China Life

The son of Hong Kong immigrants, Andy Mok left New York to find China on the cusp of a tech boom. To help fill the entrepreneurship knowledge gap, he started Beijing Tech Hive, the first weekend startup bootcamp in China.

Lingling Wei’s grandfather was an aide to Mao Zedong for 13 years. She went off to study journalism at Fudan University and New York University and returned home to China as a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. Until the Chinese government expelled her.

A boy in Montana determined to learn Chinese, Dexter “Tiff” Roberts eventually became one of Businessweek’s first China correspondents. For two decades he explored how government policies affected everyday people. His new book, The Myth of Chinese Capitalism, tells the story of China’s hundreds of millions of migrant workers.

Teng Biao grew up in a rural village before attending law school at Peking University and focusing on human rights. While his early successes were lauded by the Chinese government, he was later abducted and tortured by police. He fled to the United States with his family and now teaches at Hunter College in NYC.

Stanley Rosen was a pre-med student before he first got interested in China. A professor at USC now, his classes on Chinese politics, society, and film are informed by the over 60 trips he's made to China since 1980.

Michael Dunne was majoring in French when one of his professors told him that the future was in China. With that advice, having never stepped foot in China before, he switched to studying Chinese and business marketing.

Mellissa Berry was the Executive Creative Producer of Tomorrowland in Shanghai Disney Resort, which opened to the public in 2016. She moved to Shanghai in 2009, two years before the groundbreaking on the park, and lived and worked there for 8 years.

From trade, the environment, politics, human rights, and much more, China is in the news every single day. But China is not just a headline. On this podcast from the USC U.S.-China Institute, we'll share stories of everyday people in China.