In this episode we look at love, marriage and divorce in contemporary China, from the perspective of two female filmmakers. These are topics with a political as well as personal significance — the Chinese government is keen to boost the birth rate to tackle the problem of an ageing population, but the marriage rate has fallen sharply, while the divorce rate has grown significantly over recent decades. Elizabeth Lo’s remarkable new film Mistress Dispeller looks at a growing industry in China — people you can hire to intervene if your spouse is having an affair, and who promise to help save your marriage. Luo Tong’s documentary Shanghai Girls, meanwhile, is an intimate depiction of the experiences of a group of women in their early fifties, and their lives and loves over the past thirty years.  They join us to discuss changing attitudes to relationships in China.

Photo credit: Ariela Ortiz-Barrantes / CC BY-SA 4.0

For information about the SOAS China Institute Corporate Membership scheme, please contact SCI director Steve Tsang: [email protected]

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Relations between China and Japan — never smooth, given the legacy of Japan's invasion of China in the 1930s — are currently at their tensest in years. This follows the new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's remarks in Japan's parliament last month that if China were to use military force against Taiwan — which Beijing claims as part of its territory — Japan would view this as a threat to its survival, and could deploy its own military in response. China has denounced Ms Takaichi's comments as crossing a red line, and warned that they hint at a revival of militarism in Japan. It has warned its citizens against travelling to Japan, leading to mass cancellations of bookings and flights; concerts by Japanese pop stars and screenings of Japanese films in China have also been cancelled, and seafood imports halted. The tension comes amidst rising Japanese nationalist sentiment, much of it directed at a recent influx of immigrants, including, by some estimates, more than a hundred thousand middle class migrants from China. Rupert Wingfield Hayes, for more than two decades a BBC correspondent in first Beijing, then Tokyo, and most recently Taiwan, joins us to discuss the significance of these developments, and the historical resonances that lie behind them.

Photo credit: Official Website of the Prime Minister’s Office of Japan

For information about the SOAS China Institute Corporate Membership scheme, please contact SCI director Steve Tsang: [email protected]

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While young people around the world face growing difficulties finding work and coping with the cost-of-living crisis, the situation confronting China’s youth seems particularly acute. Years of pandemic disruption, economic slowdown and mounting social pressure have created a sense of fatigue and frustration for many. This has given rise to a new language of despair and dark humour. ‘Nei Juan’ (内卷) — or ‘involution’ — describes the exhausting, endless competition where everyone works harder yet gains less, a race to the bottom with no finish line. In contrast, ‘Tang Ping’ (躺平), or ‘lying flat’, signals quiet resistance: choosing to step back, do less, and let go of society’s impossible expectations. But is this realistic in a country with a limited social welfare safety net? Guest host Howard Zhang speaks with Dr Yuan Zhong from SOAS about her recent research in China, exploring what these buzzwords reveal about a generation under strain — and the country’s future.

Photo credit: leoon liang / Unsplash

For information about the SOAS China Institute Corporate Membership scheme, please contact SCI director Steve Tsang: [email protected]

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China and the US reached a truce in their trade war at the recent meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in South Korea. And the two leaders even pledged to visit each other’s countries next year. But US tariffs on Chinese imports remain at around 47% — and a dispute over the export of US semiconductor chips to China looks set to continue. These tensions seem to have informed the Communist Party’s newly released proposals for China’s next Five Year Plan, which focus on innovation and making China technologically self-sufficient. But will this approach, along with promises to boost the private economy, help to tackle unemployment and sluggish domestic consumer spending? Minxin Pei, professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California, and editor of the website China Leadership Monitor, discusses the prospects for Sino-US relations and the challenges facing China’s leaders.

Photo credit: Daniel Torok / White House

For information about the SOAS China Institute Corporate Membership scheme, please contact SCI director Steve Tsang: [email protected]

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The inaugural US-based Baifang Schell Book Prize for Chinese language fiction in English translation was recently awarded to the Taiwanese writer Yang Shuang-zi’s novel 'Taiwan Travelogue'. And with an ever-growing number of Chinese to English translators, and a well-resourced mainland Chinese publishing industry keen to expand globally, this could seem like a significant moment for Chinese writing. But with continuing censorship in China, and the rising popularity of often throwaway internet writing, can mainland Chinese fiction remain relevant and viable, and tackle important contemporary and historical themes? And with heightened tensions between China and the West in the last few years, is there still the same international interest from readers and publishers? Leading translators Jeremy Tiang, himself a published novelist and playwright, and Nicky Harman, founding member of the Chinese literature website Paper Republic, discuss the pressures and prospects for Chinese literature, while Daniel Li of UK-based publisher Sinoist Books reflects on the challenges of navigating between the Chinese and western publishing industries.

