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Expert Bio
Joshua Kurlantzick is senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He is the author, most recently, of Beijing's Global Media Offensive: China's Uneven Campaign To Influence Asia and the World. Kurlantzick was previously a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he studied Southeast Asian politics and economics and China's relations with Southeast Asia, including Chinese investment, aid, and diplomacy. Previously, he was a fellow at the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy and a fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy. He is currently focused on China’s relations with Southeast Asia, and China’s approach to soft and sharp power, including state-backed media and information efforts and other components of soft and sharp power. He is also working on issues related to the rise of global populism, populism in Asia, and the impact of COVID-19 on illiberal populism and political freedom overall.
Kurlantzick has also served as a columnist for Time, a correspondent for The Economist based in Bangkok, a special correspondent for the New Republic, a senior correspondent for the American Prospect, and a contributing writer for Mother Jones. He also serves on the editorial board of Current History.
He is the winner of the Luce Scholarship for journalism in Asia and was selected as a finalist for the Osborn Elliott Prize for Excellence in Journalism in Asia. His first book, Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming the World, was nominated for CFR’s 2008 Arthur Ross Book Award. He is also the author of A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA, State Capitalism: How the Return of Statism is Transforming the World, and Democracy in Retreat: The Revolt of the Middle Class and the Worldwide Decline in Representative Government.
Kurlantzick received his BA in political science from Haverford College.
Affiliations:
- Freedom House, contributor to Freedom in the World
- Japan Times, monthly contributor
- Pinter Politik, contributor
- World Politics Review, monthly contributor
- Diplomat Risk Intelligence, participant in expert network
- GLG Network, participant in expert network
Featured
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The two-year-old military junta in Myanmar wants to hold elections this year to legitimize its rule, but steady losses in its spreading civil war have put its own existence in peril and could make a vote nearly impossible.
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Understanding Beijing’s failures now is crucial ahead of a time when efforts to shape opinion are more sophisticated.
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Pro-Beijing owners have increasingly gained control of Chinese-language media in liberal democracies like Canada.
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Beijing’s massive expansion of state media hasn’t quite worked as planned. But watch out for Xinhua’s growing global deals.
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Joshua Kurlantzick analyzes China's attempts to become a media, information, and influence superpower, seeking for the first time to shape the domestic politics, local media, and information environments of the United States, East Asia, parts of Europe, and the broader world.
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China appears to be increasingly interfering in U.S. elections through intensive lobbying, control of foreign media outlets, and sophisticated disinformation campaigns.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping has gone much further than analysts had predicted he would in state control of the private sector in China and departure from a consensus based authoritarian system to one-man rule.
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In the lead-up to national elections in 2023, Thai politics is becoming increasingly dysfunctional.
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