Episodes

  • Corruption, power and the truth about my wife’s disappearance – with Desmond Shum

    Corruption, power and the truth about my wife’s disappearance – with Desmond Shum
    Oct 14 2024
    In the early 2000s, Desmond Shum and his wife, Whitney Duan, were among the richest people in China, with fingers in various real estate, infrastructure and hospitality projects. They also had some of China’s most powerful people on speed dial – including the family of then-premier Wen Jiabao. But that all changed in 2017 when Whitney was disappeared by the Chinese state. Desmond now lives in the UK where he published a memoir in 2021, Red Roulette, and is now an analyst and commentator on Chinese politics.

    On this interview, we discuss why Shum thinks Whitney was the victim of a power struggle involving Xi Jinping, the reality of politics and corruption in the China of the 2000s, and how Xi has destroyed the economic trajectory of the once-booming People’s Republic.
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    43 mins
  • Will AI be the next arms race?

    Will AI be the next arms race?
    Sep 30 2024
    ** On October 19, Cindy Yu and a panel of special guests will be recording a live Chinese Whispers at London's Battle of Ideas festival, talking the latest on China’s economic slowdown and asking – what are the social and political implications? Is China in decline?

    Chinese Whispers listeners can get a 20 per cent discount on the ticket price with the code WHISPERS24. Click here to find out more and get your ticket. **


    The release of ChatGPT in late 2022 brought home the sheer potential of artificial intelligence and the speed with which developments are being made. It made AI the hot topic from business to politics and, yes, journalism.

    This was true in China too, despite the fact that ChatGPT has never been allowed to be used within Chinese borders. Instead, China has a rich landscape of homegrown AI products, where progress is being led by tech giants like search engine Baidu and TikTok’s owner, ByteDance. So already we are seeing a bifurcation in the AI worlds of China and the West – just like with social media and e-commerce.

    This episode will peek over the Great Firewall to update listeners on China’s progress on AI. The country is fast becoming an AI superpower even as it limits the freedoms its generative models can have and keeps out some of the world’s leading companies. Could this be the next arms race?

    I’m joined by the researcher Matt Sheehan, fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a long time watcher of China’s tech scene.
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    48 mins
  • A father and son at the edge of the Chinese empire

    A father and son at the edge of the Chinese empire
    Sep 16 2024
    As a child, the New York Times journalist Edward Wong had no idea that his father had been in the People’s Liberation Army. But as he grew up, a second generation immigrant in the United States, Edward was hungry to find out more about his father and mother’s pasts in the People’s Republic of China. That hunger took him to study China at university and eventually to become the New York Times’s Beijing bureau chief.

    Edward’s new book, At the Edge of Empire, is a marvellously constructed work that traces his father’s journey through China as a soldier in the PLA, and his own reporting in China as an American journalist. It reveals how China has changed between the lives of father and son, but also how some aspects – such as the nature of political power – have not changed at all.

    On this episode, I talk to Edward about the yearning of second-generation immigrants to understand their roots, why both China and America can be seen as empires, and the seventy years of change that the lives of father and son span.
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    39 mins
  • Investigating China's 'historic' claims in the South China Sea

    Investigating China's 'historic' claims in the South China Sea
    Sep 2 2024
    The South China Sea has been an area of regular clashes and heightened tensions under the leadership of Xi Jinping. It seems that, every few months, Chinese naval or coastguard ships clash or almost clash with vessels from South East Asian nations like Vietnam and the Philippines. Only last week, a Chinese ship clashed with the Filipino coast guard in the Spratly Islands, with both sides levelling angry accusations at each other.

    The region is full of disputed claims, making it fertile waters for accidental escalation. China says its claims to the region – encompassed by the ‘nine-dash line’ – are historic; that island sets such as the Spratlys and the Paracels in the South China Sea are as integral to the Chinese empire as Hong Kong or Taiwan. How sound is that claim?

    This episode will be digging into the origins of the nine-dash line (roughly pictured here) – and finds them not so much in ancient imperial days. The chaotic formation of China’s claims in the South China Sea is researched and detailed in Bill Hayton’s book, The Invention of China.

    To hear more about Bill's book, tune in to our previous episode: What is it to be Chinese?
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    43 mins
  • What would a second Trump presidency bring for China?

