James Bellacqua

James Bellacqua is an Asia analyst in the China Strategic Issues Group. Prior to joining CNA, he served as a Chinese media analyst and linguist for the U.S. Government’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service examining PRC media treatment of Chinese domestic politics and foreign affairs. He has also worked for CNN’s bureau in Beijing.

Bellacqua’s numerous research interests include Chinese internal security, media reform, and PRC foreign policy. He has written on the PRC’s system of emergency planning and response, Beijing’s Olympic security preparations, and China’s perceptions of its vulnerabilities to terrorist threats. He is the editor of The Future of China-Russia Relations (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, January 2010) and is currently researching bilateral ties between China and Vietnam.

Having lived, worked, studied, and traveled extensively throughout the People’s Republic of China for several years, Bellacqua speaks, reads, and writes Mandarin Chinese fluently. He is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies and has studied Mandarin Chinese in Guangxi and Heilongjiang provinces. He holds a B.A. in East Asian studies from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and an M.B.A. from American University.