This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy were live in London with a very special guest: Carrie Gracie, whose career with the BBC spanned three decades as a China-based correspondent, news presenter, and China editor. She talks about her podcast series on the Bo Xilai scandal, her longitudinal documentary series on White Horse Village, and her struggle with the BBC to win equal pay for women.

6:02 – Murder in the Lucky Holiday Hotel and Carrie’s coverage of the Bo Xilai scandal and Chinese elite politics in 2012

11:38 – Overview of the main characters: Bo Xilai, Gu Kuilai, Neil Heywood, and Wang Lijun 

35:18 – How the 2012 power struggle shaped Xi Jinping’s leadership style

41:42 – Carrie’s key takeaways from following the Bo Xilai case

44:33 – White Horse Village: documenting life of farmers across a decade in rural China

50:56 – Changing conditions for foreign journalists in China

56:52 – Advice to reporters starting in China

1:01:05 – Assessing media organizations’ progress on dismantling the gender pay gap

A transcript of this episode is available at TheChinaProject.com.

Recommendations: 

Jeremy: Yellowstone, a drama series about a family-owned ranch in Montana 

Carrie: Everything Everywhere All at Once; the Disney animated film Mulan

Kaiser: the UK progressive rock band Porcupine Tree's current Continuation/Closure tour — Europe dates

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