Professional Affiliation

Senior Editor of China and Global Affairs, the New Statesman

Expert Bio

Katie Stallard is Senior Editor for China and Global Affairs at the New Statesman and author of the book Dancing on Bones: How Past Wars Shape the Present in Russia, China, and North Korea, to be published by Oxford University Press. She has written for Foreign Policy, The Diplomat, Asan Forum and others, and appeared as an analyst for multiple media outlets.

Previously based in Russia and China as a foreign correspondent for Sky News, she has reported from more than twenty countries to date, covering conflicts, natural disasters, and some of the world’s most repressive regimes. From Beijing, she reported extensively on North Korea, travelling to Pyongyang, the DMZ, and the China-North Korea border, and covering multiple missile and nuclear tests. As well as covering Chinese domestic politics, she travelled out into the disputed waters of the South China Sea and to the front line of the battle for the southern Philippines city of Marawi, where she reported under sniper fire from ISIS-linked militants. 

During her time in Russia, she led the channel’s coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, covering the Maidan revolution in Kyiv, the annexation of Crimea, and the subsequent conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Wilson Center Project

Dancing on Bones: How Past Wars Shape The Present in China, Russia, and North Korea

Project Summary

Dancing on Bones is a book-length investigation of how China, Russia, and North Korea – the three greatest threats to the liberal international order – exploit their wartime past to secure contemporary regime legitimacy, and justify aggressive foreign policy. 

More than six decades after the real guns fell silent, a reimagined version of World War II and the Korean War reverberates through daily life in each of these countries, re-told through state-funded media, public memorials, and national education campaigns. This is not history as it actually was, but as the current leaders need it to be.

Drawing on firsthand reporting from the front lines of this war for history, including Pyongyang, Crimea, and the South China Sea, this is the first book to explore this fault-line of global politics, and how the wars of the last century are still shaping the 21st century.

Major Publications

Past Present: Kim Il Sung created a powerful fiction to gain power. His family has used it to stay there. Wilson Quarterly: https://www.wilsonquarterly.com/quarterly/korea-70-years-on/past-present/

The Coming US-China Competition in Central Asia, The Diplomat: https://thediplomat.com/2020/02/the-coming-us-china-competition-in-central-asia/

North Korea's New Propaganda Campaign Looks To Old Myths, Foreign Policy: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/28/kim-jong-un-north-korea-propaganda-national-myth/

Who Controls the Past Controls the Future: The Political Use of WWII History in Russia and China, Asan Forum: http://www.theasanforum.org/who-controls-the-past-controls-the-future-the-political-use-of-wwii-history-in-russia-china/?dat=

Putin and Xi's Buddy Act Could Blow Up East Asia, Foreign Policy: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/31/putin-and-xis-buddy-act-could-blow-up-east-asia/

From Pariah to Pawn, Foreign Policy: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/06/19/from-pariah-to-pawn/

Old CCP tactics present new dangers to China's development, East Asia Forum: https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2018/10/20/old-ccp-tactics-present-new-dangers-to-chinas-development

Previous Terms

Fellow, Sept. 2018-Aug. 2020