NüVoices

Tensions between the U.S. and China have ratcheted upward in the last four years of the Trump administration. Groundbreaking research from independent Washington, D.C.–based researcher Ashley Feng have shown that acts of "economic coercion" go both ways. Policymakers on both sides of the Pacific have increasingly used measures such as tariffs and investment restrictions against one another. After Joe Biden's election win, a decrease in tensions isn't certain. In this episode, NüVoices chair Joanna Chiu chats with Ashley about what all this means for ordinary people like students, scientists, and immigrants.

Ashley is a former research associate for the Energy, Economics, and Security program at the Center for a New American Security. Her research interests include U.S.-China trade relations, China’s economic policies, and China’s global economic footprint. She has previously worked at the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Defense University, the Congressional Research Service, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and the China Affairs office in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. 

Recommendations:

A report co-authored by Ashley for the Center for a New American Security, A new arsenal for competition; China’s use of coercive economic measures, by Peter Harrell, Elizabeth Rosenberg, and Edoardo Saravalle; Economic statecraft and the revenge of the state, by Darren J. Lim; and Chinese perspectives on economic diplomacy, by Audrye Wong.

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Zhàoyīn Féng 冯兆音 is a bilingual journalist based in Washington, D.C., where she reports on U.S.-China relations for the BBC World Service. In this timely conversation, Zhaoyin and Cindy discuss the escalating tit-for-tat tactics that the two countries are deploying, the uncertain futures of journalists and exchange students caught in the middle, Chinese reactions to the recent U.S. elections, and the often-ignored and increasingly diverse Asian-American electorate.

Zhaoyin will be moderating U.S. Perspectives in Chinese, a Chinese-language event hosted by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations on November 16, 2020. You can sign up here.

Recommendations:

Cindy: The documentary festival DOC NYC, and the movie Our Time Machine 时光机 (2019).

Zhaoyin: The popular Chinese-language podcast Storyfm; the Chinese-language long-form reading platform 谷雨办公室 (Guyu Workshop); the movie Boys State, available on Apple TV+; and the book Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China, by Philip P. Pan.

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Today’s guest, Anne Henochowicz, works at the intersection of literature and human rights. She has translated leaked propaganda directives and subversive Weibo posts, investigative journalism and poetry. She is currently the translations coordinator at China Digital Times and a contributing editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel. She also leads the NüVoices chapter in Washington, D.C.

In this episode, Anne and Cindy Gao talk about the translator's relationship and responsibility to the original texts and their authors, the beauty and nuance of great translation, and the impact COVID-19 has had on the tone of online discourse and translated works.

Links to the translations mentioned in this interview:

• Tang Danhong, “Tarim, My Uyghur Friend,” China Channel, Aug. 2020, https://chinachannel.org/2020/08/28/tarim-uyghur/
• He Xiaoxin, “How Far Can I Go? How Much Can I Do?” China Digital Times, Aug. 2015, https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2015/08/he-xiaoxin-how-far-can-i-go-and-how-much-can-i-do/
• Tang Danhong, “Chairman Mao Is Dead!” China Channel, Oct. 2017, https://chinachannel.org/2017/10/12/chairman-mao-dead/ 
• republished Jul. 2019 in Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing, https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/42693/print),

Translated poetry:

• Yu Xiuhua, “Mourning Li Wenliang,” China Digital Times, Feb. 2019, https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/02/translation-a-poem-for-dr-li-wenliang-and-a-call-for-free-speech/
• Meng Lang, “To China, to the Bystanders,” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Jul. 2019, https://www.asiancha.com/wp/article/to-china/
• Also, check out Yu Xinqiao’s bilingual book of poetry, The Last Lyric, translated by Yunte Huang, at https://www.spdbooks.org/Products/9780998743837/the-last-lyric.aspx.

Some writing:

• "Huang Xueqin: 'To Resist Tyranny, Start Small,'" China Digital Times, Dec. 2019, https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2019/12/huang-xueqin-to-resist-tyranny-start-small/
• "Of Rice Bunnies and Grass-Mud Horses," China Channel, Feb. 2018, https://chinachannel.org/2018/02/27/rice-bunnies-grass-mud-horses/
• "Finding a Common Thread: A History of Chinese Language," Los Angeles Review of Books, Aug. 2016, http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/chinablog/common-thread-history-chinese-dialects/

Finally, some links to works by the authors mentioned during the interview:

• Yu Xinqiao: https://www.s

Beijing’s enactment of sweeping national security legislation in Hong Kong spurred fresh fear for the territory’s cherished freedoms as authorities sought to quash months of citywide protests. How have journalists, faced with a new reality, confronted this political shift? To help explore this question, Jennifer Creery, the managing editor of Hong Kong Free Press, stepped in as the guest host of this week’s episode of the NüVoices podcast. Joining her are Mary Hui, a reporter with Quartz in Hong Kong who covers geopolitics, technology, and business, and Phoebe Kong, a video journalist and the East Asia correspondent for DW News in Hong Kong.

This podcast was edited and produced by Jason MacRonald, with sound design by Richie Fowler.

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Yunnan Chen is a senior research officer for the Overseas Development Institute, a London think tank focused on international development and humanitarian issues. She joins Cindy for a conversation on China-Africa development finance, her own fieldwork in Africa, and Chinese identity while reflecting on being a member of the Asian diaspora growing up in the United Kingdom.

