Chris Chung

Background

About Chris Chung

I am a Senior Policy Analyst at the Foreign Policy Planning Division (RSL) at Global Affairs Canada (GAC). Drawing in part from my own academic expertise on the South China Sea maritime dispute, I provide research-based policy insights for the Government of Canada. This position follows a 12-month postdoctoral China Research Fellowship at the Centre for China Policy Research (OPR) at GAC (2024-25), which likewise combined academic research with policy analysis and advising for the Canadian government. My focus was on China’s internal and international policies and policy drivers, and their impact on Canada-China relations, especially regarding maritime disputes. To this end, I produced a long form policy report on past, present, and likely future developments in China's claims-making and actions in the South China Sea dispute. I graduated from my PhD program in History at the University of Toronto in Nov. 2022 under the supervision of Professor Li Chen. Using the South China Sea dispute as a case study, my research investigates how the global flow of ideas and activities of everyday people vitally informed Chinese state conceptions of space and sovereignty in the maritime frontier since the late eighteenth century. My doctoral dissertation, “Fluid Realms: Chinese Visions of Maritime Space in the South China Sea Islands,” explores the pivotal roles that non-government actors across the globe played in Qing and Republican claims-making over the Pratas, Paracel, and Spratly Islands, such as fishers, merchants, and community organizations. Drawing from largely unused Chinese archival files, I argue that Chinese officials were regularly forced to negotiate their political worldviews with the non-official narratives they relied on to understand the islands, their place within the emerging nation-state — and indeed, what constituted China itself. My postdoctoral fellowship at GAC followed one year of adjunct service as Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream in Chinese history (2023-24), and another year before that as Sessional Lecturer (2022-23), at the University of Toronto. I have taught a wide array of undergraduate courses, ranging from introductory survey courses such as the History of China (two-semester course) and Introduction to East Asian History, to specially designed seminar courses such as the Maritime Frontier in Late Imperial China, 1368-1912 and Maps, Guns, and Silver: China's Global Connections through Objects since 1600.