Is academic freedom under threat in China? Should academics in China be considered foreign agents? How globally competitive is China, really? These are the questions we discuss in this podcast that focuses on China's efforts to bring its univeristy system up to world class standards and the current concern in the US, Australia and the UK that the Chinese regime is using academics to exert its ideology.

Sara Custer is joined by THE reporter Ellie Bothwell and Nian Cai Liu, professor at Shanghai Jiaotong Univeristy and founder of the Academic Ranking of World Universities.