Chong Ja Ian is a nonresident scholar at Carnegie China, Carnegie’s East Asia-based research center on contemporary China, where he examines U.S.-China dynamics in Southeast Asia and the broader Asia-Pacific. Chong is also an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore. He received his PhD from Princeton University in 2008 and previously taught at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His research covers the intersection of international and domestic politics, with a focus on the externalities of major power competition, nationalism, regional order, security, contentious politics, and state formation. He also works on U.S.-China relations, security and order in Northeast and Southeast Asia, cross-strait relations, and Taiwan’s politics.
He was a 2019-20 Harvard-Yenching Visiting Scholar, 2013 Taiwan Fellow, 2012-13 East-West Center Asia Fellow, and a 2008-9 Princeton-Harvard China and the World Fellow. Chong’s current research examines how non-leading state behavior collectively intensifies major power rivalries, paying particular attention to the U.S.-China relationship. He has concurrent projects investigating how states react to sanctions on third parties by trade partners, and the characteristics of foreign influence operations. Chong has a longstanding interest in bridging academic, policy, and public discussions regarding these topics.
Chong is the author of External Intervention and the Politics of State Formation: China, Indonesia, Thailand, 1893-1952 (Cambridge, 2012), and a recipient of the 2013 International Security Studies Section Book Award from the International Studies Association. He has published in the China Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations, International Security, Security Studies, and Pacific Affairs, among other outlets. Chong is also an editor of AcademiaSG, which seeks to promote Singapore-related research.
Because strategic, economic, and ideological perceptions of China contain multiple, sometimes contradictory facets in Southeast Asia, receptions of and responses to Beijing diverge across and within state lines.
Most Southeast Asian states behave as if the actions of their Northeast Asian neighbors and the Philippines will be sufficient to maintain a regional status quo from which they can benefit.
Three scholars share their insights on the role China is playing in the South China Sea, and the wider implications of the ongoing disputes and their trajectories for Southeast Asia and beyond.
Taiwan faces a more forceful PRC and a need to further consolidate its democracy. These will be the true tests of Lai Ching-te’s political acumen and that of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) team around him.
Quiet but important shifts in Taiwan’s politics that will have critical implications for cross-strait ties.
Southeast Asian capitals would prefer that the U.S. and PRC manage their relationship, if not get along.
As the world undergoes a new round of fragmentation and major power rivalry that includes the advancing of divergent visions of global order, Singapore is discovering that its interests are increasingly being pulled in different directions.
A fragile reconnection in U.S.-China diplomacy presents an opportunity to begin to set the terms of strategic competition.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visits Hanoi seeking closer relations.
Scholars from seven Southeast Asian countries share their takes on China’s regional engagement.
