Podcast appearances and mentions of mary kay magistad

China: now what? Donald Trump has imposed tariffs on China but even before that news the country was watching and waiting for the US to make mistakes in the international arena. What happens now that Trump has made so many in such a short time? What is the China of today compared to ten, twenty or even thirty years ago? In this FRDH podcast, Mary Kay Magistad, who lived in China for more than twenty years as a public radio journalist provides deeper perspective on the country and next few years of competition between it and the United States. Give us 50 minutes to talk it out.

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 are told in The Book of Beijing: A City in Short Fiction, an anthology in English translation by 10 Chinese writers, many of them award-winning, all of whom live in Beijing or have a close and enduring connection to it. The stories were all previously published in Chinese in China, including one in which a young woman wonders what her older boyfriend saw in 1989 in Tiananmen Square, and another, in which a pre-teen boy – left alone after his older siblings are sent to the countryside – gets caught stealing, and fears the consequences. Other stories include speculative fiction from Gu Shi, who's shortlisted for a 2024 Hugo Award for a different story, and a tale from Xu Zechen, translated by Paper Republic founder Eric Abrahamsen, about how a counterfeiter who sells fake IDs gets smitten with a fellow seller of fake IDs and toys with the idea of settling down into a normal life. The book is part of the acclaimed "A City in Short Fiction" series by Comma Press in the UK, which has included The Book of Jakarta, The Book of Istanbul, and The Book of Gaza. The Book of Beijing brings a reader in to this complex city through intimate, textured, and at times jarring tales, of ordinary people navigating extraordinary times.In this episode of the China Books podcast, The Book of Beijing ‘s editor, Bingbing Shi, shares her thoughts on Beijing, on how she brought the book together, and on the impact she hopes it will have on readers outside of China.Bingbing Shi earned her PhD from the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge. Her research interests include modern and contemporary Chinese literature, adaptation studies, memory studies, translation studies, and feminist writing. She has a BA and MA in Chinese literature from Beijing Normal University. Her fiction in Chinese has appeared in People's Literature and Youth Literature. The China Books podcast is hosted and produced by Mary Kay Magistad, a former award-winning China correspondent for NPR and PRI/BBC's The World, now a senior fellow at Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations. This podcast is a companion of the China Books Review, which offers incisive essays, interviews, and reviews on all things China books-related. Co-publishers are Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations, headed by Orville Schell, and The Wire China, co-founded by David Barboza, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times China correspondent. The Review's editor is Alec Ash, who can be reached at editor@chinabooksreview.com.

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 of the COVID pandemic as a jumping-off point to explore how China became the world's top exporter and top trading partner of most countries, why "just in time" outsourcing to China long made irresistible sense to U.S. companies and investors but came with steep hidden costs to workers and a dangerously widening wealth gap, and how the answer is not a wholesale U.S. 'decoupling' from China's efficient supply chains, but making better choices at home to build resilience and restore faith among disillusioned Americans in the U.S. economy and democracy.Peter Goodman, the global economics correspondent atThe New York Times, has also been the Times'  London-based Europe economics correspondent, and U.S. national economics correspondent. He was earlier the Washington Post's China-based Asia economics correspondent (2001-06), and its telecommunications reporter. His other books are Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World (2022) and Past Due: The End of Easy money and the Renewal of the American Economy (2009). The China Books podcast is hosted and produced by Mary Kay Magistad, a former award-winning China correspondent for NPR and PRI/BBC's The World, now a senior fellow at Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations. This podcast is a companion of the China Books Review, which offers incisive essays, interviews, and reviews on all things China books-related. Co-publishers are Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations, headed by Orville Schell, and The Wire China, co-founded by David Barboza, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times China correspondent. The Review's editor is Alec Ash, who can be reached at editor@chinabooksreview.com.

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 less corrupt society, after decades of political upheaval under Mao Zedong's leadership. What they got instead from Deng Xiaoping was a brutal ‘no' to the call for political reform, but with a green light to instead focus on making money and growing China's economy. China's Communist Party leaders insist to this day that China's economic rise couldn't have happened without the crushing of the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations, and the hopes for political reform of many Chinese people. Still, the Party has tried to erase the Tiananmen crackdown from public memory in China, even as many Chinese remember the protests and all they stood for, with some dedicating their lives to working toward those same goals.  The guest for this episode, Xiao Qiang, is one such person. He talks about his life before, during, and after the protests, and recommends books for anyone interested in better understanding what the Tiananmen demonstrations and crackdown meant, and still mean, in China and beyond. Xiao Qiang is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of China Digital Times, a bilingual China news website launched in 2003 to aggregate, organize, and recommend online information from and about China. He is an adjunct professor at the School of Information, University of California at Berkeley, and director of the school's Counter-Power Lab, an interdisciplinary faculty-student research group focusing on the intersection of digital media, counter-censorship technology and cyber-activism.The China Books podcast is hosted and produced by Mary Kay Magistad, a former award-winning China correspondent for NPR and PRI/BBC's The World, now a senior fellow at Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations. This podcast is a companion of the China Books Review, which offers incisive essays, interviews, and reviews on all things China books-related. Co-publishers are Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations, headed by Orville Schell, and The Wire China, co-founded by David Barboza, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times China correspondent. The Review's editor is Alec Ash, who can be reached at editor@chinabooksreview.com.

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 control them, reduce and dilute their population, and make them assimilate.But lately, it's gotten much worse. Within the past decade, about a million Uyghurs – almost one in 10 – were sent to reeducation camps. Under international pressure, the PRC says it closed the camps in 2019, because the "trainees" graduated. But it  transferred many of the Uyghurs in the camps to prison or forced labor, sending some to other provinces as part of a policy meant to reduce the concentration of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.  Those still in Xinjiang are under constant high-tech surveillance, with some forced to let security personnel live in their homes, to better indoctrinate and surveil them.In the midst of all this, a few Uyghur women in exile have proven especially effective at speaking out on their people's plight, and advocating for international action . This episode is a conversation with two of them, about  their experiences growing up Uyghur in  China, going into exile in the United States, and becoming advocates for Uyghur rights.Gulchehra Hoja is the author of A Stone is Most Precious Where It Belongs: A Memoir of Uyghur Exile, Hope and Survival, named by The New Yorker as a best book of 2023. An award-winning Uyghur American journalist who has worked with Radio Free Asia since 2001, she grew up in Urumqi, studied Uyghur language and literature and, working for state-run Xinjiang TV, created and hosted China's first Uyghur language children's television program for five years.  Jewher Ilham's two memoirs, Jewher Ilham: A Uyghur's Fight to Free Her Father (2015) and Because I Have To: The Path to Survival, The Uyghur Struggle (2022), tell the story of how a Uyghur teenager who grew up in Beijing as the daughter of prominent economics professor and Uyghur rights advocate Ilham Tohti, went into exile in the United States and became an effective advocate for her father's release from a life sentence in prison in China. She now also works with the Worker Rights Consortium in Washington, D.C. as forced labor project coordinator and spokesperson for the Coalition to End Uyghur Forced Labor.  The China Books podcast is hosted and produced by Mary Kay Magistad, a former award-winning China correspondent for NPR and PRI/BBC's The World, now a senior fellow at Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations. This podcast is a companion of the China Books Review, which offers incisive essays, interviews, and reviews on all things China books-related. Co-publishers are Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations, headed by Orville Schell, and The Wire China, co-founded by David Barboza, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times China correspondent. The Review's editor is Alec Ash, who can be reached at editor@chinabooksreview.com.

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 to renewables ever more urgent, China is winning that bet.  China's efforts, with fierce competition within its private sector spurred by government incentives, have driven down the global cost of solar panels and electric vehicles, and have given China a near-monopoly globally on processing rare earths, and in mining and processing nickel, cobalt, magnesium and more.  This episode focuses on the story of how China achieved this lead in the green energy 'gold rush', and what the West is now doing to try to catch up, with guest Henry Sanderson, author of VoltRush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green.  A former correspondent in China for the Associated Press and Bloomberg, a commodities reporter for The Financial Times and current executive editor for Benchmark Mineral Intelligence,  Sanderson reported on the ground for from lithium fields in Chile to cobalt mines in the Congo, on the environmental trade-offs of mining minerals for renewable energy, on promising alternatives, and on what the West and the rest of the world can learn from China's experience as an early leader in green energy.  Sanderson is also co-author, with The New York Times' Michael Forsythe, of China's Super Bank: Debt, Oil, and Influence -- How China Development Bank is Rewriting the Rules of Finance.  The China Books podcast is hosted and produced by Mary Kay Magistad, a former award-winning China correspondent for NPR and PRI/BBC's The World, now deputy director of Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations. This podcast is a companion of the China Books Review, which offers incisive essays, interviews, and reviews on all things China books-related. Co-publishers are Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations, headed by Orville Schell, and The Wire China, co-founded by David Barboza, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times China correspondent. The Review's editor is Alec Ash, who can be reached at editor@chinabooksreview.com.

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 about China's transformation. He has since parlayed both of those early chapters in China into vivid and thought-provoking writing, both in his spy novel triology Night Heron, Spy Games, and The Spy's Daughter, and in his narrative non-fiction thriller Fragile Cargo: The World War II Race to Save the Treasures of China's Forbidden City. In this episode, he talks about how, with each form of writing, he has tried to bring China to life for his audiences, and deepen understanding of a complex place and people, and China's impact on the world. The China Books podcast is hosted and produced by Mary Kay Magistad, a former award-winning China correspondent for NPR and PRI/BBC's The World, now deputy director of Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations. This podcast is a companion of the China Books Review, which offers incisive essays, interviews, and reviews on all things China books-related. Co-publishers are Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations, headed by Orville Schell, and The Wire China, co-founded by David Barboza, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times China correspondent. The Review's editor is Alec Ash, who can be reached at editor@chinabooksreview.com.

