Downstream: The Secrets of the Chinese Internet w/ Yi-Ling Liu

Take part in our audience survey: novara.media/survey In China in the 1990s, the arrival of the internet was swiftly met with the ‘great firewall’: a complex matrix of censorship, surveillance and state control. Since then there have been two internets: the World Wide Web, and the Chinese internet. ​ Aaron Bastani talks to China analyst Yi-Ling Liu about the cultures and innovations that have evolved in this separate digital ecosphere. How have feminist and LGBTQ+ movements manifested through the Chinese internet? How has the Chinese Communist Party negotiated the promise and threat of the internet, and now AI? And why is the West suddenly so obsessed with China? Yi-Ling Liu’s book is The Wall Dancers: Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet.

You can listen to Downstream: The Secrets of the Chinese Internet w/ Yi-Ling Liu online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Downstream: The Secrets of the Chinese Internet w/ Yi-Ling Liu is an episode from Novara Audio: Radio for a Different Politics by Novara Media.

This episode is 1:38:50 long.

This episode was published on Apr 13, 2026.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Novara Audio: Radio for a Different Politics when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.