Scandal in Baidu and Chongqing

A year after our first show memorialized Google’s retreat from the China market, our first anniversary sees Sinica host Kaiser Kuo and his employer on the defensive as Gady Epstein and Bill Bishop grill Kaiser over recent allegations of copyright infringement by China’s biggest search engine. Without Google as a leveling force, the Chinese media industry has turned on its own in recent weeks, as attacks by a loose consortium of Chinese authors and publishers have prompted a radical overhaul of at least one of Baidu’s online services.

Never one to shy away from controversy, our discussion then turns to a brewing scandal you’re unlikely to have read about in the news... yet. Stretching up to the highest levels of the Politburo and down into the local real estate markets and mafia circles in Chongqing, this story concerns who is really running Chongqing. Joining Kaiser to dissect this emerging scandal is John Garnaut of the Sydney Morning Herald and Li Xin, Managing Editor of investigative magazine Caixin.