The Little Red Podcast

In our fourth episode of the China Rules series, we look at the State Council’s brand-new rules on overseas investment. These formalize central control over outbound investment, addressing the Party’s concerns about sensitive technologies and data, while sending a chilling signal to Chinese tech companies looking to move abroad. Beijing is now the first major capital exporter to run outbound investment as explicit indus...

In the latest episode in our China Rules series, we look at the rise and potential fall of China’s electric vehicle (EV) industry. Once scoffed at by Elon Musk, China’s EV industry is charging ahead in international markets with its top car brand, BYD, selling more cars than Tesla in 2025. Massive government subsidies and consistent policy have brought China to a point where it now leads in a range of technologies, from...

In the second episode of our series, China Rules, we look at an industry dominated by China: humanoid robots. Beijing’s running, dancing and fighting robots are more than just a gimmick; the country’s 15th Five-year Plan puts robotics right at the heart of its modern industrial system. China already accounts for 80% of global humanoid robot installations. In a recent half marathon, a humanoid robot called Lightning left...

In our new series—China Rules—we look at how China is a global exporter, not just of goods, but also of standards, ideas, technologies and mechanisms of control. We’re starting with politics, and whether China is exporting its brand of “smart authoritarianism”. China’s heady mix of extractive political institutions and pro-growth economic policies makes for an attractive recipe to would-be imitat...

As an Easter treat, we're bringing you a cracking tale of espionage from one of our favourite China podcasts: Face Off. We'll be back shortly with a new season called China Rules.

Espionage

Two young CIA agents were flown to northern China in 1952, part of a bizarre Cold War operation to overthrow Mao Zedong. The plane crashed. The two Americans were arrested, and jailed for 20 years. We fast forward to today and turn the tables: H...

Britain is the latest country to be plunged into yet another espionage scandal after an MP’s husband was arrested on suspicion of spying for China. Beijing’s long been known for its ‘thousand grains of sand’ strategy relying on amateur intelligence collectors, but it’s now increasingly employing cognitive warfare to shape public opinion. This month, we analyse changes to China’s spying ground gam...

In 2013, to mark International Consumers Day, China’s state-run TV network labelled Apple a ‘bad company’. More than a decade later, despite claiming to rely on multinationals from 50 different countries, Apple still has nearly 100% of its supply chain in China. In this episode, we look at how Apple became so dependent on China, what it did to rehabilitate its image in the eyes of the Chinese government, and how i...

China’s college exam, the gaokao, is fetishized as the ultimate test, yet a lesser-known story is how it entrenches regional education discrimination. Its role at social engineering is also clear, with AI suddenly becoming the sixth most popular major in China, on command from above. This month, the Little Red Podcast sets the first ever podcast gaokao. The intrepid test-takers are Edward Vickers from Kyushu University, ...

In the latest episode in our series on belief, we’re looking at the CCP’s faith in Artificial Intelligence. China has embraced AI like no other nation, laying out a plan for AI that would see 70 percent adoption across six sectors - including governance – within the next two years. This aggressive approach is driven by commercial imperatives, the desire to shape international standards, and the hope that AI will s...

In the latest episode in our series on belief, we’re exploring the surprising revival of shamanism in China, which has made a comeback despite Mao's best efforts at eradication. Ritual healers and spirit mediums are tapping into online believers and a public thirst for authentic spirituality. Shamanism has also become a tourist draw as a form of cultural and religious heritage, with a shamanic theme park even existing in nort...

In the latest in our series on belief, we’re examining the emergence of incels in the world’s largest manosphere.  China’s growing incel community is fuelled by state-approved nationalism and simple demographics—by one estimate, 30 million Chinese men won’t find a life partner. To find out why so many Chinese men believe that women are the source of their problems, Louisa and Graeme are joined by ...

Continuing our series on belief in China, we look at the revival of Buddhism, which is being embraced by citizens and the Chinese state. While temple visits increase, the state is funding temples and martial arts academies from Nepal to Tanzania. As Xi Jinping extols Buddhism with Chinese characteristics, the Chinese state is leveraging Buddhism diplomacy to its advantage. To find out more, Louisa and Graeme are joined by anthropol...

In the latest in our series on belief, we’re looking at China’s official belief system—Marxism.  In recent years, netizens have argued China has entered the ‘garbage time’ of history, a phrase borrowed from the dying minutes of a basketball game, which now references a crisis of trust in the Communist Party and its official ideology.  To ask whether Marxism still exists in China, and how Marx...

In our third episode on beliefs and ideologies, we explore China’s newfound enthusiasm for psychiatry. Counselling was only registered as a profession in 2001 yet has seen a massive boom under Xi Jinping. The psy-boom is such that even party branch meetings are doing mindfulness exercises, and practitioners are trying to indigenise counselling practices. There’s plenty to work on; the 2022 China Mental Health Survey fou...

To welcome the Year of the Snake, we’re launching a new series looking at belief in China. Young Chinese people are increasingly turning to spirituality - even online manifestations of it - and feng shui, in this moment of high unemployment and economic stress. For a Party guided by materialism, this spike in spiritual interest presents a dilemma: how to regulate something you purport not to believe in. To discuss the state's...

China is in the grip of a gender war. While government officials are texting and even cold calling women to urge them have children, the fertility rate continues to drop. Better educated and often better paid their male peers, many urban Chinese women are simply choosing not to marry. To discuss the growing female backlash to the Party’s pro-natal policies, Louisa and Graeme are joined by Chloe Mofei Shen, lifestyle director ...

Few outside the Chinese wedding banquet circuit have heard of fish maw, a flavourless, unappetising-looking swim bladder found in bony fish. In dried form, a kilo from the right species goes for around $150,000 on the world market, double the price of a kilogram of cocaine. The most prized maw is found in one of the remotest corners of the planet, the Kikori Delta in southern Papua New Guinea, where the once ignored scaly croaker i...

Writers from Hong Kong face a Kafkaesque decision in the years since draconian security legislation was imposed on the city: to stay and be subject to intense censorship, or to write freely from exile.  In this episode, Louisa speaks to two award-winning authors who have chosen different paths.  Lau Yeewa is still living in Hong Kong; her book Tongueless, translated by Jennifer Feeley, won the 2024 Pen Translates award.&n...

In our third episode on pig butchering scams, we explore the origins of the Chinese criminal syndicates that enslave people from at least 66 different countries. We examine the institutions supporting this appalling business, from the Thai military to cryptocurrencies, Burmese border guard forces to special economic zones. And the marks for these scam syndicates are not just Chinese lonely hearts—Western countries are now mor...