Elizabeth A. Wishnick
Research Interest
Chinese foreign policy; nontraditional security in Asia; great power relations in Central Asia
Elizabeth Wishnick is a Senior Research Scientist in the China and Indo-Pacific Security Affairs
Division at the Center for Naval Analyses, on leave from her position as Professor of Political
Science at Montclair State University. Since 2002, she has been a research scholar at WEAI. She
previously taught undergraduate and graduate courses in international relations, Chinese politics,
and Chinese foreign policy at Barnard College, Columbia College, and SIPA. Dr. Wishnick has
dual regional expertise on China and Russia and is an expert on Chinese foreign policy, Sino-
Russian relations, Northeast Asian and Central Asian security, and Arctic geopolitics. Her book
project, China’s Risk China’s Risk: Energy, Water, Food and Regional Security (forthcoming
Columbia University Press) addresses the security consequences of energy, water and food risks
in China for its Eurasian neighbors, a topic she explores in a related policy
blog, www.chinasresourcerisks.com. She received a PhD in Political Science from Columbia
University, an MA in Russian and East European Studies from Yale University, and a BA from
Barnard College. She speaks Mandarin, Russian, and French.
Publications
China’s Risk: Energy, Water, Food and Regional Security, (under contract by Columbia University Press, series on Contemporary Asia and the World, forthcoming).
China’s Interests and Goals in the Arctic, U.S. Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, March 2017.
Mending Fences: The Evolution of Moscow’s China Policy from Brezhnev to Yeltsin, paperback edition (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014).
Russia, China, and the U.S. in Central Asia: Competition and Cooperation in the Shadow of the Georgian Crisis, Paper commissioned by Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, February 2009.
The Strategic Consequences of the Iraq War: U.S. Security Interests in Central Asia Reassessed, U.S. Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, May 2004.
Growing U.S. Security Interests in Central Asia, U.S. Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, October 2002.
Mending Fences with China: The Evolution of Moscow's China Policy from Brezhnev to Yeltsin (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001).
“Pandemic Politics in Eurasia: Roadmap for a New Research Field,” forthcoming in Problems of Post-Communism, with Marlene Laruelle, Mikhail Alexseev, Cynthia Buckley, Ralph Clem, Paul Goode, Ivan Gomza, Henry E. Hale, Erik Herron, Andrey Makarychev, Madeline McCann, Mariya Y. Omelicheva, Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, Regina Smyth, Sarah Wilson Sokhey, Mikhail Troitskiy, Joshua A. Tucker, and Judyth Twigg.
“Sources of Sino-Russian Consolidation,” The China Leadership Monitor, Vol. 63, March 1, 2020.
“The Impact of the Sino-Russian Partnership on the North Korean Nuclear Crisis,” NBR Special Report No. 78, March 29, 2019.
“Sino-Russian Relations and the East Asian Order,” Asian Perspective, Vol. 42, No.3, July-September 2018, 355-386.
“In Search of the ‘Other’ in Asia: Sino-Russian Relations Revisited,” The Pacific Review, Vol. 30, No. 1 2017, 114-132.
“Russia and the CIS in 2015,” Asian Survey, Vol. 56 No. 1, January-February 2016, 47-56.
“Post-2014 Afghanistan Policy and the Limitations of China’s Global Role,” Central Asian Affairs (inaugural issue), Vol. 1, Issue 1, 2014, 133-152.
“Dilemmas of Securitization and Health Risk Management in the People’s Republic of China: The Cases of SARS and Avian Flu,” Health Policy and Planning, Vol. 25, Issue 6 November 2010, pp. 454-466.
“Competition and Cooperative Practices in Sino-Japanese Energy and Environmental Relations: Towards an Energy Security ‘Risk Community’?” The Pacific Review Vol. 22, No. 4, September 2009, pp. 399-426.
“Russia and the CIS in 2006, Asian Survey, January-February 2007, pp. 58-67.
“Russia and the CIS in 2005,” Asian Survey, January-February 2006, pp. 69-78.
“Sino-Russian Relations in a Changed International Landscape,” China Perspectives (Hong Kong), September-October 2002 pp. 4-16.
“Russia and China: Brothers Again?” Asian Survey, September/October 2001, pp. 797-821.
“Prospects for the Sino-Russian Partnership: Views from Moscow and the Russian Far East,” Journal of East Asian Affairs, Summer-Fall 1998, pp. 418-451.
