The Diplomat  |  Author

Ben Lowsen

Ben Lowsen

Ben Lowsen is a Sinologist and military strategist. The views expressed are his own and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Air Force, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

Ben Lowsen is a specialist in Chinese political and security affairs working as a China advisor for the U.S. Air Force’s Checkmate office. He previously worked as an Asia advisor for the U.S. Navy and served in the U.S. Army as a field artillery officer and China specialist. He completed tours of duty in Germany, Korea, Qatar, the Pentagon, and two tours in China, serving as Assistant U.S. Army Attaché in Beijing from 2013 to 2016.
Ben’s experience includes policy and strategy coordination, military-to-military engagement, intelligence production and analysis, and bilateral negotiation. He is interested in Chinese political and military culture as well as military modernization, reform, and strategy.
He is an active writer and speaker whose publications include book chapters, reportage, and commentary. He received an M.A. from Harvard’s Regional Studies—East Asia committee and a B.A. from U.C. Santa Barbara in music performance. Follow him on Twitter.
The views expressed are his own and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Air Force, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
Posts by Ben Lowsen
January 05, 2023

Xi Jinping’s Great Leap

By Ben Lowsen
In China’s haphazard COVID-19 opening, Xi has created a crisis of a scale unseen since Mao.

November 22, 2022

Xi Jinping Leads China’s Wolf Warrior Pack

By Ben Lowsen
Xi’s veiled threat to Canada’s prime minister reveals a leader dangerously out of touch.
October 28, 2022

Correcting the Record on US Taiwan Policy

By Ben Lowsen
The important nuances of “strategic ambiguity” and other elements of U.S. policy are often lost in the headlines.

March 01, 2022

How Reliable Are China’s Statistics?

By Ben Lowsen
Beijing has both the motive and means to fudge its statistics.

March 26, 2021

How the Olympic Movement Can Resist Beijing’s Games

By Ben Lowsen
The world at large cannot expect the IOC to address every issue, but the issue of genocide is too great to ignore.

February 11, 2021

The WHO Should Be More Wary of China

By Ben Lowsen
From the recent investigation in Wuhan and beyond, the WHO is staking its credibility on the word of a malicious actor.
January 22, 2021

The Trump Administration’s Final China Push

By Ben Lowsen
The Trump administration in its waning hours took more aggressive measures against Beijing. Has it locked new President Biden into a needlessly hostile policy?

September 24, 2020

Explainer: The TikTok Deal for Dummies

By Ben Lowsen
Trump is threatening repercussions to coax ByteDance into a deal, but whether the Chinese and U.S. governments will both assent remains unclear.

May 02, 2020

Amid a Pandemic, China Ramps Up Maritime ‘Micro-Aggressions’

By Ben Lowsen
Beijing is putting up a brash front to hide its growing insecurity.

April 15, 2020

Did Xi Jinping Deliberately Sicken the World?

By Ben Lowsen
PRC moral turpitude forces us to consider the unthinkable.

December 12, 2019

Smuggling Out the Truth: The Story of the Xinjiang Papers and China Cables

By Ben Lowsen
An unprecedented series of leaks of Chinese internal government documents highlights human rights abuses and possibly a crack in the façade of Xi Jinping’s power in China.
August 15, 2019

Hong Kong: The Orchid and the Great Stone Wall

By Ben Lowsen
The more tightly Beijing grasps Hong Kong, the more its control slips.

Page 1 of 4