Randa Abdel-Fattah
speaker
3,221 appearances
41 recordings
9 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard 8 Sep
Randa Abdel-Fattah’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 38 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 15.
Appearances
It's one of the country's industrial powerhouses.
By day, you'd see the insignia of the world's biggest brands around you.
Nike, Adidas, Tesla.
It's likely the place where all the parts in your smartphone are made.
Almost 90% of the world's electronics are made there.
It's a city defined by its manufacturing, technology, and innovation.
And that comparison is really important because the architect of this industrial city on China's coast was taking notes from American capitalism all the way back in the 1970s when China began to open itself up to the world.
That man was Deng Xiaoping, China's paramount leader in the 1980s.
When you go to Shenzhen today, you can still see his legacy everywhere you look.
Deng Xiaoping is on it.
In the background, the great skyline of Shenzhen.
And he's looking at it as if to say... I made this.
Today, it's easy to take for granted that China is one of the world's big superpowers and an economic rival to the U.S.
But this transformation started as an experiment, a gamble by Deng Xiaoping that he could turn China into an economic powerhouse.
Shenzhen embodies that gamble.
China's current leader, Xi Jinping, visited Shenzhen soon after taking office on a whistle-stop tour designed to mimic one Deng took two decades earlier.
And so much of China's ascent globally as a superpower began with the vision set in motion by Deng.
To make that vision real, he had to change China's relationship to the world and introduce capitalism to a society steeped in tradition and communist ideals.
I'm Randa Abdel-Fattah.
On this episode of ThruLine from NPR, we tell the story of Deng Xiaoping's quest to open China, transform its economy, and make it the world's factory.
Showing 241–260 of 3,221 · page 13 of 162
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