Flora Yan

Breaking down notable activities in five states – Texas, Michigan, Hawai‘i, Florida, and Missouri.

Analyzing 334 proposals introduced in 50 state legislatures.

Currently no database solely dedicated to all state-level China-related legislative measures is publicly available. To address this gap, this study initially relied on a manual review and qualitative analyses.

Analyzing state of the state addresses from 2005 to 2024 and gubernatorial campaign rhetoric from 2022 to 2024 finds an increased securitization of China-related issues in 2022.

Even as Beijing and Washington stressed the importance of subnational exchanges, states stepped up efforts to mitigate perceived risks from China.

One of the earliest cases of PRC diplomats directly lobbying state legislators was the defeat of a pro-Tibet resolution in 2009 in California. Here's how it happened.

How an obscure WTO agreement led to a spike in PRC attempts to change state legislation, sparking pushback from local lawmakers.

2008 marked one of the earliest examples of the Chinese government's direct intervention on a state bill, through aggressive use of a WTO mechanism.

Under Biden, Beijing appears to have kept its focus on maintaining and further developing subnational relationships.

Under Trump, there was new focus on – and concern about – Beijing’s attempts to take advantage of differences between local, state, and federal governments.

Xi Jinping himself has highlighted the importance of subnational exchanges in China-U.S. relations.