Few outside the Chinese wedding banquet circuit have heard of fish maw, a flavourless, unappetising-looking swim bladder found in bony fish. In dried form, a kilo from the right species goes for around $150,000 on the world market, double the price of a kilogram of cocaine. The most prized maw is found in one of the remotest corners of the planet, the Kikori Delta in southern Papua New Guinea, where the once ignored scaly croaker is being targeted on an industrial scale by Chinese fishing companies, transforming the lives of villagers—and the ecosystem. Louisa and Graeme are joined by Jo Chandler, an award-winning journalist and senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Advancing Journalism who reported on the fish maw trade for Nature magazine.

Image: c/- Jo Chandler, Veraibari Village 2024.

Jo’s fieldwork was supported in part by the Walkley Foundation Sean Dorney Grant for Pacific Journalism.

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Writers from Hong Kong face a Kafkaesque decision in the years since draconian security legislation was imposed on the city: to stay and be subject to intense censorship, or to write freely from exile. In this episode, Louisa speaks to two award-winning authors who have chosen different paths. Lau Yeewa is still living in Hong Kong; her book Tongueless, translated by Jennifer Feeley, won the 2024 Pen Translates award. Gigi Leung Lee-chi is now based in Taiwan, and her book The Melancholy of Trees has just won Taiwan's Golden Tripod award.

Image: c/- Wikimedia Commons, Empty Bookshelves, 2014

Transcripts available at https://www.thechinastory.org/lrp/

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In our third episode on pig butchering scams, we explore the origins of the Chinese criminal syndicates that enslave people from at least 66 different countries. We examine the institutions supporting this appalling business, from the Thai military to cryptocurrencies, Burmese border guard forces to special economic zones. And the marks for these scam syndicates are not just Chinese lonely hearts—Western countries are now more profitable to scam than China. To ask what can be done to counter this trade, Graeme is joined by Jason Tower, director of the Burma Program at the United States Institute of Peace, and Greg Raymond from the ANU’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre.

Image: c/- Stefan Czimmek/DW, KK Park on the Myanmar-Thai border

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Taiwan is ground zero for cognitive warfare, with the island subject to more disinformation than any other democracy. The targets are political candidates, media outlets, even boy bands. The threat is so serious that Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice recently set up a Cognitive Warfare Research Center. To explore this war for Taiwanese minds, Louisa and Graeme are joined by independent writer Min Chao and journalist Brian Hioe from New Bloom Magazine.

Image: Taiwan News Formosa TV, YouTube, 20 January 2024.

Transcripts available at: https://www.thechinastory.org/lrp/

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After our last episode on an online romance scam operating out of Palau we were contacted by Neo Lu, who was trafficked to work in an online scam camp on the Myanmar-Thailand border, the victim of a $US3 trillion global criminal industry. He joins Louisa and Graeme to offer jaw-dropping detail on life inside a scam centre, the mechanics of pig butchering, who benefits from this new form of slavery and how they launder their profits.

Image: c/- Yihao Lu, Scamming equipment, Dongmei Camp, 2022

Episode transcripts are available at https://www.thechinastory.org/lrp/

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Chinese triads have been making a Pacific play, notably in the tiny nation of Palau. There a notorious triad boss - nicknamed Broken Tooth - reinvented himself as a CCP-linked businessman trying to set up a 'gangster-themed' casino, while police busted a Chinese 'fraud factory'. In Palau, this scam scheme was linked to businessmen touting United Front credentials, who are also involved in local politics and media outlets. To examine the ties between Chinese gangsters and the Communist Party, Louisa and Graeme are joined by Aubrey Belford, the lead Pacific editor for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and freelance journalist Bernadette Carreon.

Image: Downtown Koror, Palau’s largest town. Image c/- Richard Brooks

Transcripts available at https://www.thechinastory.org/lrp/

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For our hundredth episode, there was only one choice in the Year of the Dragon. We tackle the scaly mythical beast, which now finds itself central to the Party’s image. We look at the political efficacy of the dragon for the CCP, which has recently launched a nationalistic rebranding campaign for the ‘loong’ to distinguish it from evil Western dragons. We explore the history of the dragon, its often-fraught relationship to power, and (once common) “official sightings” of dragons in government gazetteers. To get to grips with the most auspicious creature in China’s pantheon, Louisa and Graeme are joined by Australian sinologist Linda Jaivin, author of The Monkey and the Dragon, historian James Carter from St. Joseph's University, and Annie Ren, a postdoctoral fellow of Chinese literature at the Australian National University.

Transcripts are available at: https://www.thechinastory.org/lrp/

Image: c/- Louisa Lim, Bendigo, 2024

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China’s largesse in the Pacific is nothing if not visible. From mobile phone towers to gleaming stadiums and government buildings, Beijing’s splashing out on those it sees as choosing “the right side of history.” In this episode, we explore Taiwan’s future in the Pacific as it is deserted by its former diplomatic allies, lured by Beijing’s goodies. In this episode, Louisa and Graeme are joined by Solomon Islands journalist Dorothy Wickham, co-founder of the Melanesian News Network, and the University of California’s Jessica Marinaccio, a former staffer in Tuvalu’s Taiwanese embassy.

Show transcripts can be found at: https://www.thechinastory.org/lrp/

Image: Wikimedia Commons. “President Tsai and Tuvalu Prime Minister Sopoaga plant a coconut seedling, symbolizing the close friendship between Taiwan and Tuvalu.” (2017) Office of the President, Republic of China (Taiwan) | Government Website Open Information Announcement

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