Alison Kaufman

Alison Kaufman is an Asia analyst in CNA's China Strategic Issues Group of the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) in Alexandria, Virginia. At CNA she has worked on issues related to China’s and Taiwan’s military culture, Chinese foreign and security policy, and cross-Strait relations. Her personal research focuses on the historical origins of and current trends in Chinese strategic and foreign policy debates. During the fellowship year she worked on a project entitled “The Sources and Evolution of Chinese Foreign Policy Thinking, 1895-2010,” examining the development of key vocabularies and premises of Chinese elite debates about the nature of the international order and China's place in the world.

Before joining CNA, Dr. Kaufman worked for the World Bank’s China program and at China Radio International in Beijing. She also worked as a subject matter expert on Chinese affairs for a well-known consultancy. Dr. Kaufman holds a Ph.D. in political science with a focus on Chinese political philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. in East Asian studies from Harvard University. She has also studied Mandarin Chinese in Beijing at Capital Normal University and in Taipei at the International Chinese Language Program. She is the author of “The ‘Century of Humiliation,’ Then and Now: Chinese Perceptions of the International Order” in Pacific Focus (April 2010).