China Decode: China's Bid for AI Dominance, and Chinese Food Trends (ft. @BlondieinChina)

Alice Han and James Kynge break down Xi Jinping's pitch at the World AI Conference in Shanghai: free, open-source Chinese AI models for developing nations shut out by expensive U. S. systems. They dig into WAICO, the new 29-member intergovernmental AI organization China just launched, how it echoes (and diverges from) the Belt and Road and Digital Silk Road playbooks, and whether China's open-source generosity can actually last. Then: mathematicians Yu Deng and Hong Wang just became the first two Chinese nationals to win a Fields Medal in the same year — only the second and third Chinese nationals ever to win math's highest honor. Alice and James discuss why it's being celebrated as a milestone for Chinese science, and what it says about talent flow between China and the West. Plus: Amy Lyons — known online as @BlondieinChina — joins to talk about a decade of covering Chinese food and culture, what most people get wrong about Chinese cuisine outside Beijing and Shanghai, and how the creator economy is reshaping global perceptions of China. Subscribe to China Decode on Substack for weekly analysis, livestreams, and deep dives into the biggest story shaping the global economy: chinadecode.profgmedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:00Alice Han?

  It seems like China is saying, hey, we're not like America when it comes to AI. We're going to be open weight, open source. We're invested in trying to have multilateral agreement about framework. And we care about making sure that humans are always in control as opposed to this AGI narrative that you see a lot in Silicon Valley.

• 1:27Alice Han?

  Welcome to China Decode. I'm Alice Han.

• 1:30James Kynge?

  And I'm James Kynge.

• 1:31Alice Han?

  In today's episode of China Decode, we're discussing China's aims for more AI diplomacy around the world. Chinese mathematicians win a prestigious international award. And Amy Lyons, AKA Blondie in China, shares the latest in Chinese food and hospitality trends. That's all coming up, but first, let's do a very quick check in with how the markets are starting the week in China. On Monday, markets saw gains with the Shanghai Composite and the CSI 300 both up 1.15% and the Shenzhen Composite up 2.7%. Chinese memory chipmaker CXMT soared 466% on its Shanghai-style market debut Monday,

• 2:14Alice Han?

  instantly becoming China's most valuable listed company at roughly 3.3 trillion RMB. That is nearly 500 billion US dollars. All right, let's get right into it. At a recent speech at the World AI Conference in Shanghai, President Xi Jinping unveiled his vision for the future of AI led by China. He focused on the importance of free open source AI models and training, as well as the need to open up developing countries to Chinese AI models. Now, these developing countries might be left behind by the expensive US systems like OpenAI and Anthropic. The strategy of targeting the Global South could be China's secret strategy and weapon

• 2:58Alice Han?

  in becoming the global leader in AI technology. All right, James, I thought that Xi's speech was a must read. This is such an important speech from President Xi. He doesn't make them often, but when he does, you have to listen. At this AI conference, he basically delivered this speech in which he said that China needs to be a leader, particularly in the open source models, and that the Global South has a role in being part of that ecosystem. I sent this speech to many of my friends, I have to admit, in Silicon Valley because I really believe that this speech alone says a lot about China's AI strategy.

• 3:42Alice Han?

  And oftentimes, in closed systems, it really pays to go to the source of what the leadership is thinking. And here, we're getting a very good clue into how Xi and the leadership are thinking about AI. How are you seeing this play out in China? And is it as politicized as it seems to be in the US?

• 4:01James Kynge?

  I would just like to concur with what you said about this, the importance of this event. This speech by Xi Jinping at the AI conference really was vital. And if you ask me, it's partly to do with the open source question that you mentioned, but it's much bigger than that. Here we have China's new plan for artificial intelligence and disseminating artificial intelligence around the world. And to me, this illuminates a crucial part of China's even bigger plan to create a new world order, or maybe not create a new world order, but guide certain technologies and certain trends towards the creation of a new world order.

• 4:45James Kynge?

  That might be a more accurate way of putting it. And in a nutshell, my sense of this plan is that it is to appeal to the Global South. The Global South, of course, has about 130 countries in it. It's by far the biggest part of the world. And as you mentioned, Alice, Chinese AI is largely open source, almost exclusively open source. So it can be downloaded by anyone, anywhere in the world, and purposed for their own particular needs. This is a big contrast, as you've also mentioned, with most of the US models, which are closed source.

• 5:24James Kynge?