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 the world's second largest economy, the largest trading partner of most of the world's countries, and one of the world's biggest bilateral lenders. And China listed its economic growth rate in 2023 as a respectable 5.2 percent, causing more than one economist to raise a eyebrow.  How to make sense of all this, and get an idea of what China's options are to sustain a future path of comfortable economic growth?  Settle back, put your earbuds in, and listen as the two respected China-born economists in this episode lay out the challenges, choices, and possibilities that could shape China's future.Tao Wang, author of Making Sense of China's Economy  (2023) is chief China economist, managing director, and Head of Asia Economic Research at UBS Investment Bank in Hong Kong, and was formerly an economist at the International Monetary Fund.  Her research on China covers a wide range of topics including monetary policy, the debt problem, shadow banking, local government finance, US-China trade disputes, supply chain shifts, RMB internationalization, the property bubble, the demographic challenge, the urban-rural divide, and the long-term growth potential. Dr. Wang has been consistently ranked as one of the top China economists by institutional investors. She is an invited fellow of the China Finance (CF) 40 Forum and a member of the China Global Economic Governance 50 Forum. Yasheng Huang, author of Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State (2008, now being updated), The Rise and Fall of the East: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline (2023) , and nine other books in English and in Chinese, holds the Epoch Foundation Professorship of Global Economics and Management at MIT Sloan School of Management, and founded and runs MIT's China Lab, India Lab, and ASEAN Lab.  Dr. Huang is a 2023-24 visiting fellow at the Kissinger Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC. The National Asia Research Program named him one of the most outstanding scholars in the United States conducting research on issues of policy importance to the United States. He has served as a consultant at World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and OECD.The China Books podcast is hosted and produced by Mary Kay Magistad, a former award-winning China correspondent for NPR and PRI/BBC's The World, now deputy director of Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations. This podcast is a companion of the China Books Review, which offers incisive essays, interviews, and reviews on all things China books-related. Co-publishers are Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations, headed by Orville Schell, and The Wire China, co-founded by David Barboza, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times China correspondent. The Review's editor is Alec Ash, who can be reached at editor@chinabooksreview.com.

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 updated edition of Leftover Women just out, Leta joins the China Books podcast to talk about why China's Communist Party leaders are still so focused on micro-managing the personal lives of women. President Xi Jinping himself made an explicit appeal at China's National Women's Congress in November 2023, calling on China's women to stay home and have babies. The draconian one-child policy, enforced from 1979 to 2016, had led to a plummeting birthrate, a contracting workforce and an aging population. Now the government is urging women to marry early and have three children. But many of China's women -- about one in five now have college degrees -- seem none  too keen on giving up on dreams to have a career, and perhaps more independence than they would in a marriage. China's fertility rate continues to plummet, and is now about half the replacement rate. The number of marriage licenses granted per year in China has dropped for nine straight years, and is now half of what it was a decade ago.  Faced with inequality of opportunity and of protection under the law when it comes to marriage, property rights, and domestic abuse, women in China are engaged demographic revolution voting with their feet, with potentially profound implications for China's economic and political future.Leta Hong Fincher is the author of Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China (2023, 10th Anniversary Edition) and Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China (2018). She is the first American to receive a Ph.D. from Tsinghua University's Department of Sociology in Beijing and is currently a Research Associate at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University.The China Books podcast is hosted and produced by Mary Kay Magistad, a former award-winning China correspondent for NPR and PRI/BBC's The World, now deputy director of Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations. This podcast is a companion of the China Books Review, which offers incisive essays, interviews, and reviews on all things China books-related. Co-publishers are Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations, headed by Orville Schell, and The Wire China, co-founded by David Barboza, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times China correspondent. The Review's editor is Alec Ash, who can be reached at editor@chinabooksreview.com.

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 worked out. One of the dreamers was Chen Hansheng, a prominent Western-educated  public intellectual who wrote, lectured, and taught in the United States while secretly working for the Soviet Comintern and Communist Party of China, who worked over time with Zhou Enlai and more briefly with Soviet spy Richard Sorge, and who was close friends Agnes Smedley, an American journalist who supported China's Communist revolution, and with Soong Ching-Ling, the widow of Sun Yat-Sen. Chen's comprehensive surveys of rural regions of China in the 1930s painted a vivid picture of the realities on the ground for China's farmers and villagers, who China's Communist revolution ended up helping in some ways and hurting in others, particularly in the preventable Great Famine of the late '50s and early '60s, when as many as 50 million people starved to death. Chen died in 2004 at age 107.  He lived through a century of epic change in China and in the world that brought some of what he wanted, but not in the way he expected, and a lot of disillusionment. In this  episode, Chen's biographer Stephen R. MacKinnon, lays it all out. Stephen R. MacKinnon is an emeritus professor of 20th Century Chinese history and former director of the Center for Asian Studies at Arizona State University. He has lived and worked in the People's Republic of China, and has focused on China in his work since the early 1960s. He has written dozens of articles and edited volumes, and is the author of five books on China, including Chen Hansheng: China's Last Romantic Revolutionary (2023), Wuhan, 1938: War, Refugees, and the Making of Modern China (2008), and Agnes Smedley: The Life and Times of an American Radical (1987).  The China Books podcast is hosted and produced by Mary Kay Magistad, a former award-winning China correspondent for NPR and PRI/BBC's The World, now deputy director of Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations. This podcast is a companion of the China Books Review, which offers incisive essays, interviews, and reviews on all things China books-related. Co-publishers are Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations, headed by Orville Schell, and The Wire China, co-founded by David Barboza, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times China correspondent. The Review's editor is Alec Ash, who can be reached at editor@chinabooksreview.com.

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 a complex and sometimes contradictory picture -- shaping understandings, and sometimes misunderstandings -- about how China is changing, and is changing the world.   American correspondents have been a big part of this effort. In this episode, former CNN China correspondent Mike Chinoy talks his book and documentary film series Assignment China: An Oral History of American Journalists in the People's Republic, about how the work of American China correspondents has changed over seven decades, about why China correspondents matter, and what we lose when fewer are in the field. The China Books podcast is hosted and produced by Mary Kay Magistad, a former award-winning China correspondent for NPR and PRI/BBC's The World, now deputy director of Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations. This podcast is a companion of the China Books Review, which offers incisive essays, interviews, and reviews on all things China books-related. Co-publishers are Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations, headed by Orville Schell, and The Wire China, co-founded by David Barboza, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times China correspondent. The Review's editor is Alec Ash, who can be reached at editor@chinabooksreview.com.

Read “Scenarios for Future US-China Competition” here: https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/SiliconTriangle_Chapter1_230828.pdf Mary Kay Magistad and Kharis Templeman discuss four potential futures for US-China relations. These scenarios depend on whether the global economy becomes more integrated or bifurcated, and whether the US or China leads in semiconductor technology. They also cover key findings and policy recommendations around supply chain […]

Read "Scenarios for Future US-China Competition" here: https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/SiliconTriangle_Chapter1_230828.pdf Mary Kay Magistad and Kharis Templeman discuss four potential futures for US-China relations. These scenarios depend on whether the global economy becomes more integrated or bifurcated, and whether the US or China leads in semiconductor technology. They also cover key findings and policy recommendations around supply chain security, US-China competition, and Taiwan's future. To learn more, go to https://www.hoover.org/silicon-triangle Mary Kay Magistad is deputy director of the Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations. She is an award-winning journalist who lived and reported in Asia for more than two decades, including in China for NPR and PRI/BBC's The World, and in Southeast Asia for NPR and the Washington Post. Kharis Templeman is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and program manager of the Hoover Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific. Silicon Triangle: The United States, Taiwan, China, and Global Semiconductor Security is a product of the Working Group on Semiconductors and the Security of the United States and Taiwan, a joint project of the Hoover Institution and the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations.

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 the Reform and Opening Up era, Chinese fiction has even driven a national conversation.This episode offers a conversation on all of this with two deeply knowledgeable guests: Jianying Zha is a contributor to The New Yorker, and the critically acclaimed author of China Pop: How Soap Operas, Tabloids, and  Bestsellers are Transforming a Culture (1996), Tide Players: The Movers and Shakers of a Rising China (2011), and other books and writing, both fiction and non-fiction, in both English and Chinese. Jianying was born and raised in Beijing, where she studied Chinese literature before moving to the United States in the early 1980s to study English literature. She has, in most of the years since, split time between China and the United States.Perry Link is a deeply respected expert in Chinese language and literature,  Chancellorial Chair Professor for Innovative Teaching Comparative Literature and Foreign Languages in College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the University of California, Riverside, and an emeritus professor of East Asian studies at Princeton University.  His books include Stubborn Weeds: Popular and Controversial Chinese Literature After the Cultural Revolution (Chinese Literature in Translation)  (1984), Evening Chats in Beijing: Probing China's Predicament (1992), The Uses of Literature: Life in the Socialist Chinese Literary System (2000),  An Anatomy of Chinese: Rhythm, Metaphor, Politics (2013), and I Have No Enemies: The Life and Legacy of Liu Xiaobo (2023). The China Books podcast is hosted and produced by Mary Kay Magistad, a former award-winning China correspondent for NPR and PRI/BBC's The World, now deputy director of Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations. This podcast is a companion of the China Books Review, which offers incisive essays, interviews, and reviews on all things China books-related. Co-publishers are Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations, headed by Orville Schell, and The Wire China, co-founded by David Barboza, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times China correspondent. The Review's editor is Alec Ash, who can be reached at editor@chinabooksreview.com.

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) and The Wire China. The China Books podcast is hosted and produced by Mary Kay Magistad, a former award-winning China correspondent for NPR and PRI/BBC's The World, now deputy director of Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations. This podcast is a companion of the China Books Review, which offers incisive essays, interviews, and reviews on all things China books-related. Co-publishers are Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations, headed by Orville Schell, and The Wire China, co-founded by David Barboza, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times China correspondent. The Review's editor is Alec Ash, who can be reached at editor@chinabooksreview.com.

