Bio

Dr. Charles Kraus is an historian at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He has been with the Center since 2012, and is currently the Senior Program Associate for the History and Public Policy Program. Kraus leads the Center's projects on the history of China's foreign relations and spearheads other initiatives that expand the public's access to declassified archival sources, provide training to next-generation experts, and bring historical context to public policy issues. He is the coordinator for the Wilson Center's Cold War International History Project, the North Korea International Documentation Project, and the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project.

An historian of 20th century Asia, Kraus regularly writes and publishes in peer reviewed journals. His research covers topics as diverse as population resettlement and migration in Asia, China's Cold War-era foreign relations, decolonization, North Korea's formative state-building years, ethnic and national identity in China, and the history of Coca-Cola in the PRC. Kraus' dissertation, completed in 2017 at The George Washington University, investigates the resettlement of over 120,000 urban Chinese youth to Xinjiang in the 1960s. Kraus is also the editor of the Wilson Center's Chinese Foreign Policy Database, 

Fluent in Chinese, Kraus has conducted research in over 25 archives on Mainland China, as well as at dozens of others in the United States, Burma, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from The George Washington University and graduated summa cum laude from Hiram College.

Major Publications

“More than Just a Soft Drink: Coca-Cola and China’s Early Reform and Opening," Diplomatic History (2018).

"‘The Danger is Two-Fold’: Decolonisation and Cold War in Anti-Communist Asia, 1955–7," International History Review 39, no. 2 (April 2017), 256-273, doi: 10.1080/07075332.2016.1199441.

"Researching the History of the People's Republic of China," CWIHP Working Paper 79 (April 2016).

"American Orientalism in Korea," Journal of American-East Asian Relations 22, no. 2 (2015): 147-165.

Sino-European Relations during the Cold War and the Rise of a Multipolar World, co-edited with Enrico Fardella and Christian F. Ostermann (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center, 2015).

"Bridging East Asia’s Revolutions: The Overseas Chinese in North Korea, 1945-1950," The Journal of Northeast Asian History 11, no. 2 (Winter 2014): 39-70.

“To Die On the Steppe: Sino-Soviet-American Relations and the Cold War in Chinese Central Asia, 1944-1952,” Cold War History 14, no. 3 (August 2014): 293-313, doi: 10.1080/14682745.2013.871262.

“Nation, Ethnicity, and the Post-Manchukuo Order in the Sino-Korean Border Region,” co-authored with Adam Cathcart, in Key Papers on Korea: Essays Celebrating 25 Years of the Centre of Korean Studies, SOAS, University of London, edited by Andrew David Jackson (Boston: Global Oriental, 2013), 79-99, doi: 10.1163/9789004265226_007.

“A Border Region ‘Exuded with Militant Friendship’: Provincial Narratives of China’s Participation in the First Indochina War, 1949-1954,” Cold War History 12, no. 3 (August 2012): 495-514, doi: 10.1080/14682745.2011.627919.

“Bomba O Morte! Perché P’yŏngyang Non Molla L’Atomica” (“Bomb or death! Why Pyongyang does not give up its atomic weapons”), Quaderno Speciale di Limes (Italy), Anno 4 n. 2 (2012): 147-154.

“The Bonds of Brotherhood: New Evidence on Sino-North Korean Exchanges, 1950-1954,” co-authored with Adam Cathcart, Journal of Cold War Studies 13, no. 3 (Summer 2011): 27-51, doi: 10.1162/JCWS_a_00141.

“Creating a Soviet ‘Semi-Colony’? Sino-Soviet Cooperation and Its Demise in Xinjiang, 1949-1955,” Chinese Historical Review 17, no. 2 (Fall 2010): 129-165, doi: 10.1179/tcr.2010.17.2.129.

“Peripheral Influence: The Sinuiju Student Incident of 1945 and the Impact of Soviet Occupation in North Korea,” co-authored with Adam Cathcart, Journal of Korean Studies 13 (2008): 1-28, doi: 10.1353/jks.2008.0002.

“Internationalist Culture in North Korea, 1945-1950,” co-authored with Adam Cathcart, The Review of Korean Studies 11, no. 3 (September 2008): 123-148.

Resources