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In this episode of Behind the Hospital Curtain we mark Organ Donation Week by hearing Charlotte and Lucy Hornby's story. Charlotte's husband, and Lucy's dad, Andy, was in a road traffic collision, and sadly they were given the news he would not survive. We talk about what happened and the decision to donate Andy's organs, which went on to transform the lives of three people. We're also joined by Natalie Ashley, Specialist Nurse for Organ Donation, who tells us more about the organ donation process, and her role.Our heartfelt thanks to Charlotte and Lucy for sharing their experience. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In August 2020, the CGTN anchorwoman Chéng Lěi 成蕾, an Australian citizen, was detained in Beijing. Six months later, she was formally arrested and charged with violations of China’s expansive state secrets law. This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with ABC reporter Bill Birtles (whose involuntary departure from China was linked to Cheng Lei’s case), longtime Beijing-based Financial Times correspondent Lucy Hornby, and Chinese law specialist Donald Clarke, a professor of law at George Washington University, about the case and its relation to the deterioration of ties between Beijing and Canberra.12:19: What we know about Cheng Lei’s time in detention21:18: Reciprocal hostage taking, or something else?25:00: Dawn raids on Chinese journalists in Australia34:42: The public response to Cheng Lei’s arrestRecommendations:Lucy: Revolutions, a history podcast exploring political revolutions, hosted by Mike Duncan. Don: The Construction of Guilt in China: An Empirical Account of Routine Chinese Injustice, by Yu Mou, The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy and the Life of John Maynard Keynes, by Zachary D. Carter, and the search software X1.Bill: The politics of being Chinese in Australia, a comprehensive survey of attitudes and experiences of the Chinese-Australian community, by Jennifer Hsu. Kaiser: The British History Podcast, hosted by Jamie Jeffers.
Lucy Hornby, a fellow at the Nieman Center for Journalism and former Beijing deputy bureau chief for the Financial Times, and Yasheng Huang, MIT professor of international management, discuss US foreign policy challenges and opportunities with Anthony Saich, Harvard professor of international affairs and director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. This program is co-presented with the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. For more info, visit jfklibrary.org/forums.
A conversation with journalist Lucy Hornby, 2020 Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard Fellow. Lucy Hornby discusses “After the Coronavirus: China and the U.S.” Interview by Dartmouth student Ben Vagle '22. Edited by Laura Howard. Music: Debussy Arabesque no 1. Composer: Claude Debussy
As the world’s largest carbon emitter, China will be in the spotlight at this week’s UN climate summit in New York. Beijing has taken steps to tackle its pollution problems in recent years, but is it working? Pilita Clark puts this question to Leslie Hook, environment correspondent, and Lucy Hornby, deputy Beijing bureau chief. Contributors: Pilita Clark, business columnist, Leslie Hook, environment correspondent, and Lucy Hornby, deputy Beijing bureau chief. Producer: Fiona Symon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
As part of its trade war with the US, China has threatened to restrict exports of rare earths. These obscure minerals, on which the military and tech industries depend, are overwhelmingly produced in China. Katie Martin discusses how the world came to be so dependent on one country for such an essential part of the industrial supply chain with Lucy Hornby and Henry Sanderson.Contributors: Josh Noble, weekend news editor, Katie Martin, capital markets editor, Henry Sanderson, commodities correspondent, and Lucy Hornby, deputy Beijing bureau chief. Producer: Fiona Symon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
China has spent hundreds of billions of dollars financing infrastructure projects across the world through its Belt and Road Initiative, which critics say has imposed ruinous debts on some countries. Andreas Paleit discusses the global impact of the scheme for China and those taking part with James Kynge and Lucy HornbyContributors: Suzanne Blumsom, executive editor, Andreas Paleit, assistant companies news editor, James Kynge, China global editor, and Lucy Hornby, deputy Beijing bureau chief. Producer: Fiona Symon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Ravi Mattu discusses what’s behind China's economic slowdown and why it matters with Martin Wolf, the FT’s chief economics commentator, and Lucy Hornby, deputy bureau chief in Beijing Contributors: Ravi Mattu, Asia news editor, Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator and Lucy Hornby, deputy Beijing bureau chief. Producer: Fiona Symon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This week on Sinica, Kaiser speaks with Lucy Hornby, the deputy bureau chief of the Financial Times in Beijing and a veteran guest on the show. She has appeared on Sinica before to discuss professional representation for women in China, the last surviving comfort women in the country, and domestic environmental challenges. The two discuss shadow banking in