In the latest in our series on belief, we’re examining the emergence of incels in the world’s largest manosphere. China’s growing incel community is fuelled by state-approved nationalism and simple demographics—by one estimate, 30 million Chinese men won’t find a life partner. To find out why so many Chinese men believe that women are the source of their problems, Louisa and Graeme are joined by Yihuan Zhang, a graduate researcher at the University of Macau, Ling Tang, a cultural studies lecturer at the University of Melbourne, and Qian Huang from the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen.

Image: Incel. c/- MissLunaRose12 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

Transcripts available at https://ciw.anu.edu.au/podcasts/little-red-podcast

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Continuing our series on belief in China, we look at the revival of Buddhism, which is being embraced by citizens and the Chinese state. While temple visits increase, the state is funding temples and martial arts academies from Nepal to Tanzania. As Xi Jinping extols Buddhism with Chinese characteristics, the Chinese state is leveraging Buddhism diplomacy to its advantage. To find out more, Louisa and Graeme are joined by anthropologist Gareth Fisher from Syracuse University, the author of From Comrades to Bodhisattvas, and political scientist Chien-Peng Chung from Lingnan University in Hong Kong.

Image: c/- Bitter Winter. Weibo image of Xi Jinping visiting Hongjue Temple, 18 June 2024.

Transcripts available at https://ciw.anu.edu.au/podcasts/little-red-podcast

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the latest in our series on belief, we’re looking at China’s official belief system—Marxism. In recent years, netizens have argued China has entered the ‘garbage time’ of history, a phrase borrowed from the dying minutes of a basketball game, which now references a crisis of trust in the Communist Party and its official ideology. To ask whether Marxism still exists in China, and how Marx influences the Chinese state, we’re joined by two guests: Alison Sile Chen Zhao, a University of California political analyst and the author of Her Battles, and Professor Xu Chenggang, a senior research fellow at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions, and the author of Institutional Genes: Origins of China’s Institutions and Totalitarianism.

Episode art: Portrait of Karl Marx. c/- Wikimedia Commons.

Transcripts available at https://ciw.anu.edu.au/podcasts/little-red-podcast

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.