I am a historian of modern China and an expert on US-China relations and Korean Peninsula affairs. Based in Rome as Visiting Professor in the Department of Political Science at Luiss University this fall, I arrived in Italy last year as the inaugural Tsao Fellow in China Studies at the American Academy in Rome. Prior to that, I was based in Seoul, South Korea as Professor of Chinese Studies at Yonsei University, on faculty since 2010. 

My last book, Agents of Subversion: The Fate of John T. Downey and the CIA’s Covert War in China, was published by Cornell University Press and reviewed widely, from American Historical Review to Foreign Affairs. Agents of Subversion combines Chinese and US history in order to tell the hidden story of the two nations’ Cold War struggle. Unraveling the tangled skein of a Korean War-era covert op gone wrong, the book weaves together intellectual, intelligence, and diplomatic history of the US-China relationship from the end of World War II up through the Nixon visit to Beijing. As talk of a new Cold War heats up, it seems a good time to take a fresh look at the actual, historical Cold War relationship between Washington and Beijing.

My previous book, Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-first Century, was co-authored with Orville Schell of the Asia Society.  A history of modern China written around biographical sketches of a dozen key leaders and thinkers, Wealth and Power was published by Random House in 2013, just as Xi Jinping was coming to power. Sadly, the book’s thesis seems to have only gained relevance in the decade since. 

My current book-in-progress explores the question of empire in the Confucian mind. Anchored in the historical moment of China’s last imperial transition (from the Ming to the Qing dynasty), the manuscript probes how the vestiges of classical thinking about empire shape mentalities today. Tentatively titled “The Ideal of Empire: Gu Yanwu and Confucian Political Thought from Ming to Qing,” the book adds a comparative dimension by juxtaposing Chinese and Western ideas of empire, work made easier by my time as a Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy. 

The articles, essays, op-eds, and book reviews on this site are mostly related to my attempt to use historical thinking to shed light on current issues in China, the two Koreas, and US policy in East Asia– from politics and ideas in the PRC, to the intensifying US-China rivalry, to the intractable problem of what to do about North Korea. Thanks for reading!

思而不學