On June 11, 2018, Professor Bai Jiancai from the School of History and Civilization at Shaanxi Normal University joined the SIAS research staff at an NGO Salon, entitled “‘Covert Action’: the Third Option for the US to Achieve the Objectives of its Foreign Strategy”. Professor Bai serves as a doctoral supervisor at the university and as the chief scholar in the program “American NGOs and Cold War Studies in the East and West”, a major research project sponsored by the National Social Science Fund of China (NSSFC).

In his lecture, Professor Bai shed light on the significant role that “covert action” played in the process of the Cold War. He went into further detail by examining the initiation of American “covert action” strategy, its implementation during the Cold War and the effects it had achieved. He also shared his ideas on the external operations conducted by the US and the USSR during the same period of time, the collection and compilation of historical archives, as well as the current activities of American NGOs involving China. Staff and students from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS), the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS) and East China Normal University attended the salon.