Last week, the annual gathering of the Valdai International Discussion Club was held in Sochi, Russia. Today, this conference does not deserve the attention such events used to have a decade ago, when many Western experts saw it as a unique opportunity to gain access... MORE

In September 2023, all European Union member states bordering Russia introduced an entry ban on cars sporting Russian license plates. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were the first to implement the policy, albeit with Vilnius leaving open an exception for transit from the Russian exclave Kaliningrad... MORE

Amidst the drama surrounding Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s early April stopover in Southern California, where she met with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the subsequent People’s Liberation Army (PLA) maneuvers around Taiwan that followed, it can be easy to forget why the Taiwanese President was... MORE

Introduction The People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercises influence over South Korea in multiple ways. Chinese influence operations against Seoul have been characterized as not subtle and even blatant compared to the more covert and subversive methods employed in other countries (China Brief, December 19,... MORE

Russia’s war against Ukraine, which has been going on for more than a year, has caused deep reflection among Russian-speaking intellectuals from different countries and has even led them to Nietzsche's "revaluation of all values." At the beginning of 2023, Mikhail Epstein, philosopher and professor... MORE

Introduction In tandem with its increasingly provocative coercive military measures directed against Taiwan, throughout the course of 2022, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) also ramped up its accompanying rhetoric. The PRC vigorously reasserted its irredentist sovereignty claims, decried alleged “separatist” activities by Taiwan’s political... MORE

Soon after the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama posited the idea of “the end of history.” In the eyes of Fukuyama and several other Western experts, the evaporation of the influence of... MORE

Introduction Every year on Lunar New Year’s Eve, people all over China gather around the television with hot dumplings to watch the China Central Television (CCTV) Chunwan (春晚)—Spring Festival Gala. Ever since the CCTV Spring Festival Gala was first broadcast in 1983, the Chunwan has... MORE

Last September, a primary school in Lipu City, in Southwestern China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, held a commemoration ceremony for the school’s designation as a “National Defense Education Model School” (国防教育示范学校) (Defense Times, September 15, 2022). At the event, local military leaders and government officials... MORE

Over the past two months, as the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has rapidly rolled back its strict zero-COVID epidemic prevention policy, COVID-19 has spread rapidly throughout the country. The combination of the PRC reopening its borders to outbound travel on January 8 and the... MORE