With the recent capture of a Chinese ISIS soldier triggering speculation about the involvement of Chinese citizens in the Iraqi civil war, Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn are joined in our studio by Edward Wong from The New York Times and Prashant Rao of AFP, both of whom have spent considerable time reporting from Iraq. Their discussion starts off with an expose on the nature and identity of IS before moving on to China, talking about the ways in which the rise of the militant Islamic movement has affected Iraqi perceptions of China, and then a look into how these events relate to the broader crisis in the Middle East and U.S.-China relations.
Ahmad Al-Rubaye—AFP/Getty Images
A Kurdish Peshmerga fighter allied with Iraqi federal forces and backed by U.S. warplanes flashes the victory sign next to a car bearing jihadist markings hit by American air strikes north of Mosul on August 18, 2014. A counter-offensive against jihadist militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), who have recruited fighters from around the world, including China, continued on Monday.