil in Victoria Park. Despite this provocation, Hong Kong establishment figures—from vice chancellors to movie stars to religious figures—have been lining up to pledge their loyalty to China and their support for the proposed National Security Law that will be enacted in Beijing, bypassing the local legislature. Only one newspaper in Hong Kong opposes it: the popular Apple Daily. Today we speak to its chairman and founder, Jimmy Lai-Chee-ying to discuss the impact of that decision.  Lai has already been called a traitor and accused of ‘subversion’ by China’s Global Times newspaper, even though this crime is not yet on the statute books in Hong Kong.   Image: Hong Kong skyline at night, c/- Sergio Capuzzimati on Unsplash.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The byzantine rules and procedures of multilateral institutions form the backdrop for China's global power play, following President Xi Jinping's 2018 call for China to “lead the reform of the global governance system with the concepts of fairness and justice.” As the US pulls back from its global obligations, there's increasing evidence that China is simply changing the rules inside these global bodies. In this episode, we explore whether China is influencing three international organizations: the U.N. Human Rights Council, the World Trade Organization, and the World Health Organization. To ask whether Xi’s vision of a new global order is being realized, Louisa and Graeme are joined by Sophie Richardson, the China director at Human Rights Watch, trade expert Weihuan Zhou from the University of NSW’s law school, and freelance journalist Hinnerk Feldwisch-Drentrup who is the co-founder of MedWatch. Credit: UN Photo / Yun ZhaoCaption: Secretary-General Meets with President of China. Secretary-General António Guterres (left) meets with Xi Jinping, President of the People's Republic of China, in Great Hall of the People during the 2nd Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, China.26 April 2019See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

China's Covid diplomacy dispatching facemasks and respirators overseas is being hailed as the ultimate soft power play. But is this really soft power? To answer this question, we're joined by the man who coined the term, Joseph Nye, the former dean of Harvard Kennedy School of Government as well as Bates Gill, professor in the Department of Security Studies at Macquarie University, and Natasha Kassam, a research fellow in the Diplomacy and Public Opinion Program at the Lowy Institute. Image credit: "AMCHAM Cares Co-Vid 19" by United States Embassy Kuala Lumpur is licensed under CC PDM 1.0See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 2.0See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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, FlickrSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.