Recent Pieces
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Why Didn’t the Balloon Go Up?
When a Chinese surveillance balloon drifted into US airspace last year, it stoked mass hysteria triggering denunciations from Washington and denials from Beijing. After the balloon was destroyed, observers lamented that bilateral relations were at their lowest point in decades. Even worse, the fiasco caused the cancellation of Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s visit to Beijing, and
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Meet Me In The Backroom: Environmental NGOs & China/U.S. Climate Cooperation
*Note: this piece was originally published in the Center for International Policy’s recently launched International Policy Journal. Details on the artist behind the piece’s lovely artwork is provided at the end. As the two largest economies in the world, the U.S. and China are naturally also the two largest emitters of greenhouse gasses contributing to
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Notes from a Visit to Jiangsu
This past week I was invited to participate in an all-expenses paid “clean energy study trip” to Jiangsu (江苏) province, cosponsored by the state-owned China Energy Investment Corporation (CEIC, 国家能源投资集团) and the Academy of Contemporary China and World Studies (ACCWS, 当代中国与世界研究院), a foreign-facing public relations institution reporting to the Central Propaganda Department (中宣部) of the
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China and the US: Cooling Off and Global Warming
*Note: this piece was originally published in The Mint Magazine. It’s a cool spring day in Beijing. Magpies, starlings, and other local birds fill the air with song while the peonies and lotus flowers have begun blooming into captivating shades of pink, lavender, and blue. As a grad student at one of the city’s many
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What to Make of the Recent China-US Meetings?
What a difference a few days makes. In the past two months, we’ve seen more high-level engagement between US and Chinese officials than we’ve seen in the past couple of years, and it’s come not a moment too soon. Bilateral relations between the world’s two largest economies have been on a consistent downward spiral more
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The Black Devil
Late last fall, after enduring nearly a full month of mind-numbing quarantine as required by China’s rigorous zero-covid strategy, I finally arrived at the gates of the university where I would be spending the next couple years of my life. The sight of that massive entrance adorned with traditional Chinese dragon statuettes was physical proof
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Reflections on My Days in Hong Kong 香港
I recently returned from a trip to Hong Kong 香港* where I was living for over a month as I completed some term papers and began my winter break from school in Beijing 北京. Staying in the city for an extended period of time, rather than just touring around for a couple days, allowed me
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Thoughts on the Fall of Kabul
*Note: I originally drafted this piece immediately following the news of Kabul’s fall to the Taliban in August of 2021. I’ve published it here given its relevance to the mission of Foreign Missives. The house of cards has finally come tumbling down. Over this weekend, the Taliban shocked the world as its blitzkrieg across Afghanistan
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What Does Authoritarian Mean?
If you’ve recently scanned the pages of any major media outlet or had the misfortune to listen to cable news, you’ve likely heard the words authoritarian or authoritarianism thrown around repeatedly, whether in reference to domestic or international news. As these outlets describe it, authoritarianism refers to the type of governance practiced by U.S. rivals
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