Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) is delighted to share that Chris Buckley, the chief China correspondent for the New York Times, has won the 2024 Shorenstein Journalism Award for Excellence in Asia-Pacific Coverage. The award recognizes Buckley’s expertly crafted narratives unraveling the intricate tapestry of politics, social dynamics, and security issues in China and Taiwan. He will receive the award at a public ceremony at Stanford in October 2024.

Buckley’s reporting journey spans over two decades, covering Chinese politics, foreign policy, social change, and environmental issues. In recent years, he has focused on detailing the complex dynamics of the Chinese Communist Party’s governance, the transformative impact of Xi Jinping's leadership on China’s domestic and international affairs, and the varied responses to these developments from the Chinese populace. Since relocating to Taipei in late 2022, he has expanded his coverage to include Taiwanese society, politics, and culture, providing a comprehensive view of the region’s evolving landscape. His perceptive coverage navigates the challenges of tightened restrictions on foreign press reporting on China.

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Buckley was with colleagues a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for gripping accounts that revealed China's covert efforts to repress millions of Uyghurs and other ethnic groups in the Xinjiang region through a system of labor camps, harsh treatment, and extensive surveillance. He was also part of the Times team that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service for coverage of the Covid pandemic. One of several Times correspondents to race into Wuhan in the earliest days of the Covid outbreak, he spent 76 days in the city during the lockdown there, reporting on the Chinese government’s opacity as the Coronavirus spread and covering the public outcry following the death of whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang.

In May 2020, Buckley was forced to leave mainland China, where he had lived and worked for more than two decades, and was then barred from working in Hong Kong. Based in Taipei since 2022, he has continued to report on China and now also covers Taiwan.

“With his journalistic prowess, profound insights into China’s political system, and finely honed accounts, Chris Buckley has shined a critical light on the shifts in Chinese society and politics and broke numerous stories despite facing government backlash and personal sacrifices,” said APARC Director Gi-Wook Shin. “We are honored to recognize him with the Shorenstein Journalism Award.”

Before rejoining the New York Times in 2012, Buckley was a senior correspondent in Beijing for Reuters News Agency for 7 years, and before that worked as a researcher and reporter for the Times and International Herald Tribune in Beijing. He grew up in Sydney, Australia, earned a bachelor's degree in history from the University of Sydney, studied Chinese Communist Party history at Renmin University in Beijing, and received a doctorate in Chinese studies from Australian National University.

Presented annually by APARC, the Shorenstein Award carries a $10,000 cash prize and commemorates the legacy of APARC’s benefactor, Mr. Walter H. Shorenstein, and his twin passions for promoting excellence in journalism and understanding of Asia. The selection committee for the award praised Buckley’s exemplary work as embodying the award’s purpose, commenting that he is “truly unparalleled in his knowledge and understanding of China.”

The committee members are William Dobson, co-editor of the Journal of Democracy; Anna Fifield, the Washington Post's Asia-Pacific editor and recipient of the 2018 Shorenstein Journalism Award; James Hamilton, the Hearst Professor of Communication, chair of the Department of Communication, and director of the Journalism Program at Stanford University; Louisa Lim, associate professor, Audio-Visual Journalism Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne; and Raju Narisetti, publisher of McKinsey Global Publishing at McKinsey and Company.

Twenty-two winners previously received the Shorenstein Award. Recent honorees include The Caravan, India's premier magazine of long-form journalism; Emily Feng, international correspondent for NPR covering China, Taiwan, and beyond; Swe Win, editor-in-chief of Myanmar Now; and Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa, CEO and president of the Philippines-based news organization Rappler.

Information about the 2024 Shorenstein Journalism Award ceremony and panel discussion celebrating Buckley will be forthcoming in the fall quarter.

In recent years, China's military modernization and assertive actions have led to more frequent and dangerous encounters between the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the militaries of key regional players in the Indo-Pacific. Each encounter heightens the chance of a military conflict in the region. A new report published by the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) assesses the PLA’s strategic thinking on escalation control, analyzing the potential for conflict in the region and exploring regional responses and implications for deterrence.

Edited by Chinese military expert Oriana Skylar Mastro, a center fellow at APARC and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the report, "Encounters and Escalation in the Indo-Pacific: Perspectives on China’s Military and Implications for Regional Security," comprises six essays, each detailing an encounter with the PLA. These case studies include China’s maritime disputes with Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam and its increasingly aggressive military activities vis-à-vis Australia, India, and Taiwan.