China and its history; the cat-and-mouse relationship between regulators and shadow financiers; the advent of fintech and the proliferation of peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms; and Lucy’s reporting on a pyramid scheme involving selenium-infused wheat in Hebei. What to listen for this week on the Sinica Podcast: 11:15: Lucy responding to Kaiser’s question on perceptions of shadow lending in China: “You see repeated attempts by the Chinese state to shut this down. And also the words that they use around it: shadow banking, private banking, private financiers, capitalists… They’re very much painted in a negative light. But at the same time, some of China’s biggest entrepreneurs have said they would never have gotten started or been able to make it through a downturn [without a shadow loan].” 13:02: Lucy points out that in the lead-up to the financial crisis of 2008, the state took control of building housing from private investors: “This cutoff in loans [to private entities] happened roughly around the time you had the global financial crisis and the Chinese government putting out a massive stimulus plan…and suddenly if you can make a 30 percent profit on something, you can take out a 20 percent loan… That's when you really had this explosion of shadow banking that reached into every sector of the economy.” 30:35: “The other thing I think a lot of people don’t realize is that Chinese shadow financing has flowed into peripheral countries… A lot of Mongolian entrepreneurs turn to that shadow financing, and you even had some who then took that and repackaged it at higher rates to Mongolian retail customers. So, that means that basically the nation of Mongolia is now completely exposed to the Chinese shadow banking sector.” 42:15: To conclude the discussion, Lucy provides a bird’s-eye view: “I think your point about China’s need for flexible financing is a real one, and that’s going to continue. But I think what we’re also seeing is a massive deleveraging and default of all these boom years into the pockets of the average Chinese person.” Recommendations: Lucy: Den of Thieves, by James B. Stewart, the tome-like account of the junk bond trading craze of the 1980s, and The China Dream, by Joe Studwell. Kaiser: Two books by Stephen R. Platt: Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age and Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War.
Lucy Hornby is a China correspondent for the Financial Times. She has previously been on Sinica to speak about China’s last surviving comfort women and about women’s representation in China expertise. Li Shuo is the Senior Climate & Energy Policy Officer for Greenpeace East Asia. He oversees Greenpeace’s work on air pollution, water, and renewable energy, and also coordinates the organization’s engagement with the United Nations climate negotiation. Lucy returns to the podcast to discuss her reporting on Chinese environmental challenges — particularly overfishing and soil pollution — issues that Li Shuo, on the pod for the first time, has also researched. Recommendations: Jeremy: “The Anaconda and the Elephant,” an essay by Xu Zhiyuan 许知远 about self-censorship and how to be a Chinese writer in these strange times under Xi Jinping. Lucy: The latest book of her FT colleague Richard McGregor: Asia's Reckoning: China, Japan, and the Fate of U.S. Power in the Pacific Century. McGregor previously wrote The Party, a popular book among those wanting an in-depth look at Chinese politics. Li Shuo: A Chinese book called huanjing waijiaoguan shouji (环境外交官手记; “Notes of an Environmental Diplomat”), an autobiography of one of China’s early environmental diplomats, Xia Kunbao 夏堃堡. He was born in the 1940s, learned English, lived through the Cultural Revolution, and ended up at the highest levels of environmental governance in China. The book is written in fairly simple, short sentences. Kaiser: Washington Post reporter David Weigel’s new book, The Show That Never Ends: The Rise and Fall of Prog Rock.
Tensions between the US and North Korea are at their highest in years over Pyongyang's accelerating efforts to build a nuclear arsenal capable of hitting America. Ben Hall discusses the options for ending the standoff with Katrina Manson, US diplomatic correspondent, and Lucy Hornby, China correspondent. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Soil pollution is the least-discussed of China's “big three” pollution issues of air, water and soil, and also the last of the three to be directly addressed through government policy. Why are China’s soil pollution challenges so difficult to address, and what recent progress has been made? And what is it like to be a journalist trying to spur action by relaying this soil pollution story — and China’s other environmental stories — to the public? We sit down with Lucy Hornby, a veteran China resident and Financial Times journalist, to discuss the intricacies of China’s soil pollution challenges and what it’s like to report on environmental issues in China. In addition to imparting her expertise on these topics, Lucy recommends that listeners take a look at Jonathan Franzen’s New Yorker piece, “Carbon capture: Has climate change made it harder for people to care about conservation?”, which suggests that to effectively deal with climate change we must think of it as part of a broader set of localized ecological issues.
