Little Red Podcast

Power Pandemic

Little Red Podcast

How facemask diplomacy became China's soft power play

An episode of the Little Red Podcast

China's Covid diplomacy – dispatching facemasks and respirators overseas – is being hailed as the ultimate soft power play. But is this really soft power? To answer this question, we're joined by the man who coined the term – Joseph Nye, the former dean of Harvard Kennedy School of Government – as well as Bates Gill, professor in the Department of Security Studies at Macquarie University, and Natasha Kassam, a research fellow in the Diplomacy and Public Opinion Program at the Lowy Institute:

Q&A

Xue Yiwei: In Search of Universal Values

Xue Yiwei

A Chinese novelist talks to Jeffrey Wasserstrom, introduced by Amy Hawkins

My uncle, Xue Yiwei, is a Chinese novelist. Having moved to Canada in 2002, his translated works include Dr. Bethune’s Children, an epistolary novel addressed to Norman Bethune, a Canadian doctor in wartime China, and Shenzheners, a collection of short stories inspired by James Joyce’s Dubliners but set in Xue’s hometown of Shenzhen. Xue thinks that his latest novel, King Lear and Nineteen Seventy-Nine, is the one that he was born to write. It tells the story of “the most extraordinary peasant” in rural China during the Cultural Revolution, whose love of King Lear leads him to a participate in a production directed by a visiting British poet-scholar (apparently William Empson was a prototype). The novel takes in all of Xue’s interests: Chinese culture, the interchange between “high” and “low” culture, and the role of the individual in the capricious tides of history. As relations between China and the West grow ever more tense, Xue imagines a world in which the flow of knowledge across borders is harmonious.

He started thinking about the book (which is currently being translated into English) when he was just eight years old and found a copy of Shakespeare’s tragedy in his grandfather’s desk. His grandfather lived a life of almost Shakespearean drama himself, from working with the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek, being branded as a landlord by Mao Zedong to being finally rehabilitated by Deng Xiaoping. Such a trajectory is common in recent Chinese history. In this interview with historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom – who in turn introduced an interview I did with mu uncle that appeared in the LARB China Blog, a precursor to the China Channel, several years ago – Xue talks about the varied people and works that have inspired him, from Lao She to James Joyce. – Amy Hawkins

Chinese Corner

What’s in a name?

Eveline Chao

The case for and against weird names in China – Eveline Chao

Nominal Determinism is the notion that your name determines your destiny. The idea dates back to the times of ancient philosophy and adds a whiff of fatalism to, say, meeting a woodworker surnamed Carpenter, or reading about Amy Winehouse’s alcoholism. It also ties into debates in the US about whether African Americans should avoid giving their children names like Da’Quan or Shaneequa that are stereotyped as indicative of low socioeconomic status. Studies have found that teachers expect students with such names to do poorly in school, and that such treatment translates to precisely that outcome. People with stigmatized names also experience more hiring discrimination.

In an ideal world, people should feel free to choose any name they like (except maybe those white parents in New Jersey who named their baby “Adolf Hitler”). But perhaps it’s a sense that names determine destiny that has compelled so many Asian immigrant parents in the U.S. to choose safe, “all-American” names for their kids, like Michael or Stephanie. (An Asian-American named Grace Lee even made a movie that touches on this phenomenon, called “The Grace Lee Project,” after noticing the prevalence of other Grace Lees out there.) Behind these names lies an instinct to help your kid assimilate quickly so they can succeed in American society.

Hidden History

Gottfried Leibniz, the 300 Year-Old China Hand

Matthew Ehret-Kump

A scientist, sinophile and bridge between east and west – Matthew Ehret

Many people would be surprised to discover that Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716), a German polymath and logician best known for his discovery of Calculus, was one of the most important sinophiles of the 17th century, whose writings were instrumental in bringing the idea of Chinese culture and civilization to Europe.

Leibniz recognized the value of Chinese culture after an extensive study of Confucian texts provided to him by Jesuit scientists in Beijing. Inspired by the moral and practical philosophy that kept this ancient civilization alive (while European societies suffered nearly constant warfare), he created a journal called Novissima Sinica (News from China) in 1697. The journal was followed by an organizing effort across Eurasia to bring about a vast dialogue of civilizations, driven by the pursuit of scientific discovery and economic development.

In the first issue of the Novissima Sinica, Leibniz wrote:

“I consider it a singular plan of the fates that human cultivation and refinement should today be concentrated, as it were, in the two extremes of our continent, in Europe and in China, which adorns the Orient as Europe does the opposite edge of the Earth. Perhaps Supreme Providence has ordained such an arrangement, so that as the most cultivated and distant peoples stretch out their arms to each other, those in between may gradually be brought to a better way of life. I do not think it an accident that the Russians, whose vast realm connects Europe with China and who hold sway over the deep barbarian lands of the North by the shore of the frozen ocean, should be led to the emulation of our ways through the strenuous efforts of their present ruler [Peter I].”

Little Red Podcast

Power Projection

Little Red Podcast

China’s Hollywood dream and disruption

An episode of the Little Red Podcast

With cinema takings in the United States at a 22-year low, Hollywood moguls are looking to an unlikely saviour: China. With box office revenues growing at 9 percent, Hollywood is scrambling to find the formula for movies that make the cut of China’s 34 approved films and appeal to Chinese audiences. For every surprise hit, like The Meg and Warcraft, there are flops like The Great Wall. Like many an autocrat before him, Xi Jinping is enamoured of the silver screen, elevating film above radio and television in his 2018 overhaul of the propaganda apparatus. To discuss the special place of film in China’s global soft power push, back in March Louisa and Graeme were joined by City University of New York’s Ying Zhu and Variety Magazine’s Beijing bureau chief Rebecca Davis: