Talks on China

Alicia Kearns and Charlie Parton discuss the United Front Work Department.

Our podcast is back! In this episode Alicia Kearns MP and Professor Steve Tsang will go in depth into CCP influence in UK universities.

In early October, the US government rolled out extensive new restrictions on China’s access to advanced semiconductors, which play a central role in sectors such as quantum computing and weapons manufacture. The order by President Biden is unprecedented in modern times and is designed to cut China’s legs off as Washington and Beijing compete for technological advantage. Chris Cash is joined by Sar...

If China seems unstoppable, so too can its leader Xi Jinping. And yet we know very little about the man who commands over 1.4 billion people, in a vast country that spans prosperous megacities and desperately poor rural regions. Chris Cash is joined by Adrian Geiges and Stefan Aust, authors of the newly-translated biography ‘Xi Jinping: The Most Powerful Man in the World’, to discuss the story of...

In April 2022, Xi Jinping announced the Global Security Initiative (GSI), a new Chinese foreign policy initiative proposed as a solution to a rapidly deteriorating international security environment. Some view the initiative as China’s latest bid to tilt the rules-based global order in its favour, but what does it actually mean for the future of the international security architecture? Chris Cash...

In response to US Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, Beijing conducted large-scale military exercises across the Taiwan Strait. Its actions have been met with international alarm, with commentators declaring this as a ‘new normal’ for cross-strait relations. Chris Cash and Archie Brown are joined by Alessio Patalano, a Professor of War and Strategy in East Asia in the Department of War Studie...

In November 2021, Barbados became the latest Commonwealth nation to remove the Queen as its head of state. Some British policymakers and commentators attributed this trend to growing Chinese influence in the Caribbean, but does this narrative reflect the reality on the ground? Chris Cash and Archie Brown are joined by Rasheed Griffith, a non-resident senior fellow with the Asia and Latin America p...

There is a growing interest across the world in Chinese foreign policy signalling. Whilst English translations make Chinese foreign policy statements more accessible, most people fail to pick up on changes in the language of these statements in official translations. Chris Cash is joined by Sabine Mokry, PhD candidate at Leiden University and Visiting Researcher at the German Institute of Global a...

China’s digital yuan is a form of  central bank digital currency (CBDC)  which many other central banks around the world are also working on. Chinese authorities are now stepping up their ambition to expand the use of e-CNY after a trial at this year’s Winter Olympic in Beijing. Chris Cash is joined by Ananya Kumar, Assistant Director of Digital Currencies at the Atlantic Council’s GeoEc...

The emergence of highly infectious coronavirus variants has strained the Chinese Communist Party’s zero-COVID policy to breaking point. The economic struggles and growing civilian frustrations caused by unrelenting lockdowns threaten to undermine the narrative of China’s superiority in responding to the pandemic - and the image and stature of Xi Jinping’s rule. Chris Cash and Julia Pamilih are joi...

China's efforts at home and abroad to become a global leader in digital technologies is a challenge for the UK and its allies. How has Beijing set about shaping the new global digital architecture and how should we respond? Chris Cash is joined by Emily de la Bruyère, co-founder of Horizon Advisory, a strategic consulting firm focused on the implications of China’s competitive approach to geopolit...

Hong Kong stood out as an international COVID success story before a recent Omicron outbreak took hold of the city. What could have been done to prevent the tragic scenes of hospitals being overwhelmed? Has the Hong Kong government lost all democratic accountability? Quartz journalist Mary Hui joins Chris Cash to discuss the reasons behind Hong Kong's lack of COVID preparedness, the erosion of dem...

As the thawing of the Arctic has increased its geopolitical prominence and potential economic viability, new players have expanded their presence and influence in the region. China - a less obvious player in the Arctic - has in recent years pressed for a greater role in regional affairs. Chris Cash is joined by Lukas Wahden, a Yenching Scholar at Peking University, to discuss his LSE IDEAS piece o...

The greyzone is defined as "competitive interactions among and within state and non-state actors that fall between the traditional war and peace duality." But what do these interactions look like and how can we deter the most harmful greyzone activities engaged in by hostile states? Chris Cash is joined by Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and writer at the...

Before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, China and Russia appeared to be growing ever closer. Russian President Vladimir Putin being one of a handful of known leaders to attend the Winter Olympics, where he signed a landmark strategic partnership with his counterpart, President Xi Jinping. Will that 'no limits' partnership survive Russia's newfound pariah status? In this live event, co-chair of the Ch...

China has one of the world’s most restrictive media environments, relying on censorship to control information in the news, online, and on social media. But how does internet censorship in China actually function? Chris Cash is joined by Molly Roberts, a political scientist at UC San Diego and author of the groundbreaking book ‘Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China's Great Firewall’, to...

The case of Christine Lee shot to national attention when news broke that the Speaker of the House of Commons had warned MPs that there was a Chinese agent operating in parliament. But why is Lee perhaps just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Chinese interference in the UK political system and how can the UK better defend itself against such threats? Chris Cash is joined by Martin Thorley, a...

Three experts, Rui Ma, Rogier Creemers and John Lee, joined the China Research Group to discuss China's evolving tech landscape.  Rui, Rogier and John discussed how China sees the role of technology in relation to the country's economic and social development - and how common prosperity will shape the relationship between the state, society and tech firms. The panellists also analyse China's...

Where do Xi Jinping and the CCP stand - domestically and abroad - at the end of 2021?  This week, Jude Blanchette, the Freeman Chair of China Studies at CSIS, joined Tom Tugendhat for a rapid review of the key political and economic moves in 2021 in China. What did the politics of the Sixth Plenum tell us about Xi's power? Is China's new style of diplomacy here to stay? And what does common p...

As part of its Indo-Pacific Tilt, the UK is deepening its engagement with South East Asia. But what does the strategic environment look like and what are South East Asian countries looking for from the UK? Julia Pamilih is joined by Charles Dunst, an adjunct fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’s Southeast Asia programme. They discuss the impact of China's vaccine efforts...

Chair of the China Research Group, Tom Tugendhat MP was joined by Desmond Shum for a conversation on Desmond's recent book Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China, a rare look at the inner workings of the Chinese Communist Party. Desmond's journey as a successful businessman during China's boom period in the 2000s took him close to the nexus of...

With COP26 set to kick off at the end of the week and President Xi's attendance looking unlikely, we were joined by three experts for a panel discussion on China’s efforts to combat climate change - and what a successful COP 26 would look like. All three panellists have worked closely with China on climate change. Former Climate Change Secretary Amber Rudd led the UK’s delegation at COP15 in Paris...

Two data experts from AidData, Bradley Parks (Executive Director) and Dr Ammar Malik (Senior Research Scientist), joined us to discuss their findings from their recent paper: Banking on the Belt and Road . The paper draws on a new dataset covering 13,427 Chinese development projects in 165 countries, worth over $843 billion.  Since the BRI, was introduced, China has spent roughly $85 billion...

As part of the Integrated Review published earlier this year, the UK formalised its tilt to the Indo-Pacific. Our panel discussion with Claire Coutinho, Michael Auslin and Sophia Gaston provided insight and analysis of one of the generational changes in British foreign policy. How should the UK maintain its interests and deepen its engagement with the region? What can it realistically seek to achi...

With the WTO in desperate need of reform and Australia hit by trade sanctions by the PRC, do we need a new allied trade treaty? How should the UK, EU and US come together to rethink the economic challenge posed by China? This event took place in tandem with the launch of a new policy paper written for the China Research Group by Robert D. Atkinson, which you can read here . The paper looks at whet...