Insurance scam? Industrial accident? Political machinations? After August excursions to lands of clean air and English-language media, the Sinica team is back this week with a show covering the astonishing explosions that gutted the Binhai economic development zone in Tianjin last week. As the Chinese government struggles to deal with public pressures for greater transparency and conspiracy theories mount, we take a closer look at what we know and don't about the port explosion.

Enjoy Sinica? Join Kaiser Kuo and David Moser this week as they talk with two journalists who covered the aftermath of the Tianjin explosions in person from the Chinese equivalent of ground zero: Julie Makinen who heads the China bureau for the LA Times and Fergus Ryan who covers China for The Guardian. Please feel welcome to listen online or download our show as a standalone mp3 file and share with friends and colleagues.

Sinica - The Tianjin Explosion

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Barbarians at the Gate - Confused about Confucianism?

Welcome to a new podcast from Pop-up Chinese. Barbarians at the Gate is a semi-serious look at Chinese history and culture hosted by rogue historian Jeremiah Jenne and writer James Palmer. We’ll pick a topic and then explore that subject over four episodes released every other Friday. Our first topic appropriately enough is about barbarians, and our inaugural episode looks at An Lushan: the outsider who charmed his way into the court of the Tang Dynasty in the eighth century and who almost succeeded in bringing down the empire. It’s a story made for imperial slash fic: The aging emperor, his rotund but sexy concubine, and the foreigner who came between them.

Barbarians at the Gate - The Barbarian, the Emperor, and the Concubine

Barbarians at the Gate - Barbarians at the Gate: The Barbarian, the Emperor, and the Concubine

50 years ago, Mao Zedong launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, inaugurating a decade of political turmoil with his calls for young people to "bombard the headquarters." In this special live edition of our podcast recorded at The Bookworm Literary Festival in March, Kaiser Kuo and David Moser welcome Melinda Liu, longtime China bureau chief of Newsweek for a discussion of the 50th anniversary of this definitive event. Melinda shares stories about her brother, who remained in China after the civil war and experienced it firsthand. [standalone mp3 file] [rss feed]

Sinica - Live: The Cultural Revolution at Fifty

The immense popularity of social media has afforded China watchers a terrific window onto public opinion in China. In recent years, a slew of English-language websites have emerged to interpret the various trends and phenomena, discourse and debates on the Chinese Internet for non-Chinese audiences, but for our money, the very best of the bunch is ChublicOpinion.com — public opinion with Chinese characteristics — written by Ma Tianjie. A graduate of Peking University who now works for China Dialogue, Ma Tianjie offers penetrating insight and analysis written with great flare. He joins Kaiser, Jeremy, and Ada Shen in the studio for a wide-ranging discussion that reveals the mysterious origins of "diaosi" culture and looks at some of the controversies and conversations that have dominated Weibo and WeChat in recent months. [standalone mp3 file] [rss feed]

Sinica - The Tianjin Explosion

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