As Election Day approaches in the United States, the Chinese are paying closer attention to the selection of the next president.

Government censorship, the language barrier and an unfamiliarity with American political conventions have left many Chinese confused about the process. Many seem to have derived their sense of how the system works from “House of Cards,” the Netflix series about an unscrupulous politician who stops at nothing, not even murder, to scheme his way to power. The show was enormously popular in China.

Last year, You Tianlong, a Chinese doctoral student in justice studies at Arizona State University, co-founded a podcast called “Xuanmei,” or “U.S. Election,” aimed at younger, urban Chinese. Mr. You and his partners — Hua Jianping, who writes on American politics, and Zhuang Qiaoyi, who holds a master’s degree in international relations from Syracuse University — and their guests discuss topics that have ranged from voter registration to how campaign managers tap into data to advance candidates’ prospects.

An estimated 70,000 people listen the podcasts every month. In August, Mr. You published “Get Elected: A Very Short Introduction to the U.S. Presidential Election” (Taihai Publishing House, Beijing) with Mr. Hua and Lin Yao, who has a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University.