Idag berättar Jennie den andra och avslutande delen om Nepals kungafamilj Shah. Fredagen den 1:a juni 2001 är det dags för familjefest i palatset. Med på festen är kungen, drottningen, kronprins Dipendra och hans bror och syster. Den enda som lyser med sin frånvaro är kungens yngsta bror, den tidigare kungen Gyanendra. Det här blir en fest att minnas -men inte av de anledningar familjen hoppats på. Stötta oss på Patreon.com/krimkalendern! KÄLLOR: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/Nepal survivors blame prince, skriven 2001-06-07 (hämtad 2022-11-05) theworld.org/stories/2011-06-01/why-nepals-crown-prince-went-killing-spree, skriven av Lisa Mullins och Mary Kay Magistad 2011-06-01 (hämtad 2022-11-05) timesnownews.com/international/article/royal-palace-massacre-all-about-the-gory-which-took-place-20-years-ago-in-nepal, skriven av Amrita Nayaran 2022-06-01 (hämtad 2022-11-05) zeenews.india.com/news/south-asia/new-conspiracy-theory-after-10-years-of-nepal-palace-massacre, skriven 2012-06-02 (hämtad 2022-11-05) nytimes.com/2001/06/08/world/a-witness-to-massacre-in-nepal-tells-gory-details, skriven av Barry Bearak 2001-06-08 (hämtad 2022-11-05) nytimes.com/2001/07/19/world/nepal-s-royal-deaths-give-life-to-swirl-of-theories, skriven av John F Burns 2001-06-08 (hämtad 2022-11-05) economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/gyanendra-paras-involved-in-2001-royal-massacre-report, skriven 2009-12-25 (hämtad 2022-11-05)

Idag berättar Jennie den första delen av två om kungafamiljen Shah. 1768 fick det enade Nepal sin första kung, Pritivi Narayan Shah. Hans tid som regent började dock med att han drog olycka över släkten, vilket skulle visa sig 11 generationer senare. Stötta oss på Patreon.com/krimkalendern! KÄLLOR: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/Nepal survivors blame prince, skriven 2001-06-07 (hämtad 2022-11-05) theworld.org/stories/2011-06-01/why-nepals-crown-prince-went-killing-spree, skriven av Lisa Mullins och Mary Kay Magistad 2011-06-01 (hämtad 2022-11-05) timesnownews.com/international/article/royal-palace-massacre-all-about-the-gory-which-took-place-20-years-ago-in-nepal, skriven av Amrita Nayaran 2022-06-01 (hämtad 2022-11-05) zeenews.india.com/news/south-asia/new-conspiracy-theory-after-10-years-of-nepal-palace-massacre, skriven 2012-06-02 (hämtad 2022-11-05) nytimes.com/2001/06/08/world/a-witness-to-massacre-in-nepal-tells-gory-details, skriven av Barry Bearak 2001-06-08 (hämtad 2022-11-05) nytimes.com/2001/07/19/world/nepal-s-royal-deaths-give-life-to-swirl-of-theories, skriven av John F Burns 2001-06-08 (hämtad 2022-11-05) economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/gyanendra-paras-involved-in-2001-royal-massacre-report, skriven 2009-12-25 (hämtad 2022-11-05)

WTBU Reporter Tyler Carroll sat down with former NPR China correspondent in Beijing, Mary Kay Magistad, to discuss the newest developments surrounding the lockdown protests surging across the country. Then, BU students from China and Hong Kong share their thoughts on the Xi Jinping regime and censorship in the mainland.

The Winter Olympics have begun. China wants the Beijing Games to showcase the country's meteoric rise, but American legislators and an international coalition of activists see the Games as an opportunity to spotlight China's human rights record.   First, we hear from U.S. track and field star Raven “Hulk” Saunders about the Olympic podium protest ban. Then, WorldAffairs host Philip Yun talks with a former State Department colleague, Bennett Freeman, about the campaign to pressure China to change. Finally, journalist Mary Kay Magistad speaks with two leaders from China's persecuted Uyghur minority about surveillance, repression, and state violence in the shadow of the Winter Olympics.    Guests:   Raven Saunders, 2021 silver medalist for U.S. Olympic Track and Field team Bennett Freeman, former deputy assistant secretary of state, democracy, human rights and labor  Zumretay Arkin, program manager at World Uyghur Congress Nury Turkel, vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute   Hosts:  Philip Yun, co-host, WorldAffairs Mary Kay Magistad, associate director at Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society   If you appreciate this episode and want to support the work we do, please consider making a donation to World Affairs. We cannot do this work without your help. Thank you.

We're awfully good at burning things up in the name of progress -- coal, oil, gas, Amazon rain forests.  We're not as good at factoring in the real cost of those choices, on our health, and on the health of the planet. In this first episode of the COAL+ICE podcast, top climate journalists talk about what these choices look like where they live -- in China, South Africa and Brazil -- and what's being done, and needs to be done, to bend the curve on climate change. Joining host Mary Kay Magistad are:Ma Tianjie, program director in Beijing of China Dialogue, a non-profit online platform that focuses on the environment and climate change, especially as related to China.  He was previously with Greenpeace, as program director for Mainland China.  Tunicia Phillips, an award-winning environment, climate and business reporter with South Africa's Mail & Guardian investigative weekly. Jon Watts is global environment editor for The Guardian newspaper in the UK.  He's a former correspondent for The Guardian in China, Brazil and Japan, and author of the book "When a BIllion Chinese Jump: How China Will Save Mankind or Destroy It," about the environmental impact of China's rapid development.  Jon is now spending a year in Brazil's Amazon, writing another book.  

We're all living with climate change,  but what can we do about it?  Join host Mary Kay Magistad, for global conversations on what's happening with climate change around the world, and what's being done to bend the curve.  This biweekly Asia Society podcast starts in late January 2022. 

The director of Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations talks with Mary Kay Magistad about his six decades observing China, in an episode celebrating the launch of the third edition of Asia Society Magazine.

Chinese investment in Africa has built roads, railways, dams, and more, spurring new interest and competition from other global investors. Critics say China’s too often exploitative, including with loans that leave some countries too deeply in debt. But its investments helped famine-prone Ethiopia become one of the world’s fastest growing economies. Now, however, civil strife is putting that success at risk, for both Ethiopia and China. On China’s Silk Road is a production of the Global Reporting Centre in Vancouver, Canada, which produces and teachers global journalism. The podcast was created by Mary Kay Magistad, a former China correspondent for US public radio’s The World, working with partner reporters on five continents. The full series is available wherever you get your podcasts or by visiting the Global Reporting Centre podcast project webpage.

China is one of India's top trading partners, but India has chosen not to be part of China's New SIlk Road. It's not wild about a future in which China leads Asia, much less the world. Instead, India's offering its own investments and vision of a more multipolar world. And with Chinese and Indian troops in a tense stand-off on their contested border, India's strengthening its ties with the US, Japan, Australia and others, to counterbalance China's influence. On China’s Silk Road is a production of the Global Reporting Centre in Vancouver, Canada, which produces and teachers global journalism. The podcast was created by Mary Kay Magistad, a former China correspondent for US public radio’s The World, working with partner reporters on five continents. The full series is available wherever you get your podcasts or by visiting the Global Reporting Centre podcast project webpage.

China is fast becoming a global leader in cutting edge technologies—such as AI, facial recognition, surveillance, and 5G—and is exporting them worldwide. Fans like the high quality and low cost. Critics say China’s technology enables authoritarian control and increases dependence on an autocratic state. They call for democracies, including the U.S., to work together to create a tech ecosystem that protects privacy and freedom of speech. On China’s Silk Road is a production of the Global Reporting Centre in Vancouver, Canada, which produces and teachers global journalism. The podcast was created by Mary Kay Magistad, a former China correspondent for US public radio’s The World, working with partner reporters on five continents. The full series is available wherever you get your podcasts or by visiting the Global Reporting Centre podcast project webpage.

Many Latin American countries have joined China’s New Silk Road, including Panama, where Chinese companies now manage ports on both ends of the Panama Canal. As Mexico considers whether to join, some countries in the region are facing heavy pressure from the Trump Administration warning them not to get too close to China. Still, China's investments and loans are seen by many leaders as a way to help their economies. On China’s Silk Road is a production of the Global Reporting Centre in Vancouver, Canada, which produces and teachers global journalism. The podcast was created by Mary Kay Magistad, a former China correspondent for US public radio’s The World, working with partner reporters on five continents. The full series is available wherever you get your podcasts or by visiting the Global Reporting Centre podcast project webpage.

Southeast Asian countries have long managed a complex relationship with China—the region’s biggest trading partner and powerful neighbour. The New Silk Road promises opportunities for economic growth, but at what cost? With China increasingly enforcing its disputed claims to the South China Sea with its military, many Southeast Asians are wary the New Silk Road will help China strengthen its ability to project its power in the region and beyond. On China’s Silk Road is a production of the Global Reporting Centre in Vancouver, Canada, which produces and teachers global journalism. The podcast was created by Mary Kay Magistad, a former China correspondent for US public radio’s The World, working with partner reporters on five continents. The full series is available wherever you get your podcasts or by visiting the Global Reporting Centre podcast project webpage.

Italian populists—skeptical of the value of EU membership—drove Italy to become the first G7 country to join China’s New Silk Road amid pushback from Europe and the US. Italians hoped this would boost their exports to China and increase Chinese investment in Italy. But not much happened. Then came the pandemic, and generous EU aid, leaving Italians to reassess who their real friends are, and how best to help their economy. On China’s Silk Road is a production of the Global Reporting Centre in Vancouver, Canada, which produces and teachers global journalism. The podcast was created by Mary Kay Magistad, a former China correspondent for US public radio’s The World, working with partner reporters on five continents. The full series is available wherever you get your podcasts or by visiting the Global Reporting Centre podcast project webpage.

For centuries, Kazakhstan—situated on the overland route from China to Europe—has played an important role in global trading. Some Kazakhs are optimistic the New Silk Road will ultimately boost their country's economy, but others are wary of China's growing influence in the region, especially in light of its detention of Muslims in neighbouring Xinjiang province. As a former Soviet republic that shares borders with both Russia and China, Kazakhstan looks to safeguard its independence as it negotiates a new relationship with China.. On China’s Silk Road is a production of the Global Reporting Centre in Vancouver, Canada, which produces and teachers global journalism. The podcast was created by Mary Kay Magistad, a former China correspondent for US public radio’s The World, working with partner reporters on five continents. The full series is available wherever you get your podcasts or by visiting the Global Reporting Centre podcast project webpage.

