Executive Summary: The People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Cook Islands signed two agreements in February that extend Beijing’s engagement in the South Pacific to include deep-sea exploration and dual-use maritime infrastructure. Beijing seeks to overcome U.S.-imposed containment in the Pacific. The Cook Islands... MORE

Executive Summary: President Xi Jinping unveiled the “2025 Action Plan to Stabilize Foreign Investment” and met with leading entrepreneurs for the first time in seven years, in an effort to reinvigorate the private sector and court foreign investment. The plan seeks foreign investment in sectors... MORE

Executive Summary: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is using the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War to promote a distorted version of history in order to  stoke patriotism among the Chinese people. Official remembering of the war has changed over the... MORE

Executive Summary: Beijing’s economic control of port operations at strategic chokepoints across the world, many of which are part of the Maritime Silk Road initiative, pose a threat to the United States and its allies. Two Chinese state-owned firms, COSCO and China Merchant Ports, control... MORE

Executive Summary: The “Eastern Data Western Computing” plan is a multiagency strategy that coordinates cloud computing data centers and energy infrastructure across the People’s Republic of China. These are increasingly relevant with the rise of artificial intelligence. This cloud infrastructure buildout likely will not rival that... MORE

Executive Summary: Beijing believes that the multipolar world it has spent decades calling for is within reach, judging by recent high-level speeches in Europe, Russia, and elsewhere. Beijing’s conception of multipolarity diverges in important ways from that of the West. Moscow has been central to Beijing’s approach... MORE

Executive Summary: The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has expanded its activities in the Arctic since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Moscow needs PRC engagement in the Arctic as sanctions limit Russian activities, but fears the PRC will try to become the... MORE

Executive Summary: DeepSeek and its parent company, High-Flyer, are embedded in the vibrant—and heavily state-subsidized—“Hangzhou Chengxi Science and Technology Innovation Corridor,” which aims to create a Chinese answer to Silicon Valley in the companies’ hometown. DeepSeek claims that its models are not trained on GPUs... MORE

Executive Summary: The year 2024 witnessed sudden removals of high-level People’s Liberation Army (PLA) commanders, a continuation of the purge of 15 defense industry leaders and military commanders in 2023. Xi Jinping’s possible motivations include combating corruption, managing factional conflicts, asserting dominance as an aging... MORE

Executive Summary: Research collaboration between European and Chinese universities could be indirectly supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine. Over 20 agreements, partnerships, or newly published research articles have been announced between “Seven Sons of National Defense” universities and European entities between December 2024 and January 2025.... MORE