The lobby’s most prominent poster depicted Xi Jinping in a crisp black suit. Next to him was a fuzzy black-and-white shot of Deng Xiaoping visiting the institute in his later years, after his economic reforms had set China on a course to reclaim its traditional global role as a great power. He looked serene, as though satisfied with having freed China from the Western yoke. Mao Zedong loomed large in his characteristic four-pocket suit. On its walls were posters of China’s most consequential postwar leaders. In 2019, Belgian officials on a trade mission noticed that their mobile data were being intercepted by pop-up antennae outside their Beijing hotel.Īfter clearing the institute’s security, I was told to wait in a lobby monitored by cameras. To visit China on sensitive business is to risk being barraged with cyberattacks and malware. In my pocket, I had a burner phone in my backpack, a computer wiped free of data-standard precautions for Western journalists in China. China’s best and brightest were still shuffling in post-commute, dressed casually in basketball shorts or yoga pants, AirPods nestled in their ears. I visited the institute on a rainy morning in the summer of 2019. To hear more feature stories, get the Audm iPhone app.

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