China's economic rise beckoned Jeffrey Epstein in the 2010s. Associates of the financier and sex offender, who made much of his money from advising billionaires, sought opportunities to connect him with a network of powerful men in China.

Though no concrete deals ever materialized, the Epstein files demonstrate how power, connections, and opportunities flowed among the elite as China's star continued to rise. In this episode, our reporters discuss how they sorted through thousands of files to build the network of Epstein associates with stakes in the China game.

The Wire China will have no new issue this week as we take off for the Chinese New Year. Read the Epstein and China story on our website, thewirechina.com.

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In our third episode, features editor Tom Mitchell is joined by reporter Noah Berman to discuss shifts for two of China's most consequential exports: military armaments and electric vehicles.

Even as wars in Ukraine, the Middle East and Africa raged on in 2024, newly released data for that year shows that China's arms exports decreased by ten percent as Xi Jinping's anti-corruption investigations roiled the country's defense industry. Meanwhile, despite trade tensions, the door for Chinese EVs to enter U.S. markets is not entirely sealed shut, but President Trump's seeming openness to the idea puts him at odds with national and state officials alike.

We also have an extract from our latest Q&A with author Yi-Ling Liu on her new book "The Wall Dancers: Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet," and a guide to the other articles you can read in this week's edition, published every Sunday evening EST at thewirechina.com

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Welcome to the second episode of The Wire China podcast, in which we take you behind the scenes of the stories we cover each week in our magazine, thewirechina.com.

In this episode, reporter Eliot Chen walks us through a true crime thriller with news editor Andrew Peaple. A mild-mannered Chinese software engineer working for Google in California schemes to make it big as a tech entrepreneur by setting up his own company back in China. Instead, he winds up in the middle of the U.S.-China tech war, accused of stealing Google's intellectual property for the Chinese government.

We also have an extract from our latest Q&A, with Ali Wyne of the International Crisis Group, and a guide to the other articles you can read in this week's edition, published every Sunday evening EST at thewirechina.com

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