Books referred to in the discussion:

• Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuang-zi
• Delicious Hunger by Hai Fan
• Diablo’s Boys by Yang Hao
• Old Kiln by Jia Pingwa
• Cocoon by Zhang Yueran

For information about the SOAS China Institute Corporate Membership scheme, please contact SCI director Steve Tsang: [email protected]

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After the sudden emergence of the Chinese company DeepSeek’s generative AI model in January, there has been much excitement about the future of innovation in China. But continuing US efforts to limit the sale of the latest AI chips to China are a reminder of the tensions surrounding this area. The recently announced deal for a partial US takeover of Chinese social media platform TikTok’s American operation may hint at the potential for cooperation. But Jensen Huang, CEO of chipmaker Nvidia, has warned that restrictions on chip production will only encourage the development of China’s own semiconductor industry, with China already just ‘nanoseconds behind’ in AI. Yet how far is Chinese innovation handicapped by political controls? And as China seeks to promote new sectors like robotics and cloud computing, can it avoid the type of overcapacity already seen in its electric vehicle industry? To discuss these issues, we’re joined by Duncan Clark, a specialist in Chinese technology since 1994, when he founded the investment advisory company BDA in Beijing. An early advisor to Jack Ma, founder of the e-commerce giant Alibaba, he’s also author of the book ‘Alibaba — The House that Jack Ma Built’, and is co-chair of the Asia Society France.

Books referred to in the episode:

• Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future by Dan Wang
• Apple in China – The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company by Patrick McGee

Image © 光画社 (Kōgasha) / Adobe Stock

For information about the SOAS China Institute Corporate Membership scheme, please contact SCI director Steve Tsang: [email protected]

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This month’s huge parade in Beijing for the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Asia prompted much debate — both about the array of new missiles, drones and other military technology on display, and about the presence of not only Vladimir Putin, but also the North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un. But while Beijing is happy to demonstrate its newfound military confidence, the parade is also a reminder of the increased attention China has been paying to its own role in World War II, with a growing number of museums and exhibits dedicated not only to its fight against Japan, but also — despite current tensions — to wartime military cooperation between China and the US, in the form of the Flying Tigers and the Doolittle Raiders. Melinda Liu, veteran Beijing bureau chief of Newsweek, and Vice-President of the Royal Asiatic Society in Beijing, discusses the contemporary resonances of these wartime echoes, as well her family connection to a period of history which is becoming an increasingly important aspect of the image China presents to the world.

Photo: Kremlin.ru / CC BY 4.0

For information about the SOAS China Institute Corporate Membership scheme, please contact SCI director Steve Tsang: [email protected]

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The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the 14th Dalai Lama, marked his 90th birthday earlier this month with an announcement that his successor as Tibetan Buddhism’s most senior religious figure would be a reincarnation, to be identified after his death by the staff of his office in Dharamsala in northern India — where he has lived since fleeing Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule. The announcement is likely to set up a clash with Beijing, which says it alone has the right to confirm the selection of the next Dalai Lama, and points to its possession of historical relics, including a golden urn from the Qing dynasty traditionally used to select the reincarnations of senior lamas. So how will Tibetans inside and outside China respond if two different Dalai Lamas are nominated? Could the exiled community abandon the current Dalai Lama’s emphasis on seeking only autonomy for Tibet under Chinese rule? And how will this affect India, which has offered shelter to the Tibetan exiled administration, but has recently been seeking to improve its relations with Beijing? Tsering Shakya, professor of Tibetan history at the University of British Columbia, and Robbie Barnett, professorial research associate at SOAS and former professor of contemporary Tibetan studies at Columbia University, join us to share their thoughts.

Photo by Norbu Gyachung

For information about the SOAS China Institute Corporate Membership scheme, please contact SCI director Steve Tsang: [email protected]

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The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the speakers and are not necessarily those of the SOAS China Institute.
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The shockwaves from Donald Trump’s airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear programme continue to reverberate. China condemned the attack as violating the UN Charter and warned that it risked destabilising the Middle East, an area where Beijing has fast-growing economic and diplomatic links — indeed China is now the biggest buyer of Iranian oil, and after the strikes the US asked it to persuade Tehran not to cut off oil supplies from the Gulf. So will the attack change China’s policy in the Middle East — and could it also have implications for China’s aim of regaining sovereignty over the island of Taiwan, with which the US has close defence ties? We hear the views of Rana Mitter, ST Lee Professor of US-Asia relations at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, and Professor Jonathan Fulton of Zayed University, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of a new book, Building the Belt and Road Initiative in the Arab World (Routledge, 2025) on China’s relations with the Arab world.

Photo: Khamenei.ir / CC BY 4.0

For information about the SOAS China Institute Corporate Membership scheme, please contact SCI director Steve Tsang: [email protected]

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The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the speakers and are not necessarily those of the SOAS China Institute.
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China's one child policy may have  ended a decade ago — but its consequences are still being felt — not least in the continuing gender imbalance in the country's population:  for several decades, the combination of restrictions on family size with traditional attitudes favouring male children, especially in rural areas, led to many female babies being aborted. China is currently estimated to have at least thirty million more men than women — and a new documentary film explores the impact this has had, particularly on young men from the countryside, who can struggle to find a mate in China's increasingly competitive dating market. Director Violet Du Feng, previously shortlisted for an Oscar for her film 'Hidden Letters' about the secret Chinese women's language Nüshu, joins us to discuss 'The Dating Game', which follows three young men who go on a week long 'dating camp' run by a self-styled 'dating coach' in an attempt to reinvent themselves, and find love.

For information about the SOAS China Institute Corporate Membership scheme, please contact SCI director Steve Tsang: [email protected]

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The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the speakers and are not necessarily those of the SOAS China Institute.
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