Anna Tan

Anna is a PhD student at the Lau China Institute at King's College London. She has recently been elected as the President of King's Doctoral Students' Association (KDSA) at the KCLSU for the academic year of 2023/24. Working together with the College's Senior Governance, KCLSU and the Centre for Doctoral Studies, the KDSA Board represents PhD students across 9 faculties throughout the university to shape their research experience, well-being and other administrative issues.

Anna was previously Project Coordinator and PGR Representative for the Lau China Institute. Her PhD research focuses on UK-China relations from 2010 to 2022, during the administrations of David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson. She was also previously involved in a project funded by the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC), which investigates China and India's illicit trade activities across Central Asia and Eastern Europe. The project is based at the School of Politics and Economics.

Anna is also a member of the Global Institutes’ Indo-Pacific Research Group directed by Professor Christophe Jaffrelot. Prior to joining the Lau for her PhD, Anna graduated from King's in 2020 with her MSc in Global Affairs (Overall Distinction) where she specialised in China, South Asia and Middle Eastern regional studies.

Her Master's thesis (later published on Asian Affairs) was based at the Department of War Studies and supervised by Professor Mats Berdal. The project assessed the strengths and limitations of Western human rights diplomacy to Myanmar from 2007 to 2020, in the context of increasing U.S.-China power competition in the region. During her Master's degree, Anna also worked for The Policy Institute, during which she was mentored by Rt. Hon. Mike Rann, Australia's former High Commissioner to the UK.

Prior to King’s, Anna worked for the American Red Cross and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), on multi-donor humanitarian aid projects and on matters surrounding youth policy, human rights and peacebuilding from 2016 to 2018. During this time, she was particularly involved with the American Red Cross' aid strategy preparation for the Rohingya Crisis across Myanmar and Bangladesh.

Anna's research has enabled her to engage with senior policymakers and stakeholders from across international organisations, think-tanks and governments, including the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) on issues regarding foreign policy and development aid. She is bilingual in English and Burmese, speaks conversational Mandarin and basic French.

Research

Thesis title: 'Identity, Security, and Britain's China Policy from 2010 to 2022'

Anna's project primarily aims to investigate how the UK has reinforced its ontological security within its relationship with China from 2010 to 2022, across the premierships of David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson.

It seeks to investigate the motivational or intentional accounts of various state actors (Westminster and Whitehall actors), quasi-state actors and non-state actors (advocacy groups, non-governmental organisations and business groups) to understand how they shape the UK's policy towards China during this timeframe.

To answer this question, it will employ archival research and supplementary elite interviews as the main methods of data collection. This will be followed by interpretative narrative analysis and content analysis, the latter involving framing and qualitative coding.

The project contributes to the gap in the theoretical literature, which observes limited research on the study of how countries respond to China's rise, and Britain's ontological security behaviour. It also contributes to a growing literature on contemporary UK-China relations, which is found to be under-theorised. The project is largely empirical, with the potential to contribute theoretically after the completion of data analysis.

PhD Supervision

• Principal Supervisor: Zeno Leoni
• Secondary Supervisor: Kerry Brown

Publications

Peer-reviewed series:

• ‘Human Rights, Security and Diplomacy in the Asia Pacific',Tan, A., Brown, K., Liagka, E., and Woo, Y., 28 March 2020, In: Strife, Department of War Studies.

Media Articles:

• Is the war in Ukraine informing China's strategy on Taiwan? | Feature from King's College London (kcl.ac.uk)
• ‘Why non-interference risks another Syrian-style conflict in Myanmar,’ School of Security Studies, King’s College London, 6 June 2021
• ‘Can Myanmar break this cycle of tyranny? An Interview with former UN Assistant Secretary General Charles Petrie’, School of Security Studies, King’s College London, 10 February 2021
• ‘Ending the End of History: Revisiting Western Interventionism in Fragile States,’ Strife, Department of War Studies, King’s College London, 11 December 2020
• ‘British foreign policy and China: Pragmatism or short-sightedness?’ School of Security Studies, King’s College London, 23 June 2020

Peer-reviewed Journal Articles:

• ‘A Critical Assessment of Human Rights Diplomacy by Western States in Myanmar (Burma) from 2007 to 2020.’Tan, A., 18 Aug 2021, In: Asian Affairs (Journal of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs), 52(3). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03068374.2021.1953783

Policy Briefs:

• Tan, A. (2021). “China and the Myanmar Dilemma,” Lau Policy Series: China in the World, Issue 4, Lau China Institute, King’s College London.

Panels:

• '50th anniversary of Nixon's trip to China: US-China relations then and now', Department of War Studies, School of Security Studies, King’s College London
• ‘Build Back Better’ (B3W) vs. Belt & Road Initiative (BRI): Prospects and Limitations’, China Week 2021, Lau China Institute, King’s College London
• ‘Policy Paper Launch: China and the Myanmar Dilemma’, Lau China Institute and the Department of War Studies, School of Global Affairs, King’s College London
• ‘Myanmar as Asia’s Next Failed State? Reflections From Interventions in Syria and Libya’, Department of War Studies, King’s College London

Further Details

See Anna's research profile