Face-Off: The U.S. vs China – Details, episodes & analysis

China’s leader, Mao Zedong famously said that “Women hold up half the sky.” But these days it doesn’t feel that way in China. Unfair marriage rules, difficulties getting a divorce, barriers to owning property and many more restrictions are challenging women to speak out, and act. We’ll hear about the Chinese “leftover women” who are veering from the traditional path and about the Chinese feminists of today. Guest:  Leta Hong Fincher, author, Left Over Women.  Recommended Books: Left Over Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China by Leta Hong Fincher Tiananmen Square by Lai Wen Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions. Rowhome’s Creative Director is Alex Lewis. John Myers is Rowhome’s Executive Producer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Motion pictures first came to China in 1896.  China was one of the first countries to screen the Lumiere brother’s “western shadowplays” as they were called. By the 1930’s Shanghai was known as the Hollywood of the East.  That all changed after the founding of the People’s Republic. Western films were eventually allowed back into China but it wasn’t until the release of the American epic, Titanic and its blockbuster success in China that Hollywood woke up to the potential of the Chinese market. Hollywood studios soon swarmed into China, working with Chinese movie makers to concoct big movies for big audiences: The Great Wall; Mulan; Kung Fu Panda 3. Then the dream went in a different direction.  We’ll speak with an American film producer who has been at the center of the push and pull between Hollywood and China. Guest: Peter Loehr, American movie executive with three decades in China. Recommended Books: The Golden Screen by Jeff Yang An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema 1896 - 1937 by Zhang Zhen   Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions. Rowhome’s Creative Director is Alex Lewis. John Myers is Rowhome’s Executive Producer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Xi Jinping and Joe Biden met on a basketball court in China in 2011 when they were vice presidents. They later toasted each other in Washington. They’ve spent many hours together. Much has changed. Can they hold the center together?  Guest: Minxin Pei, Chinese born professor of government Claremont McKenna College; author of Surveillance State and other books on China.  Jane’s first podcast about how Washington got it all wrong on Xi Jinping.  https://shorensteincenter.org/podcast-on-the-trail-of-xi-jinping/ Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From his studio in Boston, Yo-Yo Ma tells us how music eases tensions between American and Chinese people, even as Washington and Beijing are at each other’s throats.  Guests: Yo Yo Ma; Hai Ye Ni, principal cellist, Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

China is rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal even as arms control treaties are shredded. Can China and the U.S. come to the table and agree to nuclear arms control accords? Should Artificial Intelligence control nuclear weapons?   Guest: Tong Zhao; Chinese born nuclear expert now at Carnegie China in DC  Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Apple, one of the world’s most valuable companies, depends on China, America’s biggest adversary, to manufacture its iPhones. Apple employs millions of contract workers in China. Is this marriage heading for the rocks? What will Apple and China do to keep their marriage intact?  Guests: Prof. Willy Shih, Harvard Business School; Wayne Ma, tech reporter, The Information Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An American surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter jet collide near the Chinese coast in 2001.  Smart diplomacy by a former American Navy Admiral results in the release of two dozen American airmen and women from detention in China. Today, tensions between the countries are much higher, their planes are flying within feet of each other. There are fears a similar collision could result in war.   Guest: Admiral Scott Swift, former Commander US Pacific Fleet. Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our trailer features jaw-dropping audio from the cockpit of an American spy plane flying over the South China Sea. It’s early 2001. A Chinese fighter jet is getting perilously close to the slow moving American plane. Some weeks later, a collision occurred. What happened next? Listen to episode 1 of Face Off. Our trailer also dazzles with interview clips from our episodes covering tech, spies, the Chinese economy and more.  Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More than 170 million Americans are entertained, informed and earn big bucks from the Chinese-owned app, TikTok. Now their relationship with TikTok is in mortal danger, to say the least. American politicians seem to be able to agree on one thing: TikTok is bad. What happens now, and how did Americans get hooked on TikTok in the first place. Trump used TikTok to great affect in his campaign. What’s his attitude to TikTok going forward? What’s happening to the potential American buyers of TikTok? Guest: Louise Matsakis, senior business editor at Wired. Louise has been reporting on TikTok for more than four years. Recommended Reads: Love It; Hate It; Fear It: How TikTok Changed Our Culture by Sapna Maheshwani  Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions. Rowhome’s Creative Director is Alex Lewis. John Myers is Rowhome’s Executive Producer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are few American journalists reporting from inside China today. But that has not always been the case. In fact, American journalists in China freely reported on one of the biggest stories of recent history: the Chinese army’s massacre of protestors in Tiananmen Square in 1989. In this episode, we talk to Richard Roth, a CBS correspondent who was there during the 1989 protests. We feature Lingling Wei, the distinguished Wall Street Journal correspondent who was kicked out of China, along with other American reporters. How are journalists today reporting on China from afar? At this vital time, how do we get on the ground reporting from China when we can’t be on the ground?   Guest: Lingling Wei, Wall Street Journal, Chinese born journalist now in New York Book Recommendations: Assignment China: An Oral History of American Journalists in the People’s Republic by Mike Chinoy Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life by Nicholas Kristof. Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions. Rowhome’s Creative Director is Alex Lewis. John Myers is Rowhome’s Executive Producer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices