The Economist
21 episodes listed below
An eight-part Economist investigation into how Xi Jinping built total control over China.
The Prince traces Xi Jinping’s rise through reported scenes, interviews, and context. It links one leader’s biography to censorship, ideology, zero COVID, Xinjiang, propaganda, and the pressures China places on the wider world.
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The Prince is a serialized investigative narrative podcast, not a recurring interview show — its eight episodes tell one continuous story about Xi Jinping's rise and the machinery that sustains his rule. The host is Su Lin Wong, an Economist China correspondent who reports partly from inside China and partly from outside after being denied a Hong Kong visa renewal. Episodes combine her narration with interviews and field reporting, including conversations with Economist colleague David Rennie (the paper's Beijing Bureau Chief) and Alice Su, plus outside voices such as former Weibo censor Eric Liu, censorship researcher Xiao Qiang, and pseudonymous or disguised sources like a Uyghur labour activist. Recurring threads include Communist Party ideology and succession politics, the mechanics of online and offline censorship, the zero-COVID system as both public-health policy and social control, propaganda sites built around Xi's biography, and the pressure Beijing exerts on foreign companies and leagues like the NBA. The tone throughout is investigative and often somber, dealing with detention, censorship, and repression as reported fact rather than commentary. Production credits recurring across episodes include producers Clare Reid, Sam Colbert, and Barclay Bram, sound designer Weidong Lin, composer Darren Ng, and executive producer John Shields, indicating a fully produced documentary-style show rather than a lightly edited conversation format. The series sits within The Economist's broader podcast slate — some feed entries are cross-promotional trailers for other Economist shows rather than new Prince content. Listeners drawn to the show are typically following Chinese elite politics, authoritarian governance, or press-freedom reporting rather than looking for general news roundups. Episodes run roughly 28 to 41 minutes for substantive installments, with short 2-3 minute trailers appearing separately in the feed.
Made for: Listeners interested in Chinese Communist Party politics, censorship and surveillance systems, and investigative journalism about authoritarian rule.
What sets it apart: A single serialized investigative narrative built on firsthand testimony from a former state censor, detained activists, and Economist reporters denied full access inside China, rather than a recurring news-roundup or interview format.
Xi Jinping is the most powerful person in the world. But the real story of China's leader remains a mystery. In this eight-part series Sue-Lin Wong finds out how he rose to the top, and what it means for China—and the rest of the world—now that he has ripped up the rule book to stay in power, perhaps for the rest of his life.Sign up for Economist Podcasts+ at www.economist.com/podcastsplusIf you’re already a subscriber to The Economist, you’ll have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription. Hosted on Acast. S...
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Su Lin Wong turns Xi Jinping's power into a reported account of how ideology, surveillance and censorship shape ordinary lives.
The Prince builds a portrait of Xi Jinping's rule through the systems that carry his power into everyday life. Su Lin Wong moves between political history, firsthand accounts and reported scenes, connecting Communist Party ideology to censorship, surveillance and the enforcement…
Censorship's factory floor leads straight to Xi's throne, if that's the map you have been missing.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A crisp post-congress read on Xi's third term, zero COVID loyalty politics, and the ideology around China's leadership.
The Prince returns to Xi Jinping after the 20th party congress, where he secured a third term and tightened the political picture around him. Su Lin Wong keeps the conversation clear without flattening the stakes, and David Rennie brings useful on-the-ground texture from…
A revealing companion episode on the gap between Xi's official mythology and the realities of reporting in China.
This bonus episode of The Prince turns inward, using the opening of Beijing's Party Congress to explain how Su Lin Wong reported a series on Xi Jinping and the political machinery around his image.
A sharp account of how China's censorship machine turns online fear into political control.
The Prince makes China's censorship system concrete through Eric Liu's years at Weibo, where flagged words, rushed calls, and 11-hour shifts turned political control into factory-line work.
A sharp China story linking Uyghur language survival to the limits of political speech around the NBA.
The Prince anchors Uyghur persecution in Abdueli Ayup teaching his young daughter a language he worries may not survive, then follows that fear outward into the ways China shapes what people and institutions say about Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and minority identity.
A sharp account of how zero-COVID exposed both the reach and the limits of Xi's party discipline.
The great helmsman traces China's zero-COVID response as a test of Xi Jinping's restored party discipline, moving from the Chernobyl analogy and suppressed early warnings to mass quarantine, QR-code movement tracking and the incentives that made compliance safer than dissent.
Sharp political debate with policy detail and real disagreement.
Matt Gurney and Jen Gerson debate Canadian politics, from Alberta separatism to Ottawa's bureaucracy.
Robert Evans, Katie Stoll, and Cody Johnston build fake conspiracies and mock right-wing media.
Steve Hayes and Dispatch panelists argue through the week's Iran, DOJ, and Supreme Court news.
Jonah Goldberg's solo political rants and author interviews on conservatism, courts, and current events.
John Donvan moderates two-sided debates on AI, bioethics, feminism, and film's future.
Andrew Palmer returns for Boss Class Season 3 with a focus on AI at work, opening by interviewing an AI clone of himself.
Andrew Palmer, who writes The Economist's weekly management column, launches Season 2 of Boss Class with a promise that good management can be taught.
The party congress is over.
Propaganda feels almost physical here.
Chernobyl becomes the warning.
Eric Liu joined Weibo in March 2011.
A father teaches Uyghur in Norway.