The Little Red Podcast
by Graeme Smith and Louisa Lim
The Little Red Podcast: interviews and chat celebrating China beyond the Beijing beltway. Hosted by Graeme Smith, China studies academic at the Australian National University's Department of Pacific Affairs and Louisa Lim, former China correspondent for the BBC and NPR, now with the Centre for Advancing Journalism at Melbourne University. We are the 2018 winners of podcast of the year in the News & Current Affairs category of the Australian Podcast Awards. Follow us @limlouisa and @GraemeKSmith, and find show notes at www.facebook.com/LittleRedPodcast/
Episodes
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Bank Balance: China Purges its Finances
In the sixth episode in our China Rules series, we examine China’s purge of its banks. China’s banks are three times bigger than the US banking system, holding assets worth $60 trillion – equivalent to half the world’s GDP. But in the past year, Beijing has shuttered almost one-quarter of its...
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The Rise of the Petroyuan: Who will win the Global Economic Order?
In the fifth episode in the China Rules series, we look at China’s efforts to reshape to global financial system. One milestone has been the recent designation of Deutsche Bank as a renminbi clearing house. China is pushing hard to increase its influence inside international institutions and to...
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Money (That’s What I Want): China’s New Investment Regime
In our fourth episode of the China Rules series, we look at the State Council’s brand-new rules on overseas investment. These formalize central control over outbound investment, addressing the Party’s concerns about sensitive technologies and data, while sending a chilling signal to Chinese tech...
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Out of Battery? China's EV Dreams Flicker
In the latest episode in our China Rules series, we look at the rise and potential fall of China’s electric vehicle (EV) industry. Once scoffed at by Elon Musk, China’s EV industry is charging ahead in international markets with its top car brand, BYD, selling more cars than Tesla in 2025.…
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Lightning Strikes: China’s Robot Revolution
In the second episode of our series, China Rules, we look at an industry dominated by China: humanoid robots. Beijing’s running, dancing and fighting robots are more than just a gimmick; the country’s 15th Five-year Plan puts robotics right at the heart of its modern industrial system. China...
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China Rules: Autocracy for sale
In our new series—China Rules—we look at how China is a global exporter, not just of goods, but also of standards, ideas, technologies and mechanisms of control. We’re starting with politics, and whether China is exporting its brand of “smart authoritarianism”. China’s heady mix of extractive...
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Little Red Podcast x Face Off
As an Easter treat, we're bringing you a cracking tale of espionage from one of our favourite China podcasts: Face Off. We'll be back shortly with a new season called China Rules. Espionage Two young CIA agents were flown to northern China in 1952, part of a bizarre Cold War operation to…
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State Capture or Mind Capture? China's Spy Strategy on 3 Continents
Britain is the latest country to be plunged into yet another espionage scandal after an MP’s husband was arrested on suspicion of spying for China. Beijing’s long been known for its ‘thousand grains of sand’ strategy relying on amateur intelligence collectors, but it’s now increasingly employing...
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Bad Apple? How the World’s Greatest Company Changed Chinese Tech
In 2013, to mark International Consumers Day, China’s state-run TV network labelled Apple a ‘bad company’. More than a decade later, despite claiming to rely on multinationals from 50 different countries, Apple still has nearly 100% of its supply chain in China. In this episode, we look at how...
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Education Nation: China’s Exam Fetish
China’s college exam, the gaokao, is fetishized as the ultimate test, yet a lesser-known story is how it entrenches regional education discrimination. Its role at social engineering is also clear, with AI suddenly becoming the sixth most popular major in China, on command from above. This month,...
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The Lead Goose: China’s AI Embrace
In the latest episode in our series on belief, we’re looking at the CCP’s faith in Artificial Intelligence. China has embraced AI like no other nation, laying out a plan for AI that would see 70 percent adoption across six sectors - including governance – within the next two years. This…
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Wolf Spirits and Wild Shamans: The Revival of Spirit Mediums
In the latest episode in our series on belief, we’re exploring the surprising revival of shamanism in China, which has made a comeback despite Mao's best efforts at eradication. Ritual healers and spirit mediums are tapping into online believers and a public thirst for authentic spirituality....
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Man Up: The Rise and Rise of China’s Manosphere
In the latest in our series on belief, we’re examining the emergence of incels in the world’s largest manosphere. China’s growing incel community is fuelled by state-approved nationalism and simple demographics—by one estimate, 30 million Chinese men won’t find a life partner. To find out why so...
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Karma Chameleon: The CCP turns to Buddhism
Continuing our series on belief in China, we look at the revival of Buddhism, which is being embraced by citizens and the Chinese state. While temple visits increase, the state is funding temples and martial arts academies from Nepal to Tanzania. As Xi Jinping extols Buddhism with Chinese...
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The Garbage Time of History: Is China Still Marxist?
In the latest in our series on belief, we’re looking at China’s official belief system—Marxism. In recent years, netizens have argued China has entered the ‘garbage time’ of history, a phrase borrowed from the dying minutes of a basketball game, which now references a crisis of trust in the...
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China on the Couch: Xi Jinping's Psy-boom
In our third episode on beliefs and ideologies, we explore China’s newfound enthusiasm for psychiatry. Counselling was only registered as a profession in 2001 yet has seen a massive boom under Xi Jinping. The psy-boom is such that even party branch meetings are doing mindfulness exercises, and...
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Let's Get Spiritual: State, Digital Spirituality and Feng Shui in China
To welcome the Year of the Snake, we’re launching a new series looking at belief in China. Young Chinese people are increasingly turning to spirituality - even online manifestations of it - and feng shui, in this moment of high unemployment and economic stress. For a Party guided by materialism,...
