China Books Podcast
The China Books Podcast is a monthly interview series on all things China and bookish, from ChinaBooksReview.com. Hosted by Alec Ash or Alexander Boyd, we talk to authors about their recent works on or from China and the Sinophone world, from politics and history to fiction and culture. Subscribe to stay in the loop, and drop us a rating if you enjoyed it! China Books Review is a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China.
Episodes
Murder in Hong Kong with Simon Elegant
The Hong Kong-born novelist and journalist talks us through his new novel "City on Fire," a whodunnit thriller set against the 2019 protests.The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review, a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.
Ancient Chinese Politics with Daniel Bell
The Legalists and Confucians still run the show in today’s China, argues a scholar of classical Chinese thought — but the Mohists and Daoists still have a voice in the debate.The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review, a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.
Confucius and Women, with Erin Cline
Misogyny and patriarchy are a later misreading of The Analects, argues the author of a new translation of the Confucian classic.The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review, a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.
Chinese Comedy with Jesse Appell
The bilingual comedian talks us through the traditional “xiangsheng” form of Chinese comic repartee, and explains whether Beijing can take a joke.The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review, a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.
Islamic China with Rian Thum
Islam has been part of China’s religious and cultural fabric for over a millennium, yet often it is seen as a foreign element. The author of a new study explains just how wrong that is.The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review, a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.
Chinese Horror with Xueting C. Ni
Horror writing has an unsavory reputation in China, but comes with a long history and is full of biting social commentary. The translator of a recent collection explains what lurks beneath.The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review, a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com
Ep. 27: Sex, Scams and Sorcery with Bruce Rusk and Christopher Rea
Tales of trickery were popular in the late Ming dynasty. The translators of a new collection explain how they still resonate today.The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review, a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.
Ep. 26: Chris Horton on Taiwan’s History and Present
Colonized by the Dutch, Qing China and Japan, the island of Taiwan has a complicated past and a tense present. We invited the author of a new primer to lay it out for us.The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review, a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.
Ep. 25: Timothy Thurston on Tibetan Satire
Tibetans inside China have found various ways to push back against Beijing and voice their dissatisfaction. A lesser-known form of subtle resistance is the art of “zurza,” or satirical repartee.The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review, a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksrevie
Ep. 24: China Conspiracy Theories
From Covid as a bioweapon to Chinese soldiers infiltrating America, Alexander Boyd discusses the right-wing conspiracy theories that lead our ranking of bestselling China books.The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review, a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.
Ep. 23: Mark Kitto on Shanghai in the 2000s
The author and former media mogul explains why he chose fiction as the best way to capture Shanghai’s go-go years in his new novel.The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review, a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.
Ep. 22: Michael Luo on the Chinese-American Story
The New Yorker writer discusses his new history of the Chinese in America, and immigrant identity from the Chinese Exclusion Act to Trump.The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review, a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.
Ep. 21: Jenna Tang on Taiwan’s MeToo Movement
We talked to the translator of a novel that helped launch #MeToo in Taiwan, about why both the movement and the book are having a second wind.The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review, a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.
Ep. 20: Linda Jaivin on the Cultural Revolution
The writer and China watcher talks us through her microhistory of Mao’s last decade in power, and its relevance to Trump’s MAGA movement.The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review, a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.
Ep. 19: Steven Schwankert on the Titanic's Chinese Survivors
The author of "The Six" tells us about the Chinese survivors of the Titanic, and how they were met with racist scorn on arrival in America after the disaster.The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review, a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.
Ep. 18: Lijia Zhang on Women’s Stories
The memoirist and novelist talks us through her grandmother and mother’s stories, as well as her own, and discusses how the status of women has changed in China through the decades.The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review, a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.
