China Watch

Terri Wu marks America's 250th birthday with a personal reflection on what freedom really meant to her as a Chinese immigrant. She recalls the culture shock of her U.S. visa interview in Beijing, including an accidental slur that could have cost her everything under a system she knew punished such mistakes severely, and her relief at discovering a country that didn't retaliate. She traces her jour...

When China cut off rare earth exports to the United States, most rare earth companies scrambled to copy China's technology. Curtis Wu, founder and CEO of Maglut Heavy Industries, had a different idea: steal a page from biotech instead. Drawing on his years in the biotech industry, Curtis saw that chromatography—the same precision purification technique used to manufacture cancer drugs—could replac...

China controls the rare-earth chokepoint that nearly every modern industry depends on: from smartphones and EVs to missiles and fighter jets. Rare earths are a tiny market—just $20-30 billion globally—yet they sit beneath trillions of dollars in downstream value, making them one of the most powerful leverage points in U.S.–China relations. In this episode, Terri Wu sits down with Carl Coward, co-f...

It started with a strange email: an unsolicited invitation for host Terri Wu to become a "senior geopolitical analyst" for a shadowy "defense advisory trust"—confidential, decoupled from her reporting, and sent from a personal Gmail. Then came the Five Eyes "Safeguarding Our Secrets" bulletin, warning that foreign intelligence services court exactly the people who get pitches like that: journalist...

Terri sits down with Piero Tozzi, a China expert whose deep roots in both Western and Confucian thought give him a truly rare lens on the U.S.–China competition. In this conversation, they unpack why the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has never been—and can never be—a normal trading partner or good-faith rival, and how America has been deceived into thinking otherwise, repeatedly, since the 1940s....

The Department of Justice unsealed an indictment on May 19, charging Chinese shipping container manufacturers with price-fixing their products during the COVID years. As a result, container prices nearly doubled between 2019 and 2024. And a leading defendant saw its profit increase by nearly 100-fold. This case is not an isolated case. Join Terri and maritime historian Salvatore Mercogliano in unp...

For years, Chinese investors used Tiger, Futu, and Longbridge to buy Tesla and Nvidia — through a side door Beijing called illegal but tolerated anyway. On May 22, Beijing finally shut it. Why now? Most headlines frame this as another step in U.S.–China decoupling, or as Chinese leader Xi Jinping putting another aspect of Chinese society under total control. But there's a third possibility. Join T...

The Trump–Xi summit may not have accomplished much, but both countries walked away with new labels for the U.S.–China relationship. For Beijing, it's "constructive strategic stability." For Washington, it's "a constructive relationship of strategic stability on the basis of fairness and reciprocity." Join Terri as she decodes what the Chinese term really means—and how the regime's intent gets "los...

Most Westerners in business operate on the baseline assumption that hard work leads to success and beating the competition. With business in communist China, that doesn’t hold. Hard work is a must, but not the most important ingredient for success. In this episode, join Terri as she discusses the machinations that determine whether top companies live or die, and how the competitive mentality is se...

Teapots, gas stations, and shadow fleets sound like a grab bag of unconnected things, but they’re all part of a complex system keeping a terrorist regime in power and rendering international sanctions ineffective. That is, they’re part of the system China uses to import Iranian oil. But that system is no longer being allowed to run unchecked. Hear about what has changed since Feb. 28, including wh...

Forced organ harvesting in China was once a taboo topic, in both China and the United States. But now, a book about it, “Killed to Order,” has made it to The New York Times non-fiction bestsellers list. I interviewed the author Jan Jekielek, senior editor of The Epoch Times and host of American Thought Leader, about why and how the tide has turned. Buy a copy of “Killed to Order” The Hot Mic Momen...

Beijing avoids the battlefield, then shows up for the rebuild. Precedents include Iraq and Afghanistan. The Chinese regime moved quickly to secure oil, minerals, and influence. In this way, the regime acted like a vulture on a battlefield. When the Iran war enters a new phase, what role will China play in reconstruction? And how can the United States respond to protect its strategic interests? I s...

