If you missed it: China OSINT Essentials

Asia Communique

If you missed my earlier announcement, I’ve launched a new course: China OSINT Essentials.

This course is built for journalists, researchers, analysts, investigators, and anyone else trying to make sense of China through open-source information. The basic problem is simple: there is a huge amount of publicly available information out there, but finding it, verifying it, and turning it into something useful takes method, patience, and the right workflow.

That is what this course is designed to teach.

Too often, people think of intelligence as something that depends mainly on classified sources. In reality, open-source intelligence plays a far bigger role than many assume. OSINT is often estimated to account for 75% to 80% of the information used in intelligence analysis, even if the exact number varies depending on the institution and mission. The point is not the percentage itself. The point is that open sources matter enormously — and the people who know how to work with them well have a real advantage.

That matters even more when it comes to China.

Anyone who has tried to research Chinese companies, military developments, influence operations, propaganda networks, or political narratives knows the challenge. Important information often sits across fragmented platforms, local databases, Chinese-language sources, archived pages, procurement notices, mapping tools, shipping records, satellite imagery, and obscure corners of the internet that do not surface in a simple English-language search.

China OSINT Essentials is meant to help close that gap.

The course includes over 4.5 hours of structured, self-paced video instruction and is divided into two tiers.

Tier 11 (Core) focuses on foundational skills. It is designed for people who want a reliable framework for researching China more effectively, especially if they are not sure where to begin or want to improve the rigor of their current process.

Tier 22 (Pro) goes further into advanced investigations. That includes satellite imagery analysis, deeper corporate and network research, and a fuller China OSINT toolkit for people who want to build more sophisticated workflows.

Across the course, I walk through how to search Chinese-language platforms that Google cannot reach, how to verify claims and track influence operations, how to investigate company data and business networks, and how to use imagery and other open sources to examine military and infrastructure developments.

My goal was not to make something theoretical. I wanted to build a course that is practical, field-tested, and immediately applicable.

I’ve reported for Newsweek, BBC, and TaiwanPlus, and I’ve spent years doing this work from Taipei. The methods in this course come directly from that experience: reporting under time pressure, following leads across languages and platforms, checking claims that are difficult to verify, and trying to build repeatable systems for understanding a fast-moving information environment.

I also know that many people interested in China research do not come from formal intelligence or investigative backgrounds. Some are journalists. Some are students. Some work in policy, risk, academia, due diligence, or civil society. What they often share is the same frustration: they know the information is out there, but they need a clearer process for finding it and making sense of it.

That is who this course is for.

I currently have a group of professionals enrolled, and the course is self-paced and will continue running throughout the year for those who want to join.

If you are interested, you can find the course details here: