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New Essay in The Diplomat
Entitled ‘Unraveling China-North Korea Relations,’ this 2000-word essay delves into recent bilateral implications of events in Dandong and Tumen, and argues that taking a broader geographical area into...
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Youth Work and Class Education under Kim Jong-un
The following is my original intro to a piece I just published in Seoul after some substantial carving down. In other words, the intro was cut, but I think it still stands up, so now you can read that...
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Chinese Aid to Flood-Hit Areas in North Korea
The PRC’s National Day (1 October) celebrations were muted in Pyongyang, but they did provide an opportunity for Li Jinjun, the Chinese Ambassador to North Korea, to make a few remarks. Reading the...
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Chinese Patterns of Response to North Korean Distasters and Collapse
On 29 September, I presented a paper at the Korean National Diplomatic Academy in Seoul. In addition to conversations with members of the ROK Foreign Ministry (my hosts), I also had a chance to meet,...
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Border Consolidation in Liaoning: From Chen Yun to Xi Jinping
For presentation at Leiden University lecture series “Borders: Life on the Edge of Area Studies“, 28 February 2017: For the Chinese Communist Party, the northeastern province of Liaoning today inhabits...
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Comment on the North Korean Missile Launch
I was on BBC television this evening (via the Leeds studio) discussing the North Korean missile launch with Celia Hatton, who, fortunately for me and the BBC, is a veteran ‘China hand’ with years of...
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Recent Op-eds and Media Work
The last three weeks have been particularly intense for analysts of North Korea, China, and Sino-North Korean relations. Amid the struggle to get two of my normal scholarly research articles submitted,...
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Reflections on the History of Chinese-North Korean Relations, and US-DPRK...
Sometimes we need to modify the questions we ask. The question “Is the Chinese Communist Party going to cut off North Korea?” results in a fairly predictable string of analyses — usually adding up to...
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Wise Words and Wishful Thinking on China’s Relationship with North Korea
The most recent wave of analysis emerging out of North Korea’s test of an apparent Intercontinental Ballistic Missile has once again brought minds back to focusing on China’s ability to pressure North...
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Poking the Wasp Nest: Shen Zhihua’s Controversial Speech on North Korea
Why should we care about scholars in China, or the complaints they have toward North Korea? Usually, readers take interest in Chinese scholarly debates because something specific and enticing has been...
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Writings and Media Work: July 2017
For whatever reason, July has been a particularly active month in the various cockpits where I do my work — coffee shops, trains rocketing between Leeds and London, my university office, and British...
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Evaded States: Security and Control in the Sino-North Korean Border Region
Adam Cathcart, “Evaded States: Security and Control in the Sino-North Korean Border Region,” in Routledge Handbook of Asian Borderlands, Alexander Horstmann, Martin Saxer, Alessandro Rippa, eds.,...
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Hillary Clinton and the Taxing Friendship: China and North Korea
This essay, previously unpublished, was written in Seattle on 27 May 2010. Hillary Clinton arrived in Beijing last weekend to send an urgent message to China: put pressure on North Korea. Tensions on...
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Joshua’s Map: Beijing’s Coverage of North Korean Defector Issues and Human...
In January/February 2015, the Huanqiu Shibao (the foreign affairs tabloid under Beijing People’s Daily, massive readership etc.) used one of Joshua Stanton’s maps to indicate the locations of North...
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Notes on the Sino-North Korean War of Words
Just because the US President has thrown up a number of smokescreens and signs of real mania of late does not mean writers must “resist” by reflexively taking an analytical approach toward US-North...
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Questioned Liberators: Guerrilla, Mobile, and Base Warfare in Communist...
The years from 1945-1947 were a complex transitional period in the development of Chinese Communist military, political, and diplomatic strategy. While not yet facing the dilemmas of transforming...
View ArticleMedia Blackout in Beijing: Reading the Empty Spaces during the Kim Jong-un Visit
Among the dozens of subplots feeding into and out of the curious-but-necessary welcome by Xi Jinping of Kim Jong-un this week is the question of information access and what it means or doesn’t mean...
View ArticleThunderclouds Over the Honeymoon: Xi, Kim, and the Trump Summit
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...
View ArticleOn the Opening of the Ji’an-Manp’o Trade Port
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 Chinese troops into the...
View ArticleMore to Life than Kim Jong-un: Reflections on Robert Collins’ Report on the...
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 short...
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