  And that means that, as I say, the diffusion of Chinese AI into the Global South is growing far, far quicker than that of the American models. And the other thing, of course, is that Chinese AI models are much, much cheaper to use. Typically, they cost about a tenth of the cost of the US models per million output tokens. And that means that this is diffusing throughout the Global South, developing countries all over the world. And I would say China's overall plan is to use technology, to use finance, building infrastructure for countries in the developing world.

• 6:07James Kynge?

  And then through these services that China gives to the developing world, China wants to bind these countries to it politically and use their agency to counterbalance the West and also to write new rules. Some of these rules could be rules in AI, standards for technology and other rules as well. So I see in this conference, which was held with Xi Jinping as the keynote speaker, I see a much bigger plan developing. Do you think I'm over egging it? Or do you think this is actually part of the picture?

• 6:49Alice Han?

  No, I think you and I are in agreement. And I actually pulled out a couple of quotes that I think were the real highlights from his speech. These boil down to, I think, three main areas. Number one, he talks about the importance of open source, right? So in the speech, he talks about seizing this rare historic opportunity to encourage open source, openness, collaboration and sharing. And then the second point that I want to raise is that he does talk about the importance of AI governance and regulation, both at a domestic level, but at a global multilateral level. And here, I believe that he is trying to fill in the gap or the lacuna left by the US and some of these other G7 players that are left behind in the AI race.

• 7:31Alice Han?

  And he says in his speech, "We should put in laws and regulations, technological monitoring, early warning and emergency response systems to strengthen the line of security and ensure that AI is always under human control. And we should jointly oppose overstretching the national security concept in the field of AI and placing one country's security over that of others." And again, I think this is a veiled reference to the US, which obviously with its frontier models is quite a bit ahead of the rest of the world. And I almost feel that a lot of the technology strategy that China has, especially in AI, is about, to your point, James, creating the antithesis to the US model.

• 8:14Alice Han?

  So whatever the US model is doing, I think there is a veiled reference to it being capitalistic, hegemonic, unilateral, and China wants to make it the opposite, right? It wants to make it affordable for many, open to all, and something that can be multilaterally governed and controlled. And then the third point is your point about the Global South, and that is what he calls "extensive international cooperation and help with the Global South countries with capacity building to bridge the AI and digital divides." And here is referencing to the programs, the 5,000 or so programs in AI training and seminar initiatives, as well as some of these other institutions like Waco that they've

• 8:59Alice Han?

  started in the last month or so. And putting that all together, it seems like China is saying, hey, we're not like America when it comes to AI. We're going to be open weight, open source. We're invested in trying to have multilateral agreement about framework. And we care about making sure that humans are always in control as opposed to this AGI narrative that you see a lot in Silicon Valley. Whether or not he can deliver on that, or China can deliver on all this, remains to be seen because my next question to you, James, would be, do you buy this argument that we're seeing now in Western media that there is pressure being put on Chinese companies,

• 9:44Alice Han?

  potentially by the state or maybe by their shareholders, to not disclose the weights in open weight models for fear that that would be exposing their IP? It wouldn't be good for maintaining and holding on to shareholder value? You know, obviously, we have seen some stories come out recently that both ByteDance and Alibaba are gating some of the models. So for instance, ByteDance has this hybrid strategy where C-Dance and C-Dream, which are its visual AI platforms, are closed, but other parts of the models are open weight. And likewise for Alibaba.

• 10:25Alice Han?

  So maybe we end up with this hybrid system where the cutting edge open weight models are closed, but the rest remains widely available at a huge discount, obviously. I don't have an answer to this, but from the speech alone, my sense is that that would not be smart. And I think that Beijing and maybe the private companies agree that right now, the modus operandi for China to have success is to be as open as possible so that as many people want to download their weights and then fine tune on prem, basically on their own hardware.

• 11:02Alice Han?

  Maybe I'm wrong here, I'm not looking at the big picture, but that is my sense, and that is why I think the speeches is so, so important for setting China's AI policy.

• 11:10James Kynge?

