The Little Red Podcast

Writing history in China has never been easy; China’s first historian, Sima Qian, was forced to choose between execution and castration and imprisonment.  He chose the latter in order to finish his life’s work,  Records of the Grand Historian .  Now China’s keepers of inconvenient truths are put under immense pressure by Xi Jinping’s war on historical nihilism—viewpoints and memories that run coun...

Just as satirical writers struggled in Trump's America, China's sci-fi writers are facing a challenge:  how do you write in a world where reality is more like science fiction than science fiction itself? Added to that are the perils of popularity, with everyone from Netflix to the Communist Party embracing Chinese science fiction. To explore China's metaverse of sci-fi, Loiusa and Graeme are joine...

Beijing's recent ban on the export of two rare metals represents the latest front in the global battle to control chipmaking technology. Now there are fears China could block the export of rare earths, over which it has a stranglehold.   How close are we to that nuclear option? To find out, Louisa and Graeme are joined by Martijn Rasser, a former senior intelligence officer and analyst with the CI...

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 the...

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...

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...

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...

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 jus...

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...

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 rhetor...

“Controlling data means controlling the future.” Those are not George Orwell's words, but instead were uttered in 2015 by Jack Ma, founder of tech company Alibaba. Though Ma has since been brought to heel by the Chinese state, the CCP is constantly expanding the way it harnesses data to bolster its techno-authoritarian rule.  Chinese companies now lead the world in AI and facial recognition techno...

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, o...

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 households under lockdown have lacked food, company, and access to medical care.  But they’ve had an almost endless supply of a traditional Chinese medicine treatment called  Lianhua Qingwen , made by Yiling Pharmaceuticals. Chinese students abroad even have this drug delivered to their doorsteps in healthcare packages, and demand for it among diaspora communities has seen panic-buying and...

It’s now been twenty-five years since Hong Kong returned to Chinese sovereignty with a pledge not to change Hong Kong’s way of life for fifty years. In actual fact, Beijing's stealth infiltration of Hong Kong began long before the territory's return, with United Front work targeting certain sectors of the population. In this episode, we delve deep into Hong Kong's history to pinpoint how Beijing u...

After two long months, Shanghai's brutal lockdown is over in name, but Xi Jinping is telling officials to ‘unswervingly adhere’ to Zero COVID, despite the costs. Shanghai’s lockdown brought chaos to global supply chains and torpedoed China’s once-sacred economic growth targets. It’s also taken a toll on the city’s residents; once the nation’s most privileg...

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 kinderga...

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 describe...

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 f...

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...

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 r...

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.  Thi...

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, Loui...

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...

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...