China, AI, and authoritarianism. Head of China investigations @aspi_cts. Was @axios @foreignpolicy @yale @HopkinsNanjing. Author BEIJING RULES, Financial Times Best Books of 2023. Robert Lewis Watchdog Award, Batten Medal for Courage in Journalism finalist
Bethany Allen 貝書穎
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The problem is that “I am often scared and angry about social change” does not inherently lend itself to interesting art. You can be as technically skilled as the greats, but art with nothing interesting to say is just a commodity.
Jared Holt
More, on my Substack here substack.com/@bethanyallen
Bethany Allen 貝書穎
And finally, these reports make a mockery of actual, high-quality China influence research.
This must stop now — and journalists reporting on this style of report should do so with the highest degree of journalistic professionalism and scrutiny.
These reports, given both their methods and their political goal, are also a form of disinformation and propaganda, very similar to how China paints Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters as stooges of America.
I increasingly find that my primary role in the "China influence" space these days is to debunk a lot of very, very poor quality "China influence" research reports that have been coming out.
Let me start with a couple recent ones:
— The reports from Bitcoin Policy Institute and Power the Future which have led House reps to call for an investigation into anti-data center organizing
www.btcpolicy.org/articles/bit...
Bethany Allen 貝書穎
Bethany Allen 貝書穎
Reports like these represent an anti-democratic abuse of the concept of China influence research, which denies agency to real Americans.
— And this latest one about how China is supposedly bankrolling climate activism at the University of California system and thereby acting to "shape California’s climate and energy policies."
thefederalist.com/2026/06/08/h...
Bethany Allen 貝書穎
Bethany Allen 貝書穎
Bethany Allen 貝書穎
Bethany Allen 貝書穎
This is junk research, primarily motivated by the desire to delegitimize grassroots American organizating by attempting to associate them with "hostile foreign forces" — a tactic widely used by the CCP to delegitimize grassroots Chinese civil society whenever it finds such movements inconvenient.
I can easily show that these reports are
1) junk quality, and
2) primarily motivated not by a desire to uncover China's influence (and thus to preserve the integrity of US civil society), but rather to delegitimize organic US movements (and thus to compromise the integrity of US civil society)
Bethany Allen 貝書穎
Bethany Allen 貝書穎
substack.com
China, AI, and authoritarianism. Head of China investigations at ASPI. Previously Axios, Foreign Policy, Yale, Hopkins-Nanjing. Author BEIJING RULES, Financial Times Best Books of 2023.