  I couldn't agree more, Alice. I remember the time I was in Beijing, actually, when the internet was sort of really kind of going mainstream, late 90s, 2000s. And at that time, China was very concerned about the fact that the US effectively ruled the internet and still does to this day. You know, it's the big US companies, the big multi-trillion-dollar companies that effectively dominate the internet right now, apart from inside China itself. And so China doesn't want to miss the boat. It doesn't

• 11:49James Kynge?

  want the US to win AI as well. And in fact, it wants to win AI so that in 20 years' time, whoever is doing this version of this podcast will be talking about the fact that China won AI. And that's what this whole plan is all about. And I think the political nature of the plan comes over really clearly when you see how the training that you mentioned is organized. So China's going to be training thousands of people, and the focus is going to be on the global south. The training's going to be on how to use Chinese open weight models. And there are going to be six major regional AI centers that are set up within

• 12:32James Kynge?

  regional groupings, so that the training will be delivered through the auspices of these regional groupings. And the regional groupings are the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the League of Arab States, the African Union, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. These are all forums in which China is either a major force or the leading light. And so that we can see that China is getting behind this strategy in a very major way. And I think it's true

• 13:10James Kynge?

  to say that YCO, which is the World AI Cooperation Organization, which is the body that held the meeting that Xi Jinping gave his speech at, it's an intergovernmental body which is headquartered in Shanghai and led by China. It's currently got 29 members, including Brazil, Russia, Indonesia, South Africa, and it aims to roughly double in size. So this is China's political land grab to get behind AI and to disseminate it into the global south, and then to set the rules of AI globally. So this couldn't be more important.

• 13:51James Kynge?

  It is a massive moment, I think, in technological governance and China's influence spreading around the world. So yeah, I mean, it's going to be interesting to see how it turns out. Personally, I would expect the US to have some kind of comeback, some kind of alternative plan, but let's see what happens. The last thing I'd mention is that although we said at the beginning, the US has mostly closed source models, it is beginning to move into open source as well. Nvidia has a couple of open source models now, and we all know that Nvidia is a very powerful company. So as I always say, whenever we talk about

• 14:32James Kynge?

  AI, this is a race. It has not got a winner so far. We shouldn't count out the US. It's vastly impressive and powerful in these areas.

• 14:43Alice Han?

  I always feel, James, that it's a competition which the two sides are running very different kinds of races. Related to this is a Substack article that I just read from an amazing guy who is a fellow at Brookings, Kyle Chan. He writes High Capacity. I highly recommend for those who don't know his work. And he talks about the fact that the closed models are to Apple what open source models are to Android. And what he means by that is the fact that these, Google really created an Android open ecosystem that allowed Samsung, Huawei, Oppo, all these other companies to join in on their operating system, the Android

• 15:28Alice Han?

  operating system, and they would collect basically licensing fees. But the idea was that you would create an alternative ecosystem so that it's not fully dominated by the Apple OS system. And that, I think, is a useful way to think about it, which is that ultimately the open source models do a good job, I think, of ensuring that there's more market competition and providing an ecosystem in which other players, to your point, James, Miramarades or Nvidia's who are getting into the open source ecosystem as well, can come in. And it's not yet clear if China's going to, you know, in five, 10 years, completely still

• 16:08Alice Han?

  dominate in the open source ecosystem. But that, at least, I think the big takeaway, which people have woken up to in the last couple of months, is that, hey, OpenAI and the closed model system isn't the only way to do things. And actually, there's a very credible open source, open weight ecosystem where in some metrics, the token usage has gone up substantially and has actually overtaken these closed source models. Now, monetization is different, where the closed source models clearly win and outpace their open source varieties. But certainly, I think, the last couple of months, when I put all the data points together, I think that the Chinese models that have come out, that are mainly

• 16:52Alice Han?

  open weight, have reminded people that, hey, you know, there are other ways to run models, to create value, and it's not just the closed system. And it all connects back to Xi's point. And it's funny, because in some ways, it reminds me of what he said many years ago about blockchain. Do you remember? He was saying that China wanted to be a leader in blockchain technologies. And then a couple of years later, he was talking about open source. People might be scratching their head and thinking, hey, how does that work within a closed kind of regime to some extent, politically? But I think it's the only way I can answer this is that it is a geopolitical move to try to create an alternative, non-US

• 17:36Alice Han?

  system. That is how I think about it the other day. So it all comes back to geopolitics, this technology question. And China's looked at the field and said, hey, well, we have hardware constraints, we have compute constraints, we have capex constraints too. And so we can't keep doing the same kind of, we can't run the same race that the Americans are in the frontier labs and the closed models. So we have to do a different system and then get everyone else onboarded, like Android operating system, so that we have a very competitive alternative system to the Apples or to the closed source models. Okay, we'll be back with more after a quick break. Stay with us.

• 18:22Scott Galloway?

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• 21:58Alice Han?

