Aric Chen | Insights

The Invitation Comes First: What Xi's Youth Offer Hides

In June, the Chinese government invited an American scholar to an academic conference in Kunming, and its security services detained him inside the…

Oct 17 • Aric Chen

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Seventy Years of Bait: The CCP Playbook Behind the Fake Militia

A masked man ran an anti-CCP militia. It was fake, built by China's police to snare one exiled artist. The trap is older: since 1952, Beijing has lured…

Oct 15 • Aric Chen

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September 2026

The Red Carpet Was Not America Kneeling. It Was America Choosing the Terrain.

On Wednesday night at Joint Base Andrews, America did something it almost never does.

Sep 24 • Aric Chen

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Beijing's Guest List for the White House Had Pentagon-Blacklisted Firms on It

Xi Jinping may now arrive without his executives. The ministry that was calling them, and what happened to Jack Ma, explain why Chinese founders never…

Sep 22 • Aric Chen

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August 2026

The Honeytrap Is the Least Interesting Thing in the Fang Fang File

Thirty espionage and influence cases across eight countries. Sex is the actual mechanism in two of them. The Fang Fang file is not the honeytrap story…

Aug 19 • Aric Chen

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Microsoft Shut 15 China Offices in Five Years. One Customer Is Why It Hasn't Left.

ByteDance is on track to spend over a billion dollars a year renting OpenAI models on Azure — and Beijing is funding the replacement.

Aug 17 • Aric Chen

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June 2026

Beijing Ran Nine Secret Police Stations on French Soil. Paris Just Shut Them Down.

A botched airport kidnapping cracked open the Chinese Communist Party's shadow policing network in France. The fallout is still spreading across Europe.

Jun 24 • Aric Chen

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Typhon Launchers Stay in Japan: Tomahawks Now Target China from Kyushu

Last September, the U.S.

Jun 22 • Aric Chen

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181,000 drones. Four months. Made in Taiwan. Bound for Ukraine

181,000 drones.

Jun 22 • Aric Chen

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American "Journalist" Caught Red-Handed: Paid CCP Spy Fed U.S. Election Intel Straight to Xi Jinping

In a federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia on Thursday, a U.S.

Jun 5 • Aric Chen

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Capital Walks: Why Japan’s Banks Are Quietly Pulling Out of China

Regional bank offices in China down 20% in five years. Megabank lending down as much as 40%. This is a verdict — and the risks driving it run straight…

Jun 4 • Aric Chen

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Japan Has 14,125 Islands. Chinese Buyers Own Parts of Them Near U.S. Bases.

For the first time in its modern history, the Japanese government is going to find out who actually owns the country.

Jun 3 • Aric Chen

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