Round Table China

With Mid-Autumn and National Day bookending a rare calendar gap, travelers are pouncing on what might be 2026's biggest escape window. Domestic hotspots are surging, but overseas demand is climbing fast, too. So what is really driving this rush, and where is everybody going to go? On the show: Steve, Fei Fei & Yushan.

Consider all the small conversations you did not have today. The barista, the neighbor, the colleague you passed without stopping. On their own, each one seems like nothing. Together, they add up to thousands of words that were never spoken, and a new study suggests this is becoming the new normal. So what have we traded away without noticing, and is there any reason to want it back? On the show:...

Beijing is crawling with a problem you cannot ignore. American white moth caterpillars are raining down from trees, blanketing sidewalks, and turning a simple walk into something close to a nightmare. The city's answer sounds like science fiction. Release hundreds of millions of parasitic wasps and let them do the work. Why has this year's infestation exploded and can this tiny-winged counterattac...

The fishing boats are back and the ports are buzzing with fresh seafood heading to market. What you will not see on your dinner plate is the millions of tonnes of aquatic food lost or wasted every year. On September 29, the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste, we follow the catch from ocean to table and ask how much of the fish we pull from the sea never actually makes it to our...

Have you ever cried at a song whose words you never understood? That wordless pull toward beauty feels deeply human, yet AI now writes poetry, scores films, and paints portraits that move people to tears. So does it truly feel beauty, or simply mimic everything we've always called beautiful? On the show: Steve, Yushan & Yushun

What if the job you'll hold next doesn't exist on any official list yet? In China, that list just grew to include robot trainers, sustainability planners, and even incense-making artisans. Work you never knew existed is now being formally recognized as a legitimate career. The line between a passion project and a profession is thinner than it looks. On the show: Steve, Yushan & Yushun

There is something comforting about knowing the moon on September 25th is the same one that has watched over this festival for generations. It will shine down on family dinners and quiet apartments, on people coming home and people who cannot. Life moves, cities change, and we scatter further from where we started, but the moon keeps showing up. So what still makes a Mid-Autumn celebration feel li...

Living on campus has long been a standard part of university life in China, but that is now starting to change. Instead of staying within campus walls, many students are moving into residential buildings, as universities across the country buy or lease existing apartments and convert them into student dorms. For the students, it means perks like balconies and round the clock hot water. For the peo...

In Shanghai this week, the WorldSkills Competition has brought together around 1,400 young competitors from 68 countries. They are repairing cars, programming drones, and working with a level of precision that comes down to half a millimeter. It is the biggest celebration of vocational skills on the planet, and the energy is electric. On the show: Fei Fei, Steve & Yushan

Deep in the Italian Alps lies a course so punishing that it has broken some of the world's best athletes. This year, it was conquered by Zhao Jiaju, a Chinese runner who once delivered takeout for a living. A year earlier, the same mountains handed him his worst defeat. This time, he did not simply finish the race. He rewrote the record book and became the first non-European ever to win. On the sh...

China is pushing harder to remove phones from classrooms, and a new Chongqing regulation marks a notable escalation. Schools there can now ban smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches, but this measure sits inside a juvenile crime prevention law rather than an education policy. That raises difficult questions about the link between screen habits and criminal behavior, and whether real evidence justi...

Every text you send, every search you run, every question you ask an AI passes through the same quiet piece of software beneath your fingertips, and it is watching all of it. In 2026, China's biggest tech companies are fighting to control that software, and the stakes go far beyond convenience. The battle to reinvent the keyboard may be the fiercest front in the AI competition, hiding in the one p...

China has now approved the world's first national standard for BCI medical devices that use AI to interpret brainwaves, setting rules for how brain data is collected and accessed. The question now is whether that standard makes the technology safer for patients, and whether BCIs are finally entering everyday medicine. On the show: Steve, Yushan & Yushun

In 45-degree heat, air conditioning is a luxury millions can't reach, so researchers at the Beijing Institute of Technology are building something you wear instead. Round Table's Yushan sits down with Ji Wenjie and Fu Ying, from the team behind a cooling vest that could change who survives the heat and who gets left behind. 

Bringing someone into your home to clean or care for your family feels like a private arrangement. In China, it is also a thirty-million-person industry, one that has long run on informal deals, unclear hours, and unanswered questions about who is responsible when something goes wrong. Now nineteen new measures aim to change how that work is done, covering everything from training and insurance to...

You walk into a room and find a stage waiting for you. Someone hands you a presentation you have never seen before. The slides make no sense, the crowd is waiting, and your only job is to keep talking. In Beijing, Shanghai, and a handful of other Chinese cities, this is a game that turns everything you know about professional presentations upside down, and once you hear why people keep coming back...

A competitor at HYROX Beijing left a bowel accident across the sleds, mats, and rowers, forcing the other athletes onto contaminated equipment. She still finished first. With no clear rule to handle it, the incident sparked a global debate about where the line falls between pushing through pain and protecting others, and it caused HYROX to rewrite its rulebook. On the show: Fei Fei, Steve & Yu...

China has just opened its first major canal since 1949. The Pinglu Canal stretches 134 kilometers and represents one of the most significant infrastructure projects in the country's modern history. What could this waterway actually mean for the way we move goods, run businesses, and connect with Southeast Asia? In an age of high-speed railways and vast road networks, why build a canal at all? On t...

It sounded like a hit, it charted like a hit, and radio played it like a hit. There was just one catch. No human made it. Now Australia has become the first country to shut fully AI-generated music out of its official charts and its biggest awards. But if a machine makes a song that makes you feel something, does it matter who or what made it? On the show: Steve, Fei Fei & Yushun

A little girl opens a treasure box and finds a tiny eyeshadow palette, a lipstick, and a blush. To her, it's a toy. To her parents, it's a question mark. China is about to tighten the rules on makeup made for kids aged 12 and under, with tougher limits on contamination and stricter safety requirements. But why are children being sold beauty products at all, and will new standards actually make the...

It begins in a quiet corner of Shaoxing, on a balcony full of gourds, with an old man happy to wave at whoever shows up. It starts as the kind of story that makes you smile. Then the crowds get bigger, the cameras get closer, and the smile gets harder to hold. When does showing up to admire someone's life turn into taking it away from them? / Why do we never like our pictures (18:02)? On the show:...

In 45-degree heat, air conditioning is a luxury millions can't reach, so researchers at the Beijing Institute of Technology are building something you wear instead. Round Table's Yushan sits down with Ji Wenjie and Fu Ying, two members of the team behind a cooling vest that could change who survives the heat and who gets left behind. On the show: Steve, Yushun & Guo Yan

Across China, people are paying strangers for what friends used to give for free — a listener to vent to, or someone to offer custom compliments and rebuild confidence. Maybe connection isn't the problem. Maybe trust is. Today, we're asking what happens when we'd rather pay a stranger than lean on the people we know. On the show: Steve, Yushan & Yushun

Paying to get knocked around by fake hurricane winds. Wading through a flooded garage that's dry on the other side. Getting swept up in a man-made torrent. It sounds like something to avoid — until you realize people are doing it to learn. Across China, disaster simulation venues are turning fear into a classroom. Because when the real storm hits, hesitation kills. And practice can mean the differ...

The most interesting developments at this year's China International Fair for Trade in Services may be happening outside the venue. Beijing's western districts now have new waterfront spaces, routes and transport, all backed by AI, digital platforms and healthcare technology, and all pointing to a fair that no longer speaks only to companies but to the rest of us. On the show: Steve, Fei Fei &...