  Welcome back. Deng Yu and Wang Hong have become the first two Chinese nationals to win the prestigious Fields Medal for Mathematics in the same year. And people across China are holding it up as evidence of the country's increasing status as a science and technology power. James, I didn't realise this, but this is actually quite a rare occurrence in Chinese history, even though we have this assumption that China is great in mathematics and Chinese people are awesome at mathematics. But actually, if you look at the history of the Fields Medal, which really is kind of the Nobel Prize for people under 40 in the mathematics realm, China's only ever won it now three times. Now, you've obviously got these two young people, Deng Yu and Wang Hong, and then you

• 22:41Alice Han?

  had somebody from Tsinghua in 1982 who won it. So it really is a big deal within the mathematics field. It's surprising because you think China must be great at mathematics, there's so many great mathematicians coming out of China, and yet they've only now won this medal three times. And this is the first female from mainland China who's won it as well, Wang Hong. Before we even get into the mathematics of it, which are really complicated, I just want to say that this has been going viral in China. I was just looking at some social media and people really getting proud about these two young people winning this prize and what it says about China's education system as excellence in STEM.

• 23:25Alice Han?

  But over to you, what were your first thoughts when you saw this?

• 23:29James Kynge?

  It is really curious when you think about the size of the Chinese population, the vaunted nature of China's education system, the fact that, you know, within families in China, mathematics is prized very, very much. And there are many, many brilliant people in China that China's only won the Fields Medal three times, as you said. So this is a breakthrough. I also noted the historic nature of the problems that these two had solved. One of them, Deng Yu, had solved a problem that was first posed in the year 1900, therefore

• 24:11James Kynge?

  it had been unresolved for 125 years, and he managed to crack it. So obviously, these are very, very considerable achievements. The other one, Wang Hong, she solved a three-dimensional conjecture. This one had also puzzled mathematicians all over the world for over a century. So these are, you know, in their own right, are very considerable achievements for mathematicians. But I think the bigger question, and you've already alluded to this a bit, is the way in which China hasn't featured too much in any of the global prizes that we can really think of.

• 24:56James Kynge?

  And I think this stands really as an anomaly. And so my first comment on this Fields Medal success is that it helps to slightly rebalance what I might call China's prize deficit. If we look at Nobel Prizes, for instance, there have only been 13 Chinese-born winners of the Nobel Prize since the Nobel Prize began. That is just about 1% of the total number of winners of the Nobel Prize. I would also, I'd like to ask the question, you know, why? Why is that? Is it that China had a, you know, a difficult time in its history and education was somewhat

• 25:41James Kynge?

  circumscribed? Or is it that there's been a bias against China? If we look at the winners of the Nobel Prize, there have now been three. We had Liu Xiaobo, he was a dissident, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. And we had Tu Youyou, she was, in 2015, she won the prize for the discovery of a novel malaria therapy, which was, incidentally, developed from a fourth-century traditional Chinese medicine text. So really extraordinary if you want to read into that story further. And the other was Mo Yuan, and he got the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2012.

• 26:25James Kynge?

  So those are China's three winners of the Nobel Prize in modern times. And, you know, when we think about the very first one, I was in Beijing at that time, it went to the dissident Liu Xiaobo, and the Chinese government reacted with great displeasure bordering on fury. It said that the Nobel Committee once again displayed its arrogance and prejudice against the country that has made the most remarkable economic and social progress in the past three decades. So that left no doubt that the mind of the Chinese government is that these Western institutions have been prejudiced against China, and that's one of the reasons, at

• 27:09James Kynge?

  least, why China hasn't featured that greatly in many of these prizes that we now venerate so highly.

• 27:18Alice Han?

  Yeah, we'd have to run, as an economist, I'd say, we'd have to run regressions to see, you know, what were the most important variables at play, if there is an innate bias, or really the education system was stacked against these Chinese mathematicians and scientists for a long period of modern Chinese history relative to Europe's. But what I did think about when I read these stories were two things. Number one is the way in which China is actually rising up the global institutional rankings for universities. And number two, that it's surprising to me that, as you mentioned, James, the three

• 27:59Alice Han?

  Nobel Prize winners from China, it's in literature, medicine, and then the Peace Prize, it's not in areas like physics and chemistry and economics, you know, areas where, you know, I know for a fact that China is quite strong. And it all links back to even the first story that we mentioned, AI, because if you look at the breakdown, and I've mentioned this many times before, of the top-tier AI talents, and there's a couple of data sources for this, around the world, the plurality, I think it's something close to 40%, is from China, mainland China. And that speaks to the fact that you've got amazing physicists, mathematicians, scientists

• 28:44Alice Han?

  coming out of Chinese universities that go to European, American research institutions, universities, labs, companies, and help develop the products and technologies in those areas. And yeah, that's not really being reflected by some of these prizes, which I find very interesting, to your point. But number two, the FT just ran a piece, I believe, a week or so ago, about how China is quietly rising up the rankings. It's not yet in the top 10, that's still dominated by the UK and the US in terms of top 10 universities around the world.

