Author Archive

China’s Ground Game in Dandong and North Korea

By | January 27, 2024

As Sino-North Korean bilateral relations intensify, Adam Cathcart looks at China’s ground game in Pyongyang and Dandong, with a focus on business.

Chinese Intellectuals, the CIA, and Defector Memoirs in the 1960s

By | January 18, 2024

Newly declassified documents shed light on a CIA operation to extract high-level intellectuals as defectors from the People’s Republic of China. We also look at defector accounts of meetings with Mao Zedong.

Red Lines, Taiwan, and the UK Foreign Secretary Visit to Beijing

By | September 04, 2023

Adam Cathcart unpicks Chinese reponses to a British diplomatic delegation, and the eruption around a UK House of Commons committee’s reframing of Taiwan sovereignty.

Bridges, Anti-Corruption, and Minerals: Sino-North Korean Borderland News

By | May 25, 2023

Chinese Communist Party cadre in the border region with North Korea have got a lot on their plates: discipline and development. Plus a look at trade in Dandong.