“The Environment and Development in the Russian Far East,” Issues and Studies (Taipei), February 1996, pp. 99-122.
“Russia and the Arctic in China’s Quest for Great-Power Status,” in Ashley J. Tellis, Alison Szalwinski, and Michael Wills eds., Strategic Asia 2019 (NBR: Seattle and Washington, D.C., 2019).
“Safe Harbor in a Risky World? China’s Approach to Managing Food Safety Risk,” in Robert M. Hathaway and Michael Wills, eds. Managing New Security Risks in Asia, Washington, D.C: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2013.
“Food Security and Food Safety in China’s Foreign Policy,” in Wu Guogang, ed. China’s Challenges to Human Security: Foreign Relations and Global Implications, London: Routledge, 2012.
“1980 shidai zaoqi Sulian dui Zhongguo zhengce yanxu he bianhua de yali,” [Pressures for Continuity and Changes in Sino-Soviet Relations in the early 1980s] in eds. Shen Zhihua and Douglas A. Stiffler, Cuiruo de lianmeng: lengzhan yu ZhongSu guanxi [Fragile Alliance: The Cold War and Sino-Soviet Relations], Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2010. [This is a Chinese translation of a chapter from my book Mending Fences.]
“Sino-Russian Strategic Partnership: View from China,” in James Bellacqua, ed. China-Russia Relations in the Early 21st Century, Louisville: University of Kentucky Press, January 2010.
“The Securitization of Chinese Migration to Russia: Rhetoric and Reality,” In eds. Melissa Curley and Wong Siu-lun, Migration and Securitisation in East Asia, Routledge Press, 2008.
“Migration and Economic Security: Chinese Labor Migrants in the Russian Far East,” in eds. Tsuneo Akaha and Anna Vassilieva eds., Crossing National Borders: International Migration and Human Security Issues in Northeast Asia, Brookings/United Nations University Press, 2005.
“Russia in Inter-Korean Relations,” in Samuel S. Kim, ed. Inter-Korean Relations, (Palgrave 2004).
“The Far East Federal District,” in eds. Robert W. Orttung and Peter Reddaway, Dynamics of Russian Politics: Putin’s Federal-Regional Reforms, (Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003).
“A New Era in Russian-North Korean Relations?” in Samuel S. Kim, ed., North Korea and Northeast Asia, (Boulder: Rowman&Littlefield, 2002).
“The Regional Dynamic in Russia’s Asia Policy in the 1990s,” in eds. Judith Thornton and Charles E. Ziegler, Russian Far East: A Region at Risk (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002).
“Chinese Perspectives on Cross-Border Relations,” in ed. Sherman Garnett, Rapprochement or Rivalry? (Washington, D.C.: The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2000).
“The Regional Factor in Sino-Soviet Relations, 1969-86,” in ed. Reneo Lukic, Rethinking International the Conflict in Communist and Post-Communist States, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998).
Associate Editor, The China Handbook (a three-volume, 63-chapter work published by Sage in 2018).
“Energy in Northeast Asia: Resources for Conflict or Cooperation? An Introduction” East Asia, Vol. 25, No. 1, Spring 2008 pp. 1-5. [Editor of special issue]
“Mongolia: Bridge or Buffer in Northeast Asia? Reflections from the 6th Ulaanbaatar Dialogue and beyond.” The Diplomat, June 19, 2019 https://thediplomat.com/2019/06/mongolia-bridge-or-buffer-in-northeast-asia/.
“The Sino-Russian Partnership and the North Korean Nuclear Partnership: U.S. Policy Implications,” NBR Brief for Congressional Outreach, June 14, 2019 https://www.nbr.org/publication/the-sino-russian-partnership-and-the-north-korean-nuclear-crisis/.
“The Sino-Russian Partnership in the Arctic,” March 15, 2018 https://cpianalysis.org/2018/03/15/sino-russian-partnership-in-the-arctic/.
“The Unpredictable Triangle: U.S.-China-Russia Relations in the Trump Era,” China-U.S. Focus, May 29, 2017 http://www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/the-unpredictable-triangle-us-china-russia-relations-in-the-trump-era.
“Russia Wants to Be a Contender: The New Problem in the South China Sea,” Foreign Affairs, September 19, 2016, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/2016-09-19/russia-wants-be-contender.
