Simone van Nieuwenhuizen is a researcher at the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney. She is co-author, with Kerry Brown, of China and the New Maoists (Zed, 2016). Simone holds a Master of International Relations (Diplomacy) from Peking University and lived in China for three years. She was previously a Research Associate at the Lowy Institute and an intern with the West Asia Program, and has also interned at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing. Her research interests include Chinese politics, China-Middle East relations and North Korea. She speaks Chinese and Arabic, and is learning Russian.