China & Taiwan

Executive Summary  In 2015, a new space race began. Blue Origin, a privately owned company, landed a booster on a launch pad back on earth, after lifting an object 100 kilometers into the atmosphere. SpaceX quickly followed suit, landing its own Falcon booster back on a pad for use again for later space...

Introduction While international attention often centers on China’s latest foundation models or its constrained access to high-end artificial intelligence (AI) chips, these headlines obscure the broader architecture of China’s AI strategy. China is pursuing a dual-track approach that combines...

Cyber operations are now a defining feature of modern warfare, as the war in Ukraine has demonstrated—and China is taking note. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has served as a testing ground for the integration of emerging technologies...

Introduction The Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China announced that their friendship had “no limits” and “no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation” in 2022. That summit between President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping...

For a document intended to carefully outline relations with a key US partner while navigating a region’s complex history and geopolitical realities, eight pages seem brief. Enacted in 1979 in response to the US switch in recognition from the...

China has been a major investor and trade partner in Central Asia for some twenty-five years. For the first half of those years, Beijing was focused on oil and natural gas pipelines and roads and railways to bring energy...

Introduction If there was ever any doubt, Taiwan’s July 26 “Great Recall” election makes one thing clear: Taiwanese politics are deeply divided. For many in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), a vote to recall one of twenty-four Kuomintang (KMT)...

This report is published in collaboration with the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), also available on their website.  Introduction The 2024 Taiwan presidential elections marked a historic third consecutive win for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)—the first time a party...

Earlier this summer, in June 2025, President Lai Ching-te delivered the first of his “Ten Lectures on National Unity,” their goal being “to unite the people, political parties, and the nation as a whole, to advance Taiwan’s progress while...

On July 26, only a year and a half after the most recent general election, Taiwanese voters will once again head to the polls. This time, however, the vote is not part of a standard election cycle. Instead, after...