“The New China-Russia-U.S. Triangle,” NBR Analysis Brief, December 16, 2015, http://nbr.org/publications/nbranalysis/pdf/brief/121615_Wishnick_ChinaRussiaUS.pdf
“Russia and China Go Sailing: Superpower on Display in the Eastern Mediterranean,” Foreign Affairs, May 27, 2015, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2015-05-26/russia-and-china-go-sailing.
“There Goes the Neighborhood: Afghanistan’s Challenges to China’s Regional Security Goals,” Brown Journal of World Affairs, Fall-Winter 2012.
“The Constraints of Partnership: China’s Approach to Afghanistan,” PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo No. 219, September 2012, http://www.ponarseurasia.org/memo/constraints-partnerships-china%E2%80%99s-approach-afghanistan
“The Amur River Basin: A Region at Risk? Environmental and Political Consequences of Chemical Spills in the Songhua River,” Proceedings of the 2nd Annual Meeting of the Amur-Okhotsk Consortium: Towards the Sharing of Environmental Data in the Pan Okhotsk Region, Amur-Okhotsk Consortium, Hokkaido, Japan, March 2012.
“Of Milk and Spacemen: The Paradox of Chinese Power in an Era of Risk, The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Vol. XV, Issue II, Spring/Summer 2009, pp. 211-224.
One Asia Policy or Two? Moscow and the Russian Far East Debate Russia’s Asia Policy, NBR Analysis, Vol. 13, No. 1, March 2002.
“The East by West Trade Corridor: Myth and Reality,” ERINA Report (Niigata, Japan), No. 35, August 2000, pp. 32-40.
“Russia in Asia and Asians in Russia,” SAIS Review, Winter-Spring 2000 pp. 87-101.
“Phoenix Rising from the Ashes? The Russian Far East and the August Crisis,” The Harriman Review, Vol. 11, No. 4, June 1999, pp. 43-45.
“The Grass Is Greener: Russia's New Chinese Illegal Immigration Problem,” The Asia-Pacific Magazine, Nos. 6-7, 1997, pp. 54-59.
“Masked Diplomacy: Xi and Putin Seek Advantage and Cover from the Pandemic,” PONARS Eurasia, April 3, 2020 http://www.ponarseurasia.org/memo/masked-diplomacy-xi-and-putin-seek-advantage-and-cover-pandemic.
“Putin and Xi: Ice Cream Buddies and Tandem Strongmen,” PONARS Eurasia, October 2019 http://www.ponarseurasia.org/node/10449.
“Are China and Russia Teaming Up in Southern Europe? PONARS Eurasia, June 2017, http://www.ponarseurasia.org/memo/are-china-and-russia-teaming-southern-europe.
“Tensions with Russia Heat up a Melting Arctic,” PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo 464, March 2017, http://www.ponarseurasia.org/node/8976.
“China and the Two Pivots,” PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo 365, July 2015, http://www.ponarseurasia.org/node/7787
“The ‘Power of Siberia’: No Longer a Pipe Dream,” PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo 332, August 2014, http://www.ponarseurasia.org/memo/%E2%80%9Cpower-siberia%E2%80%9D-no-longer-pipe-dream
“In Visit to Central Asia, Chinese President Shows Off ‘Silk Road Economic Belt,’” PONARS Eurasia, September 16, 2013 http://www.ponarseurasia.org/articles/category/policy-blogs-
“Russia: New Player in the South China Sea?” July 27, 2013, http://russiancouncil.ru/en/blogs/dvfu/?id_4=592
“Russia: New Player in the South China Sea?” July 8, 2013, PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo No. 260, http://www.ponarseurasia.org/node/6277
“Afghanistan and U.S.-China Relations,” China-US Focus (Hong Kong), August 4, 2011.
China as a Risk Society, Working Paper No. 12, September 2005, East-West Center Politics, Governance, and Security Series.
Integration or Disintegration? Challenges for the Russian Far East in the Asia-Pacific Region, Occasional Paper, Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan (with Tamara Troyakova), Occasional Papers No. 1, December 2003.
Review of China as a Polar Great Power by Anne-Marie Brady (Cambridge, UK and Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, D.C.), The China Quarterly 236 (December), 2018, 2019-20.
