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This week on Sinica, Jeremy is delighted to host Luigi Tomba, expert on municipal government in China, fellow at the Australian Centre on China and the World, and author of the book The Government Next Door: neighborhood politics in urban China. Since 2005, Luigi has also been the co-editor of The China Journal, a well-known academic journal on Chinese affairs. We're also delighted to have Luigi since it gives us an excuse to talk about the property market, without obsessing over real estate speculation and prices per square meter. Instead, after starting with a look at the emerging middle class in China, we move on to talk about Luigi's ideas on how China's property revolution and the dismantlement of the danwei system has counterintuitively ended up strengthening rather than weakening the government's ability to control its citizens on a local level. We also look at how China's shift to community-based governance structure has improved the image of the Party at the grassroots level. [standalone mp3 download]

First there were the terrorist attacks in Paris. And then there was the global reaction to the attacks, with its spate of frenzied free-speech cartooning. And then there was the counter-reaction to the initial reaction, which played out mostly on Facebook. And then the China Daily decided to wade into the fray, vaguely blaming Charlie Hebdo for “[persisting] in its way of doing things" and alienating most thinking people with its somewhat baffling display of not-quite-sympathic-but-not-exactly-condemnatory rhetorical showboating. So what does all of this have to do with China, and how are the terrorist attacks getting read by the Chinese government? Joining our two hosts to talk about this story is none other than Ada Shen, renowned social-media wunderkind, and longtime friend of both Jeremy and Kaiser. Ada joins us for an interesting discussion that meanders us from Algeria and King Lear to ancient Chinese horses and their sometimes-controversial burial customs. So please grab a seat!

The tip-off? It had come from an old landline in the basement of the National Gallery, so the caller could have been anyone associated with the institute, and possibly even the director himself. But finding out exactly who had made that call was proving more troublesome than Inspector Zhang had anticipated, since the phone had been wiped clean of prints, and none of the staff - even when questioned privately - showed anything but bewilderment at any suggestion of impropriety. So who had snuck into that backroom, and was there any substance to their allegations of artistic skullduggery? Complicating matters further was the demand for extreme discretion coming down from his supervisors at Scotland Yard, who themselves were now under pressure from Downing Street and the House of Windsor, both parties well aware that with the integrity of the Royal Collection at stake, the nation itself might face a public scandal that could threaten the integrity of the monarchy itself.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy are joined by Lynette Shi and William White, two globe-trotting adventurers who've found unconventional careers navigating the shoals of the professional interpretation circuit in China. So whether you're considering a career in interpretation and want the inside story on how to do it, or are just curious what two of the working greats consider the most unexpected and hilarious moments of their careers, join us for this show. On a side note, the audio quality is a bit soft during this recording. We've tried to fix it as we can, but there are a few moments that might -- we'll be fixing this moving forward. In the meantime, if you have your own thoughts on Chinese-English interpretation or just want to nitpick our translators, please feel welcome to comment in the discussion space below, or write Kaiser and Jeremy directly at sinica@popupchinese.com. We're also pleased to release this show as a standalone mp3 file if you don't want to stream directly from Popup Chinese. Enjoy!

As a professional negotiator with more than twenty years experience on the force, Richard had dealt with hostage cases before and knew that this would be a particularly tough one to crack. And his was an impression confirmed by the grim visages on the faces of the SWAT team. Holed up on the upper floors of the National Bank, the kidnappers had settled into a defensive position that would make storming the building a disastrous exercise in bloodshed, making a negotiated settlement the only practical option.

Sorry for the delay in getting this show released, folks (all hail Internet issues), but we're delighted to finally publish Sinica's second annual New Years call-in-show. If you've been following all of the news and gossip involving China for the last year, join Kaiser and Jeremy as we take your questions and talk insider politics on everything from the ongoing anti-corruption campaign to the question of coming media controls and what on earth we are all doing with our lives in China anyway. As we pull into 2015, let us remind you that in addition to listening to Sinica here on Popup Chinese, you are warmly invited to download our show as a standalone mp3 file. Questions or suggestions about the show are welcome by email at sinica@popupchinese.com, while we also encourage everyone to check out our dedicated RSS feed right here.

