Chinese Whispers

By The SpectatorSociety & Culture News News Commentary Politics

Chinese Whispers episodes

September 20, 2021 Has China got over the Japanese invasion?
For China, WWII started in 1937 with the Japanese invasion, two years before Hitler invaded Poland. Japan would occupy China until its surrender in 1945, in the process committing atrocities like the rape of Nanjing. This was the second Japanese invasion in fifty years.
Yet decades after the war, when I grew up in Nanjing, Japanese food was all the craze and it was Japanese anime that kids watched and Japanese fashion that teenagers craved. So has China got over its wartime hatred of Japan?
On this episode, I’m joined by the Tokyo-based Chinese translator Dylan Levi King, who you might remember from our previous conversation on ketamine use in China. We’re going to be chatting about China’s attitude to Japan today, and the contradictions within that, rather than focusing on the history between the two countries. If you want to learn more about that part of things – there’s nowhere better to go than Professor Rana Mitter’s book, China’s War with Japan. Dylan and I chat about the Chinese caricatures of Japanese soldiers on screen, the Japanese porn star who overcame the two countries’ enmity and the jingri – the Chinese who identify as ‘spiritually Japanese’.
Dylan reflects on the cognitive dissonance – or disassociation – that the Chinese hold between Japanese politics and Japanese soft power. For example, he tells me that:
‘I used to go to this clothing store when I was a student in China, and in the store they would sell Japanese fashion like BAPE, but on the doorstep walking into the place there was a Japanese flag on the ground, so you could trample on the Japanese flag as you walk into buy all your Japanese fashion.’
Japanese nationalism, in return, seems to be getting louder, whether it’s visits to the Yasukuni shrine housing war criminals, or a continued refusal to acknowledge the war-time trafficking of Chinese and Korean women as sex slaves – euphemistically known as ‘comfort women’. Yet Dylan argues that this is just all bark, no bite:
‘China rising on its doorstep and Japan’s economy, since 1990, not really improving, has exacerbated that feeling in Japan of wanting to stand up, even though they can’t really. So it’s all performative and useless.’
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40 min
September 06, 2021 Ancestors and demons: a brief history of Chinese religion
Are the Chinese religious? The government’s treatment of Christians and particularly Muslims have been under scrutiny in recent years. But these religious groups only form around 4 per cent of the Chinese population, according to national surveys. So what do the other 96pc believe in?
The CCP is famously atheist, but that doesn’t mean the society is faithless. Even today, my family (like most other Han families) still sweep the tombs of our ancestors and burn paper money (and these days paper cars and paper iPhones) for their use in the afterlife.

In particular, Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism have grown together, over the centuries, to provide what the Chinese call ‘sanjiao heyi’ – three teachings harmonious as one, and these continue to influence Chinese life. Growing up, I never knew which part of my temple visit belonged to which faith. One social scientist has described Chinese faith as ‘an empty bowl, which can be variously filled’
On this episode of Chinese Whispers, we’ll be taking a look at what the three teachings teach, and how, in modern China, they've perhaps become more cultural than religious.
Joining me on this podcast is Mark Meulenbeld, Associate Professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, who is an expert on Chinese folk religion.
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38 min
August 20, 2021 Will China become Afghanistan's new sponsor?
Last month, the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi welcomed senior Taliban leaders to Beijing, standing shoulder to shoulder for the photographers. China is carefully watching events unfold in Afghanistan. And while it hasn’t yet recognised the Taliban government, the Beijing meeting was a nod towards a potential alliance.
But replacing America in Afghanistan wouldn’t be without its risks – can Beijing succeed where Washington failed? America's 20 year mission in the country cost lives and money. And what would a closer alliance mean for China’s Xinjiang policy, considering the close links that the Taliban has historically had with militant Uyghur groups?

I speak to Tom Miller, author of China's Asian Dream, and Dr Mike Martin, author of An Intimate War and former British Army officer in Helmand.
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37 min
August 09, 2021 Ketamine in China: has the country got over the opium wars?
It might be an understatement to say that China has a difficult relationship with drugs. Most infamously, the Opium Wars of the 1800s saw British soldiers fight against the Qing dynasty to protect the British right to sell opium to China. When the Qing lost, it wasn’t just the sobriety of their people that they lost – but a series of ports, concessions and reparations signed away in so-called ‘unequal treaties’. Hong Kong was lost to the British at this point, and it’s where the Chinese mark the start of the century of humiliation.
The memory and trauma of opium addiction is still bound up with national decline in the Chinese conscience.
So imagine my surprise to read about widespread drug use (especially ketamine) in the early 2000s in a recent article by the translator and writer Dylan Levi King. Dylan joins this episode, and we talk about what the popularity of ket says about China's reform and opening, how the Chinese see drug abuse as a disease than a crime, and President Xi's moralistic clampdown on the party scene in the years since.
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24 min
July 26, 2021 Black cat or white cat? Reconciling the two Deng Xiaopings
For most people, Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping stand out as the two Communist leaders of the People’s Republic of China. But growing up, it was actually a third man, by the name of Deng Xiaoping, whose legacy I felt the most.
Though less than 5 foot tall, his impact on China’s trajectory was arguably more than Mao’s; and possibly will be more than Xi’s. It was Deng’s vision of reform and opening – which we’ve talked about in passing many times on this podcast – that started a process which transformed China from a Maoist backwater to today’s economic backwater. TIME magazine twice chose him as their Man of the Year.
Yet it was also Deng who gave the final go ahead for the military clampdown of the Tiananmen Square protests. So what sort of leader and politician was he, and how do we reconcile the seeming contradictions between Deng the liberal reformer, and Deng the communist autocrat?

