ChinaEconTalk

Mister Softee, the famed northeastern American ice cream brand, in Suzhou, China? Yes, that was a thing. Turner Sparks, rising from humble beginnings as just another English teacher making his way in the world, achieved fame and fortune thanks to a catchy jingle and some tasty mango-flavored soft serve. Yet his vision of China-wide ice cream domination dissolved amid a deluge of backstabbing regulators, slashed tires, and stolen cones. Listen here to learn about the circumstances that finally melted Turner's ice cream dream.

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Chinese politics is boring and confusing. Or is it? This week Jordan speaks with Andrew Polk and Trey McArver, economics and politics specialists at Trivium China. The three discuss the size of the Chinese bureaucracy, how policy is formed and implemented, and the Chinese economy.

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Foreign investors have lost billions expecting a Chinese financial crisis that hasn't come yet. So what gives? According to the Rhodium Group's Logan Wright, it's not China's domestic savings rate or RMB-denominated debt that's keeping the economy afloat, but rather the government's credibility.

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, the executive editor of Foreign Affairs, is the author of the recent book The China Mission: George Marshall's Unfinished War, 1945–1947.

George Marshall, World War II hero and creator of the Marshall Plan, spent 1945-47 drinking baijiu with Mao and playing croquet with Chiang Kai-shek, fighting to stave off a civil war.

Was the "loss of China" to the CCP inevitable? Did Marshall, with his strategy of forcing reconciliation on the Nationalists and Communists, in any way contribute to it? And what can we learn from Marshall's expedition to China about the limits of American influence abroad?

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China's government aims to create a $500 billion sports industry by 2020. But how are those ambitions playing out on the ground in the Chinese basketball and soccer leagues? There's more to sports in China than the well-known problems of exorbitant transfer fees and match fixing, but with the government apparently unable to resist interfering in private leagues, does China have much hope for ever developing world-class teams? SupChina columnist and longtime China sports watcher Mark Dreyer gives his take.

What is Bytedance and how does it make its money? How do politics and culture get in the way of Chinese firms' internationalization efforts? What can Chinese phones in Africa and electric buses in LA teach us about localization challenges? Elliott Zaagman, co-host of TechNode's China Tech Investor podcast, takes on these issues for the latest episode of ChinaEconTalk.

Why is KFC so big in China? What is the "Toilet Revolution" and why does it matter? How does Chinese propaganda work? How have bicycles' role in Chinese society evolved over time? Neil Thomas of MacroPolo takes on all this in ChinaEconTalk's latest show.

What is the history of Google in China? Does the company have any hope of bringing its search engine back into the Chinese market? How does China's development of artificial intelligence stack up against the rest of the world's? To answer these questions, Matt Sheehan of MacroPolo makes his triumphant return to ChinaEconTalk.