Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

In recent weeks I’ve driven round-trip from Ann Arbor to both Grand Rapids and Cleveland, and I’m currently in Pittsburgh en route to Philadelphia, so I’ve had lots of time to catch up on podcasts while behind the wheel. Here are some highlights of my playlist during these road trips:

Drum Tower, “The Cage,” a two-part investigation into the Chinese Party-state’s continued repression of Uyghurs, by Alice Su of The Economist. Su talks with Uyghurs living outside China to understand how their lives and relationships have been affected by the crackdown in Xinjiang since 2017. Her interviewees speak of the tremendous anxiety they’ve felt about family members still inside China, and the agony of not being able to connect with loved ones for their own safety.

Sinica, “Transnational repression and China’s ‘overseas police stations,’ with Jeremy Daum of Yale’s Paul Tsai China Law Center.” Daum is one of the best out there at providing a corrective to over-hyped stories that make the CCP state out to be more capable than it actually is. Here, he and Sinica host Kaiser Kuo discuss China’s “overseas police stations” and dig into the work that those facilities actually do—and don’t do. A dedicated and refreshingly clear-headed researcher, Daum conveys an important message about distilling truth from hysteria.

A Taiwan double feature: this episode of Nü Voices, hosted by Sophia Yan speaking with guest Yu-Jie Chen, provides a succinct overview of the history and politics in PRC-Taiwan relations. And in the most recent release from Sinica, Kaiser Kuo interviews Paul Heer and Maggie Lewis about a Council of Foreign Relations task force report that both were involved in writing, U.S.-Taiwan Relations in a New Era: Responding to a More Assertive China.

“Did some good come from the Qing’s dying century?” That’s a catchy title for this episode of Chinese Whispers, hosted by Cindy Yu, a journalist at the Spectator. Yu speaks with journalist Isabel Hilton and historian Jeff Wasserstrom, in a conversation linked to an exhibit currently on view at the British Museum. As Hilton and Wasserstrom explain, the final century of the Qing Dynasty has traditionally been told in China as a time of decline and exploitation at the hands of foreign powers. Shift to another angle, however, and there’s an interesting history of exchange and growth in the fields of literature, scholarship, and material culture.

And, of course, two podcasts always in my regular rotation: Hittin’ Season, to dissect the ups and downs of the Phillies, and Broad Street Hockey Radio, for spirited discussions of what’s happening to the Flyers and how (or if) they’ll ever correct their course.

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A follow-up to last week’s post: we got a partial resolution to the mystery of Qin Gang’s disappearance on Tuesday, when an official announcement came that Wang Yi would take over Qin’s role of Foreign Minister. The “why?” question remains, however, and no explanation of that has been forthcoming. Those who hypothesized that Qin’s health was the issue were seemingly proven wrong when all mentions of him were quickly scrubbed from the Foreign Ministry’s website—behavior more in line with a Party-state official’s political downfall than physical decline. (In a very weird twist, many of those online mentions of Qin were then mysteriously restored to the site toward the end of the week.) Amid this ongoing story, here are some of the pieces that I’ve turned to for news and analysis:

David Bandurski, “China’s Foreign Minister is Sacked, and Erased”
Bill Bishop and Andrew Sharp, Sharp China podcast
Chris Buckley and David Pierson, “China’s Foreign Minister Is Removed After a Month of Silence”

Qin’s departure will mean little to China’s foreign policy; foreign ministers are career civil servants who carry out decisions made by the party. Rather, the key point is that Xi Jinping has suffered yet another embarrassingly public setback, one in a string that calls into question his judgment as he now rules alone at the top of the party.

Ian Johnson, “Qin Gang’s Removal Puts the Focus on Xi Jinping’s Leadership”

David Pierson, “After Ousting a Top Official, China Erases Him and Evades Questions”
Wenxin Fan, “Replaced, Then Erased: Mystery Deepens Around China’s Former Foreign Minister”
Amy Hawkins, “The growing list of Chinese elites who disappear but later resurface subdued”
Simone McCarthy, “China is erasing mention of its former foreign minister. But it still hasn’t said why”

Recommended Readings

China Stories
Vic Chiang and Christian Shepherd, “From salesman to ‘spy’: An inside account of arbitrary arrest in China”
Shibani Mahtani and Amrita Chandradas, “In Singapore, loud echoes of Beijing’s positions generate anxiety”

For anybody wondering how they said pspsps in the Qing dynasty, Wang Chutong’s 王初桐 1798 Mao sheng 貓乘 (A Cavalcade of Cats), the earliest collection of cat-related quotations and factoids I could find, has a section listing all the ways of calling a cat known to authoritative sources. Mi, variously written, is the clear consensus favorite, though the Yuan writer Bai Ting 白珽 suggests 汁汁, pronounced something like ji-ji at the time. (Wang comments that this “sounds like mice squeaking.”)

Brendan O’Kane, “The Naming of Cats, and an Offering”

Wanderings Around the World
Grace M. Cho, “The Hauntings of the Korean War: On the 70th Anniversary of the Armistice”
Choe Sang-Hun, with Chang W. Lee, “Life Along the Korean DMZ, 70 Years After the Fighting Ended”
Lizzie Johnson and Lauren Tierney, “Why the famed Appalachian Trail keeps getting longer — and harder”
Ankita Dhar Karmakar, “A Ramble Through Delhi’s Queer History, Told Through Monuments And Subcultures”
Rana Mitter, “One or More Asias?: On Nile Green’s ‘How Asia Found Herself’”
Anne Helen Petersen, “How Your House Makes You Miserable”
Paul Singer, “The history of enslavement at Boston’s Freedom Trail sites is beginning to be told”
Rohan Venkat, “Nikhil Menon on India’s Experiment in ‘Democratic’ Centralised Planning”

The One to Click
“How I Survived a Wedding in a Jungle That Tried to Eat Me Alive”
“A super-trek to a remote destination that we all barely survive but bonds us forever.” If I ever get a wedding invitation like that, I’m probably declining it. Melissa Johnson, however, accepted the invite (challenge? dare?) and then wrote about her precarious journey through the Guatemalan jungle for Outside magazine.

And just for fun: “Raccoon runs rampant through Philadelphia airport baggage claim”

Feature photo: The Philadelphia Phillies play the Pittsburgh Pirates at PNC Park on July 29, 2023. The Pirates won, 6-5. Sigh.