Buckle up — this episode of The Restricted Handling Podcast dives straight into Beijing’s high-stakes week of power plays, propaganda, and paranoia. From the courtroom to the coastline, China’s been flexing, fighting, and flat-out rewriting the narrative, and we’ve got the breakdown you won’t hear anywhere else.

We start in Hong Kong, where the conviction of media mogul Jimmy Lai continues to reverberate across the globe. The 78-year-old publisher’s national security trial isn’t just another crackdown — it’s Beijing’s attempt to permanently close the book on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy era. We unpack how Lai’s case has become a global flashpoint: Trump’s personal plea to Xi Jinping, the U.K. and E.U. summoning Chinese diplomats, and how Hong Kong’s last few independent journalists are rebuilding the city’s free press in exile.

Then it’s out to sea, where the People’s Liberation Army Navy is running the region like it’s trying to film the next Top Gun — minus the cool soundtrack. China’s newest supercarrier, the Fujian, just made a dramatic debut through the Taiwan Strait, while its older sister ship, the Liaoning, wrapped up an aggressive set of drills that nearly sparked a radar fight with Japan’s F-15Js. Add in the U.S. carrier George Washington shadowing in the background, and you’ve got a Pacific dance floor packed with billion-dollar war machines — each daring the other to blink first.

Meanwhile, down in the South China Sea, China’s coast guard isn’t making friends. New video footage shows Chinese ships cutting anchor lines and blasting Filipino fishermen with water cannons near Sabina Shoal. The Philippines has called it “state-sponsored piracy.” Beijing says it was “lawful and restrained.” We’ll let you decide which version sounds more believable.

Back on land, China’s Ministry of State Security is in full “Saturday morning cartoon panic” mode. Officials claim that foreign spies are using video games and anime to corrupt the minds of Chinese youth. Their words, not ours. It’s a surreal mix of Cold War paranoia meets Pokémon Go — and it’s being treated as a national security threat.

We also hit China’s growing cyber ecosystem, where provincial intelligence bureaus are running specialized hacking units tied to the country’s biggest industries, from aerospace to maritime tech. It’s espionage with local flavor — and global reach.

And to wrap it up, we peel back the polish on the People’s Liberation Army, where morale is low, pay is late, and soldiers are more likely to complain about isolation than glory.