The authors of the essays are current and former practitioners with insight into their government’s experiences and thinking. Their assessments emphasize the need for Asia-Pacific countries to reevaluate their defense capabilities and adopt clear and consistent policy approaches to navigate the complex geopolitical landscape in the region.

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Tactics, Intentions, and Shared Threat Perceptions

As the PLA adopts a more assertive approach beyond its maritime boundaries, nations across the Indo-Pacific region have increasingly experienced perilous encounters with the Chinese military. For example, the PLA's intensifying aggression around Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea led to several incidents of maritime tension with the Philippines. Likewise, a Chinese fighter aircraft intercepted an Australian surveillance aircraft during its routine activity in international airspace over the South China Sea, posing a safety risk to the Australian aircraft and its crew.

The authors of the six case studies in the NBR report agree "that China harbors problematic intentions and is using increasingly aggressive and risk-acceptant tactics to accomplish its goals." While they show that China uses different tactics in different situations and differ in their evaluations of the most troublesome tactics for their respective countries, their analyses share several common themes, which Mastro reviews in her introduction to the report, titled "Close Encounters with the PLA: Regional Experiences and Implications for Deterrence."

First, “China doctrinally does not take any responsibility for the deterioration in the strategic environment,” writes Mastro. “All six case studies mention China’s tendency to publicly blame the other country for whatever crisis unfolded.”

China also sees crises as opportunities, Mastro explains, and most case studies indicate that the crises at stake were deliberate acts of PLA escalation. All case studies also reflect Chinese strategic thinking on deterrence as serving dual purposes: firstly, to discourage adversaries from certain actions, and secondly, to influence their behavior in line with the deterrer's intentions, ultimately requiring them to comply with the deterrer's preferences.

Another common theme is that the PLA's assertive actions have prompted all six nations studied in the report to boost security cooperation with the United States and other regional powers, albeit to varying extents. For example, in addition to enhancing its strategic partnership with the United States, India has enhanced its defense ties with the two other Quad members (Japan and Australia) and regional partners such as Vietnam, Singapore, and the Philippines.

Moreover, based on their encounters with the PLA, almost all regional players have concluded that strengthening their military capabilities will discourage Chinese aggressive behavior in the future, Mastro says, noting that “changes in defense posture have perhaps been the most drastic in Japan.”

Policy Implications

The report's case studies offer policy recommendations for deterring China, emphasizing the importance of a consistent approach that includes strengthening deterrence capabilities through military modernization, firm stances on border disputes, and close security cooperation with the United States, its allies, and other like-minded nations. While there is consensus that military deterrence needs to be balanced with diplomatic engagements to reduce tensions, each regional player views the effectiveness of diplomacy and cooperation with China differently.

“Ultimately,” Mastro concludes, “the path forward for maintaining peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region requires a cohesive strategy that prioritizes long-term security interests, demonstrating the essential role of international cooperation and the strategic interplay between military readiness and diplomatic efforts in navigating China’s aggression.”

Learn more about the report and download Mastro’s introductory essay > 

Note: this piece builds on a previous article by the authors, published by The Washington Quarterly.

No foreign policy challenge is more important, or difficult, than finding a way to simultaneously deter and engage China without provoking unwanted behaviors. Achieving this requires understanding the perceptions and priorities shaping Beijing’s actions.  

Despite China’s worsening economic problems and waning international trust, the March 2024 session of the National People’s Congress has reaffirmed Beijing’s determination to stick with policies fuelling domestic discontent and alienating foreign partners. The reasons are structural, not simply strong-man egoism. Policies in China are tightly interconnected, reflecting hard-to-change perceptions reinforced by bureaucratic and personal interests. Changing one facet requires changing the entire policy package. For now, that package prioritizes domestic stability and security over economic growth.

Beijing has fallen into an old mindset that sacrifices growth to reduce vulnerability to external and internal threats that leaders believe endanger the regime and China’s future. This is not good for China, the United States, or the world. Washington cannot achieve immediate or fundamental changes in China’s behavior but ill-considered actions can make things worse. The best we currently can achieve is wary coexistence, careful management to reduce dangers, and keeping the way open for a better day.

Read the rest of the essay online at the East Asia Forum.