Ep. 17: Lau Yee-Wa on Hong Kong Fiction
We talked to the author of "Tongueless" about how Cantonese is disappearing from Hong Kong schools, and what literature can do to raise awareness.Our guest this month is Lau Yee-Wa, one of Hong Kong's most exciting emerging fiction writers, whose debut novel Tongueless (The Feminist Press, 2024) came out in English last summer, translated by Jennifer Feeley. Lau studied literature a
Ep. 16: Oriana Skylar Mastro on China’s Challenge to the U.S.
As 2025 gets into gear, all eyes are on the year ahead, with a degree of trepidation (or excitement, depending on whom you ask) for the early impacts of the incoming Trump administration on U.S.-China relations, and global politics at large. From the Ukraine war to possibility of conflict across the Taiwan Strait, not to mention economic and diplomatic conflict across the Pacific, it’s a fresh era
Ep. 15: Paul French on Wallis Simpson's China Year
The American socialite Wallis Simpson is best known as the wife of former British king Edward VIII. When they announced their intention to marry, her status as a divorcée (and an American) caused a constitutional crisis that led to Edward's abdication in 1936. But long before that, Simpson's adventures had led her to spend a year in interwar China, from 1924-25, while fleeing her abusive
Ep. 14: Kishore Mahbubani on the Asian Century
In this episode, we’re pleased to have had the opportunity to talk to Kishore Mahbubani, a Singaporean former diplomat who was Singapore’s representative to the UN in the 1980s and 1990s, and later Dean at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at National University of Singapore. Mahbubani is the author of ten books on Asia and the world, most recently Living the Asian Century (2024).Though the
Ep. 13: Peter Hessler on 'Other Rivers'
Our guest this month is renowned writer Peter Hessler, a staff writer at The New Yorker and author of five books about China, most recently Other Rivers: A Chinese Education, published earlier this year by Penguin Press. In the book, Hessler details his most recent stint living in China, teaching writing at Sichuan University in Chengdu from 2019 to 2021. Hessler talked to us about how the new gen
Ep. 12: China's evolving art scene
China’s edgy contemporary art exploded into global view over decades of China’s meteoric economic growth. Gone were the days of Mao Zedong insisting that art had to “serve the people", by which he meant, the Communist Party, with socialist realist propaganda. Freed from those contraints with Mao's death and the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, successive generations of contemporar
Ep. 11: Beijing in Short Fiction
Beijing is many things to many people, sometimes all at once – a mecca for migrants and artists, a tech hub, a proving ground for young graduates, a capital of politics and power, a smoggy, traffic-choked dystopia, a charming collection of lakes, leafy parks, narrow lanes and courtyard houses, an enduring city with 800 years of history and lore, and millions of stories to tell. Ten such stories ar
Ep. 10: Rethinking U.S.-China trade
Who are the winners and losers in U.S.-China trade over recent decades, and what's a better way forward? Laying out a compelling argument in this episode is Peter Goodman, a former correspondent in China, current global economics correspondent at The New York Times, and author of How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain. He takes the supply chain snarls at the peak
Ep. 9: Tiananmen remembered
Tiananmen -- the place, the protests, the crackdown -- reverberates in memories and imaginations around the world, even 35 years after tanks rolled in Beijing’s streets, and the Chinese military’s crackdown on student demonstrators in the week hours of June 4, 1989, killed at least hundreds and wounded thousands of people. The protesters had been calling for political reforms, for a more open and
Ep. 8: Uyghur Women Speaking Out
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 various ways over time to co
Ep. 7: Why China's ahead in the green energy 'gold rush'
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 from fossil fuels
Ep. 6: Spy novels, a real-life thriller, and the BBC
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 global audience a
Ep. 5: China's Economic Challenges, Explained
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, China is still
Ep. 4: How "Leftover Women" may reshape China's future
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, with a new u
Ep. 3: How China's Future Looked in the Past
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 all of that w
Ep. 2: American Correspondents in China
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 pieces formed
Ep. 1: Chinese Fiction in the Reform & Opening Up Era
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-telling. At times in
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