With the US imposing new tariffs on Chinese exports, the state of the country’s domestic economy has become all the more crucial. Despite healthy export growth in recent years, at home consumer confidence has plummeted, with rising youth unemployment and a slump in the once booming housing market. Will recent government steps to reassure consumers and entrepreneurs and stimulate property sales be enough to revive the economy? Or does soaring local government debt mean more creative solutions are required? In this episode, we hear two perspectives on China’s economic challenges — from economist Andy Rothman, founder of Sinology LLC, and Professor Victor Shih, director of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California San Diego.
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The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the speakers and are not necessarily those of the SOAS China Institute.

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Music credit: Sappheiros / CC BY 3.0

Ep185: China's Economic Challenges — Consumption Slump and Soaring Local Government Debt

In this episode we look at the life and work of Lynn Pan, one of the most imaginative of writers in English about modern China and particularly Shanghai, who died last year, and was commemorated at a special event at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival earlier this month. Her books, including In Search of Old Shanghai, The New Chinese Revolution, Sons of the Yellow Emperor, Shanghai Style and When True Love Came to China, were accessible, often witty, and always deeply researched. Duncan Hewitt discusses her legacy with Paul French, author of Midnight in Peking and Her Lotus Year, Frances Wood,  SOAS Research Associate and former curator of Chinese collections at the British Library, and Michelle Garnaut, founder of the Shanghai Literary Festival. With a further contribution from Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Chancellor’s Professor of History at University of California, Irvine.
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The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the speakers and are not necessarily those of the SOAS China Institute.
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Music credit: Sappheiros / CC BY 3.0

Ep186: Writing Shanghai, Writing China — A Tribute to Lynn Pan

At this month’s legislative session China announced policies to maintain GDP growth at 5%, boost consumption and the private sector and promote AI and high tech industry, from quantum computing to the low altitude economy. But will it be enough to reassure consumers and investors — and does the higher than GDP growth increase in defence spending in the budget, and the continuing crackdown on corruption hint that the leadership’s top priorities are still security and stability rather than growth? Professor Steve Tsang, Director of the SOAS China Institute and co-author of the recent book, The Political Thought of Xi Jinping, and George Magnus, former Chief Economist at UBS, and a Research Associate at SOAS and at the Oxford University China Centre, share their views.
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The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the speakers and are not necessarily those of the SOAS China Institute.
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Music credit: Sappheiros / CC BY 3.0

Ep187: Planning China's Future — Boosting Consumption, Enterprise and Defence

Taiwan is facing a range of challenges — from Donald Trump's threat of 32% tariffs on its crucial exports to the US, to massive Chinese military exercises off its coastline aimed at intimidating the island's leaders. If that weren't enough, the DPP administration, led by President William Lai, has seen its budget slashed by Taiwan’s legislature, which is now dominated by its main rival, the KMT, or Chinese Nationalist Party. It's resulted in months of protests and political wrangling. So how will Taiwan's economy and society cope with these challenges? In the latest episode of China in Context, Dr. Michael Reilly, senior fellow on the Taiwan Studies Programme at the University of Nottingham, and a former British diplomat who was previously the UK's senior representative in Taiwan, analyses the island's political and economic situation, in conversation with Duncan Hewitt.
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The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the speakers and are not necessarily those of the SOAS China Institute.
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Music credit: Sappheiros / CC BY 3.0

Photo credit: 總統府 / CC BY 2.0

Ep188: Taiwan's Controversial Budget Cuts — The KMT goes DOGE?

In the face of Donald Trump's tariffs, will China's plans to boost its domestic consumer economy succeed — or could the government in Beijing be tempted to introduce massive stimulus measures, as it did after the financial crisis in 2008? In this episode of China in Context, leading scholar Yasheng Huang, professor of global economics and management at MIT's Sloan School of Management, explains why China's political resilience in a trade war may be greater than its economic resilience — and argues that, despite the current obsession with high technology, reforms of land ownership and the rights of rural citizens and migrant labourers could be key to China’s long term economic prosperity.

Professor Huang's forthcoming book, Statism with Chinese Characteristics — a revised version of his 2008 work Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics — draws on lessons from China's response to the 2008 crisis to highlight the country's current challenges.
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The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the speakers and are not necessarily those of the SOAS China Institute.
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Music credit: Sappheiros / CC BY 3.0

Ep189: Rebooting China's Economy — Lessons from the 2008 Crisis

After the drama of Donald Trump’s Liberation Day and the 145 percent tariffs he imposed on China, and Beijing’s retaliation with 125 percent tariffs, the two countries have agreed a 90 day pause while they engage in further negotiations. But with the US recently announcing that it would seek to punish any business using advanced chips made by the Chinese IT giant Huawei anywhere in the world, and Beijing threatening retaliatory measures against anyone who complies, what are the prospects for a meaningful and lasting trade deal? On this episode we hear the views of two Americans with decades of experience in China, Kenneth Jarrett, a former US Consul General in Shanghai who is now the Senior Advisor in Shanghai for the strategic advisory firm Albright Stonebridge Group , and Jim McGregor, Chairman for Greater China of the consultancy APCO Worldwide, and formerly the head of Dow Jones in China.

