China Books

May 07 2024 14

China Books Podcast artwork

Fresh ideas and thought-provoking conversations on fiction and non-fiction about China and/or from China, with host Mary Kay Magistad, a former China correspondent for NPR and PRX's The World.

The China Books podcast is a companion of the China Books Review (chinabooksreview.com), co-published by Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations (where Mary Kay is deputy director) and The Wire China.

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Ep. 8: Uyghur Women Speaking Out

May 07 2024 51 mins

Genocide is not a word thrown around lightly by the U.S. government, but it uses that term to describe the Chinese government’s ongoing assaults on Uyghurs’ distinct culture, identity, rights, and freedom in China’s far western region of Xinjiang. China's government has long had an uneasy relationship with Uyghurs’ distinct Turkic Muslim identity, and has tried in vario

Ep. 7: Why China's ahead in the green energy 'gold rush'

Apr 02 2024 49 mins

China has bet big over the past couple of decades on how building up its renewable energy sector -- solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and their batteries, and the metals and minerals that make them all possible -- will help China achieve a dominant global position in an essential field. So far, with intensifying climate change making the need to speed the transition fr

Ep. 6: Spy novels, a real-life thriller, and the BBC

Mar 05 2024 56 mins

Acclaimed spy novelist Adam Brookes started out in China as a languge student in the mid-'80s, skipping class to travel in trucks and buses to Tibet and other parts of China that had just opened up after being shut off to foreign visitors for decades. He want back as a BBC China correspondent, informed by his earlier experiences in remote parts of China, and informing a huge gl

Ep. 5: China's Economic Challenges, Explained

Feb 06 2024 69 mins

The sizzle has come off of China's decades of economic growth, as the country contends with deflation, slumping consumer confidence, plummeting foreign investment, a cratered urban property sector, high local government debt, overcapacity in manufacturing, and a private sector cowed by government crackdowns, as well as a shrinking workforce and an aging population.For all that,

Ep. 4: How "Leftover Women" may reshape China's future

Jan 02 2024 47 mins

A funny thing happened at the height of China's economic boom, as more and more Chinese women were getting college degrees, good jobs, and promising careers. The government launched a propaganda campaign, urging women to get married young, before they became "yellowed pearls". Leta Hong-Fincher captured that phenomenon in her book Leftover Women (2014). A decade later

Ep. 3: How China's Future Looked in the Past

Dec 05 2023 47 mins

Dreams of a better future have driven many a revolution, but not all have turned out the way the dreamers imagined. China's early revolutionaries, a century ago, aimed to rid the country of what they saw as corrupt capitalism and the world of colonialism and imperialism. Instead, they said, socialism would bring a future of peace, prosperity, equality, and social justice. Not a

Ep. 2: American Correspondents in China

Nov 06 2023 45 mins

China's rise is one of the great stories of the past century, and China correspondents have told that story in myriad ways -- as a story of transformation, of falling poverty rates and rising power, of new wealth and old political elites, of new opportunities and unintended consequences, of abuses of rights and of power, of surveillance and censorship. Together, these different

Ep. 1: Chinese Fiction in the Reform & Opening Up Era

Oct 10 2023 54 mins

China's epic transformation over the past four decades has seen cities expand, fortunes rise, and expectations change. It has left Chinese people to either ride the waves of change, or scramble -- perhaps struggle -- to keep up. In the midst of it all, Chinese fiction has reflected and riffed on life on the ground, with humor, satire, pathos, and good old-fashioned story-tellin

China Books, Trailer

Sep 24 2023 3 mins

Fresh ideas and thought-provoking conversations on fiction and non-fiction, about China and from China, with host Mary Kay Magistad, a former China correspondent for NPR and PRX's The World. The China Books podcast is a companion of the China Books Review (chinabooksreview.com), co-published by Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations (where Mary Kay is deputy director