The Ramsay Centre Podcast: Rowan Callick OBE - The party that ate China: the subsuming of a great culture

In the second Ramsay Lecture for 2022, Walkley Award winner and distinguished China commentator Rowan Callick OBE offers unique insight into the Chinese Communist Party (CPP) and argues that the Party’s actions are subsuming China’s great culture as we know it.  

Drawing on some 20 years of reporting, Rowan Callick lists examples of manipulation of Chinese life by the CPP to ensure its own survival. He discusses how the CCP control over media and social media, national celebrations and events, education, and even printing presses has worked to suppress traditional elements of Chinese culture so that only Party-friendly elements remain. During his lecture, Rowan discusses the achievements of China’s ‘marvellous civilisation’ and its cultural treasures and laments that ‘an extraordinarily pervasive and ambitious CPP’ has seen these fade into memory as it creates its own ‘grim simulacrum of a civilisation’. Despite the CCP’s tight grip over Chinese society, he believes that the will and genius of the Chinese population will ultimately see their civilisation survive.  

Please join us for this insightful lecture and discussion between Rowan Callick and Ramsay Centre CEO Professor Simon Haines.