Showing results for "shanghai" in Freedom & Security

As any traveller knows, the best and most honest conversations take place during car rides. So when journalist Frank Langfitt wanted to learn more about the real China, he started driving a cab - and discovered a country amid seismic political and economic change. The Chinese economic boom, with its impact on the environment, global trade and the tech industry, has been one of the most important stories of the 21st century.

As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal communist regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom and, as the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question and realise that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty and starvation she witnessed surely her country could not be, as she had been told, 'the best on the planet'?

I made this audiobook to chronologize my personal experience of going through the lockdown in Shanghai during the covid-19 ordeal for over 60 days. In those days of confinement, I had a full taste of how brutal the authoritarian socialist system could be, and how fragile, helpless, and insignificant individuals were in front of the cold and inhumane government policies.