Jin Kai

Associate Professor, Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences

Jin Kai is an associate professor at the Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences in China and a non-resident scholar at the Sigur Center for Asian Studies of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, Washington DC. He is also a visiting scholar at the Yonsei Institute for Sinology at Yonsei University, Seoul in South Korea. His research areas include Chinese foreign policy, China-US relations and security in Northeast Asia.

This undated picture released from North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on 27 November 2022 shows North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un (centre right) and his daughter (centre left) posing with soldiers who contributed to the test-firing of the new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), at an unknown location in North Korea. (KCNA via KNS/AFP)

Can China avert North Korea's seventh nuclear test?

With North Korea’s seventh testing of a nuclear weapon looking imminent, Chinese academic Jin Kai notes that the ROK’s hardened stance and the US’s inconsistent policies are not helping to calm rising tensions in the Korean peninsula. And while it is perceived to hold sway over North Korea, China’s influence over its neighbour may be overrated in truth.
A couple (front, left) wear traditional hanbok dress as they walk across a road in Seoul, South Korea, on 7 January 2022. (Anthony Wallace/AFP)

When neighbours disagree: Did China 'steal' South Korea’s culture and historical memory?

When the Chinese featured a lady wearing a hanbok — what to the Koreans is their national costume — at the Winter Olympics opening ceremony, it was as if the band-aid on rising China-South Korean tensions was peeled off. Soon after, cries of foul play and the Chinese “snatching” medals from the South Koreans followed. Are greater squabbles on the horizon for these Northeast Asian neighbours?