Cognitive hazing: The Disinformation War on Taiwan?

Taiwan is ground zero for cognitive warfare, with the island subject to more disinformation than any other democracy. The targets are political candidates, media outlets, even boy bands. The threat is so serious that Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice recently set up a Cognitive Warfare Research Center. …

The Pig Butcher’s Payroll: Inside a Romance Scam

After our last episode on an online romance scam operating out of Palau we were contacted by Neo Lu, who was trafficked to work in an online scam camp on the Myanmar-Thailand border, the victim of a $US3 trillion global criminal industry. He joins Louisa and Graeme to offer jaw-dropping detail on l…

Fraud Factories and Pig Butchery: Chinese Triads go Pacific

Chinese triads have been making a Pacific play, notably in the tiny nation of Palau. There a notorious triad boss - nicknamed Broken Tooth - reinvented himself as a CCP-linked businessman trying to set up a 'gangster-themed' casino, while police busted a Chinese 'fraud factory'. In Palau, this scam…

Here be Dragons: LRP turns 100

For our hundredth episode, there was only one choice in the Year of the Dragon. We tackle the scaly mythical beast, which now finds itself central to the Party’s image.   We look at the political efficacy of the dragon for the CCP, which has recently launched a nationalistic rebranding campaign for…

Hold my popcorn: Diplomatic war in the Pacific Theatre

China’s largesse in the Pacific is nothing if not visible. From mobile phone towers to gleaming stadiums and government buildings, Beijing’s splashing out on those it sees as choosing “the right side of history.” In this episode, we explore Taiwan’s future in the Pacific as it is deserted by its fo…

The Feminists have Stood Up: Gender and Comedy in China

Stand-up comedy looked set to be the next big thing on China’s entertainment scene, with shows like Roast Convention drawing billions of views and comics scoring lucrative commercial endorsements. But comedy now finds itself in retreat.  A new wave of feminist comics is struggling with attacks from…

Full time children or half dead: China’s Gen Z goes to ground

Every generation in modern China has been richer and more ambitious than the one before—until Gen Z. With youth unemployment so high that the government has simply stopped reporting the figures, many are opting to lie flat, slump down dead, or even become full-time children. The Party frets that de…

Bombard the Past: Exhuming the Cultural Revolution

The exponential trauma produced by the Cultural Revolution is barely mentioned in China, yet has been foundational to a generation.  Now the Communist Party is using the experience of its leader Xi Jinping as one of the 17 million young people sent down to the countryside to reframe the movement as…

The Battle for the Future: The Mission of China's Underground Historians

Writing history in China has never been easy; China’s first historian, Sima Qian, was forced to choose between execution and castration and imprisonment.  He chose the latter in order to finish his life’s work, Records of the Grand Historian.  Now China’s keepers of inconvenient truths are put unde…

Cat Years in Cat Country: Sci-Fi in China

Just as satirical writers struggled in Trump's America, China's sci-fi writers are facing a challenge:  how do you write in a world where reality is more like science fiction than science fiction itself? Added to that are the perils of popularity, with everyone from Netflix to the Communist Party e…