The explosion of the commercial media sphere in China over the last decade hasn't been particularly subtle, especially if you're anything like us and walk past multiple Chinese newsstands in the morning. But let's look beyond the way kiosks have traded promoting the Beijing Evening News for hawking glossy cosmetics adverts and celebrity gossip rags, and ask how the rise of a for-profit motive in the press has affected the way the Chinese government regulates the industry, and what the consequences of this are for the rise of what we traditionally think of as the role of the fourth estate in Western democracies. As we turn our focus to these questions this week, Kaiser Kuo is delighted to be joined by Daniela Stockmann, assistant professor of Political Science at the University of Leiden and the woman who quite literally wrote the book on this subject with the publication of Media Commercialization and Authoritarian Rule in China, a fact-heavy tome that goes into detail about how China has managed to maintain its apparatus of media control despite its ostensible shift towards a commercially-oriented media sector. On a final note, we should point out that we've just put together a new version of Popup Chinese platform, and one of the features of the new site is a fancy new javascript-powered audio player that will let you listen to all of our shows directly using your iPhone or Android or flash-free tablet. That said, if you still want to download today's show as a standalone mp3 file, please consider yourself welcome to do so. And if you have any feedback on the show or suggestions about guests you'd like to see us host in the future.

Exactly how exploitative are Chinese development activities on the African continent? What exactly is motivating the various resources-for-development deals inked by African governments over the last decade, and what strategies are these governments now adopting in the face of power imbalances with China? What is driving the mass migration of Chinese workers to the African continent, and why does everyone from Senegal seem to come from Henan? This week on Sinica, we ask these questions and many more as Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn are joined in conversation with Howard French. If you've spent a while in China, you may have head of Howard as the author of a well-known book on Shanghai's architectural legacy, and lecturer on the subject. What you may not know is that he is also an expert on African development, and the new author of China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa. Want more Sinica, but frustrated at your biological limitations that force you to have to download each episode one-by-one (hint: standalone mp3 link)? Why not join the 21st century and set your computer to the task by subscribing to our Sinica RSS feed. If you have ideas on topics you'd like to hear covered or suggestions on guests we should feature on the show, please feel welcome to write the team at sinica@popupchinese.com.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that China and South Africa weren't actual neighbors given all the pomp and ritual that surrounded South African President Jacob Zuma's recent state visit to China, a trip that saw China roll out the red carpet in a very uncritical fashion not often seen these days, with even Xinhua getting into the spirit of international camraderie with fulsome editorials praising the South African people and their international spirit. And in the spirit of confusing co-host Kaiser and changing the balance of power in the studio, Jeremy is delighted to have invited a "real" South African to join us this week. And so our guest is John Bailey, Asia Correpondent of ENCA, the 24-hour television news broadcaster focusing on South African and African stories. In this hour-long show, John joins us to talk about what is happening in South Africa, and why the country's relations with China have taken such a rosy turn. Enjoy Sinica? If you like this show and would like more to show up automatically on your iPhone as we publish them, subscribe to Sinica manually by selecting the option "Subscribe to Podcast" from the File menu in iTunes and providing the URL http://popupchinese.com/feeds/custom/sinica when prompted. We also welcome everyone to download this show directly from our server as a standalone mp3 file, and to send comments and suggestions for future shows to us at sinica@popupchinese.com. Enjoy!

It doesn't take a lot of time in China to see household violence play out in supermarkets, in schools, or even in the streets. But exactly how common is domestic violence in China? In the face of recent evidence from Peking University that more than 70 percent of all children suffer from some form of physical or emotional abuse, not to mention the never-stopping stories of spousal abuse (by both men and women) that pour out in the press, we wanted to take an episode to look into the issue and ask what the hell is going on? That's why this week, Sinica is delighted to host Su Wenying and Cai Yiping, two leading advocates of women and children's rights who join us for a discussion of domestic violence in China. Our conversation starts with a discussion of the current legal landscape, and moves on to the prevalence of domestic abuse with some surprising stats about how education and social status does and does not affect the prevalence of violence in this country, before we look at public awareness of the problem, and ask to what extent it seems likely to change anytime soon. Enjoy listening to Sinica? We invite everyone to download this show as an standalone mp3 file for listening offline or sharing. If you have any feedback on the show or suggestions about topics you'd like to hear covered, please feel welcome to leave a note in our comments section, or send us an email at sinica@popupchinese.com.

