Episodes

  • What's behind the Chinese migrant surge at the Darien Gap?

    What's behind the Chinese migrant surge at the Darien Gap?
    Nov 25 2024
    The Darien Gap is a 60 mile stretch of jungle that hundreds of thousands of migrants from all over South America trek through in order to reach the US-Mexico border. From there, they enter America in search of better lives.

    These are usually migrants from Venezuela, or Colombia or Panama. But in recent years, a new group of people have appeared at the border, having paid people smugglers and hacked through the jungle. They often bring young children, clutch on to smartphones with which they check their routes, and watch social media videos that set out, step by step, the journey they are embarking on.

    These are the Chinese, which in the last two years have been the fastest growing group of migrants being encountered at America’s southern border – over 37,000 last year, up from under 4,000 the year before. This year, there have already been over 21,000.

    What brings them, and how unusual is this method of emigration when it comes to people from China?

    On this podcast are Professor Meredith Oyen, an expert on US-China migration, and Amy Hawkins, senior China correspondent at the Guardian, who has come across a similar phenomenon on Europe’s borders.
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    23 mins
  • Why Beijing is wary of a Russo-North Korean alliance

    Why Beijing is wary of a Russo-North Korean alliance
    Nov 11 2024
    There have been reports that some 11,000 North Korean troops are present in Russia and preparing to take part in the Russian invasion. While not acknowledged by either country, if true, this would mark a historic milestone: the first East Asian state to send troops to Europe since the Mongol Empire.

    And yet, both countries’ most powerful neighbour and ally – China – has remained suspiciously quiet about this new development. Beijing’s silence may well express a deep distrust and unease that actually characterises China’s relationship with its so-called allies.

    To get into the recent developments and what we can learn from the history of the relationship between these three countries, the historian John Delury joins the podcast. He is an expert on the Cold War and the history of China and the Korean peninsula. He is a visiting Professor at Luiss University and author of Agents of Subversion.

    Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Cindy Yu.
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    56 mins
  • Battle of Ideas – is China in decline?

    Battle of Ideas – is China in decline?
    Oct 28 2024
    ** This episode of Chinese Whispers was recorded in front of a live audience as a part of the Battle of Ideas Festival 2024. **

    Is China in decline?

    I was born in China in the 90s, and growing up it felt like the future was always going to be brighter. My parents were wealthier, more educated, better travelled than their parents, and it seemed assured that my generation would only have even better life chances.

    But in the 2020s, China’s economic growth has slowed down. Some of the once-bright spots in its economy, like real estate, are in slow motion meltdown. In the last couple of years foreign direct investment into the country has been falling at a record pace. The youth unemployment rate from this summer shows that just under a fifth of people under 24 are jobless.

    So how much of this is a considerable decline in the progress that China has made in the last miraculous half century, or is it just perhaps 'western bias' that’s blinding us to what is still a very positive picture?

    On this live podcast, I discuss this question with a lively and experienced panel of China-watchers: Tom Miller, a senior analyst at Gavekal Research and author of two books on China; Isabel Hilton, a veteran international reporter and founder of the website China Dialogue; and Austin Williams, an architect by training who is also the author of numerous books on China, and teaches at the Xi'An Jiaotong-Liverpool University.
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    1 hr and 35 mins
  • 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
    ** 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. **

    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