• 29:22Alice Han?

  But China now has 85 of the top 1,500 or so universities, that's up 13 from last year. The US has the most, 184, which is down from its peak of 201 in 2023. And 65% of US institutions slipped down their rankings, 40% of British institutions fell down their rankings, and 61% of Chinese institutions rose. So, you know, we're potentially going into a period, to your point, James, where maybe the deck isn't going to be stacked against these, you know, mathematicians, scientists, engineers, because now we're actually going to have serious, cutting-edge research institutions

• 30:05Alice Han?

  and universities that allow them to do, you know, really cutting-edge and globally-recognised science. But maybe I'm too Pollyannaish, but I think it's connected. What do you think?

• 30:17James Kynge?

  Yeah, I mean, I do, definitely. I think, you know, Chinese intellectual endeavour is really on the march, and we can see that in the rise up the league tables that Chinese universities have accomplished. We can see it in so many other different areas. So I wouldn't expect history to be any guide to the future when it comes to China's ability to win field medals or Nobel Prizes in the sciences, such as you've just mentioned. I think it's going to be very, very closely contested with China, maybe even taking the lion's share at some point in the future. Yeah, I think we're at this pivotal moment in history, and it really is across the board,

• 31:00James Kynge?

  and it just says that China has risen and is now on the march.

• 31:06Alice Han?

  We'll be back with more after a quick break.

• 31:16Speaker 00

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• 31:46Scott Galloway?

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• 32:53Alice Han?

  Welcome back. We're joined now by the amazing Amy Lyons, perhaps better known as her internet persona Blondie in China. Amy has been in China for a decade and explores everything about Chinese cuisine and food trends, among other things. And you can find her on YouTube and Instagram at Blondie in China Amy. It's a pleasure to have you on the podcast.

• 33:14James Kynge?

  Amy, thanks so much for coming on. It really is a great pleasure. You know, between Alice and me, there is no question as to who is the great culinary expert. Alice is in fact brilliant in the kitchen and I am, to put it mildly, pretty hopeless. But please kick off by telling us a little bit about the food culture in China. We probably, a lot of people in the West tend to have the view that it's a bit monolithic, that it's basically what you might get in your average standard Chinese restaurant in London or New York or Sydney or somewhere like that. Have you found any surprising discoveries as you've been going around China and presumably doing quite a bit of eating?

• 33:58Speaker 05

  Oh, yes. I, I can really empathize with people who think that Chinese food might just be their local Chinese restaurant menu because growing up in Australia, yes, we do have access to so much amazing Chinese food. But I didn't realize the depth of Chinese cuisine until I lived and studied in China. And it took me by surprise at first because I remember going down the road and trying restaurant by restaurant and being like, well, that was so different to this and this was so different from that. And then I started traveling more and realizing when it comes to China, food, just like the history, just like the culture changes as you go from city to city, province to province, village to village.

• 34:40Speaker 05

  And I think that's the beautiful thing about China is it has this 5,000 plus years of history and everywhere has been developing in its own way in kind of separate communities for most, for the most part. So you have this really beautiful culture that's tied to the food as well. So when you're eating something, it comes back to the history, it comes back to the geography and every single place is so different. For example, right now I'm in Kunming, it's the capital of Yunnan province. And in Yunnan, you have such a diversity in eating from the north to the south, even just from hour to hour away, because you've got like mountainous, snow topped regions in the north. And then in the south, you're bordering Laos and Myanmar. So it's super, super tropical.

• 35:24Speaker 05

  So, and you also have so many different ethnic minorities here as well. So let alone Chinese cuisine, you cannot sum up in a sentence, Yunnan food in itself. You cannot define it. So Chinese food, there is no one Chinese food. There is no way to describe Chinese food because it is just so diverse. And that's the exciting path I've been on in the last 12, 13 years that I've been based in China. And it's been such a window into the culture.

• 35:52Alice Han?

  That's incredible. And I have to say shout out to the fact that Amy and I went to high school together. So we've known each other since we were 13. We also did a trip to Yunnan a couple of years ago where we had a lot of the cuisine, the delicacies, the mushrooms in that region. But what I love about your content, Amy, is that you really have no fear to go into the far flung places of China and really talk to locals, be it in Yunnan or Dongbei, where northeastern provinces of China. And you really show the authenticity of how people eat day to day. But I want to zoom out a little bit and think about social media, especially in the realm of Chinese content in the last couple of years.

