Why did the concept of the gray rhino — a big, obvious threat some people nonetheless ignore or neglect — so capture the imagination of Chinese officials and journalists and businesspeople? I spoke to the inventor of the concept to find out.
Cindy Yu is the broadcast editor of the London-based Spectator magazine, one of the U.K.’s most venerable current affairs publications. We chatted about her work there, the beginning and end of the Sino-British ‘golden era,’ drinking culture, and much more.
Bonnie Glaser has a lifetime of experience researching and advising the U.S. government on trans-Pacific geopolitics, security, and defense. I asked her all about the global anxieties China and the U.S. are causing around the world, how close we are to a war over Taiwan, and much more.
Malcolm Riddell was an intelligence case officer, and then an investment banker. Now he runs China Debate, an investor advisory service focused on the country he used to spy on.
Steve Tsang coined the phrase “consultative Leninism” to describe the Chinese political system that took shape in the early 21st Century. But is this still accurate in the age of Xi Jinping, the Chairman of Everything?
How are Chinese consumers dealing with the slowing economy? Are foreign brands finished in China? I talked about these and other topics with Mark Tanner, founder of one of Shanghai’s most successful independent marketing and branding agencies.
One of Time magazine’s “top 100 influential people in the world,” Andrew Sheng is a Malaysian-born banker, financial regulator, and scholar, and one of the most interesting people in the world to talk to.
Niva Yau is a Hong Kong–born scholar who lives in Kyrgyzstan, from where she observes China’s relationships with its western neighbors. She told me all about Beijing’s business in Kabul a year after America pulled out of Afghanistan.
Everybody seems to be talking about war as China ramps up its rhetoric and its live-fire military exercises in the seas and skies around Taiwan. But not so much the Taiwanese. I asked journalist and president of the Taiwan Foreign Correspondents Club William Yang: What is the rest of the world getting wrong?