Talks on China

Alicia Kearns and Charlie Parton discuss the United Front Work Department.

Our podcast is back! In this episode Alicia Kearns MP and Professor Steve Tsang will go in depth into CCP influence in UK universities.

In early October, the US government rolled out extensive new restrictions on China’s access to advanced semiconductors, which play a central role in sectors such as quantum computing and weapons manufacture. The order by President Biden is unprecedented in modern times and is designed to cut China’s legs off as Washington and Beijing compete for technological advantage. Chris

If China seems unstoppable, so too can its leader Xi Jinping. And yet we know very little about the man who commands over 1.4 billion people, in a vast country that spans prosperous megacities and desperately poor rural regions. Chris Cash is joined by Adrian Geiges and Stefan Aust, authors of the newly-translated biography ‘Xi Jinping: The Most Powerful Man in the World’, to d

In April 2022, Xi Jinping announced the Global Security Initiative (GSI), a new Chinese foreign policy initiative proposed as a solution to a rapidly deteriorating international security environment. Some view the initiative as China’s latest bid to tilt the rules-based global order in its favour, but what does it actually mean for the future of the international security archite

In response to US Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, Beijing conducted large-scale military exercises across the Taiwan Strait. Its actions have been met with international alarm, with commentators declaring this as a ‘new normal’ for cross-strait relations. Chris Cash and Archie Brown are joined by Alessio Patalano, a Professor of War and Strategy in East Asia in the De

In November 2021, Barbados became the latest Commonwealth nation to remove the Queen as its head of state. Some British policymakers and commentators attributed this trend to growing Chinese influence in the Caribbean, but does this narrative reflect the reality on the ground? Chris Cash and Archie Brown are joined by Rasheed Griffith, a non-resident senior fellow with the Asia and

There is a growing interest across the world in Chinese foreign policy signalling. Whilst English translations make Chinese foreign policy statements more accessible, most people fail to pick up on changes in the language of these statements in official translations. Chris Cash is joined by Sabine Mokry, PhD candidate at Leiden University and Visiting Researcher at the German Insti

China’s digital yuan is a form of central bank digital currency (CBDC) which many other central banks around the world are also working on. Chinese authorities are now stepping up their ambition to expand the use of e-CNY after a trial at this year’s Winter Olympic in Beijing. Chris Cash is joined by Ananya Kumar, Assistant Director of Digital Currencies at the Atlant

The emergence of highly infectious coronavirus variants has strained the Chinese Communist Party’s zero-COVID policy to breaking point. The economic struggles and growing civilian frustrations caused by unrelenting lockdowns threaten to undermine the narrative of China’s superiority in responding to the pandemic - and the image and stature of Xi Jinping’s rule. Chris Cash and