• 36:34Alice Han?

  And what I sensed, and I want to see if you feel the same way, is that when I show speed, this African American kid showed up in China, did a lot of live streaming with Chinese creators and people, that really kind of changed the narrative about China. And then all of a sudden you see a lot of content creation about traveling to China, uncovering the real China, China maxing, you know, I'm, I'm living a very Chinese time of my life. You know, the, the, the whole shade narrative around China has shifted, I would say, on social media in the last two years. But you've been there for longer, over a decade. How has it evolved and where do you see it going right now?

• 37:12Speaker 05

  It's definitely evolved. I think it was a perfect storm around the time that I show speed came to China. I'm not sure what happened first, but I see it as a chain of events. Firstly, or somewhere in there, there was the TikTok went offline and a lot of people came to Red Note. And I think that was such a beautiful time for social media because Red Note is such a beautiful place in Chinese social media. It's one of my favorite platforms to post on here. And seeing foreigners come to Red Note and get a window into Chinese culture, I think that did a really, played a really big part as well. I also think that around the same time, Chongqing as a city started to go viral. And I think it was a really cool moment for China to have a city that wasn't Shanghai

• 37:57Speaker 05

  or Beijing going really famous and showing a different side of China, not the China that people think they might know. I mean, it was only three or four years ago that when I was going to Chongqing and making videos, I was describing it as the world's biggest city you've never heard of. And now the world has heard of Chongqing. So even in that way, China has evolved so, so much. And it's just been so lovely having a little bit more positive dialogue around China or getting a more, more insight into the nuance of China. And that's been lovely to see as a creator who has been here for so long and has seen a lot of negativity in the past towards China. So I just think it's cool that people are coming here and seeing it for their own eyes.

• 38:38Speaker 05

  And I think that will continue to evolve as now there's been a spark that's been ignited about China. And I think people are starting to interact more with Chinese culture. And I think that's really cool to see.

• 38:50James Kynge?

  Amy, you've, you've said that, you know, that there is, you know, quite a distance in terms of the understanding of people abroad and, and what's going on in China. What would you say, if you could give an example of like a food trend or a dish in China that's blowing up in China that Western audiences really don't have much of a sense of at the moment?

• 39:12Speaker 05

  Okay, so right now in China, a cuisine and a place that's really taking off in a way that like three years ago, I was saying, oh, Chongqing is, you know, going to be the next big thing. I think Guiyang is going to be the next big, big thing. Guizhou is a province in China and Guiyang is the capital city. And Guiyang is such a cool city and it has such an incredible food culture and it's really going viral in China. And in Shanghai, for example, it's the, kind of the hottest food cuisine that you can be having right now and is characterized by being quite sour because geographically, Guizhou province is very mountainous and there's not a lot of salt reserves in Guizhou province. So historically, people haven't been able to preserve their food through salt.

• 39:56Speaker 05

  They've had to resort to other means like pickling and fermentation. So as a result, to this day, Guizhou food is very, very sour and I find it very addictive. You also have some of the best potatoes in China there. You have these beautiful hot pot dishes with sour soup fish. And yeah, it's one of my favorite cuisines. I'm going to say it, my favorite cuisine right now. And I think for a lot of people in China, it is as well, but I don't really see it popping up much in, in the West. And I think people are still on their Sichuan food trend right now, but I think that'll start developing. But even in the last few years, you do see Chinese food trends in the West changing. I think generally, at least in Australia, a lot of the food that we would see growing

• 40:40Speaker 05

  up was more Cantonese because that was also the source of, major source of the diaspora to Australia and also other countries around the world. But then you've also seen this gradual transition to more Sichuan dishes. You see a huge trend of C and dishes like Bian Bian noodles that have just gone viral around the world as well. So I think Guizhou food will be the next thing to take off, but we'll see.

• 41:04Alice Han?

  Okay, what's your favorite dish there? I need to go out. James and I need to find someplace in London. I'm not sure if we will, but we'll have to find. What's your favorite dish within that region?

