China's recent impressive economic growth has been built largely on massive debt.  According to some estimates, in just over a decade China has managed to rack up debt in excess of 300% of its GDP, effectively placing a ticking time-bomb under the world economy.  Is China heading for a financial crisis, and if so when?  In this episode, Graeme and Louisa are joined by Dinny MacMahon, the author of China’s Great Wall of Debt, and Tim Murray, co-founder of J Capital Research, who make predictions about China's financial future and explain how Beijing's strategy may be driving a stealthy renationalization of the Chinese economy.

All Maxxed Out: The Biggest Ponzi Scheme The World Has Ever Seen?

There’s no escaping China’s Belt and Road Initiative. It’s been written into China’s constitution, and more than 70 countries from Pakistan to Papua New Guinea have signed up.  But what is it? A modern-era Marshall Plan, a geopolitical bid for China to build a new international power bloc, a new model for Chinese colonialism, or an all-encompassing bumper sticker for Chinese-brokered development projects? To unpack the motivations behind Xi Jinping’s highest profile foreign policy initiative, Louisa and Graeme are joined by Peter Cai of the Lowy Institute and Dirk van der Kley from the Australian National University. And a warning: this episode contains some truly awful music.

Come Dance with Xi: Who Can Resist the Belt and Road's Embrace?

China today is Black Mirror through the Looking Glass. A national video surveillance network is promised in just two years, while new technologies are being rolled out at speed on the frontier of China’s surveillance regime, in Xinjiang, ranging from iris scans to phone surveillance apps. Simultaneously the Chinese state is building a nationwide social credit system, to be launched in 2020, which provides incentives for citizens to participate in their own surveillance. To unpack China’s dystopian present, Louisa and Graeme are joined by Elsa Kania from the Center for a New American Security, Lotus Ruan from the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, and Samantha Hoffman from the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin.

All three guests have recently written reports for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, links below
Elsa Kania: https://www.aspi.org.au/report/technological-entanglement
Lotus Ruan: https://www.aspi.org.au/report/big-data-china-and-battle-privacy
Samantha Hoffman: https://www.aspi.org.au/report/social-credit

The Han-Opticon: Social Credit and AI in the Surveillance State

Little Red Podders: If you've been waiting for new episodes, we've moved! Find us at https://omny.fm/shows/the-little-red-podcast. The Little Red Podcast: interviews and chat celebrating China beyond the Beijing beltway. Hosted by Graeme Smith, China studies academic at the Australian National University's Department of Pacific Affairs and Louisa Lim, former China correspondent for the BBC and NPR, now with the Centre for Advancing Journalism at Melbourne University. We are the 2018 winners of podcast of the year in the News & Current Affairs category of the Australian Podcast Awards. Follow us @limlouisa and @GraemeKSmith, and find show notes at https://www.facebook.com/LittleRedPodcast/

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