China Books Podcast
Episodes
Ep. 27: Sex, Scams and Sorcery with Bruce Rusk and Christopher Rea
02 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tales of trickery were popular in the late Ming dynasty. The translators of a new collection explain how they still resonate today.The China Books Pod...
Ep. 26: Chris Horton on Taiwan’s History and Present
04 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Colonized by the Dutch, Qing China and Japan, the island of Taiwan has a complicated past and a tense present. We invited the author of a new primer t...
Ep. 25: Timothy Thurston on Tibetan Satire
07 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tibetans inside China have found various ways to push back against Beijing and voice their dissatisfaction. A lesser-known form of subtle resistance i...
Ep. 24: China Conspiracy Theories
02 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From Covid as a bioweapon to Chinese soldiers infiltrating America, Alexander Boyd discusses the right-wing conspiracy theories that lead our ranking ...
Ep. 23: Mark Kitto on Shanghai in the 2000s
05 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The author and former media mogul explains why he chose fiction as the best way to capture Shanghai’s go-go years in his new novel.The China Books P...
Ep. 22: Michael Luo on the Chinese-American Story
01 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The New Yorker writer discusses his new history of the Chinese in America, and immigrant identity from the Chinese Exclusion Act to Trump.The China Bo...
Ep. 21: Jenna Tang on Taiwan’s MeToo Movement
03 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We talked to the translator of a novel that helped launch #MeToo in Taiwan, about why both the movement and the book are having a second wind.The Chin...
Ep. 20: Linda Jaivin on the Cultural Revolution
06 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The writer and China watcher talks us through her microhistory of Mao’s last decade in power, and its relevance to Trump’s MAGA movement.The China...
Ep. 19: Steven Schwankert on the Titanic's Chinese Survivors
01 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The author of "The Six" tells us about the Chinese survivors of the Titanic, and how they were met with racist scorn on arrival in America a...
Ep. 18: Lijia Zhang on Women’s Stories
04 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The memoirist and novelist talks us through her grandmother and mother’s stories, as well as her own, and discusses how the status of women has chan...
Ep. 17: Lau Yee-Wa on Hong Kong Fiction
04 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We talked to the author of "Tongueless" about how Cantonese is disappearing from Hong Kong schools, and what literature can do to raise awar...
Ep. 16: Oriana Skylar Mastro on China’s Challenge to the U.S.
07 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As 2025 gets into gear, all eyes are on the year ahead, with a degree of trepidation (or excitement, depending on whom you ask) for the early impacts ...
Ep. 15: Paul French on Wallis Simpson's China Year
03 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The American socialite Wallis Simpson is best known as the wife of former British king Edward VIII. When they announced their intention to marry, her ...
Ep. 14: Kishore Mahbubani on the Asian Century
05 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we’re pleased to have had the opportunity to talk to Kishore Mahbubani, a Singaporean former diplomat who was Singapore’s represe...
Ep. 13: Peter Hessler on 'Other Rivers'
01 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Our guest this month is renowned writer Peter Hessler, a staff writer at The New Yorker and author of five books about China, most recently Other Rive...
Ep. 12: China's evolving art scene
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
China’s edgy contemporary art exploded into global view over decades of China’s meteoric economic growth. Gone were the days of Mao Zedong insisti...
Ep. 11: Beijing in Short Fiction
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Beijing is many things to many people, sometimes all at once – a mecca for migrants and artists, a tech hub, a proving ground for young graduates, a...
Ep. 10: Rethinking U.S.-China trade
02 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Who are the winners and losers in U.S.-China trade over recent decades, and what's a better way forward? Laying out a compelling argument in this...
Ep. 9: Tiananmen remembered
04 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Tiananmen -- the place, the protests, the crackdown -- reverberates in memories and imaginations around the world, even 35 years after tanks rolled in...
Ep. 8: Uyghur Women Speaking Out
07 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Genocide is not a word thrown around lightly by the U.S. government, but it uses that term to describe the Chinese government’s ongoing assaults on ...
Ep. 7: Why China's ahead in the green energy 'gold rush'
02 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
China has bet big over the past couple of decades on how building up its renewable energy sector -- solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and...
Ep. 6: Spy novels, a real-life thriller, and the BBC
05 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Acclaimed spy novelist Adam Brookes started out in China as a languge student in the mid-'80s, skipping class to travel in trucks and buses to Ti...
Ep. 5: China's Economic Challenges, Explained
06 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The sizzle has come off of China's decades of economic growth, as the country contends with deflation, slumping consumer confidence, plummeting f...
Ep. 4: How "Leftover Women" may reshape China's future
02 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A funny thing happened at the height of China's economic boom, as more and more Chinese women were getting college degrees, good jobs, and promis...
Ep. 3: How China's Future Looked in the Past
05 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Dreams of a better future have driven many a revolution, but not all have turned out the way the dreamers imagined.  China's early revolutiona...
Ep. 2: American Correspondents in China
07 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
China's rise is one of the great stories of the past century, and China correspondents have told that story in myriad ways -- as a story of trans...
Ep. 1: Chinese Fiction in the Reform & Opening Up Era
10 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
China's epic transformation over the past four decades has seen cities expand, fortunes rise, and expectations change. It has left Chinese people...