China… New Writing on the PRC’s Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries 25 Oct 2022 As Xi Jinping confirms his position as China's disciplinarian helmsman, we return to a regular theme of this blog: the early years of the People's Republic of China. Mao's role…
Cultural Politics… Mao Zedong, Jiang Qing, and Vietnam in 1965 1 Mar 2022 On 2 June 1965, Mao Zedong arrived in Hangzhou, where he read a journal article which interested him greatly. Entitled “Looking at US Expansion of the Vietnam War from the…
Kim Jong-un… Kim Jong Un and the Bomb – A Review 20 Dec 2021 As the North Korean state made remarkable leaps to its nuclear and missile capabilities under the leadership of Kim Jong-un, Ankit Panda, a journalist and editor at The Diplomat, based in…
Borderlands… From Liberation to the Great Leap Forward: Ethnic Koreans and Assimilation in Northeast China, 1945-1962 1 Jul 2021 Today I completed a new research article on the broad subject of Maoism's impact on ethnic Koreans in northeast China. The work is slated to appear next year as a…
history and memory… Reading the Absences in Ramseyer’s “Comfort Women” Provocation 19 Feb 202120 Feb 2021 A new publication on Japan’s wartime system of military prostitution (‘Contracting for sex in the Pacific War,' International Review of Law and Economics [December 2020]) has generated a whirlwind of…
China… Surveying the Job Market for Chinese History PhDs, 2018-2021 13 Feb 202119 Feb 2021 Out of curiosity and as a service to my own PhD students, I did a review of some recent university job searches in the field of East Asian history, and thought it…
China… Chinese Strategy and South Korea 1 Sep 202024 Oct 2020 My newest essay, a study commissioned by the National Bureau of Asian Research and introduced and edited by Nadège Rolland, was published on 25 August. The chapter is not paywalled…
Beijing… “The Enemies Made this Possible”: Sino-North Korean Relations after 1948 6 Jun 202023 Dec 2020 “’The Enemies Made This Possible’: Sino-North Korean relations since 1948” with Yujin Lim, in Adrian Buzo, ed., Routledge Handbook of Contemporary North Korea (London: Routledge, 2020), pp. 131-140. Abstract: This chapter is…
Chinese communist party… More to Life than Kim Jong-un: Reflections on Robert Collins’ Report on the Organization and Guidance Department 26 Sep 2019 Today the NK News website published a 1600-word essay I wrote in response to Robert Collins' extensive new report on the Organization and Guidance Department of the Korean Workers' Party. A…
Borderlands… On the Opening of the Ji’an-Manp’o Trade Port 20 Apr 201920 Apr 2019 As a small Chinese city on the Yalu River, Ji'an (集安) is an often-overlooked juncture for Chinese-North Korean movement of supplies and people. It was the main conduit for the…
Adam Cathcart 