Young China Watchers Young China Watchers

Bill Birtles shares the story of his sudden departure from China in 2020, and discusses his book, "The Truth About China: Propaganda, Patriotism and the Search for Answers."

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Bill Birtles is East Asia correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He was based in Beijing between 2015 and 2020, when he had to make a sudden departure as Australia-China relations soured. He is now based in Taiwan.

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The YCW Podcast is a podcast series by Young China Watchers. We’re a global community of young professionals, providing a platform to discuss the most pressing issues emerging from China today. We organize events with China experts in our 10 chapters across Asia, Europe and the U.S., fostering the next generation of China thought leaders.

Download and follow our podcast on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play Music or your usual podcasting platform.

Produced by Joshua Cartwright and Sam Colombie.

Music: ‘We Build With Rubber Bands’, ‘Dirty Wallpaper’ by Blue Dot Sessions.

For any suggestions, recommendations or other notes, please email us at editor@youngchinawatchers.com.

For this episode, we partnered with the Asia Global Institute at the University of Hong Kong, which focuses on presenting Asian perspectives on global issues. Alejandro Reyes is the institute’s director of Knowledge Dissemination and host of the Asia Global podcast. Ahead of the 20th Party Congress, he discussed the challenges China is facing with Ann Listerud and Jason Li.

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Ann Listerud is co-director of Young China Watchers’ DC chapter and is an analyst at Strider Technologies. She specializes in China’s macroeconomic conditions and government policies, as well as East Asia more broadly. 

Jason Li is a DC-based research associate at the Stimson Center’s East Asia program. His research focuses on U.S.-China relations, cross-Strait relations, grand strategy in the Indo-Pacific, and China’s approach to conflict issues in its periphery and the Middle East. 

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The YCW Podcast is a podcast series by Young China Watchers. We’re a global community of young professionals, providing a platform to discuss the most pressing issues emerging from China today. We organize events with China experts in our 10 chapters across Asia, Europe and the U.S., fostering the next generation of China thought leaders.

Download and follow our podcast on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play Music or your usual podcasting platform.

Produced by Joshua Cartwright, with support from Sam Colombie.

Music: ‘We Build With Rubber Bands’, ‘Dirty Wallpaper’ by Blue Dot Sessions.

For any suggestions, recommendations or other notes, please email us at editor@youngchinawatchers.com.

On the 30th of June, 2020, Beijing implemented the Hong Kong National Security Law. Officials promised the law would not substantially alter Hong Kong’s way of life. But many greeted that rhetoric with skepticism, and some critics even declared the death of the “One Country, Two Systems” framework. 

So, over a year later, what has been the actual impact of the National Security Law on Hong Kong and its people? To find out, YCW’s multimedia editor Joshua Cartwright spoke with Thomas Kellogg, an expert on law and governance in China.



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Thomas Kellogg is a leading scholar of legal reform in China, Chinese constitutionalism, and civic society movements in China, who currently serves as the Executive Director of the Center for Asian Law at Georgetown University.



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The YCW Podcast is a podcast series by Young China Watchers. We’re a global community of young professionals, providing a platform to discuss the most pressing issues emerging from China today. We organize events with China experts in our 10 chapters across Asia, Europe and the U.S., fostering the next generation of China thought leaders.

Download and follow our podcast on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play Music or your usual podcasting platform.

Produced by Joshua Cartwright, with support from Sam Colombie.

Music: ‘We Build With Rubber Bands’, ‘Dirty Wallpaper’ by Blue Dot Sessions.

For any suggestions, recommendations or other notes, please email us at editor@youngchinawatchers.com.

As our London chapter kicks off their annual Climate Series with a Q&A with Isabel Hilton of China Dialogue, we invited climate reporter Karoline Kan to share her thoughts on recent developments in China-U.S. climate cooperation and China's climate policy.

Sam and Karoline talk about the Leaders Summit on Climate, cooperation versus competition, and China's 14th Five-Year-Plan and carbon market.

Karoline's reading recommendations:


Bloomberg Green
China Dialogue
Meltdown in Tibet, by Michael Buckley

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Karoline Kan is a longtime climate journalist and author of Under Red Skies, a memoir of China's changing society through the eyes of her family. Kan is the 2019 winner of our Young China Watcher of the Year Award. 

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The YCW Podcast is a podcast series by Young China Watchers. We’re a global community of young professionals, providing a platform to discuss the most pressing issues emerging from China today. We organize events with China experts in our 10 chapters across Asia, Europe and the U.S., fostering the next generation of China thought leaders.

Download and follow our podcast on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play Music or your usual podcasting platform.

Produced by Sam Colombie, with support from Joshua Cartwright.

Music: ‘We Build With Rubber Bands’, ‘Dirty Wallpaper’ by Blue Dot Sessions.

For any suggestions, recommendations or other notes, please email us at editor@youngchinawatchers.com.

As our European chapters continue a deep dive into the relations between China and the Visegrád Four countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia), we invited Czech analyst Filip Šebok to discuss China's role in Czech domestic politics and the future of the 17+1 initiative. Our host for this interview is Mirela Petkova, a former Junior Researcher at the EU & Global Affairs Unit at Clingendael, and a writer for the Young China Watchers editorial team. 

If you'd like to find out more about developments in Central Europe regarding China, be sure to check out our recent webinar, in which a panel debated the benefits and pitfalls of the Visegrád Four’s cooperation with China, Beijing’s economic and political presence in the region, the region’s role in EU-China relations, and the significance of the 17+1 Initiative. And subscribe to our newsletter to find out about upcoming events.

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Filip Šebok is a Project Manager and China Research Fellow at the Association for International Affairs in Prague, Czech Republic. His research interests include Chinese domestic and foreign policy, relations between China and the Central and Eastern European countries and China's foreign policy rhetoric.

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The YCW Podcast is a podcast series by Young China Watchers. We’re a global community of young professionals, providing a platform to discuss the most pressing issues emerging from China today. We organize events with China experts in our 10 chapters across Asia, Europe and the U.S., fostering the next generation of China thought leaders.

Download and follow our podcast on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play Music or your usual podcasting platform.

Produced by Sam Colombie, edited by Joshua Cartwright and Sam Colombie. 

Music: ‘We Build With Rubber Bands’, ‘Dirty Wallpaper’ by Blue Dot Sessions.

For any suggestions, recommendations or other notes, please email us at editor@youngchinawatchers.com.

In this episode, Sam speaks with Lt. General H.R. McMaster about his new book, "Battlegrounds," in which McMaster lays out his vision for some of the key foreign policy challenges facing the current and next U.S. administration. McMaster discusses what he believes to be the flawed assumption embedded in previous U.S. administrations' China policy — namely, that the PRC would liberalize. McMaster puts it bluntly: "Engagement with the Party has not worked," and has in his view emboldened the Party.

They also discuss China's overseas investment and the difficulty of imposing international standards of accountability as well as China's aims to export its model, what McMaster says has been called a "new type of colonialism."

McMaster makes the case for characterizing Trump's trade war within the appropriate bounds of competition rather than confrontation with China. "This is not a U.S. and China problem; it's a free world and China problem."

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Lt. General H.R. McMaster is a former National Security Advisor to U.S. president Donald Trump. He currently holds fellowships with Stanford University and the Hoover Institution. McMaster is the author of "Dereliction of Duty" (1997) and "Battlegrounds" (2020).

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The YCW Podcast is a monthly podcast series by Young China Watchers. We’re a global community of young professionals, providing a platform to discuss the most pressing issues emerging from China today. We organize events with China experts in our 10 chapters across Asia, Europe and the U.S., fostering the next generation of China thought leaders.

Download and follow our podcast on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play Music or your usual podcasting platform.

Produced by Sam Colombie, edited by Joshua Cartwright, with support from Johanna Costigan.

Music: ‘We Build With Rubber Bands’, ‘Dirty Wallpaper’ by Blue Dot Sessions.

For any suggestions, recommendations or other notes, please email us at editor@youngchinawatchers.com.