From business to literature to politics, there is a huge pool of female expertise on China. But you wouldn’t know it if you examined the names of people who are quoted in the media and invited to China-themed panel discussions: They are mostly men. This is a problem that two Beijing-based journalists aim to solve. Joanna Chiu of AFP and Lucy Hornby of the Financial Times created and maintain an open, user-contributed list called “Female Experts on Hong Kong, Macau, Mainland China and Taiwan.” They began by providing their own contacts, then promoted the document to various email groups and to Twitter. The list “blew up” early this year and now contains nearly 200 names and contact details of female China experts on every major subject area, based all around the world. With such a roster willing to be called up, the list eliminates many common excuses for the underrepresentation of women in the field. In this episode, Joanna and Lucy speak with Jeremy and Kaiser about the realities and biases in the field, the excuses and corresponding solutions for gender underrepresentation, and how the “women’s list” came about. Longtime listeners will remember Lucy from a previous Sinica episode discussing her story on China’s last surviving “comfort women,” enslaved by the Japanese military in World War II. You can follow Lucy on Twitter at @hornbylucy, and find Joanna on Twitter at @joannachiu. Recommendations: Jeremy: Witness to Revolution, a film by Lucy Ostrander about author and labor activist Anna Louise Strong (1885–1970), who spent decades in China and the Soviet Union, getting to know Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Joseph Stalin, and writing about their pursuit of communism. Lucy: All the President’s Men, the first-person account of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as they reported on the Nixon administration’s Watergate scandal. Joanna: The Supreme People’s Court Monitor, a project of Susan Finder, for those who follow Chinese law, and the work of Jessica Valenti, a feminist book author and columnist for the Guardian. Kaiser: The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen, a story about a sleeper agent from Vietnam who moves to the U.S.
Supplies of traditionally popular species have become so depleted through overfishing that commercial fleets — especially the Chinese — are trawling further from home, deeper and wider in the oceans, says Lucy Hornby. This has led to clashes as they impinge on local hunting grounds halfway across the world, Lucy says See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Xiao Jianhua, a billionaire businessman living in Hong Kong, was spirited away by agents of the Chinese authorities last week and his whereabouts remain a mystery. The FT's Josh Noble and Lucy Hornby discuss what might have happened and why the incident is making many in Hong Kong very uneasy. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Chinese president Xi Jinping was anointed as the “core” leader of the Communist party last week, paving the way for a return to strongman rule. So is China moving towards a more autocratic system? Gideon Rachman discusses the question with the FT's Beijing correspondent Lucy Hornby, and James Kynge, former bureau chief in the capital. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
China has launched a quantum satellite to test whether communications can be rendered hack-proof, in its latest challenge to US supremacy in space. Clive Cookson, the FT’s science editor, discusses the development with Lucy Hornby, FT Beijing correspondent. Music from Star Trek theme by Alexander Courage See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
After embracing market reforms in 1979, the world's largest communist country blindsided the world with three decades of consistent double-digit GDP growth. It was dubbed the "China Miracle." But now, the country's growth is rapidly slowing and a raft of grave concerns about demographics, the middle-income trap, capital flight, and debt are emerging in its economy. So does this mean economic catastrophe, or can it be managed? In this episode we hear from a range of economists, investors, and journalists to unpack what’s going on in China’s economy, and what a stumble might mean for the world.
In May last year Hanergy, a little known Chinese solar energy company, was worth almost $40bn, at least on paper. But in one brutal half hour of trading in Hong Kong, its shares came crashing down. FT reporters Miles Johnson, Lucy Hornby and Cynthia O'Murchu investigate the trail of debt that led to its spectacular decline. Music by David Sappa See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
For a few short months, Chinese entrepreneur Li Hejun became the richest man in China. FT reporters Miles Johnson and Lucy Hornby tell the story of the dramatic rise of his solar energy company, and what it says about levels of corporate debt in one of the world's biggest economies. Music by David Sappa See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This week on Sinica, we are delighted to be joined by Lucy Hornby, China correspondent for the Financial Times, and author of this phenomenal piece on China's last surviving Chinese comfort women and their longstanding — and often futile — attempts to seek reparations in both China and Japan. Join us today as we talk about this piece, and also other stories of reparations and post-war politics that may leave you, like us, somewhat less cynical going out than coming in.
China's Yellow River supports one in every 12 people in the country. But as the economy booms, demand for water has grown, forcing the government to find new ways to prevent the river from running dry. Lucy Hornby, the FT's China correspondent, reports from Beijing See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.