The Belt and Road Podcast

Exploring Chinese Soft Power with Maria Repnikova

Episode 59
Juliet and Erik are joined by Maria Repnikova to talk about her book, "Chinese soft power," Confucius Institutes, China's love for spectacle, and of course, how all this and more applies to the Belt and Road. What is soft power? How is China doing when it comes to soft power projection around the world? Listen to find out!

Maria Repnikova is the Director of the Center for Global Information Studies and an Assistant Professor in Global Communication at Georgia State University. She is a scholar of global communication, with a comparative focus on China and Russia. Her research examines the processes of political resistance and persuasion in illiberal political contexts, drawing on ethnographic research in the field. Dr. Repnikova holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She speaks fluent Mandarin, Russian and Spanish. Her book, Media Politics in China: Improvising Power under Authoritarianism examines participatory communications channels under an authoritarian regime through the relationship between China's critical journalists and the one-party state in the past decade. 

Recommendations:
Maria:


Erik:

  • Pekingology Podcast from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) with Jude Blanchette, specifically these two episodes:
  • The Rehearsal, Nathan Fielder's new docu-comedy series on HBO

Juliet:


*Bonus: The Belt and Road Sing Along Music Video*