Chengdu is one of China’s fastest-growing cities, thanks to major investments in infrastructure. Now China’s taking its success at home on the road, promising that infrastructure done well can transform people’s lives around the world. Starting in Chengdu, a stop on both the ancient Silk Road and the new one, this episode looks at how China's effort to create what it's calling a "community of shared destiny" is building on its recent—and extraordinary—economic transformation within its own borders. On China’s Silk Road is a production of the Global Reporting Centre in Vancouver, Canada, which produces and teachers global journalism. The podcast was created by Mary Kay Magistad, a former China correspondent for US public radio’s The World, working with partner reporters on five continents. The full series is available wherever you get your podcasts or by visiting the Global Reporting Centre podcast project webpage.

This essay is part of "On China's New Silk Road," a podcast by the Global Reporting Centre that tracks China's global ambitions. Over nine episodes, Mary Kay Magistad, a former China correspondent for The World, partners with local journalists on five continents to uncover the effects of the most sweeping global infrastructure initiative in history. The conflict between Ethiopia’s central government and local government forces in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region has sparked a humanitarian crisis with tens of thousands of refugees. It has threatened to destabilize a wider region in which China is heavily invested — a sobering reminder that grand plans, like China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), are only as good as ground truths allow them to be.Despite all of Ethiopia’s success in recent years as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, ethnic and political rivalries are fierce and deep. And they haven’t gone away just because China has invested heavily there over the past two decades, or because Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for ending a war with neighboring Eritrea. “We want the Horn of Africa to become a treasury of peace and progress,” Abiy said in his Nobel lecture in December 2019. “Indeed, we want the Horn of Africa to become the 'Horn of Plenty' for the rest of the continent.” The Horn of Africa, which includes Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea and Ethiopia, has long been an area of strategic focus for world superpowers. It’s where the Gulf of Aden meets the Red Sea, in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait opposite Yemen, a strategic waterway for oil that leads all the way to the Suez Canal. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States fought proxy wars in Ethiopia and Somalia. Now, both the United States and China have military bases in the tiny coastal country of Djibouti, at a narrow part of the Strait.Much of China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) involves building a belt of land routes and a maritime Silk Road of sea routes around the world, for both economic and strategic purposes. China’s many investments in Djibouti and Ethiopia include a railway that connects them and is also meant to connect Tigray’s capital of Mekelle to Djibouti.Chinese investment has helped transform Ethiopia from one of the world’s poorest and most famine-prone countries to a model for the region of what’s possible — both in terms of rapid progress and self-sabotage of that progress.Chinese investment has helped transform Ethiopia from one of the world’s poorest and most famine-prone countries to a model for the region of what’s possible — both in terms of rapid progress and self-sabotage of that progress.Long before Chinese investment started in earnest in the early 2000s, Ethiopia’s central government fought long wars with Tigray and Eritrea, then both northern Ethiopian regions. The war with Eritrea stretched over 30 years; the war with Tigray lasted 17. Both wars ended in 1991, when Eritrea declared independence and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) took over the central government. Tigrayans stayed in power until political protests elevated Abiy to the prime minister in 2018.Related: China's new Silk Road runs through cyberspace, worrying rivals and privacy advocatesTPLF leaders have not gracefully accepted being shunted aside, despite Tigrayans making up just 6% of Ethiopia’s population. When Abiy started replacing Tigrayns in government, the TPLF left the unity party, retreated to Tigray, and conducted an election in September, in defiance of a government decision to postpone elections due to COVID-19.Tigray’s regional militia is both well-armed and sizable with as many as 250,000 armed fighters. Its recent attack on a national government military base sparked the current conflict, which includes aerial bombing by the central government, in areas where Chinese companies have spent years building infrastructure. While in power, Ethiopia’s Tigrayan prime ministers invited in Chinese investment to build desperately needed roads, dams, industrial parks and more throughout much of Ethiopia, at a time when many Western investors saw Ethiopia as too risky.“China was courageous enough to get involved in such a market,” says Ethiopian economist Getachew Alemu. “So it really helped us.  We used to have a huge backlog of demand for infrastructure, but we didn’t have the finance to finance it and push our economy forward. So, Chinese capital came as a savior for us.” Related: Opening the door to Chinese investment comes with risks for Southeast Asian nationsChina counts the billions of dollars invested in or lent to Ethiopia as part of China’s BRI. By the Chinese government’s calculation, some 140 countries have signed on in some way, including 44 African countries, drawing closer to China over the past two decades under the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation.“Always standing on an equal footing, China respects African countries’ own decision-making rights, and lets African economies go into global markets through the Chinese market,” wrote Wei Jianguo, a former Chinese vice-minister of commerce in the Chinese Communist Party-run newspaper, The Global Times.Wei counts China’s successes in Africa over the past two decades: building 3,750 miles of railways and roads, and “almost 20 ports, more than 80 large-scale power facilities…more than 130 hospitals and medical centers and more than 170 schools, which have brought significant progress to Africa’s economic and social development.” China’s approach in Africa has received mixed reviews from Africans. The African survey group Afrobarometer found in a survey in 36 African countries in 2014-15, that 63% of Africans surveyed had a favorable view of China. And some African leaders prefer Chinese loans because Chinese lenders aren’t particular, like the World Bank and IMF are, about human rights conditions, corruption levels and whether a project can generate enough economic growth to repay the loan. The Chinese-built African Union complex in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Credit: Courtesy of Mary Kay Magistad But Chinese loans often have higher interest rates and shorter repayment schedules. By contrast, Abiy has equated loans from the IMF and World Bank as being like borrowing from your mother. Ethiopia now owes an estimated $16 billion to Chinese lenders, roughly half of Ethiopia’s total debt. Abiy has called for debt forgiveness for the world’s poorest countries, from all international lenders. Related: China's new Silk Road traverses Kazakhstan. But some Kazakhs are skeptical of Chinese influence. Zambia, too, has struggled to repay its debt. It missed a Eurobond payment, becoming the first African country to default during the COVID-19 pandemic, amid reports that Chinese lenders were pressing to take control of at least one copper mine if Zambia couldn’t repay its debt to China. And then there’s Sudan, where China’s arms-for-oil approach in the early 2000s contributed to mass killings in Darfur, in what the US government later called a genocide, with an estimated 400,000 people killed and thousands more displaced. “In Sudan, in the early 2000s, this was the showcase country, that Chinese oil investment would bring peace, that Chinese infrastructure would develop the country,” says Luke Patey, author of “The New Kings of Crude: China, India and the Global Struggle for Oil in Sudan and South Sudan. ... And what happened — not the Chinese fault, of course, but the Chinese didn’t solve it — there was a civil war, multiple civil wars. Sudan hasn’t developed. Now you have the Janjaweed that were militias in Darfur, displacing and killing civilian populations. They’re now in charge of the country to a large degree. So there wasn’t a happy ending to China’s investments in Sudan.”Whether and when there will be a happier way forward in Ethiopia is now an open question. Here, too, China didn’t cause the conflict, and Chinese interests are squarely behind a peaceful and stable Horn of Africa, so China can move the commodities and other resources it needs from Africa.But one thing China has learned on its new Silk Road is that even the most careful strategic planning only gets you so far. Much is beyond China’s control. And in response to China’s global ambitions, more global players have started their own outreach, with loans and investments, with more countries exercising more agency in deciding who to partner with and how.“They have a lot more confidence than they did before,” says Parag Khanna, a global strategy adviser and author of books including “The Future is Asian.” “And the more the global system becomes a geopolitical marketplace of multiple competing powers, the more agency these smaller countries can actually have.”So for all its imperfections, the Belt & Road Initiative may actually leave as its legacy a more multi-polar world, with states having more infrastructure, more investment, and more options than before, allowing them to better make their own decisions about what kind of future they want, and how to get there. To borrow a phrase China’s leaders like to use: that certainly could be considered a win-win. On China’s New Silk Road podcast is a production of the Global Reporting Centre. Full episodes and transcripts are available here.

This essay is part of "On China's New Silk Road," a podcast by the Global Reporting Centre that tracks China's global ambitions. Over nine episodes, Mary Kay Magistad, a former China correspondent for The World, partners with local journalists on five continents to uncover the effects of the most sweeping global infrastructure initiative in history. As winter arrives high up in the Himalayas, troops from Asia’s two giants remain in a tense standoff at their long-contested border, where India and China fought a war in 1962, and then faced off again just months ago. Now the two sides are in talks to deescalate the situation, with a plan on the table to pull back military forces. In hand-to-hand combat around May, Indian and Chinese troops beat each other with sticks and stones — before better-armed soldiers arrived in June. Despite the long-standing agreement not to use gunfire on the non-demarcated Line of Actual Control (LAC) border, at least 20 Indian troops and an undisclosed number of Chinese soldiers died in the clashes. The confrontation also signaled a sharp turn for the worse in India’s and China’s relationship, which had somewhat warmed over the past dozen years, with China becoming one of India’s top trading partners. Chinese companies have helped to build and supply subway lines in India’s cities, with hopes in some quarters that India will be able to further engage China’s experienced construction companies to overhaul aging Indian infrastructure."We can't build enough bridges or we can’t modernize our railways fast enough. So, all of those skills, actually the Chinese have."Santosh Pai, partner, Link Legal“We have an infrastructure deficit,” said Santosh Pai, a partner with Link Legal in New Delhi. Pai lived in China for years and now advises both Chinese companies who want to invest in India and Indian companies seeking to invest in China.“We can't get our roads built fast enough,” said Pai. “We can't build enough bridges or we can’t modernize our railways fast enough. So, all of those skills, actually the Chinese have.”Related: Opening the door to Chinese investment comes with risks for Southeast Asian nationsChina’s telecommunications companies were among those that installed 3G and 4G systems in India. And until the June border clash, Huawei was under consideration to install 5G. Their involvement may now be off the table, and India — not unlike the US — has also banned dozens of Chinese apps, including TikTok, citing security concerns.China’s critics in India consider the prospect of Beijing controlling Delhi’s 5G networks to be potentially most worrying.  “The fear is that they have source code of these technologies and they can manipulate it to their advantage in a critical situation,” says VK Cherian, a telecommunications consultant in New Delhi. “Or they can literally shut off some networks — critical networks.”India’s leaders have also resisted China’s efforts to pull India into other sorts of networks that China leads or dominates. That goes for the new free-trade deal, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Agreement (RCEP), which was signed Nov. 15, and brings together most East Asian countries that represent almost a third of the global economy. And it goes for China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).‘Our sovereign territory’Even before border tensions ramped up, Indian strategists had become increasingly wary of China’s regional and global ambitions — with a Chinese presence now firmly entrenched in deep-water ports to India’s east in Myanmar, to its south in Sri Lanka, and to its west in Pakistan.India has opted not to join China’s BRI, which is a massive project to finance and build roads, railways, ports, pipelines, 5G and other infrastructure in dozens of countries around the world. The objective is to solidify a new network of global trade and power with China at its center.  Related: The ‘China dream’: New Silk Road begins at homeMany Indians — and other Asians — would prefer a region that’s networked in multiple directions — and not dominated by China. That’s one reason India hasn’t joined the BRI or RCEP. India also has a more immediate reason for keeping its distance from China’s Belt and Road endeavors. One of the BRI’s signature projects, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), runs through Pakistan-administered Kashmir, which India sees as its sovereign territory, unlawfully occupied by Pakistan soon after British colonialism ended in 1947. That was when the British separated the Indian subcontinent into two nations: India, a majority Hindu country, and Pakistan, a predominantly Muslim country.The area where Chinese and Indian troops are now at loggerheads is the Ladakh area in the greater Kashmir region. Chinese troops seized territory there in the 1962 war and in the more recent summer skirmish. And China claims more territory that India now controls.  Dhruv Katoch, a retired major-general in the Indian army. Credit: Mary Kay Magistad/The World “So far as India is concerned, there is no way we can ever support the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. It passes through our sovereign territory,” says Dhruv Katoch, a retired major-general in the Indian army who spent much of his career defending Indian sovereignty in Kashmir. Katoch has also directed India’s Center for Land Warfare Studies, the Indian army’s premier think tank. He argues that India needs to be alert about China’s Belt and Road activities in Pakistan, including the construction of dams, a railway and a road that will run from China, through Kashmir, diagonally southwest across the country, to Pakistan’s strategically-located port of Gwadar. Gwadar is near the Iranian border and not far from the Strait of Hormuz, which leads to the Persian Gulf. Around one-quarter of the world’s oil passes through there, as do US naval ships, coming and going from their base in Bahrain. China’s BRI includes big expansion plans for the Gwadar port. The development encompasses industrial parks and new housing for Chinese workers. The vision is consistent with a Chinese strategy called “port-park-city,” which promotes urban growth starting with port facilities and then continuing with other infrastructure. The term also is associated with the idea that China can build for predominantly civilian use now but pivot toward potential military use later. ‘Very major security concern’Katoch is troubled by the road passing from China through contested Kashmir to Gwadar.“I think it is a very major security concern,” Katoch says. “To protect that road, a very large number of Pakistani military troops are employed. But what is not known is that a very large number of Chinese soldiers are also employed.”“These soldiers are not in uniform, but they are part of the security apparatus of the Chinese state,” he added. “And I think it gives China and Pakistan a nexus to join hands from this particular area should any hostilities take place between India and China.” A general view of signs along a highway leading to Gwadar, Pakistan, April 12, 2017. Credit: Akhtar Soomro/Reuters Isfandiyar Pataudi, a Pakistani retired major-general who was once up for consideration to head Pakistan’s premier military intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), disputes that any armed Chinese are operating in Pakistan.“No foreigner can carry a weapon in Pakistan, including Chinese,” he says. “That’s the rule.  And so this fear — American audiences need to dispel — that there is going to be a Chinese outpost at the mouth of the Persian Gulf.” Gwadar has more challenges than most BRI ports. It’s in Balochistan, one of Pakistan’s poorest provinces. Over the years, it’s seen outsiders come in to mine copper and gold and drill for oil, leaving little benefit for ethnic Baloch people.Now, with China’s presence, the separatist Baloch Liberation Army has pushed back with repeated attacks on Chinese workers, on a luxury hotel in Gwadar, and on the Chinese consulate in Karachi. But still, Chinese construction continues. “I think China’s had its eyes on Gwadar Port for a very long time,” says Taha Siddiqui, a Pakistani journalist who long covered Balochistan. “And it’s going to get that no matter what, and keep that, no matter what.”

As tensions intensify between President Trump and Xi Jinping, China is pursuing its global ambitions through the “Belt and Road Initiative,” a massive global infrastructure project. In her new podcast, former NPR Beijing correspondent Mary Kay Magistad partners with local journalists on five continents to investigate the initiative’s impact. She joins journalist Shuang Li to explain how China tightens its hold on communities by building roads and pipelines around the world.   Guest:  Mary Kay Magistad, Creator & Host, “On China’s New Silk Road” and former East Asia correspondent for NPR, & for PRX's The World Shuang Li, Journalist and documentary filmmaker   If you appreciate this episode and want to support the work we do, please consider making a donation to World Affairs. We cannot do this work without your help. Thank you.​

This essay is part of "On China's New Silk Road," a podcast by the Global Reporting Centre that tracks China's global ambitions. Over nine episodes, Mary Kay Magistad, a former China correspondent for The World, partners with local journalists on five continents to uncover the effects of the most sweeping global infrastructure initiative in history.To win the hearts and minds of Mexicans, marketers from China’s Huawei telecommunications giant figured they’d sponsor a popular soccer team called Club America.  “That was the best thing ever that we could invest in,” says Adriana Moreno who, until recently, headed Huawei Latin America’s marketing and communications for businesses in Huawei’s regional headquarters in Mexico City. In what Moreno calls a remarkably short time, Mexicans went from sneering at Chinese products as cheap and low quality, to cheering for a team with the Huawei logo on their shirts, buying more Huawei smartphones, and being impressed with the value for their money. At the same time, Huawei has been lobbying to build end-to-end 5G telecommunications networks for Mexico, and throughout Latin America and the world — as it promotes its ability to offer all-in-one 5G networks, as a key part of China’s “digital Silk Road.” It’s part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative — building out roads, railways, ports, pipelines, and laying fiberoptic cables around the world. Its vision is to create a new network of global trade and power, with China at the center.  Since 2012, the US government has been urging people to stay away from Huawei, citing its equipment as a security risk. It has also banned Huawei from using US-made technology, including semiconductors.  China is fast becoming a global leader in cutting-edge technologies — such as artificial intelligence, facial recognition, surveillance and 5G — and is exporting them worldwide. Fans like the high quality and low cost. But critics say China’s technology enables authoritarian control and increases dependence on an autocratic state. They’re calling for democracies, including the US, to work together to create a tech ecosystem that protects privacy and freedom of speech.Related: The ‘China dream’: The new Silk Road begins at home Compared to the current 4G telecommunications networks that connect most of the world, 5G transmits much more data, much faster, with more capacity and less latency. It can power the Internet of Things, communicating with your smart thermostat and smart appliances — and perhaps with your future driverless electric car. But these days, the Trump administration — and President Donald Trump himself — have been urging US allies in Latin America and around the world to avoid Huawei, too. “We convinced many countries, many countries — and I did this myself, for the most part — not to use Huawei, because we think it’s an unsafe security risk,” Trump said in July. “It’s a big security risk. And I talked many countries out of using it. If they want to do business with us, they can’t use it.” One concern is that Huawei equipment may contain vulnerabilities or “backdoors” that allow Chinese state security to access the data of those who use it — in the same way that some US equipment has been discovered to have to have backdoors, sometimes installed in foreign exports by the National Security Agency, or NSA.   Huawei denies having backdoors. Whether it does or not, a Chinese national intelligence law passed in 2017 says Chinese citizens and organizations, including companies, must help Chinese intelligence organs if they ask for help. "...if you're using the Chinese technology, your data is not just in those private companies’ hands, such as Google or Apple. Your data is essentially in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.”Xiao Qiand, founder, China Digital Times“So, in other words, if you're using the Chinese technology, your data is not just in those private companies’ hands, such as Google or Apple. Your data is, essentially, in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party,” says Xiao Qiang, a native of Beijing and founder of China Digital Times. Qiang also heads the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Information’s Counter-Power Lab, an interdisciplinary research group that focuses on digital rights and internet freedom.That’s a risk, he argues, for those signing on to China’s digital Silk Road —whether having China install a 5G network or a "smart city" surveillance camera system. It’s even a risk at the personal level, he says, for users of Chinese apps like TikTok and WeChat, both of which the Trump administration has targeted in an effort to limit or control their use within the United States.“The form of generalized surveillance and political repression that most concerns me is the pervasive surveillance of WeChat, which is the chat and everything else app that pretty much all Chinese people who use smartphones are going to be using,” says Graham Webster, a research scholar who edits the DigiChina project at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center. WeChat concentrates a huge amount of personal data in one place: who you know, who you talk to and what you say, where you go and when, what you buy, and medical and banking records. The app is used by most Chinese within China, where it’s largely considered a must-have convenience and not a surveillance tool.Related: WeChat users in the US rankled by potential ban on the app But the Chinese government has increased surveillance since President Xi Jinping took over China’s top leadership in 2012. It has even been experimenting with a “social credit” system that rewards what the Communist Party considers good behavior and punishes transgressions, both financial and political. Already, millions of Chinese have been blocked from buying plane and high-speed train tickets through various local versions of this system.Other government surveillance in China is done through millions of security cameras, facial and voice recognition technology and artificial intelligence. On its digital Silk Road, it has exported surveillance camera systems to countries such as Ecuador. Within China, the government has used this cutting-edge surveillance technology on Uighurs, Turkic Muslims who live in China’s western region of Xinjiang, who the Chinese government largely distrusts as being separatists. Hundreds of thousands of Uighurs have been detained over the past three years, while many more face a daily gauntlet of checkpoints.“The human rights abuses in Xinjiang are nothing short of ongoing atrocities,” Webster says. “And there’s a technology element there, in that the people who are being targeted may be recognized through facial recognition tools — which, by the way, have high error rates and are likely to misidentify people all the time.”But the dystopian digital future that Xinjiang’s experience shows is not inevitable, even as China’s digital Silk Road rolls out globally. Nor is the digital Silk Road only something to be feared and blocked. China’s ability to make affordable high-quality technology cheaply has put smartphones in the hands of hundreds of millions of people in developing countries who otherwise may not have been able to afford them. It has also created ever-faster networks to connect them.The trick in building a more positive, less invasive digital future, Webster says, is to take more seriously the fact that values are embedded in how technologies are made and regulated and be more proactive in steering both in a less invasive and predatory direction. “These could be some pretty darned compelling products around the world,” he says. “If there's a whole technological ecosystem that is more respecting of freedoms and privacy and data security, then that would contrast with the Chinese offerings, which are built for surveillance and manipulation and, frankly, for lower cost.”

