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 201918 Dec 2020 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. In recent years, big histories…
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…
Chinese communist party… Thunderclouds Over the Honeymoon: Xi, Kim, and the Trump Summit 18 May 2018 Amid the welter of diplomatic moves that have occurred in and around the Korean peninsula in 2018, the two meetings in quick succession between the North Korean leader and China’s…
American Foreign Policy… New Book Reviews: Espionage in Republican China, and Britain’s Role in the Korean War 30 Mar 201830 Mar 2018 My two new book reviews engage with the intelligence history of two chaotic decades in China, and the British role in the Korean War, respectively. Review of Panagiotis Dimitrakis, The…
Art… Cruel Resurrection: Chinese Comics and the Korean War 19 Mar 201819 Mar 2018 I wrote this article in the early 2000s under the direction of the ageless Chinese art historian Shen Kuiyi, with whom I did a "cognate field" during my doctoral studies…