Image © Adobe Stock
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The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the speakers and are not necessarily those of the SOAS China Institute.
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Music credit: Sappheiros / CC BY 3.0


Ep190: China US tariff talks — Is a deal possible?

The sudden emergence of DeepSeek’s AI chatbot earlier this year reminded the world of just how fast Chinese technology is developing. But it’s also highlighted continuing tensions over China’s technological rise — US Vice President JD Vance recently spoke of America being in an ‘arms race’ with China for control of Artificial Intelligence: the US has banned the export of its most advanced chips to China, and is now trying to stop companies around the world from using China’s own latest chips. It’s also sanctioned numerous Chinese tech firms due to security fears. The EU meanwhile has imposed tariffs on imported Chinese electric vehicles, amidst concerns about unfair subsidies. But as its technology improves, is China winning the ‘tech war’? And what does this mean for Taiwan, currently the world’s largest chip manufacturer? These topics are explored in a new audio book, ‘Global Tech Wars - China’s Race to Dominate’, by James Kynge, who recently left the Financial Times, where he reported on China for almost three decades. Now a senior fellow at MERICS (the Mercator Institute for Chinese Studies) in Berlin, he discusses his findings with presenter Duncan Hewitt.

Image © Adobe Stock
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The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the speakers and are not necessarily those of the SOAS China Institute.
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Music credit: Sappheiros / CC BY 3.0

Ep191: Is China Winning the Tech War? A conversation with James Kynge

China's one child policy may have  ended a decade ago — but its consequences are still being felt — not least in the continuing gender imbalance in the country's population:  for several decades, the combination of restrictions on family size with traditional attitudes favouring male children, especially in rural areas, led to many female babies being aborted. China is currently estimated to have at least thirty million more men than women — and a new documentary film explores the impact this has had, particularly on young men from the countryside, who can struggle to find a mate in China's increasingly competitive dating market. Director Violet Du Feng, previously shortlist for the Oscars for her film 'Hidden Letters' about the secret Chinese women's language Nüshu, joins us to discuss 'The Dating Game', which follows three young men who go on a week long 'dating camp' run by a self-styled 'dating coach' in an attempt to reinvent themselves, and find love.
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The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the speakers and are not necessarily those of the SOAS China Institute.
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Music credit: Sappheiros / CC BY 3.0

Ep192: Left-Behind Men and Rebellious Women — Dating, Relationships and the Gender Imbalance in China

The shockwaves from Donald Trump’s airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear programme continue to reverberate. China condemned the attack as violating the UN Charter and warned that it risked destabilising the Middle East, an area where Beijing has fast-growing economic and diplomatic links — indeed China is now the biggest buyer of Iranian oil, and after the strikes the US asked it to persuade Tehran not to cut off oil supplies from the Gulf. So will the attack change China’s policy in the Middle East — and could it also have implications for China’s aim of regaining sovereignty over the island of Taiwan, with which the US has close defence ties? We hear the views of Rana Mitter, ST Lee Professor of US-Asia relations at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, and Professor Jonathan Fulton of Zayed University, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of a new book, Building the Belt and Road Initiative in the Arab World (Routledge, 2025) on China’s relations with the Arab world.

Photo: Khamenei.ir / CC BY 4.0

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The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the speakers and are not necessarily those of the SOAS China Institute.

Ep193: China, Iran and the Middle East — After Trump's Airstrikes

The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the 14th Dalai Lama, marked his 90th birthday earlier this month with an announcement that his successor as Tibetan Buddhism’s most senior religious figure would be a reincarnation, to be identified after his death by the staff of his office in Dharamsala in northern India — where he has lived since fleeing Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule. The announcement is likely to set up a clash with Beijing, which says it alone has the right to confirm the selection of the next Dalai Lama, and points to its possession of historical relics, including a golden urn from the Qing dynasty traditionally used to select the reincarnations of senior lamas. So how will Tibetans inside and outside China respond if two different Dalai Lamas are nominated? Could the exiled community abandon the current Dalai Lama’s emphasis on seeking only autonomy for Tibet under Chinese rule? And how will this affect India, which has offered shelter to the Tibetan exiled administration, but has recently been seeking to improve its relations with Beijing? Tsering Shakya, professor of Tibetan history at the University of British Columbia, and Robbie Barnett, professorial research associate at SOAS and former professor of contemporary Tibetan studies at Columbia University, join us to share their thoughts.

Photo by Norbu Gyachung

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The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the speakers and are not necessarily those of the SOAS China Institute.

Ep194: After the Dalai Lama — China, India and the Tibetan Succession

China In Context is a fortnightly podcast by the SOAS China Institute (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) which offers expert analysis on the politics, economy, society, culture and history of China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. It features interviews with leading academics, researchers, journalists and other China-specialists from around the world.