Introduction In 2017 a Chinese company, CEFC China Energy, made international headlines when Patrick Ho Chi-ping, the General Secretary of its non-profit wing China Energy Fund Committee, was arrested in the United States on charges of bribing officials at the United Nations, in Chad, and... MORE

Introduction—The Growing Role of the CCP’s United Front Work The structure and functions of organizations within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are often poorly documented. However, buried inside a January 2019 Global Times article was a reference to “a deputy head of the 12th bureau... MORE

Introduction—A New Approach to United Front Work in Central and Eastern Europe In the era of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping, “united front work” (tongyi zhanxian gongzuo, 统一战线工作) has taken on greater significance and a global scale (China Brief, April 24, 2018;... MORE

Four years ago, Nigerian military sources said the country’s decision to shift to Russian military training and arms supplies was only an “interim measure” after its traditional partners, from the United States and the United Kingdom, seemingly showed insufficient interest in Nigeria’s fight against Boko... MORE

The European Commission and its president, Jean-Claude Juncker, are bracing for a May 13 deadline, presented to them on April 12 in a quasi-ultimatum form by Nord Stream Two project company CEO, Matthias Warnig (112.international, April 23). On the company’s behalf, Warnig threatens to sue... MORE

On May 1, a Holocaust Remembrance event at the US Department of State focused on the history of the Minsk Ghetto, one of the largest in Nazi-occupied Europe. Most of its 100,000 prisoners were slaughtered when the ghetto was liquidated, including 22,000 Jews transported there... MORE

Increasingly, one of the defining characteristics of Vladimir Putin’s leadership has been its propensity to push the narrative that the Kremlin has a special relationship with ethnic Russians and Russian speakers abroad, groups that Moscow typically lumps together as “the Russian World” (“Russkiy Mir”). Less... MORE

Russia’s second-largest natural gas producer, Novatek, which captured the largest share of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) market in Europe in the first quarter of 2019, has sold 20 percent of its planned Arctic 2 LNG project to China (Novatek.ru, April 25). The stake went... MORE

Although North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un’s travels inevitably attract a lot of media attention due to his country’s inherent secrecy and opacity, expectations were not high for the summit with Vladimir Putin, on April 25, in Vladivostok (Kommersant, April 25). And to a large degree,... MORE

Military force remains a predominant instrument of choice for Russian policymakers; yet, state expenditures on the Armed Forces continue to decline. This paradoxical situation was recently highlighted by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI) latest global military balance assessment, which the Russian media eagerly... MORE