• 41:14Speaker 05

  Oh my gosh, there's so many. I, I take my food tours through Guizhou because I also, I like to eat there. My favourite dish, they have this beautiful hot pot called Qingshui Tang, which is essentially a clear broth um hot pot. And then you choose all your ingredients, but the ingredients that you can find are so varied. Because in Guizhou province, you have a lot of mountains, you have a very favourable climate. So you'll see like thirty different kinds of leafy greens that you can add to your pot, things that you have never seen before. And then the the soul is in the sauce, which the sauce bar itself has hundreds of ingredients, including at least ten different types of chili. And you have to use different types of those chilies.

• 41:57Speaker 05

  And people are masters of knowing how to pair chili with chili. Uh, they have this smoky chili here that is created through the ashes of a fire. You put dried chilies in the ashes of a fire and then you ground it up and you add water to it. And it adds this gorgeous smokiness. And so you have a lot of smokiness here, you have these sour flavours, it's spicy, it's incredible. But I'm not sure if you can find that overseas.

• 42:21Alice Han?

  I don't think so. I've actually never come across a uh Guizhou restaurant.

• 42:25James Kynge?

  I must say, I'll tell you, listening to you talking about uh Guizhou food makes me think of how much of a time lag indeed there is. I mean, it was only in two thousand and twelve that we here in the UK got the Bao dumplings. There was a a chain that was set up at that time, well, actually a tiny restaurant called Bao, B A O, which means dumpling in Chinese in London. And now it's become a bit of a chain and now Bao dumplings is sort of entered the language. And every, but you know, my my kids' generation, they all know what a Bao dumpling is. But so maybe it'll take ten years before the Guizhou uh food gets here.

• 43:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, and I think with social media, uh food and food culture is spreading really rapidly, whether that be overseas or even just domestically in China. I feel like you wonder whether food traditions can continue uh in this age where people are moving around and there are more westernisation, western influence that's happening in China. But I think social media has just helped people understand more about Chinese food traditions domestically. And I think that with social media, it's a great tool to let people know everywhere about dishes that you may not have heard of. And I just uh encourage anyone who thinks and they've dismissed Chinese food. They think, I don't like Chinese food because I don't like what's on offer at my local Chinese restaurant.

• 43:47Speaker 05

  I don't think it's possible for anyone to say they don't like Chinese food because there is just so many different types of Chinese food. I just encourage people to come here and try it for themselves.

• 43:56Alice Han?

  That's awesome. I I this is a a comment and a question. I'm I'm on my feed, I'm seeing a lot of uh Zendaya and Tom Holland. They're doing the Spider-Man tour in Shanghai and and and and people are following, you know, where they've been to in terms of this noodle store or this matcha store. And and and stores are moving very quickly to rename things after Spider-Man or after after them. And it reminded me of Chen Zhenhuang's tour after Trump's uh meeting in in Beijing with Xi Jinping uh in May and in which Chen Zhenhuang did a big food tour. And then, you know, people were renaming foods in their stores after him, after he was seen eating their foods. My question, I guess, to you is, I feel that in the Chinese food scene moves so quickly.

• 44:41Alice Han?

  There are always these new stores that come up and new trends and everything. What's a way that we can keep up with it? And what are some exciting things that you are seeing that are happening in the food scene in China?

• 44:52Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, I how to keep up with it? That that is the question. I am also trying to keep up with it. The, I think um the best way to keep up with it is to get on Red Note because I think the best content about Chinese food is from Chinese creators that are from the the places that these foods come from and they're posting a lot on Red Note. They're also on Douyin, but I think Red Note's a great place if you're trying to dip your toe into the Chinese social media scene because you also have a lot of friendly functions like translate. Um, and it's also a great way to understand China as a whole. I know a lot of my Chinese friends, they use Red Note like Google. So if you have a question, you can type it in even in English and it'll come up with an answer. That'll be correct and authentic.

• 45:37Speaker 05

  Whereas if you type into Google um something about a regional dish, you're going to be getting a lot more diluted search results because it'll be coming from platforms that are writing from a bit more of a removed perspective. So I think getting on Red Note is a great way of keeping up to date with trends and in terms of food as well. There's a lot of food things happening, there's always a new hashtag to use. And to be quite honest, I I find it hard to keep up myself. Um, people can always check out my videos if they want to dip a toe into um different kinds of foods that you might find in China and then use that as a springboard to do a bit of exploration for yourself. If you find a dish that you like, maybe do a bit more research into where it comes from.

• 46:19Speaker 05

  And yeah, it's a it's a endless hole of content that you can get into um on Red Note, that's for sure. And I mean, I've been doing food exclusively, food content exclusively, coming on six years now. And I've only just scratched the surface. I, there's always more to explore.

• 46:38Alice Han?