This essay is part of "On China's New Silk Road," a podcast by the Global Reporting Centre that tracks China's global ambitions. Over nine episodes, Mary Kay Magistad, a former China correspondent for The World, partners with local journalists on five continents to uncover the effects of the most sweeping global infrastructure initiative in history. The Panama Canal was a marvel of American engineering when it built more than a century ago. It’s still pretty impressive, moving up huge container ships from one ocean, level by level, through three locks to a lake well above sea level, then down again and on to another ocean. Over the past century, the Panama Canal has helped transform global shipping. It can shave off two weeks or more from the route of otherwise having to go around the horn of South America —  saving shippers time and money, with the bonus of skipping the stormy seas.Related: The 'China dream': China's new Silk Road begins at homeAmericans didn’t just build the Panama Canal. For most of the 20th century, from 1903 to 1979, they also controlled it. The US military was based on a strip of land that ran the entire length of the canal and 10 miles across.  But Panamanians generally weren’t allowed to enter the Panama Canal Zone. That created both mystique and resentment and eventually led to an end to what pro-independence protesters saw as a neocolonial American presence. American housing in the old Panama Canal Zone has now been left to rot, with graffiti thick on the walls. And Panamanians are proud to control the Panama Canal themselves.“Even from high in the government, they have recognized that the canal is running efficiently — even better now than in the old system,” said Johnny Wong, an engineer who worked on the Panama Canal for three decades. He helped oversee an expansion project of the canal from 2007 to 2016, adding an extra lane and doubling the canal’s capacity.China is now interested in the Panama Canal both for its economic utility in cutting time and cost on shipping routes, and for its strategic and symbolic value, with China aspiring to replace the US as the global, preeminent power. Johnny Wong is an engineer who helped oversee expansion of the Panama Canal. He is one of many Panamanians of Chinese ancestry.  Credit: Mary Kay Magistad/The World For 20 years, Hutchison Ports, a Hong Kong company, managed ports at either end of the canal.A Chinese state-owned company plans to build a bridge over the canal. Another has built a convention center and a cruise ship terminal on the Pacific side of the canal, where the Chinese government also wanted to build a new embassy — until pushback from both the United States and Panama caused them to look elsewhere. Several other Chinese projects were also proposed since Panama joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative in 2017, including a high-speed rail system across Panama. “Belt and Road” stands for a belt of land routes and a maritime Silk Road of sea routes — which is what China aims to build with this global infrastructure initiative. Most of the world’s countries have signed on or expressed interest in it. When Panama shifted its diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in June 2017, a step needed to join the Belt and Road later that year, then-President Juan Carlos Varela sat down for an interview with China’s state-run CGTN television network. “China has the largest population in the world, has the second-largest economy, [and] is the second-main user of the Panama Canal,” Varela said. Varela also said he gave the Trump administration about an hour’s notice of Panama’s decision to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative. “This is our decision,” he said. “And I’m pretty sure I did the right thing for our people.”The Trump administration soon made it clear it had a different view. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Panama in late 2018 and warned against what he called China’s “predatory economic activity.”  Related: China's new Silk Road traverses Kazakhstan. But some Kazakhs are skeptical of Chinese influence. Soon after, Chinese projects in Panama started being scaled back, canceled or rejected. A $4 billion high-speed rail project was canceled. A $2.5 billion monorail project, linking Panama City with its western suburbs, went to South Korea’s Hyundai instead of, as earlier expected, to a Chinese company. The Panama Canal bridge to be built by a top Chinese state-owned company was scaled back. Negotiations between Panama and China for a free trade agreement stalled. And Panama’s government said it will audit Hutchison Ports and is considering whether to renew its concession when it expires in 2022. Patiently and methodically, China is using its Belt and Road Initiative to expand and strengthen its strategic presence around the world, including in what has long been called the United States’ backyard.Welcome to a 21st-century version of the Great Game. The 19th-century version had imperial Russia and imperial Great Britain vying for influence and access to resources in Central Asia. Now, it’s the world’s two top economies vying for influence around the world: the United States as the incumbent premier power, and China as an ambitious contender for that position. China, patiently and methodically, is using its Belt and Road Initiative to expand and strengthen its strategic presence around the world, including in what has long been called the United States’ backyard.“Our government, the generals and the president should have sat down and said, ‘Hey, something is going on around here,’” said retired US Sergeant First Class Sidney Thomas, on a cruise down the Panama Canal in November 2019. He was born in Panama, moved to the United States as a kid, and came back to Panama with the US military in the 1970s. “It’s like playing checkers, or even chess. You make a move, and you wait for the other person. If the other person doesn’t make a move, you study the board to get an advantage. So, yeah — I believe China has an advantage now.” China has been investing heavily in Latin America for more than a decade. It has built roads and dams in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest as land is cleared to grow more soybeans for export to China. It has also built or expanded ports in Peru, Mexico, Panama; a dam and surveillance system in Ecuador; and dozens of other projects throughout the region. In Latin America, 19 countries have now joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative — after a decade in which trade between China and Latin America increased more than twentyfold.  The hope across much of Latin America had been that signing on to Belt and Road membership would bring more Chinese investment of the kind each country needed, and more opportunities for Latin American countries to export to China, narrowing often sizable trade imbalances. That hasn’t always happened. Venezuela and Ecuador, in particular, now have high debts to China and new economic woes in the wake of COVID-19. The region’s four largest economies — Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico — still haven’t signed a Belt and Road Initiative agreement. Together, they account for 70% of Latin America’s gross domestic product. But the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei is already building 5G networks in Mexico and Argentina, and has done pilot runs of its 5G technology in Brazil. “Mexico has to be always open to build up a strategic relationship with China, but always very, very clear: It has to be a relationship that is well-balanced. We don’t want to create any type of dependency, not to China, neither to the United States.” Idelfonso Giajardo, Mexico's former Secretary of Economy“Mexico has to be always open to build up a strategic relationship with China, but always very, very clear: It has to be a relationship that is well-balanced. We don’t want to create any type of dependency, not to China, neither to the United States,” Mexico’s former Secretary of Economy Ildefonso Guajardo told Isabella Cota, a Mexican journalist and economic correspondent for the Spanish newspaper, El Pais.   Isabella Cota is the economic correspondent for the Spanish newspaper El Pais and a partner reporter for the "On China’s New Silk Road" podcast. Credit: Mary Kay Magistad/The World Later, Cota — a partner reporter for the “On China’s New Silk Road” podcast — said the hit Mexico’s economy is taking from COVID-19 is causing the government to consider the best way forward. Mexico’s central bank has warned the economy could contract by almost 13%, and 15 million or more Mexicans could fall out of the middle class and into poverty. Chinese investment in the Mayan Train, a 900-milelong tourist train on the Yucatán Peninsula and in an oil refinery may help. But Cota says many Mexicans are looking to the new US-Mexico-Canada Agreement — the new North American Free Trade Agreement — more than anything else. “Mexican officials are just so hopeful that this is going to be the thing that makes the economy come back in Mexico,” Cota said. “I’m not so sure it’s going to work out that way, at least not immediately. But this shift in mentality is important. It’s been kind of like being more grounded, being more realistic about Mexico’s opportunities. Cota says it’s not clear yet how Mexico is going to balance its long-standing and close economic relationship with the United States, and new investment opportunities that may be coming from China.  “But I think that they’re going to try and get the best of both worlds,” she said. “And you know what? Quite frankly, I hope they do. Because we need as much investment and as much opportunity as we can get in Mexico.”

