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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Start the Week: China – its poetry and economy

China – its poetry and economy

BBC Radio 4 - Start the Week, China – its poetry and economy

Tom Sutcliffe with Noo Saro-Wiwa, Michael Wood and George Magnus

Noo Saro-Wiwa, Michael Wood and George Magnus discuss China – its culture and economy – and its relations with Africa, with Tom Sutcliffe

In the winter of 770 the Chinese poet Du Fu wrote his final words, ‘Excitement gone, now nothing troubles me…/ Rushing madly at last where do I go?’ Looking back at his life and work, the historian Michael Wood retraces Du Fu’s journeys across China. He lived through war and famine, but his poetry found beauty and grandeur in the minutiae of everyday life and the natural world. Michael Wood tells Tom Sutcliffe how Du Fu’s poetry has the timeless quality of Shakespeare or Dante. 

The travel writer Noo Saro-Wiwa goes on a different journey into China, finding out about the lives of Africans living there today. In Black Ghosts she traces the waves of immigration from the 1950s onwards, which benefitted African students and economic migrants who found Europe closed to them. As she meets those from all walks of life – from visa-overstayers to top surgeons – she considers the precarity of their lives, and the ultimate power imbalance in Sino-African relations. 

China is Africa's largest trading partner and in the past China has lent huge sums for infrastructure in its Belt and Road project. But as China’s economy begins to falter, the economist and China specialist George Magnus looks at the implications. Abroad many African countries are deeply indebted, and at home after 40 years of China’s seemingly irrepressible rise, the country is now facing a surge in urban youth unemployment and signs of deflation.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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