I'm joined by James Carter, Professor of History at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, and author of Champions Day: The End of Old Shanghai.

Further links:
Chinese Whispers: China's long history of student protests https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcast/china-s-long-history-of-student-protests
Chinese Whispers: How Hong Kong became what it is today https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcast/how-hong-kong-became-what-it-is-today
YouTube: Zhao Ziyang's speech at Tiananmen Square in 1989 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZxjV0s2CrA
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42 min
July 12, 2021 China's 'snowflake generation'
Tangping, or 'lying flat', is a new lifestyle tempting China's millennials. Describing a minimalist stress-free life where one opts out of a career and raising family, lying flat is the young person's desperate answer to the infinite rat race of modern Chinese workplaces and society. But while there are few lie-flatters as of yet, the allure of the lifestyle has propelled the term into the mainstream. On this episode, Cindy Yu discusses the phenomenon with millennial journalist Karoline Kan, author of Under Red Skies. They talk about why young people are pessimistic about life in a growing China, whether they are a 'snowflake generation' compared to the struggles of their parents and what this means for the Chinese government's social contract with the people.
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29 min
June 28, 2021 Hong Kong's National Security Law, one year on
In the 12 months since the enactment of the National Security Law on Hong Kong, opposition leaders, journalists and activists have been arrested; reforms on education and elections begun; and last week saw the emotional closure of the pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily.

On this episode, I speak to Jennifer Creery, who works for the Financial Times in Hong Kong, about the situation on the ground; and Professor Jeff Wasserstrom, a historian of China at the University of California, about the last year and the city's future. We reflect on the strategic erosion over time of Hong Kong's autonomy, the importance of education that the CCP places on its Hong Kong policy, and whether the 2019 protests actually expedited the choking off of the city.
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35 min
June 14, 2021 Has economic engagement with China failed?
Exactly 20 years ago, China acceded to the World Trade Organisation. In the decades since, the globalised world became what we know today, with hundreds of millions of Chinese and people around the world lifted out of poverty through free trade. But the promised liberalisation - both economic and political - doesn't seem to have happened. China is now challenging western-led world order, and too difficult to disentangle from the world economy. So was it a mistake to allow China into the WTO, and has engagement failed?

With Stewart Paterson, author of China, Trade and Power, and Yu Jie, senior research fellow at Chatham House.
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40 min
May 31, 2021 Journalism in China: what can and can't you say?
What is it like to be a journalist in China? There are obvious restrictions on freedom of speech, but, as I find out on this episode, there are creative ways to navigate the strict system of censorship. The end result is a complex media landscape - some have to litter investigations with state propaganda; others continue to report on sensitive issues (like the Wuhan Covid cover up) and rely on editors for protection; while growing digitisation and a strongman President continue to threaten what little independence flourished at the beginning of the century.

With political scientist Maria Repnikova, author of Media Politics in China, and former journalist Fang Kecheng, now an Associate Professor in Journalism at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
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39 min
May 17, 2021 The fightback against facial recognition
China has run wild with facial recognition. From using it to ration tissues in public toilets, to identifying highest paying customers in stores and criminals from a crowd, what is a budding technology in the West has furthered state surveillance and corporate snooping in China. But there is a civil fightback happening in the courts, on social media and in public opinion at large. On this episode, I speak to Jeffrey Ding, a DPhil researcher of China's development of AI at the University of Oxford, and Jeremy Daum, Senior Research Scholar in Law at Yale Law School, who also runs the blog China Law Translate. We discuss who is driving the tech growth in China; whether citizens have any recourse to turn back the tide; and how this technology is being used in Xinjiang.
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41 min

About Chinese Whispers

From the publisher's feed

A fortnightly podcast from the Spectator on the latest in Chinese politics, society, and more. From Huawei to Hong Kong, Cindy Yu talks to experts, journalists, and long time China-watchers on what you need to know about China.