This essay is part of "On China's New Silk Road," a podcast by the Global Reporting Centre that tracks China's global ambitions. Over nine episodes, Mary Kay Magistad, a former China correspondent for The World, partners with local journalists on five continents to uncover the effects of the most sweeping global infrastructure initiative in history. If Venice makes you think of scenic canals and singing gondoliers, think, too, about how Venice was once a center of global trade. Goods from as far off as China would travel on the ancient Silk Road, in ships that would sail right up to the city’s San Marco Square. That trade brought Venice wealth, ideas, innovations — and disease. The bubonic plague, which geneticists have traced to its origins in China, wiped out a third of Venice’s — and Europe’s — population in the mid-14th century. Venice’s innovation then was to isolate incoming travelers on islands until it was clear they weren’t infected. It was the dawn of the quarantine.Now, in a new pandemic, Italy faces new challenges. Its economy was already in recession with high unemployment before COVID-19 hit this spring. In March 2019, disgruntled populists, skeptical that the European Union had much to offer Italy, led the way to make Italy the first G7 country to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) — a global infrastructure initiative to build a belt of land routes and a maritime road of sea routes, in which Chinese loans and investments, and mostly Chinese state-owned companies, are building roads, railways, ports, pipelines, 5G networks and more around the world.  The hope was that joining the BRI would help Italy export more of its products to China, narrow its considerable trade gap and pull in new Chinese investment. China has already invested some $20 billion in Italy over the past 20 years. But that investment peaked four or five years before Italy joined the BRI. And significant new Chinese investment, or a new Chinese appetite for Italian exports, hasn’t exactly been pouring in since — certainly not this year amid a pandemic.  Related: The 'China dream': China's new Silk Road begins at homeBut Italy’s move closer to China, which the European Union calls “a systemic rival,” served as a wakeup call to the EU: If it doesn’t help member economies when they’re feeling economic pain, they could come up with solutions that may not be in the EU’s strategic interests. When Italy’s economy reeled under COVID-19, the EU offered Italy help: more than $200 billion in cheap loans and grants from the EU’s coronavirus recovery plan, an outsized share of the $890 billion total available in the fund.The EU appeared to be applying a lesson learned during the 2008 financial crisis. At the time, it insisted that an already suffering Greece undergo austerity measures. Instead of being squeezed indefinitely, Greece accepted investment from the Chinese state-owned China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO) to manage, and eventually buy, a majority stake in Greece’s storied ancient port of Piraeus, which also happens to be one of Europe’s most strategically located ports. COSCO’s investment has helped transform Piraeus into the busiest port in the Mediterranean.Chinese investments in the Italian ports of Genoa and Trieste were mentioned in the memorandum of understanding Italy signed when it joined China’s BRI last year, a fact that got some Europeans speculating about whether a Chinese presence in those ports would be a Trojan horse for China to dominate central Europe.Michele Geraci is an Italian economist who, as Italy’s undersecretary of economic development at the time, was instrumental in moving Italy to join the BRI. He dismisses such concerns as overblown, given how many European ports China already manages or owns.“When we hear warnings that Chinese should not invest in the Italian ports, it’s too late. China has already invested in all major European ports and almost manages 15 to 20% of European traffic.”Michele Geraci, former Italian undersecretary  of economic development“We have Bilbao, Valencia, Antwerp in Belgium, Zeebrugge, Piraeus in Greece of course, Dunkirk, Le Havre, Marseilles, Nantes in France, Malta, Rotterdam in the Netherlands,” he says. “So when we hear warnings that Chinese should not invest in the Italian ports, it’s too late. China has already invested in all major European ports and almost manages 15 to 20% of European traffic.” The container port in Trieste, Italy.  Credit: Courtesy of Mary Kay Magistad The challenge, he says, should be for Italians to figure out how to make Chinese investment work for Italy’s interests.And in Trieste, a picturesque city rising above the Adriatic Sea, with a port going back to the Roman Empire, and a free port for 300 years, port president Zeno D’Agostino sees great opportunity.“We must try to use this opportunity, which is to be a node in world logistics,” he says. Related: China's new Silk Road traverses Kazakhstan. But some Kazakhs are skeptical of Chinese influence.D’Agostino says he’s been working with Chinese partners to get more Italian exports to eastern China. He’s looking to develop areas of Trieste’s free port, with factories and warehouses to take advantage of its free trade status — only paying duty on goods when they leave the warehouses.  He’d been expecting this kind of investment from the Chinese. But while that’s been slow to come, the publicity that came to Trieste when Italy joined China’s BRI has drawn in more European investors. “I don’t need the money of the Chinese, I can tell you, without problem,” D’Agostino says. “So if we do what we agreed, we are both satisfied. If they do what they want, and it’s something different from what we agreed, we cannot do [it].”Italy’s “Golden Power” rules prohibit the sale of ports and other strategic assets to foreign entities. Back in Venice, the head of its modern Marghera Port, Pino Musolino, says it’s a good thing Italy has those restrictions because China has proven adept at establishing a presence at strategic ports all the way from China to Europe.“The Belt and Road [Initiative] is not just about infrastructure,” he says. “It's a huge design aimed at controlling trade flows and controlling the main global value chains. If you control those, you don't need to control any army anymore. You are controlling the very specific wealth of any country along those economical corridors. Chinese are very much aware of this, and they are doing a very good job on this, honestly. And they are also very straight forward on this, I have to say, I don't see them particularly scheming on this. They have a clear goal and they are pursuing it.” Italy’s government, made up of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and the center-left Democratic Party, is working out its own goals for what they expect to be an economic bounce next year, after Italy’s economy contracts 8 to 9% this year. There’s talk of upgrading train lines and creating a fast broadband network. China’s Huawei had been in the running. Italy’s leaders have since reconsidered using them, citing security concerns.

This essay is part of "On China's New Silk Road," a podcast by the Global Reporting Centre that tracks China's global ambitions. Over nine episodes, Mary Kay Magistad, a former China correspondent for The World, partners with local journalists on five continents to uncover the effects of the most sweeping global infrastructure initiative in history. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Almaty, Kazakhstan’s capital, in 2013, seemed like another boring meeting worth skipping, according to Dulat Yesnazar, then a college student studying international relations. Xi had come to announce the launch of one of the most sweeping global infrastructure initiatives in history. “I thought it was just another of those programs where you just talk much and do nothing — or do little,” Yesnazar said.  Now, as a journalist, Dulat sees China’s new Silk Road — also called the Belt and Road Initiative — as an effort to extend its reach and its power.“It’s just part of China’s ambitions, big ambitions, of being hegemon,” he says.The Belt and Road Initiative, rolled out by the Chinese government in 2013, aims to build a belt of land and sea routes that stretches from East Asia to Europe, spanning some 70 countries. Kazakhstan has called itself a buckle in that belt, echoing the centuries on the ancient Silk Road when Kazakhstan was at the crossroads for caravans of traders from China, India, Persia, Turkey, and beyond. But many Kazakhs are skeptical of China’s intentions and its promises to make the new Silk Road a “win-win” for both countries.In recent years, protests have erupted in Kazakhstan against Chinese workers taking jobs Kazakhs can do, or over what some see as increasing Chinese political influence in Kazakhstan.  Related: The 'China dream': China's new Silk Road begins at homeProtesters pressured the Kazakh government to be more transparent about the nature of Chinese investments. Finally, in 2019, the government released data showing 55 Kazakh projects are receiving Chinese new Silk Road investment and loans totaling $27.6 billion, with approximatley of half going toward oil and gas-related projects. Some protesters have called for some of those projects to be scrapped.But other Kazakhs see the Belt and Road Initiative as an opportunity to help Kazakhstan’s economy, and to get investments that weren’t so easy for Kazakhs to land elsewhere. Almas Chukin, an entrepreneur in Almaty, says he landed a Chinese investment for a wind energy project in Kazakhstan he’d been trying to do for a decade.“We traveled to the United State a few times, but when the first question was, ‘Where is Kazakhstan?’ you understand they’re not going to give you money.”Almas Chukin, entrepreneur, Almaty, Kazakhstan“We traveled to the United State a few times, but when the first question was, ‘Where is Kazakhstan?’ you understand they’re not going to give you money,” he says with a chuckle.  He ticks off his next stops: London? Nope. Paris? Not interested. Turkey? “More words than deeds,” he says.  Almas Chukin, an entrepreneur who got Chinese funding for Kazakhstan’s first major wind energy projects after US and European potential investors turned him down.  Credit: Mary Kay Magistad/The World “And with China, we finally got the project,” he says. The result, he says, will be Kazakhstan’s first major wind energy project at a time when the Kazakh government has committed to moving toward using more renewable energy.  Chinese investment is also helping to transform Kazakhstan’s border with China. On the Kazakh side, there’s now a new dry port where companies load containers onto trains, with plans for much more. And in a new free trade zone on both sides of the border, a new Chinese city has sprung up in Khorgos, where a dusty trading town used to be. Kazakh shoppers come in by the busload to snap up bargains and sell them for a profit back home. “Business is good and getting better,” says Li Xin, a Chinese shop owner in Khorgos who sells handbags and other women’s accessories, who came from northeastern China’s Heilongjiang province. “I didn’t know much about this place, or about the Belt and Road, before I came here. But I’m glad I did.”Li says she thinks she’s here to stay, and she hopes the Belt and Road strengthens relations between Kazakhs and Chinese. She says she hopes the two sides can learn to communicate better. Unintentionally illustrating the challenge, she calls Kazakhs mao zi, the Pinyin spelling of a somewhat derogatory term in Chinese for “Russian.”  When it comes to cultural understanding across the border, the easiest cultural understanding may be between Kazakhs, most of whom are Muslim, and Uighurs, the Turkic Muslim population that, until recently, had been the majority in Xinjiang — the region of China that abuts Kazakhstan. When China’s Communist Party came to power in 1949, it encouraged Han Chinese — the ethnic majority in China — to move to Xinjiang and tame China’s wild west. Uighurs are now a minority in Xinjiang.And over the past three years, Chinese officials have forced hundreds of thousands of Uighur and ethnic Kazakh Muslims into so-called "reeducation camps" and other forms of detention. Chinese officials insist these measures are necessary to prevent extremism, terrorism and separatism. Related: Sterilization abuse of Uighurs in China meets international legal criteria for genocide, experts sayDetainees who have been released tell of being beaten, made to eat pork — against usual Islamic practice — and to recite propaganda.  “Every day, we’d spend 45 minutes learning Chinese and glorifying the Communist Party and President Xi Jinping,” says Gulzira Auelkhan, who was detained for 15 months. An ethnic Kazakh, she was born in Xinjiang as a Chinese citizen, married a Kazakh man, and moved to Kazakhstan. She was detained at the Kazakhstan-China border on her way home to Xinjiang to visit her sick father.   Kazakhs in Almaty hold up photos of their relatives being held in detention in Xinjiang, China. Credit: Kazakhs in Almaty hold up photos of their relatives being held in detention in Xinjiang, China. Auelkhan’s husband was eventually able to bring her home to Kazakhstan — but not before she’d completed a stretch of forced labor, making gloves for export to Germany and the US. Her experience did nothing to sell her on the win-win promises China makes about the new Silk Road.“I don’t believe that Kazakhstan and China are friends. ... I think this project is part of China’s expansion. I think they’re trying to take over other countries.”Gulzira Auelkhan, an ethnic Kazakh“I don’t believe that Kazakhstan and China are friends,” she says. “I think this project is part of China’s expansion. I think they’re trying to take over other countries.” And, she says, it seems they want to “erase Islam” within China’s borders.  Kazakhstan’s leaders are left to balance between the potential economic windfall of strengthening economic ties with China under the New Silk Road, and many Kazakhs’ desire to protect their sovereignty, culture, and religious preferences, as they watch with concern the way Chinese authorities are treating Muslims just across the border. “It’s extremely destructive, because they’re creating this horrible node for just decades to come,” says Gene Bunin, an Almaty-based scholar of the Uighur language, who created an online database of detainees called shahit.biz.  “You’re just going to have a lot of broken people who don’t know what to do with their frustrations.”