Recommendations:

Yunnan: Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures, by Merlin Sheldrake, as well as the TV series Queer Eye, available on Netflix.

Cindy: All or Nothing, a documentary about the Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, Cindy’s favorite team in the English Premier League.

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For years, Hollywood has been trying to reach Chinese audiences, but has yet to find a winning formula. The remake of Mulan, which cost $200 million, is projected to make only $41 million over the entirety of its monthlong China box-office run. 

As U.S.-China tensions ratchet up, is there a future for movies that try to cross cultural divides and bring ordinary people together? Does politics play a role when Chinese viewers reject art from America? NüVoices chair Joanna Chiu turns to Rebecca Davis, a reporter covering China's entertainment industry, to provide much-needed context and insights. 

Guest: Rebecca Davis is Variety’s China bureau chief, establishing the magazine’s first permanent outpost in the country in 2018. Davis covers all aspects of China’s entertainment industry, and has a special interest in the intersection between culture and politics in authoritarian systems. Fluent in Mandarin and French, she has a decade of experience in China, including stints at Agence France-Presse, the New York Times, and Le Monde.

Recommended reading:

• Chinese audience reviews of Mulan on Douban 
• SupChina: Why Chinese viewers hate Disney’s ‘Mulan’ 
• Variety: China box office: ‘Mulan’ is no hero with $23 million debut

This podcast was edited and produced by Jason MacRonald.

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This week’s bonus episode of NüVoices was recorded live from Beijing, where Anthony Tao had a conversation with Huang Chenkuang, a journalist and creative who runs the interview series Beijing Lights (published on the website of the arts collective Spittoon). They spoke in front of an audience at the bar Camera Stylo, which was — believe it or not — launching a cocktail named after Huang’s Beijing Lights.

For each article in the series, Huang interviews one person — often a stranger, and usually someone on the margins of society — and tells that person’s story. She has profiled housekeepers (“If I had to live my life again, I’d probably lead the exact same life”), blind masseuses (“Only a few know my full name here, they just call me ‘Number Five’”), fortune-tellers (“Now that all the good stuff I’ve wanted is finally here, it’s already too late, and I’m old”), barbers (“I wasn’t dreaming big, anyway”), and more, getting them to reveal personal details along with their misgivings, their regrets, and their dreams. 

Among other subjects, she and Anthony talked about her methods, her interviewees, herself, and also this one guy who may have eaten human flesh. We hope you enjoy this episode.

(Huang has also written for SupChina in the past, on topics such as Li Wenliang and the “online wailing wall” and Chinese parents who lose their only child.)

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An executive order signed in July has indefinitely ended the Fulbright program in China and Hong Kong. What happened in the lead-up to the program’s cancellation, and where does the closure fit into the larger context of deteriorating U.S.-China relations? For answers, Sophie Lu (a Fulbrighter herself) convened a panel of scholarship recipients, who shared their Fulbright experiences and the importance of their research. They also discuss the fallout of losing such an avenue for educational and cultural exchange between China and the United States.

Guests: Megha Rajagopalan, international correspondent at BuzzFeed News; Hai-Ching Yang, senior corporate counsel for Coursera; and Julia Fan, co-chair of the Coalition for Adolescent Girls.  

You can sign a Change.org petition to support the Fulbright program in China and Hong Kong here, and share infographics through social media here. 

Recommended reading:

• The danger of a single story, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 
• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson 
• A podcast, Seeing White 
• The cost of ending Fulbright in China, by Eleanor Albert  
• Donald Trump’s ending of the Fulbright programme in Hong Kong and China damages US soft power, by Scott Laderman
• Bring back Fulbright exchange programme with Hong Kong and China that Trump seeks to end, South China Morning Post
• Barring Fulbright scholars in Hong Kong and China will only hurt U.S. interests, by Amanda H. Schmidt
• Cutting off Fulbright exchange program further shrinks our world, by Denise Glover
• The Fulbright U.S. Student Program website

This podcast was edited and produced by Jason MacRonald.

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Simone Tong is a chef and co-owner of Little Tong Noodle Shop and the newly opened restaurant Silver Apricot in New York City. Cindy sat down with her to discuss her life as a chef and restaurateur in New York during the pandemic, Chinese cuisine and identity in America, and the inspiration behind the food she cooks.

Recommendations:

Simone: Educated, by Tara Westover.

Cindy: The works of Grace Lee Boggs.

This podcast was edited and produced by Jason MacRonald.

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Shantha Bloemen is the founding director of Mobility for Africa, a social enterprise that aims to bring the electric mobility revolution to rural Africa. Having spent the last two decades working in international humanitarian and development assistance in Africa and Asia, she is now eager to put her experience into this venture, which she believes will improve the lives of rural women. Shantha is a keen observer of China's growing footprint in Africa. She is specifically focused on China's relationship with the UN and the multilateral system, and how China is changing the development and humanitarian model and forging new types of relationships that are transforming the South-South agenda.

In this conversation recorded in Johannesburg and New York City, Shantha and NüVoices board member Chenni Xu talk about South-South development, gender-equality-driven social enterprises, infrastructure in Africa, how to form meaningful partnerships, and renewable energy and sustainability.

Recommendations:

Shantha: Mrs. America on Hulu, and Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister, by Jung Chang.

This podcast was edited and produced by Jason MacRonald.

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