    What would a second Trump presidency bring for China?
    Aug 19 2024
    Trump is tough on China, but what really motivates his hawkishness? Does he care at all about China's human rights abuses? Or is he fundamentally a foreign policy disentangler, hoping to rein back America's overseas commitments? How much does the China policy of a second Trump presidency depend on which advisors the president surrounds himself with?

    On this episode of Chinese Whispers, The Spectator's China podcast, assistant editor Cindy Yu talks to deputy editor Freddy Gray and Jordan McGillis, economics editor at the Manhattan Institute's City Journal.

    Produced by Cindy Yu and Patrick Gibbons.
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    30 mins
  • How oil became the latest Chinese food scandal

    How oil became the latest Chinese food scandal
    Aug 5 2024
    Whenever I go back to China, I try to eat as much as I can – delicious Chinese food that I can’t have outside of the country, whether childhood favourites or the latest food trends. But I’m often struck by my relatives and friends who turn their noses up at many of these delicious dishes – they commonly say ‘不敢吃’ – ‘I’m scared to eat it’.

    The Chinese middle class can now be very discerning about the food that they eat, and who can blame them? In the last twenty years, there seems to have been a steady stream of food safety and hygiene scandals – most infamously melamine-laced milk powder in 2008, which poisoned tens of thousands of babies. Since then, we’ve heard about pesticides being put into steamed buns to improve their texture, used cooking oil being retrieved from gutters to be reused, and lamb meat that might contain rat or fox.

    The latest scandal, breaking over the last couple of months, is that of fuel tankers being used to carry cooking oil without the tankers being cleaned in between.

    So what gives? Are these scandals a particularly Chinese phenomenon? Why hasn’t government regulation or punishment worked? And how does this impact political credibility in the eyes of the middle class?

    I’m joined by two brilliant guests to discuss all of these questions and more.

    Dali Yang is a political scientist and sinologist at the University of Chicago, whose research has focused on Chinese regulations when it comes to food and medicine. His latest book is Wuhan: How the Covid-19 Outbreak in China Spiralled Out of Control.

    James Palmer is deputy editor at Foreign Policy and author of numerous books on China. He worked for years as a journalist inside China.

    For further listening, check out the Chinese Whispers episode on the gig economy – another huge labour rights issue in the country today: Algorithms and lockdowns: how China’s gig economy works.
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    53 mins
  • Why China loves Taylor Swift

    Why China loves Taylor Swift
    Jul 22 2024
    ‘Swifties’, as Taylor Swift’s fans are known across the world, are extremely dedicated to the cause, and often estimated to drive up local economies wherever they flock, and Chinese fans are no different. Swift didn’t perform in China on the latest global tour, but that didn’t stop more wealthy fans flying to Singapore to see her; or the less wealthy, going to cinemas in China to watch the Taylor Swift Eras Tour documentary – which has broken box office records in China.

    All this got me thinking – how popular is American, and western, pop music in China in general? Is it considered mainstream, or something a bit more indie compared to Chinese pop? Is the language barrier a problem, or censorship?

    On this episode I'm joined by two people very much in the know. Alex Taggart is an artist manager who has previously worked as a DJ and a Nightlife columnist in China. Jocelle Koh also works in the music industry and founded the media platform Asian Pop Weekly.

    They tell me about Chinese opera-style covers of Adele and explain how an American missile system brought down K-Pop in China...

    We also mention a range of our favourite viral videos featuring western pop in China. Links here:
    Vlogger Lorelei in Singapore
    Countryside Nicki Minaj
    'Low low low your boat'
    Last Emperor Puyi dancing to Harry Styles
    Chinese opera Adele
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    47 mins
  • Shock To The System (II): How China's electric cars dominated the world

    Shock To The System (II): How China's electric cars dominated the world
    Jul 8 2024
    The EU and US are turning up the pressure on Chinese made electric cars, as I discussed with my guest Finbarr Bermingham on the last episode.

    On this episode, I want to take a closer look at how China has come to dominate the global electric car market. Chinese EVs make up 60 per cent of worldwide sales, and a third of global exports. Its leading brand, BYD, now regularly gives Tesla a run for its money in terms of number of cars sold.

    How much of a role do subsidies play, versus other factors like its control of rare earths or lower labour costs? Is there really an overcapacity issue that suggests a flooding of Chinese cars globally?

    On this episode, I'm joined by Zeyi Yang, China tech reporter at MIT Technology Review, who is an expert on the genealogy of China’s EV industry.
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    34 mins