How much could concepts such as high school education and high-tech development overlap? Terri says a lot. Hear in this week’s episode, along with producer Daniel, how China’s education system builds people who are very specifically trained for certain tasks—and trained away from other tasks. The specific innovations—and the shocks from China’s AI industry—appear to follow a certain pattern, somet...

For decades, a core assumption about China has gone largely unchallenged: That the Chinese Communist Party can legitimately represent Chinese culture—or is inseparable from it. Then came Shen Yun. For 20 years, the dance company has presented a vision of traditional Chinese culture independent of the regime—one that, some say, counteracts a century of the Party’s efforts to harness culture as soft...

China has set its lowest growth target since 1991, reinforcing concerns that its economy faces structural challenges that may be difficult to reverse. Some analysts have taken it further, asking the fundamental question: “When does China stop growing altogether?” And when that happens, what does it mean for the United States? Join Terri as she presents expert views on this question. Thomas Duester...

When an ally, even a business partner, is in dire straits, one would think that others would come to their aid. It would be unwise to make this assumption about a partner such as China. As the war in Iran continues, China is being placed in a deeper dilemma about how to handle its relationships with the United States and Iran. It manifests similarly to how many movies and stories have portrayed vi...

China has long maintained a 5% economic growth target, even as many analysts questioned the reliability of the numbers. But this year, Beijing broke that streak. If growth figures have been widely seen as inflated, why lower the target now? And what does the move signal as China prepares for a potential Trump–Xi summit at the end of March? Meanwhile, China’s export numbers look unusually strong. B...

“The energy rice bowl must be held in our own hands.” That’s Xi Jinping’s mantra on China’s energy security. It has guided Beijing’s policy for years. Now, the Iran war is testing that strategy, shaking the very “rice bowl” Xi has warned must remain firmly in China’s hands. But could the conflict also fit into a broader U.S. strategic calculus toward China? Join Terri this week as she speaks to Ta...

While much of the international news focuses on what is happening in Iran, other moving pieces in the region will play additional critical roles in America's future foreign business efforts. And there are consequences for China as well. Listen as Terri and Daniel discuss how America is expanding into its last “Economic Frontier,” which counters many of the power players in the area. Learn how this...

China proudly holds a total global monopoly on critical minerals—at least, that’s what they’d like you to think. As one of this week’s experts explains, “And as long as the perception of dominance remains, dominance remains.” And that is the case for China in terms of its control on this important product, a “smoke-and-mirror” monopoly. Daniel and Terri first examine why early reactions to the Sup...

Happy Lunar New Year! The year of the Horse has arrived, and so has a new co-host for this week’s episode. Show producer Daniel Holl joins Terri this week for a more lighthearted discussion on Chinese propaganda. That is, the kind that takes movie form, which can be unintentionally comical to a non-Chinese audience. And if you noticed issues with Daniel’s audio, he’ll have them fixed for next week...

The Panama Canal, the Board of Peace, and the Critical Minerals Ministerial seem to be unrelated projects, but they’re all coordinated moves against the Chinese Communist Party. Listen to Terri Wu connect these seemingly unrelated dots to explain how they’re part of a broader geopolitical strategy by the United States to address Chinese influence and how the interconnectedness is working in the br...

Greenland stands at the center of a global power struggle between the United States and an aggressive China. Both countries have been jockeying to assert influence on the island, with U.S. President Donald Trump recently taking a decisive lead. What is the significance of the island to each of these countries? Why does the European Union take a contrary stance to Trump? Find out with Terri Wu and...

China has been pursuing a long-term strategy to position itself along key geographic and economic chokepoints surrounding the United States. It’s a long game, with a metaphorical example in one of the country's oldest and most famous games: Weiqi. While it’s often a strategy to encircle the opponent without them realizing it, it seems China has been caught out this time. That may be the reason why...

U.S. President Donald Trump has called for “new leadership in Iran.” The country’s economy is on the brink of collapse. What began as an economic protest quickly escalated into a nationwide anti-regime movement. Iran’s nuclear capabilities and terrorist proxies have also been significantly diminished, and the Islamic regime appears to be more fragile than ever before during its rule since 1979. Wh...