I have just re-tooled my Chinese foreign policy syllabus for an undergraduate lecture course on the topic. Like most academic tasks, revising this syllabus was much more time-consuming than I had anticipated. Moreover, there are never enough lectures to cover all the topics that need to be addressed. Nevertheless, this version seeks to cover both …
China-North Korea Dossier
Adam Cathcart, a professor of history at Pacific Lutheran University in Washington, edits a terrific blog on China and North Korea, sinonk.com. The site contains a great deal of Chinese and Korean language materials that are translated into English and analyzed. One recent post stands out: a “dossier” of materials from the Chinese language press …
China’s Quest for Natural Resources
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a body which Congress created in 2000, has started a new round of hearings. Typically, each hearing examines a particular dimension of China’s international activity and any security implications for the United States. The most recent hearing, held yesterday, explores China’s thirst for natural resources. In particular, the hearing …
China in Africa: The Real Story
Deborah Brautigam, author of the detailed and informative book The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa, has an equally terrific and informative blog. Similarly entitled China in Africa: The Real Story, she covers China’s growing role in Africa — a great resource for those interested in these issues. As she writes, “This blog …
China’s Strategy in the South China Sea
In this article in Contemporary Southeast Asia, I examine China’s behavior in the South China Sea disputes through the lens of its strategy for managing its claims. Since the mid-1990s, China has pursued a strategy of delaying the resolution of the dispute. In the article, I make several arguments: The goal of China’s strategy is to consolidate its …
Revising Deng’s Foreign Policy
At the end of December, the Jiefangjun Bao, the official paper of the People’s Liberation, carried a brief article on page three of the print edition – with a small revelation about a key principle of China’s foreign policy. The article described a speech delivered by Gen. Ma Xiaotian, Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the PLA, to the China …
The Twimpact Factor
Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic reports on a new study from the Journal of Medical Internet Research about the relationship between tweets of a journal article and scholarly citations. The conclusion: articles that many people tweeted about were 11 times more likely to be highly cited than those who few people tweeted about. Apparently, the …
Maritime Security in the South China Sea
In this chapter, I explore the recent competition over maritime rights in the South China Sea. This competition over maritime rights is related to but distinct from other components of maritime security in the region, including competing claims to territorial sovereignty over island groups, freedom of navigation and naval modernization. I argue that despite the recent …
Open Sources and Information Laundering
At the end of 2011, a study by the at Georgetown University on China’s nuclear forces attracted a great deal of attention, including a in The Washington Post. The project documented the construction of networks of tunnels by the Second Artillery, the PLA’s strategic rocket forces, and suggested that China might have as many as 3,000 nuclear warheads …
Beyond the Moat
A chapter of mine (co-authored with Alexander Liebman) on the influence of China’s navy has just been published in an edited volume of papers from an annual conference on the People’s Liberation Army. Read the chapter