was an associated controversy. In the years since the reform and opening up, China watchers can live in China and take advantage of normal sources of information. Others remained in Hong Kong, however. The Hong Kong journalist Willy Wo-Lap Lam has been called the "quintessential China watcher, practiced in the art of Pekingology," whose "scope is wide, but the focus of his analysis is the Zhongnanhai and factional manoeuvring among the political elite." Post-Cold War Era Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, China became seen as a major United States antagonist, which has caused more interest in China from strategists, including China watchers, rather than just sinologists. Sinologists have since lost ground in shaping the US policy on China, and have claimed that strategists "don't understand China". According to Washington officials, there is "a desire for a new cold war", and The Economist wrote "expertise about China is not necessary" for China watchers, while doveish China experts lost their advisory role to the White House. Criticism The credibility of China watchers has been subject to criticism, as many China watchers predicted extreme and conflicting scenarios, either a collapse of the PRC's economy, political system or nation, or PRC domination. In particular, China watchers have claimed that the CPC is struggling to hold on to power, however the party proved to be adaptable. During the COVID-19 pandemic, China watchers were prominently featured in media reports claiming lockdowns as authoritarian measures, with support for this policy by the scientific community receiving considerably less attention. Notes References Richard Baum, China Watcher: Confessions of a Peking Tom (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010). Harry Harding, "The Changing Roles of the Academic China Watcher" (Sigur Center for Asian Studies, 1999. Trends in China Watching: The PRC at Fifty) Further reading Jim Peck, "The Roots of Rhetoric: The Professional Ideology of America's China Watchers," in Ed Friedman and Mark Selden, ed., America's Asia (1971). Subfields of political science Politics of China