Chinese Whispers

Across the span of China, a country as big as Europe, there are countless regional dialects and accents – perhaps even languages. Often, they're mutually unintelligible.
The Chinese call these ‘fangyan’, and each Chinese person will likely be able to speak at least one fangyan, while also understanding Standard Mandarin, the official language of the People's Republic. It means that the Chinese are more multilingual than you might think.
But it also means that the question of language is inherently a political one. Standard Mandarin has a relatively short history, created by the country’s founding fathers to unify the spoken word in a huge country. But with the ubiquity of Standard Mandarin now, is fangyan at risk of dying out?
Joining the episode is Gina Tam, a historian and author of Dialect and Nationalism in China .

Controlling history is key to the Chinese Communist Party’s control of the country. Whether it’s playing up the ‘century of humiliation’, or whitewashing past mistakes like the Great Leap Forward or the Tiananmen Protests, the Party expends huge effort and resources on controlling the narrative.
That’s why it’s so important and interesting to look at those Chinese people who are documenting the bits of history that the Party doesn’t want you to know about. They interview survivors from Communist labour camps, or keep their own memoirs of the Cultural Revolution, and try to keep the memory of past horrors alive through film, magazines and paintings.
A new book called Sparks documents their work. Its author is Ian Johnson, a Pulitzer-Prize winning writer and long time China journalist. Ian calls these people the ‘underground historians’. He joins this episode of Chinese Whispers.
Visit https://minjian-danganguan.org/ to see some of their work documented, in an upcoming website founded by Ian and others.
Produced by Cindy Yu and Patrick Gibbons.

All cultures care about their cuisine, but the Chinese must have one of the most food-obsessed cultures in the world. It may be because we have the best food...
Those listeners of Chinese Whispers who’ve been to China will know exactly what I’m talking about. For those of you who haven’t, you may have come across the classic Chinese takeaway with dishes like sweet and sour pork, or you may like Cantonese dim sum, and some of you may be big fans of Sichuanese cooking.
But China has so much more to offer than what has made across into the West’s Chinese restaurants. Thankfully, that’s changing and quite fast.
Part of the education campaign to bring more of the diversity and richness of Chinese cuisine to the West is the work of people like Fuchsia Dunlop. She trained to cook in Chengdu and is one of the most engaging and thoughtful writers on Chinese cuisine in the English language.
I’m delighted to be joined by her on the podcast today, to mark the publication of her new book, Invitation to a Banquet , which is all about the history, meaning and diversity of Chinese cuisine.

When China brokered a historic detente between Saudi Arabia and Iran earlier this year, it seemed that a new phase in world history – and certainly in Chinese foreign policy – had opened up. Instead of the US being a policeman of the world, it was the rising power, China, that was stepping into that role. Whereas Chinese foreign policy had previously only really cared about promoting trade and silencing dissidents, it seemed that perhaps, now, Beijing was taking a more leadership role in global diplomacy and security issues.
And yet the events of the last week and China’s response to them have shown that perhaps the country isn’t ready for that responsibility just yet. In response to the horrors unfolding in Israel and later Gaza, Beijing has given only lukewarm statements, calling for 'relevant parties to remain calm, exercise restraint and immediately end the hostilities to protect civilians'. At no point has it condemned Hamas by name.
So what does this mean for China’s grander ambitions in the Middle East? With me to discuss is Tuvia Gering. During peacetime, his full time role is as a researcher on China and the Middle East, with the Israeli thinktank the Institute for National Security Studies and he is also a nonresident fellow in the Atlantic Council.
But in the last week, as with all Israelis, his life has been changed forever. He’s now been called up for active duty.
What you’re about to hear is an incredibly well informed but raw contribution from an expert whose research interests have come crashing into his real life.

In 2010, David Cameron and George Osborne ushered in what they called ‘a golden era’ with China, the world’s rising superpower. They argued that Britain could be China’s best friend in the West. Thirteen years later, after a global pandemic, up to a million interned in Xinjiang, and a Communist Party General Secretary seemingly keen to roll back democratic progress in the mainland and in Hong Kong, that policy looks ill-thought-out, at best. But are we at risk of swinging the other direction now, going from ignorance to hysteria within a handful of years? Did we get China wrong, and do we keep getting China wrong? Is Britain now losing influence in China?
On this episode, live from Conservative party conference, I’m joined by Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, Sophia Gaston, Head of Foreign Policy at Policy Exchange, and Sam Hogg, editor of the Beijing to Britain newsletter.

Two years ago, Richard Moore, head of MI6, said that China was now the organisation’s ‘single greatest priority’.
Parliamentarians and the British public have been starkly reminded of this by last week’s news that a parliamentary researcher had been arrested on suspicion of spying for China.
On this episode, we won’t be commenting on the ins and outs of that case, but talking more generally about Chinese espionage. What forms does it take, what are its goals and how successful are the Chinese secret services at achieving those?
I’m joined by a brilliant and knowledgeable guest. Nigel Inkster is the former director of operations and intelligence for MI6. He has served in Beijing and Hong Kong, and is now the senior adviser on cyber security and China at the think tank IISS.
Produced by Cindy Yu.

For thousands of years, Confucianism has run through the fabric of Chinese society, politics and culture. Decades of Communism has taken its toll on China, so can it still be considered a Confucian country?
Joining the episode is one of the world’s leading experts on the philosophy, Professor Daniel Bell. In 2017, he was appointed the dean of Shandong University, an unusual appointment for a foreigner in China but one based on his expertise in Confucianism, in the province of Confucius’s birth. His new book, The Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese university, details some of the ups and downs of his time in that position.

178 miles to the east of Beijing, there’s a beach resort called Beidaihe. The water is shallow and the sand is yellow and fine. Luxurious holiday villas dot the coastline. Starting from the 1950s, leaders of the Chinese Communist Party have moved their families and work to Beidaihe in the summer, making the beach resort something of a summer capital. Secrecy clouds the gatherings, and though this tradition continues, today the resort seems to serve a much more leisurely purpose when the CCP visits.
On this episode, I’m joined by the historian James Carter and Bill Bishop, editor of the very popular Sinocism newsletter, to discuss where Communist leaders go, when they go on summer holiday. What is the changing role of Beidaihe, and what does this tell us about the changing nature of Communist leadership?
Presented by Cindy Yu.
Produced by Cindy Yu and Joe Bedell-Brill.