East Asia

State of the Order: Assessing November 2022

The State of the Order breaks down the month's most important events impacting the democratic world order.

The National Defense Strategy shows the Pentagon’s increased focus on the gray zone. Here’s what that means.

By Gray Zone Task Force experts

The DOD is officially recognizing that competitors’ coercive and malign activities in the gray zone present a challenge to US security. What does this mean for US strategy in the years ahead?

What Xi Jinping’s Saudi Arabia visit means for the Middle East

By Atlantic Council experts

The Chinese leader's trip for a series of summits with countries from around the Middle East cemented dozens of deals with a good bit of pageantry. Our experts lay out what comes next.

The numbers that drove China’s Zero-COVID policy

By Niels Graham

China's adherence to zero-COVID was primarily driven by poor vaccination rates among seniors and weak health care infrastructure. As the country opens, both factors remain key health risks.

Holes in the great fire wall: Dissent and protests in China

By Digital Forensic Research Lab

At 360/StratCom, the DFRLab hosted a panel of experts on China’s Communist Party, surveillance architecture, protest, and the information environment for a conversation on the implications of recent events for China.

Taiwan: The key to containing China in the Indo-Pacific

By John B. Barranco

2021-2022 Senior Marine Corps Fellow John Barranco considers the role of the US-Taiwanese relationship in deterring Chinese aggression and ways in which the United States can strengthen this relationship.

Autocratic setbacks offer Biden his ‘inflection point’ for democracies

By Frederick Kempe

This year has been a tough one for the world’s worst authoritarians: Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.