Mission 

The China Center is committed to studying China’s strategic behavior, advancing U.S. national security, and promoting a free and open Indo-Pacific. Our team conducts objective data-driven research, hosts strategic dialogues, and convenes panels of leading experts to uncover new information about China and identify actionable policy solutions for US decisionmakers. 

The China Center will organize its initial research under two inaugural research initiatives: The Geoeconomics Initiative and The Technology Initiative. These initiatives will examine the economic and technology dimensions of great power competition and the global impact of China’s economic and technology policies.

Recent Analysis

The China Initiative and its Implications for American Universities

In a speech on Chinese threats to U.S. national security on January 31, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Christopher Wray emphasized ongoing attempts by the People’s Republic of China to spy on American companies and steal...

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China’s Belt and Road Initiative Meets Slowing Global Trade

During the early 2010s, developing countries were keen to get in on the global trade boom that brought prosperity to many countries, most famously China, over the prior quarter century.  At the Asian-African Conference in 2015, Chinese General Secretary...

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China’s Rare Earth Metals Consolidation and Market Power

Rare earth metals or “rare earths,” a collection of 17 elements that are valued for their conductive and magnetic properties, have made headlines again.  Over the past year and a half, their prices have risen to levels not seen...

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Beijing’s Olympic Moments, 2008 and 2022: How China and the Meaning of the Games Have, and Have Not, Changed

For China and for the world engaging with China, much has changed between the 2008 Summer Games and the 2022 Winter Olympics that the Chinese capital is hosting thirteen and a half years later.  Between the two Olympiads, China...

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Great Power Competition and Beijing’s Olympic Moment

The assessments and conclusions in this analysis are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent those of National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. Despite unmistakable structural similarities in the geopolitical environment,...

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Chinese Economic Engagement in Africa: Implications for U.S. Policy

China may have missed the European Scramble for Africa that characterized the turn of the last century, but it has been making up for this since the 1950s. The pace of this investment has increased in the past couple...

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Tokyo, Beijing, and New Tensions Over Taiwan

Taiwan,  a perennially sensitive issue between Japan and China, gained increased salience in the run-up to Japanese elections in fall 2021. In separate incidents in late August and early September, a Chinese flotilla sailed through the waters between Taiwan...

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A ‘Bright Path’ Forward or a Grim Dead End? The Political Impact of the Belt and Road Initiative in Kazakhstan

  Executive Summary This report assesses the political impact of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Kazakhstan. Specifically, it examines whether and how the People’s Republic of China can pursue a strategy of economic statecraft to further its...

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Hot and Cold: The Philippines’ Relations with China (and the United States)

In spring 2021, hundreds of Chinese fishing boats gathered at several South China Sea islets, most notably at Whitsun Reef, within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. Worried that China might use the boats, which were suspected of being part...

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ASEAN’s Search for a Third Way: Southeast Asia’s Relations with China and the United States

Stung by Southeast Asian criticism of Chinese behavior in the South China Sea at the 2010 ASEAN Regional Forum, China’s then-Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi curtly remarked to his Singaporean counterpart: “China is a big country and other countries are...

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Events