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Sisters doing it for themselves? Marriage Refusal and Little Milk Puppies
China is in the grip of a gender war. While government officials are texting and even cold calling women to urge them have children, the fertility rate continues to drop. Better educated and often better paid their male peers, many urban Chinese women are simply choosing not to marry. To discuss...
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Give me Maw: China's Craze for the Cocaine of the Seas
Few outside the Chinese wedding banquet circuit have heard of fish maw, a flavourless, unappetising-looking swim bladder found in bony fish. In dried form, a kilo from the right species goes for around $150,000 on the world market, double the price of a kilogram of cocaine. The most prized maw is...
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The Centre of the Vortex: Survivors' Notes from Hong Kong Writers
Writers from Hong Kong face a Kafkaesque decision in the years since draconian security legislation was imposed on the city: to stay and be subject to intense censorship, or to write freely from exile. In this episode, Louisa speaks to two award-winning authors who have chosen different paths.…
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Special Criminal Zones: China’s Pig Butchers Pivot to the West
In our third episode on pig butchering scams, we explore the origins of the Chinese criminal syndicates that enslave people from at least 66 different countries. We examine the institutions supporting this appalling business, from the Thai military to cryptocurrencies, Burmese border guard forces...
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Cognitive hazing: The Disinformation War on Taiwan?
Taiwan is ground zero for cognitive warfare, with the island subject to more disinformation than any other democracy. The targets are political candidates, media outlets, even boy bands. The threat is so serious that Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice recently set up a Cognitive Warfare Research…
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The Pig Butcher’s Payroll: Inside a Romance Scam
After our last episode on an online romance scam operating out of Palau we were contacted by Neo Lu, who was trafficked to work in an online scam camp on the Myanmar-Thailand border, the victim of a $US3 trillion global criminal industry. He joins Louisa and Graeme to offer jaw-dropping detail on...
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Fraud Factories and Pig Butchery: Chinese Triads go Pacific
Chinese triads have been making a Pacific play, notably in the tiny nation of Palau. There a notorious triad boss - nicknamed Broken Tooth - reinvented himself as a CCP-linked businessman trying to set up a 'gangster-themed' casino, while police busted a Chinese 'fraud factory'. In Palau, this…
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Here be Dragons: LRP turns 100
For our hundredth episode, there was only one choice in the Year of the Dragon. We tackle the scaly mythical beast, which now finds itself central to the Party’s image. We look at the political efficacy of the dragon for the CCP, which has recently launched a nationalistic rebranding campaign for...
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Hold my popcorn: Diplomatic war in the Pacific Theatre
China’s largesse in the Pacific is nothing if not visible. From mobile phone towers to gleaming stadiums and government buildings, Beijing’s splashing out on those it sees as choosing “the right side of history.” In this episode, we explore Taiwan’s future in the Pacific as it is deserted by its...
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The Feminists have Stood Up: Gender and Comedy in China
Stand-up comedy looked set to be the next big thing on China’s entertainment scene, with shows like Roast Convention drawing billions of views and comics scoring lucrative commercial endorsements. But comedy now finds itself in retreat. A new wave of feminist comics is struggling with attacks…
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Full time children or half dead: China’s Gen Z goes to ground
Every generation in modern China has been richer and more ambitious than the one before—until Gen Z. With youth unemployment so high that the government has simply stopped reporting the figures, many are opting to lie flat, slump down dead, or even become full-time children. The Party frets that...
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Bombard the Past: Exhuming the Cultural Revolution
The exponential trauma produced by the Cultural Revolution is barely mentioned in China, yet has been foundational to a generation. Now the Communist Party is using the experience of its leader Xi Jinping as one of the 17 million young people sent down to the countryside to reframe the movement…
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The Battle for the Future: The Mission of China's Underground Historians
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…
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Cat Years in Cat Country: Sci-Fi in China
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...
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Gone to ground: China’s rare earths strategy
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...
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China’s Best Mate: New Zealand’s Muddled China Ties
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...
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China Beyond the Ends of the Earth: Welcome to the Internet
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…
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China Beyond the Ends of the Earth: The Polar Express
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...
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China Beyond the Ends of the Earth: Rolling in the Deep
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...
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China Beyond the Ends of the Earth: Space
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,...
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COVID infections: The New Bumper Harvest
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…
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The Death of Covid Zero?
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...
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Controlling the future: Inside China’s surveillance state
“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…
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Spies, Lies and Peaceful Rise
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…
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Cambodia: China’s first client state?
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…
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Herbal Gold: Chinese medicine, COVID and the CCP
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...
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Cheongsams and Coppers: Beijing's Stealth Infiltration of Hong Kong
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…
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Shanghaied: Living with Zero Covid
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...
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Gimme, gimme, gimme a Han after midnight: China’s masculinity crisis
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...
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Kevin Rudd: Is War With China Inevitable?
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…
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Ukraine: A Win-Win for China
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…
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Elite Capture: A CCP Primer in Making Friends and Influencing People
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...
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Caste Aside: The Future for China's Peasants
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...
About this show
The Little Red Podcast: interviews and chat celebrating China beyond the Beijing beltway. Hosted by Graeme Smith, China studies academic at the Australian National University's Department of Pacific Affairs and Louisa Lim, former China correspondent for the BBC and NPR, now with the Centre for Advancing Journalism at Melbourne University. We are the 2018 winners of podcast of the year in the News & Current Affairs category of the Australian Podcast Awards. Follow us @limlouisa and @GraemeKSmith, and find show notes at www.facebook.com/LittleRedPodcast/
Hosted by
Graeme Smith and Louisa Lim
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