Review in Book Review Roundtable of Elizabeth C. Economy and Michael Levi, By All Means Necessary: How China’s Quest for Resources Is Changing the World (Oxford University Press, 2014), Asia Policy, 18(July 2014):161-180.
Review of Yumin Sheng, Economic Openness and Territorial Politics in China (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Xi Chen, Social Protest and Contentious Authoritarianism in China (Cambridge University Press, 2012), International Studies Review, 16 (1) March 2014, 115-118.
Review of Thomas P. Bernstein and Hua-yu Li, eds., China Learns from the Soviet Union, 1949–Present. (Harvard Cold War Series. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2010), Slavic Review, Spring 2011.
Review of Sergey Radchenko, Two Suns in the Heavens: The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962-1967 (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2009). Pacific Affairs, Vol. 83 No. 4, December 2010.
Review of Michael Share, Where Empires Collided: Russian and Soviet Relations with Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macao. (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2007). Slavic Review, Vol. 67, No. 3, 2008, pp. 763-764.
Review of Alistair Iain Johnston and Robert S. Ross, eds., New Directions in the Study of China’s Foreign Policy. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006). China Review International, Vol. 13, No.2, Fall 2006, pp. 423-426.
Review of Jeanne Wilson, Strategic Partners: Russian-Chinese Relations in the Post-Soviet Era, (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 2004). China Review International. Vol. 12, No. 5, Fall 2005 pp. 564-7.
Review of Alexander Lukin, The Bear Watches the Dragon, (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 2003), Slavic Review. Vol. 63 No. 4, Winter 2004.
Review of Erich Kasten, ed., People and the Land: Pathways to Reform in Post-Soviet Siberia, Russian Review. Vol. 62 Issue 3. July 2003.
Review of Mark Lupher, Power Restructuring in China and Russia, (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), China Quarterly, June 1998.
Review of David S.G. Goodman, China's Provinces in Reform, (Routledge, 1997), China Information, Winter 1997-1998.
Review of Hafeez Malik, ed., The Roles of the United States, Russia, and China in the New World Order, (St. Martin’s Press, 1997), Journal of Asian Studies, November 1997.
Review of Minxin Pei, From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union, (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1994), Russian History, Vol. 22, No.3, Fall 1995, pp. 364-366.
“Beyond Bordeaux: China’s Taste for Wine Uncorked,” The Palate Press, October 3, 2012, www.palatepress.com.
“China’s Challenge to the Kyoto Protocol,” International Relations and Security Network Security Watch (Zurich), December 11, 2006.
“APEC Meeting Shows N Korea Divisions,” International Relations and Security Network Security Watch (Zurich), November 23, 2006.
“China and North Korea: Tensions between ‘Lips and Teeth,’” International Relations and Security Network Security Watch (Zurich), August 11, 2006.
“Smoke and Mirrors in the Shanghai Spirit,” International Relations and Security Network Security Watch (Zurich), July 25, 2006.
“Great Powers Compete for Kazakh Energy,” International Relations and Security Network Security Watch (Zurich), June 12, 2006.
“Add Energy Insecurity to US-China Relations,” The Asia Times Online, June 2, 2006.
“Contradictions in US China Policy,” International Relations and Security Network Security Watch (Zurich), May 16, 2006.
“Brothers in Arms Again? Assessing the Sino-Russian Military Exercises,” PacNet No. 35, Pacific Forum/CSIS, August 18, 2005.
“The Search for Sustainability: Consequences of China’s Growing Energy Demand,” Asia Intelligence, November 2004.
“Anti-Terrorism Dwarfs Urgent Land Mines Problem,” International Relations and Security Network Security Watch (Zurich), October 25, 2004.
“Europe Shows ‘Soft Power’ in Iran-IAEA Row,” International Relations and Security Network Security Watch (Zurich), November, 2003.
“China Eyes Russian Energy Projects,” Hong Kong Business, October 2003.
“Security Focus Pakistan,” Intersec (London), October 2003.
“Northeast Asia Rejoins the Silk Road: New Connections with Central Asia,” Asia Intelligence, September 2003.
“India Makes Strategic Inroads in Central Asia,” International Relations and Security Network Security Watch (Zurich), August 2003.
“A New “Great Game” in Kyrgyzstan?” International Relations and Security Network Security Watch (Zurich), July 2003.
“Forgotten Rim? The Russian Far East and the Asian Economy,” Asia Intelligence, November 2002.