Hosted by Amie Ferris-Rotman
Featuring Melissa Chan
Produced by Finbar Anderson
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Author and Emmy-nominated journalist Melissa Chan isn’t afraid to be up front with New Lines’ Amie Ferris-Rotman about her views on the country she made her home for a decade, and which she has recently made the subject of a new graphic novel.
“I’m very critical of China, I don’t like authoritarianism anywhere,” says Chan, co-author of “You Must Take Part in Revolution,” on The Lede. “But I also look at what’s happening and I look at facts, and there are some interesting dynamics playing out in China.”
“I’m very critical of China, I don’t like authoritarianism anywhere.”
Chan’s former employer Al Jazeera sent her to Russia shortly after her expulsion from China in 2012, she remembers. “That was a fun assignment because it was vaguely familiar. Like I’d left one system and gone to the other. But it’s the same system, just different language.”
Attempts by the U.S. to stem some of China’s huge advances in the technology sector could have backfired, she suggests. “In some ways, the U.S. regulations against China have somewhat backfired and forced the Chinese to be creative, so they’re now in this brute force race with AI, and who turns out to be the winner on that remains to be seen,” Chan says.
Chan and Ferris-Rotman discuss how China has carved out a space at the forefront of global geopolitics through its dominance in tech, as well as its image control at home and abroad. That image control was on full display at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Chan argues.
“In 2008, people were very naive and really felt it was China’s moment. A ‘coming out party’ was the term that I heard a lot — this was a Chinese communist state that was liberalizing and getting involved in the global market economy.”
That vision, Chan argues, has since been superseded. “I actually think that Beijing 2008 was a template for the modern era of authoritarian states realizing that they can use sports for sportswashing.”
The Beijing 2008 model is on the radar of U.S. President Donald Trump, Chan says, for when the 2028 Olympic Games come to Los Angeles. “People will try to use it as propaganda in the same way that Russia and China have done.”