Hello and welcome to Chinese Whispers with me, Cindy Yu.

Every episode, I'll be talking to journalists, experts and longtime China watchers about the latest in Chinese politics, society and more.

There'll be a smattering of history to catch you up on the background knowledge

and some context as well.

How do the Chinese see these issues?

The word West is often used as a shorthand to describe liberal democracies in Europe

and perhaps in Asia too, such that we'll often talk about the West's attitude

to China or the West's relations with China. But this is at best a lazy shorthand, and by the way,

I'm guilty of this too, as of course you all have heard on this podcast, but it's lazy

because there is actually no unified West on China. Not really. So on this episode, I wanted to

disaggregate that idea, focusing especially on the continent of Europe, to understand exactly

how different nation states or multilateral institutions, or even factors within a country,

have differing views and approaches on China. and what Beijing does in response to that.

This was made amply clear by Macron's visit to Beijing earlier this year when he was

treated like a VIP, while European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was essentially

sat at the kiddie table. So my guest for this week is Noah Barkin, who's a senior advisor

at the Rhodium Group,

an independent research provider. He's also associated with the German Marshall Fund,

with whom he writes the very popular Watching China in Europe newsletter.

Noah, welcome to Chinese Whispers. There's a lot to get through, so I wondered if we can just

start by explaining a very popular term these days called de-risking.

Have a listen to this, as Ercelon von der Leyen in a March speech.

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