With Jeremy Goldkorn conscripted into family duties as father of lucky newborn Felix Goldkorn, Kaiser Kuo hosts alone this week as we turn our attention to the World Internet Conference last week, when a last minute attempt by Chinese organizers to foist the so-called Wuzhen Declaration on participants provoked an international backlash over concerns it was attempting to make the international community complicit in even sharper restrictions on Internet usage China seems poised to impose under the country's new Internet Tsar, Lu Wei. Missed the news? Joining us to bring everyone up-to-date with a combination of insider-gossip and academic analysis is Rogier Creemers of Oxford University, founder of the China Copyright and Media Blog, and one of the unsung heroes of China-watching given his penchant for producing rapid and accurate translations of important Chinese policy documents and speeches that tend to be ignored by the rest of the press. Welcome Rogier!

"If you're not working in China, you're probably not working at all...." Despite China's legal moratorium on the development of the golf industry, a policy driven by concerns over illegal farmland seizures and the potential misallocation of agricultural land and water resources, the golf industry has experienced an unprecedented frenzy of development over the past thirty years, with the very government organs that overtly disapprove of the luxury sport often promoting its growth, leading to a situation where not even the central government has more than a vague inkling of how many courses actually exist in the country. With rumors of an impending crackdown on the industry circulating in the industry though, and questions of whether this kind of growth will or can continue, we are delighted to be joined in the studio by Dan Washburn, former founder of The Shanghaiist, and now Chief Content Officer for the Asia Society in New York, where Dan has lived while working on his latest book: The Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream. Like Sinica? Don't forget that you can download this show and all of our previous shows as a standalone mp3 file. And if you have any suggestions on topics you'd like to see us tackle or just feel like yelling at Kaiser or Jeremy, feel welcome to write us anytime at sinica@popupchinese.com.

With tensions between the West and Russia running high over Ukraine, China and Japan still wrangling over the Diaoyu islands, and America and China fighting over pretty much the same old petty stuff, it's easy to be cynical about APEC. But this year's summit seemed to accomplish quite a lot, and not just cleaning up the air in Beijing for a week or so. This week on Sinica, we look behind the public politics with an insider's guide to what was really going on. Joining Jeremy and Kaiser for this analysis of the scene-behind-the-scene are two great political analysts and commentators tied closely to American geostrategy in Asia: Evan Feigenbaum, Vice President of the Paulson Institute and adviser on China to Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick, along with Damien Ma, fellow at the Paulson Institute and author of In Line Behind a Billion People. Like Sinica? As always, let us remind you that we have a special RSS feed that feeds out nothing but Sinica shows if you're interested in subscribing to the podcast that way. We also welcome comments and feedback by email at sinica@popupchinese.com and are pleased to make this show available as a standalone mp3 file for everyone interested in downloading it, or passing it along to friends. And thanks for listening!

The admission process had already taken four months. Four months of school tours, and meetings with first the principal and then every fourth grade teacher on payroll. Four months of paperwork, paperwork and more paperwork as Jonathan sat sullenly at home wondering when he would finally be able to go back to school. It had been a long wait, but today, at least, his parents would get an answer to that question.

After a shocking expose of Jeremy Goldkorn's criminal past, Sinica this week moves on to examine the Bitcoin phenomenon in China. Joined by Zennon Kapron, fintech expert, owner of the Shanghai consultancy Kapronasia, and recent author of the book Chomping at the Bitcoin, we delve into the driving forces behind the cryptocurrency revolution in China, as well as take a quick look at the various other kinds of innovation surfacing in China's online financial sector. Interested in more Sinica but shy about signing up at Popup Chinese? If you'd like to get iTunes to download new episodes of Sinica automatically as they are released, don't forget you can subscribe to our free public RSS feed and have your computer download new episodes as soon as they are released. Twitter users are also welcome to join the constant stream of discussion about China news by following Kaiser at @KaiserKuo and Jeremy at @danwei. And we welcome everyone to download this show as a standalone MP3 file too.