This week, we're delighted to bring you the first episode of Mary Kay Magistad's brand new podcast, On China's New Silk Road. Mary Kay is a veteran China reporter and a dear friend of the Sinica Podcast – a frequent guest in our early days. After she moved back to the States, she created another great podcast called Who's Century It It?, a show that often looked at issues related to China. We know that Sinica's audience would really appreciate her latest series and wanted to share it with you. On China's New Silk Road is a production of the Global Reporting Centre, a nonprofit group that teaches, practices and promotes innovation in global journalism. Make sure to subscribe to this great new series! We hope you enjoy this first episode.

In the first episode of "On China's New Silk Road," The World's former China correspondent Mary Kay Magistad looks at Chengdu, China, a stop on both the ancient Silk Road and the new one, for clues on China's global influence via its Belt and Road Initiative.

This essay is part of "On China's New Silk Road," a podcast by the Global Reporting Centre that tracks China's global ambitions. Over nine episodes, Mary Kay Magistad, a former China correspondent for The World, partners with local journalists on five continents to uncover the effects of the most sweeping global infrastructure initiative in history.If you’d asked Chinese people a decade ago to define the “Chinese dream,” you might have heard answers that sounded a lot like the American dream: opportunity, self-made prosperity, time for leisure with good friends and  family, a happy life.  I asked that very question in different parts of China in the leadup to the 2008 Beijing Olympics and in the years just after, when I was The World’s China correspondent. China, at that point, had undergone an extraordinary economic transformation, using profits from being the factory of the world to build cities, highways, airports and high-speed rail all over the country, connecting people and raising incomes, living standards and expectations. But when President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012 as Communist Party chief, and in 2013 as president, he made it clear he had a different dream. The "China dream," he said, is for China to be strong again in the world, as it was for centuries. He has called on Chinese to unite behind this one shared dream and make it a reality.  As part of that plan, President Xi launched a new initiative in the same year he became president. He even enshrined it in China’s constitution — it’s that important to his vision of China’s place in the world. It’s called the new Silk Road, a new take on the era centuries ago when caravans of traders came from Europe through Central Asia, to China, when ships sailed from China to Southeast Asia to Europe.It’s called the new Silk Road, a new take on the era centuries ago when caravans of traders came from Europe through Central Asia, to China, when ships sailed from China to Southeast Asia to Europe.  The new Silk Road is also called the "Belt and Road Initiative" — as in, a belt of land routes and a maritime Silk Road of sea routes, connecting China with much of Asia, Africa and Europe, with more projects in Latin America, the Arctic, in cyberspace and in space.   A street in Chengdu, China, a stop on both the ancient Silk Road and the new one. Credit: Courtesy of Mary Kay Magistad Most of the world’s countries have signed on to be part of it, and so far, China has laid out more than half a trillion dollars in loans and investments, with mostly Chinese construction teams now applying abroad the infrastructure-building experience they learned at home. China’s leaders pitch the new Silk Road as a “win-win.” In some countries, Chinese investments and infrastructure building have indeed helped create jobs and boost incomes, just as similar efforts did in China.  In other countries, people aren’t so sure about the “win-win” thing. Some joke about this being a double win for China, with China giving loans for projects that seem to serve China’s long-term interests more than meet the most pressing local needs. At least eight new Silk Road partner countries are carrying too much debt for their financial health, a study by the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC, has found. In my new podcast with The Global Reporting Centre, “On China’s New Silk Road,” I team up with local journalists in five continents to explore how China’s global ambitions are seen around the world, what impact China’s new Silk Road investments are having on the ground, and how COVID-19 and other challenges are affecting China’s goals. First up, a stop on the ancient Silk Road and the new one: Chengdu, capital of Sichuan, home of spicy hot pot and convivial teahouses, and a city with one of the fastest-growing economies in China over the past decade.   Mary Kay Magistad, right, reported from China with reporter Shuang Li, left, in June 2019. Credit: Courtesy of Mary Kay Magistad “I think it’s quite amazing, just to think about it, how fast everything is going,” says Shuang Li, a Chengdu native and a journalist who worked with Reuters news agency in Shanghai for a decade before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area. “I remember the early years when China was building the high-speed rail, and a lot of people were very skeptical. ‘This is a huge investment. How can you get it back?’ But then, just within a few years, it completely changed the way that people travel.”On the new Silk Road, Chengdu is a dry port, with trains traveling from its station through Central Asia to Europe. Thousands of trains now make the journey annually from China to Europe, a symbol of how the new Silk Road is retracing the path of the old. But it’s not yet become a game-changer in how goods are shipped from China.“Overland cargo transport from China through central Asia to Europe doesn’t have a really strong strategic advantage on cost or speed,” says Eli Sweet, vice-chair of the American Chamber of Commerce of southwest China, and formerly with Chevron Petro-China. “We were shipping… thousands of tons of cargo every month,” he says. “And it wasn't going by rail through the Silk Road to Europe, even though that rail line was already open at the time. Mostly that was used by Volvo for shipping car parts. If you want something fast, air cargo shipment is still a lot more effective. And if you want something that's going to be the cheapest, sea freight is definitely the most cost-effective.”Shuang also found, when talking on background to European representative trade offices in Chengdu, that “people still want to use the sea, and go through the ports of Shanghai or Tianjin. Because people here — they don’t know how to deal with various goods. So, it can take them a long time to clear customs.”It’s still early days for the new Silk Road, and many Chinese entrepreneurs and officials have been known to learn fast and adapt quickly. That could make new Silk Road projects more attractive — and affordable — for countries now reeling from a COVID-induced economic hit. But in the seven years since the new Silk Road initiative launched, even some countries that signed on to it have grown concerned about Chinese aggression in the South China Sea, on China’s border with India, and in Chinese diplomacy. Some have started to cancel or cut back Chinese loans and Chinese-built projects.  Some have begun looking for other investment partners, and Japan, India, the European Union and to a lesser extent the United States, have started offering alternatives. That leaves President Xi Jinping with a quandary. It’s one thing to have your own dream, to make China great again in the world, and ordering the Chinese military and civilians to work together to more swiftly reach that goal. It’s quite another to get others on the new Silk Road to dream your dream, much less accept it as their reality. 

Join host Mary Kay Magistad as she explores how China's New Silk Road may change the world. Dozens of countries have invited China to build roads, railways, ports, 5G networks, and more. How is China’s global ambition seen around the world and what impact are its investments having on the ground? Over nine episodes, Mary Kay, a former China correspondent for NPR and PRX’s “The World,” partners with local journalists on five continents to uncover the effects of the most sweeping global infrastructure initiative in history. From the Global Reporting Centre, “On China’s New Silk Road” launches September 2, with new episodes dropping weekly.

Protesters are back in the streets in Hong Kong to fight against a new security law that tightens the Chinese government’s  grip over the city. On this week’s episode, we look at how Hong Kong’s new security law will impact US-China relations, and what it means for the millions of people who live there. First, we’ll hear from Human Rights Watch’s China Director, Sophie Richardson, who argues that US-China relations are at their worst point since the Cold War. Will this new law make them worse? Next, an activist and artist from Hong Kong discusses the evolution of her city’s protest movement. Then, we revisit a conversation with journalist Mary Kay Magistad and professor Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a historian specializing in modern China. They unpack the history of Hong Kong and how the city got to where it is today.    Guests:  Mary Kay Magistad, former East Asia correspondent for NPR & Director of Audio Journalism at UC Berkeley Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Professor at UC Irvine and author of Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink Sophie Richardson, China Director at Human Rights Watch and author of China, Cambodia, and the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence Claire, artist and activist from Hong Kong If you appreciate this episode and want to support the work we do, please consider making a donation to World Affairs. We cannot do this work without your help. Thank you.

Are we witnessing the end of Hong Kong as we know it - or is this the biggest challenge yet to China’s authoritarian rule? This week on the podcast, we’re looking at what’s driving the protests in Hong Kong and why the demonstrations have persisted for so long. We walk through the history of Hong Kong, right up to today with: Jeffrey Wasserstrom, professor of history at UC Irvine and author of Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink, and former East Asia Correspondent for NPR and PRI’s The World, Mary Kay Magistad. We want to hear from you! Please take part in a quick survey to tell us how we can improve our podcast: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PWZ7KMW

In the imagined world of novelist Eliot Peper's near-term future in such books as Bandwidth and Borderless, San Diego's burning, polar ice caps have melted, everyone's got their heads in their digital feeds, and a powerful social media company called Commonwealth controls --well, seems like just about everything. Eliot talks to host Mary Kay Magistad about writing speculative fiction, about the value of sci fi in helping us all think through current crises and possible futures, and about what sci fi has seen coming, and what it's gotten just plain wrong. 

Few issues hit more of an emotional chord, or an emotional nerve than those around borders and belonging, immigration and identity. Bringing it home in this third of a three-episode series on these issues, host Mary Kay Magistad visits the lands of her ancestors — Ireland and Germany — and explores the ways in which they are wrestling with these issues — and have wrestled with them in the past.

This live recording of Sinica at the Smyth Hotel in New York City on July 13 features the journalists Mary Kay Magistad and Gady Epstein discussing the increasingly complex "frenemyship" of China and the United States. They also talk about the South China Sea, the role of "old China hands," and how the Middle Kingdom is changing the world and being changed by it. The title of the episode is taken from Mary Kay's radio show and podcast, Whose Century Is it? Mary Kay is a veteran radio journalist who has covered China, North Korea, Southeast Asia, Ethiopia, the Western Sahara, Kashmir and many other places for NPR, PRI and other outlets. Gady has reported on business, current affairs, the internet, and politics in Asia and particularly China since 2002 for the Baltimore Sun, Forbes and The Economist, where he also began covering the media industry after moving back to the U.S. in 2015. They both are regular guests from the podcast's early days.

When big things happen, there's nothing like sitting down with smart friends over a beer (or coffee, or whatever), and kicking around ideas about what it all means, and where it's all going. In this episode, host Mary Kay Magistad checks in with old friends in Dublin, London and Berlin, to see how Brexit looks from where they sit, and how it might affect their lives.