Samm Sacks

on January 31, 2019

Samm Sacks is a Senior Fellow with the Yale Law School Paul Tsai China Center and New America. She is writing a book (to be published by the University of Chicago Press) on U.S.-China relations and the geopolitics of data privacy and cross-border data flows. Her research examines China’s information and communications technology (ICT) policies, with a focus on China’s cybersecurity legal framework, the U.S.-China technology relationship, and data governance.

Previously, Sacks launched the industrial cyber business for Siemens in Asia and worked as an analyst and Chinese linguist with the U.S. government. She also led China technology analysis for the political risk consulting firm Eurasia Group.

Sacks has published in outlets including The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, MIT Tech Review, Lawfare, and Slate. She testifies regularly before Congress on China’s technology and cyber policies. She is widely cited in media including The New York Times, Politico, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post and has appeared in TV and radio including NPR, Bloomberg, CNBC, and MSNBC. Sacks also advises corporate clients on China’s technology regulations and is a Senior Fellow with the Cross Border Data Forum.

Elliott Zaagman

on January 31, 2019

Elliott Zaagman is the Co-Host of the China Tech Investor podcast, and works as a PR and leadership consultant for Chinese tech founders and executives. He is a frequent commentator on issues facing China and its tech industry, having written for The Lowy Institute, Foreign Policy, SupChina, and Technode, as well as in Chinese on Huxiu.com.

Ding Jin

on January 31, 2019

Ding Jin is the Marketing and Communications Manager at the Pulitzer Center. She previously worked for NBC Sports as a nation-wide marketing research analyst in New York and as a sports reporter and Olympics correspondent for local newspapers in China. Ding co-directs the Asian American Journalism Association’s Women & Non-Binary Voices affiliate group.

‘My Responsibility to History’: An Interview with Zhang Shihe

By Ian Johnson on January 30, 2019

“Tiger Temple” (Laohu Miao) is the nom de guerre of Zhang Shihe, one of China’s best-known citizen journalists and makers of short video documentaries, many of them profiling ordinary people he met during extraordinarily long bike rides through China, or human rights activists who have been silenced but whose ideas on freedom and open society he has recorded for future generations. Now 65 years old, Zhang belongs to a generation of people like leader Xi Jinping who came of age during the Cultural Revolution. Also like Xi, Zhang was a child of the country’s Communist elite. His father had been a Public Security Bureau official in China’s Northwest, which was also the base of Xi’s father, Xi Zhongxun. Zhang’s father was a rung lower on the ladder, but still ended his career with the rank of vice-minister.

Scott W. Harold

on January 29, 2019

Scott W. Harold is a Senior Political Scientist and Associate Director of the Center for Asia-Pacific Policy at The RAND Corporation. In addition to his work at RAND, Harold is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, and George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, as well as the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Prior to joining RAND in August 2008, Harold worked at The Brookings Institution from 2006-2008. He holds a Doctorate in Political Science from Columbia University. He was a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations from 2012-2017, and a 2018 Visiting Academic Fellow at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) in Berlin. He is fluent in Mandarin Chinese.

Marina Rudyak

on January 29, 2019

Marina Rudyak is an Assistant Professor for Chinese Cultural Studies at Heidelberg University and interim professor for Chinese Politics at Frankfurt University. Her research focuses on China’s international development cooperation and the Chinese foreign policy discourse. Previously, she was a policy advisor with the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) in Beijing. She regularly advises governmental organizations and NGOs on matters of China’s foreign aid and international development cooperation. Rudyak is the co-founder of the Decoding China Dictionary. She studied Chinese Studies and Public Law in Heidelberg and Shanghai, and holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Chinese Studies from Heidelberg University.

What Does Xi Want from Taiwan? (And What Can Taiwan Do About It?)

A ChinaFile Conversation

By Brian Hioe, Jieh-min Wu & more on January 24, 2019

In a major speech in early January, China’s leader Xi Jinping called unification across the Taiwan Strait “the great trend of history,” and warned that attempts to facilitate Taiwan’s independence would be met by force. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen immediately condemned Xi’s speech and countered that “Taiwan absolutely will not accept ‘one country, two systems,’” Beijing’s formula for governing Taiwan after a putative unification with the mainland.

Jieh-min Wu

on January 23, 2019

Jieh-min Wu is an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, and served as a director at the Center for Contemporary China, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. He works on Sino-Taiwan relations, political and economic development in China, and democracy and civil society in Taiwan. He will publish Rent-Seeking Developmental State in China: Taishang, Guangdong Model and Global Capitalism in March 2019, a book series jointly published by National Taiwan University Press and The Harvard-Yenching Institute.

First Case of an Administrative Detention Linked to the Foreign NGO Law?

on January 22, 2019

As reported by HK01, a Hong Kong-based news outlet focused on civil society and advocacy work, local public security authorities picked up Hong Kong resident Cheung Kam Hung on January 11 in Shenzhen, Guangdong province for violations of the Foreign NGO Law and administratively detained him for three days. As head of the Hong Kong-registered Rainbow China (彩虹中國), a non-profit focused on LGBT rights and HIV/AIDS prevention and support in China, Cheung had planned to travel to Fujian province on January 12 to conduct activities related to his NGO work. HK01 included a photo of his signed deportation notice, which references China’s Foreign NGO Law. The notice was issued by police in Wuhan, a city hundreds of miles away from both Shenzhen and Fujian and apparently not on Cheung’s itinerary.