Britain is the latest country to be plunged into yet another espionage scandal after an MP’s husband was arrested on suspicion of spying for China. Beijing’s long been known for its ‘thousand grains of sand’ strategy relying on amateur intelligence collectors, but it’s now increasingly employing cognitive warfare to shape public opinion. This month, we analyse changes to China’s spying ground game on three continents. Louisa is joined by former Australian diplomat Sam Guthrie who’s the author of The Peak, a spy thriller set in Australia and China, national security expert Dennis Molinaro, the author of Under Assault: Interference and Espionage in China's Secret War Against Canada, and human rights activist Lyndon Lee, who has been targeted by Chinese agents in the UK.

Image: c/- Sergeant Paul Shaw LBIPP/MOD, under Open Government License version 1. Union and Chinese flags together.

Transcripts available at: https://ciw.anu.edu.au/podcasts/little-red-podcast

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In 2013, to mark International Consumers Day, China’s state-run TV network labelled Apple a ‘bad company’. More than a decade later, despite claiming to rely on multinationals from 50 different countries, Apple still has nearly 100% of its supply chain in China. In this episode, we look at how Apple became so dependent on China, what it did to rehabilitate its image in the eyes of the Chinese government, and how it has influenced China’s aspiring global tech giants. Graeme is joined by Jianggan Li, the founder and CEO of Singapore-based Momentum Works, and the co-author of Seeing the Unseen: Behind Chinese Tech Giants’ Global Venturing and Patrick McGee, Financial Times journalist and the author of Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company.

Image: c/- Gerd Eichmann, 2020. Apple Store on Nanjing Lu, Shanghai.

Transcripts are available at https://ciw.anu.edu.au/podcasts/little-red-podcast

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

China’s college exam, the gaokao, is fetishized as the ultimate test, yet a lesser-known story is how it entrenches regional education discrimination. Its role at social engineering is also clear, with AI suddenly becoming the sixth most popular major in China, on command from above. This month, the Little Red Podcast sets the first ever podcast gaokao. The intrepid test-takers are Edward Vickers from Kyushu University, co-author of Education and Society in Post-Mao China and host of the Asian Education Podcast, Karron Huang, who is studying for a Masters in early childhood education at the University of Melbourne and sat the gaokao in 2015, and Ruixue Xia from the University of California San Diego who coauthored The Highest Exam: How the Gaokao Shapes China.

Image: c/- Karron Huang. Morning gaokao study session, Foshan No. 1 High School, Guangdong, 2015.

Transcripts are available at https://ciw.anu.edu.au/podcasts/little-red-podcast

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.