Screenshot from France 24 English YouTube channel discussing China's influence in Zambia By Niva Yau. Yau is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council's Global China Hub. Her research work focuses on China-Central Asia relations and China's new overseas security management infrastructure and initiatives. The lack of access to data has long been a problem, primarily as a mental block, for members of civil society worldwide looking to work on China-related issues in their countries. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wants to establish a monopolizing, authoritative voice in all affairs of the People’s Republic of China (China). To reach this, they have set up various criteria preventing the growth of independent research and journalism — including excluding non-Chinese language speakers from being able to easily access information and content about the CCP. But for members of civil society on the ground, not much Chinese language is actually needed for research as a starting point to identify activities of the PRC in their countries. This is true, particularly for certain areas of research, such as identifying and monitoring CCP entities and mapping elite capture and relations, which would require a higher level of knowledge of local affairs. Being able to access at least some Chinese open-sourced data gives useful supplementary information to know what additional information and/or persons of interest to look for on the ground. This article will provide a brief walkthrough in how to identify and access this Chinese open-source data. As a start, install Google Translate in the browser of your choice for ease of full website translation. Note that even when websites have an English version, the Chinese version will almost always have more information. Depending on the countries you are researching from, be aware of cyber security risks and access safely Keep a running document with Chinese words of countries and persons of interest, this is important for pasting words back into the search engine, it should always be done in Chinese language. One of the first documents you want to access when researching PRC activities in any given country is the Country (Region) Guidelines for Foreign Investment and Cooperation (对外投资合作国别（地区）指南). It’s a publication released annually by the trade section of each Chinese embassies worldwide, specifically written for Chinese business people looking to invest in other countries. Depending on the level of Chinese engagement with the country, the publication is usually between 80–150 pages long, providing the Chinese perspective of that country’s history, geography, resources, climate, demographics, politics, culture, language, religion, non-governmental organizations, domestic economics, and most useful of all, bilateral trade relations. Because investments into strategic sectors, companies, and individuals lay at the very heart of the PRC's strategy to build influence in other countries, this data is key for identifying and monitoring CCP entities, mapping elite capture and relations, and understanding what kind of Chinese investments are already on the ground and/or on the way. The Embassy Guidelines often contain a rich section on bilateral trade relations containing information such as the past five years of Chinese statistics on export-import trade, two-way investment (including accumulative figures), contracted projects (such as those bids from international financial organizations), local banks in collaboration, and number of Chinese workers. There are also valuable qualitative data in the Guideline where the Embassy communicates with the Chinese businesspersons about what local culture they should be aware of when starting investments in this country, sometimes including failed cases of engagement, warning of religious customs, and asking Chinese companies to always be mindful to establish a good image in this country. The Guidelines also include various appendixes of key information, such as a list of leading Chinese companies operating in the country, sometimes with contact information such as emails or phone numbers. To access the Guidelines, go to the public service platform of the PRC Ministry of Commerce, translate the whole website, and find the country whose guidelines you would like to download. You will find the guidelines on the top of the box after you hold your cursor on the country name, it should look like this: Screenshot of the Guidelines page for Asia The downloaded guidelines will be in English. Google Translate provides a free service where a document can be uploaded, translated to a language of your choice, and re-download in that language.