With the recent capture of a Chinese ISIS solder triggering speculation about the involvement of Chinese citizens in the Iraqi civil war, Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn are joined in our studio by Edward Wong from the New York Times and Prashant Rao of AFP, both of whom have spent considerable time reporting from Iraq. Their discussion starts off with an expose on the nature and identity of IS before moving on to China, talking about the ways in which the rise of the militant Islamic movement has affected Iraqi perceptions of China, and then a look into how these events relate to the broader crisis in the Middle East and US-China relations.

As always, if you enjoy Sinica, let us remind you that you can download this episode as a standalone mp3 file. Everyone is also welcome to subscribe to our Sinica RSS feed through iTunes, or get in touch with us at sinica@popupchinese.com with suggestions about topics and guests you'd like to see on the show.
 said on
September 10, 2014
Great podcast guys. Would be interested on hearing your thoughts Kaiser on Vice News. I have only recently discovered it (in the past fortnight). And I have found it pretty good. The documentary series on IS that Ed and Prashant recommended is excellent and surpasses anything that anyone has done on IS to date.

I get the sense that you are not a fan?
 said on
September 10, 2014
Am I the only person not seeing the recommendation links for this week?
 said on
September 11, 2014
Putting up recommendation links regularly and on time is just not how Sinica rolls sinolawson. Learn to love their idiosyncratic ways or suffer. (Prompts to mastery of the emotions is just one of the many less obvious benefits listening to Sinica has to offer).
 said on
September 16, 2014
Mark Lesson Studied