china relations

A Vox Borders episode with Johnny Harris explaining how China is gradually erasing the line between mainland China and Hong Kong since the 1997 handover. It describes the one country, two systems arrangement and its expiration date.

Permaculture instructor Andrew Millison visits the chinampas, the floating gardens of Xochimilco in Mexico City. He looks at this ancient Aztec agricultural system and the project restoring it.

Chai Jing's 104-minute documentary on China's smog, with full English subtitles. A former TV anchor, she investigates what smog is, where it comes from and what can be done, prompted by her daughter's health problems.

Economist Martin Jacques offers three building blocks for understanding China's rise, including seeing China as a civilization-state rather than a nation-state. He also covers how Chinese people view the state.

PolyMatter's first part of a series on China's demographic collapse, covering the effects of the one-child policy, shrinking workforce and economic consequences.

A VICE News piece on China's Social Credit System, including a neighbor-watch pilot where paid watchers record behavior. It covers rewards for high scores and public shaming or restrictions for low ones.

A video by expat YouTuber serpentza about animal-eating practices and hygiene in China, presented as showing what the country's authorities do not want seen.

A Wendover Productions explainer on how China built the world's largest high-speed rail network so quickly and why its rail strategy differs from America's. It covers politics, social benefits and the economics of unprofitable lines.

An expat YouTuber in China shows how dockless bike-sharing, once loved, has been flooded by competing companies. Bikes pile up, get abandoned in odd places and are vandalised, with footage from around the city.

VICE News reporter Elle Reeve investigates China's rollout of facial recognition and mass surveillance technology and what it means for citizens. The report originally aired on VICE on HBO.

An Asianometry documentary-style video on the rise and collapse of China's dockless bike-share boom. It covers the startups, the heavy subsidies and the price wars.

A WSJ report on China's 'dark factories', highly automated plants run by robots with little human presence, visiting Zeekr's EV factory. It covers Chinese labor costs, automation and overproduction in the EV industry.

The ADVChina hosts tour a villa neighborhood in southern China that was built only three years earlier and is already empty and deteriorating. They use it to discuss ghost cities, building quality and the real estate bubble.

A three-and-a-half-hour Lex Fridman interview with international relations scholar John Mearsheimer. He discusses war and power politics, covering Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and the risk of a larger war.

PolyMatter explains China's housing bubble and why around 50 million homes sit empty. It covers cultural and economic reasons behind the overbuilding and the government's bind.

A long video essay by Kraut arguing that Trump's biggest failure was his handling of China. It spends much of its length on Chinese history, culture, the trade war, and the rise of a communist superpower.

Asianometry's short analysis of SMIC's N+2 node, China's 7nm leap forward. It considers how far behind the competition SMIC still is.

A clip of Yanis Varoufakis answering a question about China versus the EU on debt conditions. He contrasts Chinese non-interventionist lending with EU conditionality, drawing on the Piraeus port.

Time-lapse of Broad Group erecting a 30-story prefabricated hotel (J57) in Changsha, China in about 15 days. The description touts modular construction's precision, speed and low waste.

A New York Times video on how China's sheltered internet produced a new breed of apps, centering on WeChat's all-in-one model combining payments, social and services. It suggests American companies are now taking cues from Chinese tech.

A one-minute Bloomberg report that Chinese President Xi Jinping declined to give Mark Zuckerberg's unborn child an honorary Chinese name. Emily Chang reports it on Bloomberg West.

A short news clip of WHO official Bruce Aylward's 2020 interview with a Hong Kong outlet, in which he stalls and then ends the call when asked about Taiwan's WHO membership. He also says he would want to be treated in China if infected.

A 2018 VICE News Tonight interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook, in which he discusses privacy as a core company value, the Facebook breach, and Apple's iCloud arrangement in China.

Out of Spec Reviews takes a one-hour drive in an Avatr 11 running Huawei's Qiankun ADS 3.2 driver assistance system in China, billed as the best FSD-like system there.

An animated map of the territories of Chinese dynasties from 1000 BC to the present, compressed into about a minute.

ADVChina tours Chinese ghost cities and discusses the housing bubble, with speculative buyers purchasing empty apartments as investments.

A short South China Morning Post report on Nio's second-generation automated battery-swap stations for electric vehicles. It notes that Nio had built more than 800 stations in China by early 2022.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on the Chinese government's treatment of the Uighur people, covering the human rights abuses in Xinjiang and why they deserve attention.

VICE News reporter Isobel Yeung goes undercover as a tourist in Xinjiang, documenting heavy surveillance, policing and internment of Uighurs. It also covers children taken into state-run institutions.

Defense analyst H I Sutton argues that a new type of Chinese landing barge can only be explained by planning for an amphibious assault, in particular on Taiwan.

A 2019 BBC News report by John Sudworth, who was given rare access to the secure facilities in Xinjiang where more than a million Muslims are thought to be held. Authorities call them training schools, and the report examines what the visit reveals about the system and conditions inside.

CGTN coverage of the 2026 Spring Festival Gala, in which humanoid robots perform synchronized martial arts routines alongside children.

A Radio Free Asia report from its China food safety series on how "gutter oil" is recovered from sewers and waste and sold on to cheap restaurants and street vendors.

An Extra Credits episode on China's Sesame Credit, which gamifies obedient citizenship through a social score. It covers how the system rewards conformity and pressures people through their friends' behavior.

A Gamers Nexus investigative documentary on the black market for Nvidia AI GPUs, following smugglers, middlemen, and buyers, including reporting from China. It examines how export-restricted chips reach their users.

Strange Parts tours JLCPCB's large PCB factory in Huizhou, China, walking through the printed circuit board manufacturing process step by step. It shows the machinery, quality checks and scale behind cheap prototype boards.

Tom Scott's Royal Institution discourse on science communication in the age of social media, how recommendation algorithms shape popularity, and why view counts can matter more than truth. It includes a segment on parasocial relationships.

A data-visualization style timeline of the early coronavirus outbreak events by YouTuber Nathan Rich. It lays out dates of key developments in China.

Elon Musk joins the All-In Summit 2023 by Starlink for an interview on Ukraine and Starlink, X, the creator economy, China, AI and self-driving.

Strange Parts spends four months, seven custom circuit boards and several disassembled iPhones adding a working headphone jack to an iPhone 7 in China. The build is documented in detail.