  Awesome. Okay, one last question for you, Amy. Can you name one dish that you were the most excited about? It could be a dessert, a drink, something that you've had recently that people need to get on a plane to have.

• 46:50Speaker 05

  Oh, I don't know if it would be get on a plane, but two nights ago with my parents, I actually ate insects for the first time, um which was a really exciting moment for me because I I've always been a little bit scared to try. But here in Yunnan province, they have um a lot of different ethnic minorities and people who like to eat in insects. So um it was really cool. Uh, my parents and I were at this barbecue place, they had an entire insect buffet. And we actually just had a plate of insects, deep fried insects. And we got to go through this kind of process together where you are scared. Uh, it's something that I love about uh food adventuring in China, which is you have something that you might be a bit afraid to try because you've never tried it before.

• 47:32Speaker 05

  But as soon as you've tried it, you now know that's no longer scary and your vision kind of widens a little bit. And at this stage, I'm just, the more you try, the more you grow and the more you learn and the wider your vision becomes. So it was really cool to experience that. And uh it, they were actually really tasty. I would definitely have them again. We had a millipede, a scorpion, we had um wasps. I don't know, Alice, if you remember when we were in Yunnan together, we went to the mushroom market and they had all of those wasp nests with the wasps in different stages of development.

• 48:05Alice Han?

  Yeah.

• 48:05Speaker 05

  We had those wasps, which was, they were really tasty. But I mean, I don't know if that's something that people will be getting on a plane for, but that's just something that recently happened that really excited me. Um, it's something maybe a little bit more approachable. Um, I had these incredible breakfast noodles a couple of days ago as well in a city called Mengze. Uh, and they, it's a, it's a rice noodle. They're really thick and they're very bouncy. And you basically dip it into this dipping sauce. It's called uh Zhan Shui Zhan Fen, but it's also called Mujiangzi, Zhan Shui Zhan Fen. And Mujiangzi is this type of berry. And it's um, it's, I don't know if you've come across it before, Alice, in your cooking,

• 48:48Speaker 05

  but it's got this citrusy aroma, it's uh kind of tastes like lemongrass. And a lot of people, they also get the wood of that tree and they shave it into their dishes. And anyway, the dish was citrusy and deep in flavour and spicy. And it's topped off with um uh papaya jelly, where they use the seeds of papaya. They rub them together, they make this jelly and then they put a popsicle in it. It was very interesting and it was a, it was a breakfast like I've never had it before.

• 49:19Alice Han?

  Oh, wow. Yeah, just reminds me that there's so many weird and wonderful things that you come across when you travel in China. Uh, and on that note, Amy, thank you so much for your time and enthusiasm that you um shared with us. We're, we're actually getting very, very hungry now. It's evening in in London. So James and I will be looking forward to dinner.

• 49:37Speaker 05

  Thanks for having me, guys.

• 49:39Alice Han?

  All right, James, you know what time it is. It is prediction time. As you appear into the future this week, what do you see?

• 49:45James Kynge?

  Well, um, I am actually going to twin uh two of the topics that we've had today. One is food. We were hearing uh all of that uh scrumptious food content from Amy. And the other is winning prizes. And so I'm going to predict that the number of Michelin-starred restaurants in China, which stood at ninety-nine in the latest edition of the Michelin Guide, which covers the year twenty twenty-five, is going to rise sharply over the next ten years. I think this is probably a pretty safe uh prediction, Alice. Um, but I'm going to say that by twenty thirty-five,

• 50:27James Kynge?

  there will be at least two hundred restaurants in China that have at least one Michelin star.

• 50:35Alice Han?

  Okay, so my prediction is more in the realm of economics. So we're going to have a July Politburo meeting, I think, any day now this week. And that's designed historically to assess China's growth in the first half and then project what kind of fiscal and monetary measures will be needed in the second half. And I think even with the slowdown that we're seeing in the economy, I don't think we're going to get massive stimulus that gets announced. I think that we're going to see a very measured approach to both fiscal and monetary in the second half of the year. And somewhat related, I think, especially if the Fed hikes in the next uh meeting, we might see further weakening of the CNY against the dollar. Um, especially if there is a bias towards one to two hikes by the Fed.

• 51:21Alice Han?

  I don't think we will see a move from the PBOC and that naturally will, I think, lead to a stronger dollar against the CNY. That's very wonkish, but it's stuff that's relevant for people who follow markets and economics. All right, that's all for this episode. Thank you for listening to China Decode. This is a production of Prof G Media. Make sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss an episode. Talk to you again next week.