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…
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…
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…
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…
Beijing… Robert Jay Lifton, Revolutionary Immortality, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution 12 Jan 201913 Jan 2021 In 1954, an American psychologist travelled to Hong Kong, where he carried out extensive interviews with both Chinese and foreign survivors of captivity, solitary confinement, and torture psychological variety in…
China… Mistranslating Mao in Chengdu, 1958 7 Jan 20191 Jul 2021 [Updated on 1 July 2021] The question of Mao Zedong’s personal role in triggering massive famine in China during the Great Leap Forward (1958-61) brings us into an important debate.…
Beijing… New Fragments from Mao in the Cultural Revolution 10 Dec 2018 In December 2013, scholars of the history of the PRC were given a shot in the arm via the publication of Mao Zedong Nianpu, 1949-1976, consisting of six volumes of previously obscure…
American Foreign Policy… George H.W. Bush in Mao’s China 1 Dec 20181 Dec 2018 With the death of George H.W. Bush, it is an opportune time to look back at his time as the top U.S. diplomat in Beijing in the immediate aftermath…
Adam Cathcart 