RESTON, Va. (November 18, 2021) – Earlier this week SOSi’s Center for Research and Analysis (CIRA) and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) hosted the “Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at 100 Conference” to assess the CCP’s ideology, structure, and activities in both China and around the world.
Held at the Center for Education at Wolf Trap, the conference brought together over 130 participants from across government, industry, and academia to hear from leading China experts. Among the panelists and discussants were distinguished academics that included Dr. David Shambaugh (George Washington University), Dr. Joseph Fewsmith (Boston University), and Dr. Alice Miller (Hoover Institution), as well as current and former U.S. government officials including the Honorable Michèle Flournoy (former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy) and Dr. Evan Medeiros (former Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Asia).
SOSi and CSIS will turn the discussions and papers into various briefings and ultimately an edited volume for the public to be published in 2022. Describing the rationale for this event and eventual publication of the book, CIRA’s Director Dr. James Mulvenon said, “To date there has been no comprehensive baseline assessment of the CCP and how it operates. We wanted to create foundational knowledge, and we wanted to put out a long-term, enduring reference source for people in the field.”
Discussing the need for policymakers to understand the CCP, Ms. Flournoy commented that the United States is at a “strategic inflection point” and “we don’t understand China – in particular, the CCP and Chinese leadership – well enough to be highly confident in our ability to deter.”
The conference’s panels and roundtables at the conference covered a range of issues, including the CCP’s leadership, organizational structure, and means of control, as well as its penetration of private enterprises, civil-military relations, and influence activities overseas. One USG official in attendance described the work as “truly outstanding papers about what are extremely opaque structures within the Communist Party and its attempt to exercise power within the country and externally.”
Discussing the CCP’s evolving role in private enterprise, CIRA analyst Emily Walz noted how early in the Xi Jinping era, central leadership sought to assure private enterprise that much would not change. However, she noted, “there is a big change happening and it involves making the party a bigger player in private enterprise.”
“We’ve reached a seminal moment in U.S.-China relations,” said SOSi CEO Julian Setian, “With one of the largest concentrations of China experts with native or near-native Chinese language fluency in the community, SOSi is at the forefront of the most difficult national security challenge of our time.”
ABOUT SOSi
Founded in 1989, SOSi is the largest private, family-owned and operated technology and services integrator in the aerospace, defense, and government services industry. Its global portfolio includes cybersecurity, software development, intelligence analysis, and military logistics. For more information, visit www.sosi.com and connect with SOSi on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
CIRA employs a team of cleared linguist-analysts covering Chinese, Russian, Arabic, Farsi, Korean, and Spanish, who combine advanced degrees with deep regional, cultural, and technical subject matter expertise. CIRA’s analytic products inform national security strategy, analyze supply chain risks, and support third-party due diligence, fraud investigations, and market/industry technology assessments. They leverage open-source platforms, software, and data-as-a-service solutions developed by Exovera, a wholly owned technology subsidiary of SOSi.
Contact:
Dr. James Mulvenon
Director, Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis
SOS International
703.868.4324
