Draft:Caiping He

Caiping He was born in Gongan County, Hubei Province, China, in 1962. After he completed his primary school and middle school in Gongan County, he entered Wuhan University for higher education in 1979. In 1983, he received a BSc in genetics from Wuhan University, Wuhan, China. He completed his MSc in genetics (1986) and his PhD^{[9][10][11][12][13]} in genetics (1991) under the guidance of Academician Yang Hongyuan (杨宏远) at Wuhan University, Wuhan, China. In 1998, he received his MSc in computer science from the State University of New York at Albany, US.

In 1992, he joined the University of Nottingham as a visiting scholar, researching transgenic plants under the guidance of Michael R. Davey in Professor Edward (Ted) Cocking FRS’s laboratory; this work resulted in several publications.^[14][15][16]

After relocating to Canada in 2000, he served as a computer scientist at Adobe Inc. (2003–2008) before transitioning to the public sector. He has since provided specialized IT consultancy for several Canadian federal departments—including IESD, CSC, CRA, and PSPC—a role he continues to the present day.

Under the mentorship of Professor Hongyuan Yang, his research on the in vitro gynogenesis of plants was awarded the Third Prize of the National Natural Science Award in 1991 (Certificate No. Z9132105).

Strategic Trap Theory^[3]
Why do strategies designed to prevent conflict sometimes make conflict more likely?

In international politics, governments constantly search for ways to reduce the risk of war. Diplomacy, strategic restraint, asymmetric tactics, and security commitments are widely used to manage rivalry and avoid escalation. These policies are intended to stabilize competition and prevent crises from spiraling out of control. Yet history repeatedly shows that such strategies do not always work as intended.

Diplomatic engagement can provide cover for a surprise attack. Consistent restraint can invite probing and strategic pressure. Asymmetric tactics can prolong conflicts without resolving them. Security commitments can lock states into rigid escalation dynamics.

Caiping He proposed the Strategic Trap Theory, which explains this paradox.

He argues that strategies designed to reduce conflict risk can unintentionally generate strategic instability. Through processes of signaling and expectation formation, policies adopted to manage rivalry may gradually reshape the strategic environment and produce new pressures for escalation.

He introduced a conceptual framework identifying four recurring strategic traps in international politics:

• The Negotiation Trap – when diplomacy creates opportunities for deception
• The Restraint Trap – when caution weakens deterrence
• The Asymmetry Trap – when indirect warfare prolongs unwinnable conflicts
• The Commitment Trap – when security guarantees create escalation pressures

Rather than asking why wars occur, Strategic Trap Theory asks a different question: why can strategies intended to avoid conflict sometimes produce the very instability they seek to prevent? At a time of intensifying great-power rivalry, understanding these dynamics is more important than ever.

U.S.–China Rivalry^[4]

For more than two decades, the relationship between China and the United States has been described as a story of missed opportunities, policy failures, or clashing intentions. Analysts argue over who made the wrong choices, which leader miscalculated, or when cooperation could have been saved.

Caiping He takes a different approach.

Rather than asking who was right or wrong, he asks a colder and more difficult question: Why, at so many moments that appeared to offer genuine alternatives, did Sino-American relations continue to move in the same direction?

From the optimism of the early 2000s to the shock of 9/11, from China’s entry into the WTO to the financial crisis of 2008, from the management-focused years of the Obama administration to the overt confrontation of the Trump era, the forms and intensity of interaction have changed repeatedly. Engagement became competition; cooperation gave way to pressure. Yet beneath these shifts, the underlying trajectory remained strikingly consistent.

His central argument is that intentions alone cannot explain this persistence. Leadership styles changed. Parties rotated in and out of power. Rhetoric hardened and softened. But the direction endured. To understand why, we must look beyond motives and personalities to the structural constraints that shaped what was possible.

These constraints include economic scale and market structure, technological and industrial paths, political legitimacy and social stability mechanisms, and the division of roles and security dependencies within the international system. None of these factors dictate specific actions. But together they determine which choices are sustainable—and which carry costs too high to be maintained over time.

Using carefully constructed counterfactuals, he examines moments when alternative paths seemed available and tests whether those paths were truly viable in structural terms. In doing so, it reveals not how opportunities were missed, but how options were systematically eliminated.

被注視的人(The Man Being Watched) ^[7] is categorized as avant-garde literature. It tells the story of Zhou Qiming, a man gradually sinking into hallucinations and loneliness due to childhood trauma, and his wife Lin Xueping and daughter.

Under the immense pressure of a cracked marriage, pandemic lockdowns, the "blank paper" movement, and overseas exile, Zhou Qiming gradually descends into a "silent fall." His notes, hallucinations, and disappearances become inescapable echoes for his family.

Lin Xueping learns to cope amidst pain and struggle: she burns some of her writings, turning her memories into embers; she finds new sparks in her daughter's growth and the reconstruction of daily life. Ultimately, she confirms another destination—not forgetting, but continuing to live on the embers.

This is a novel about trauma, hallucinations, and family affection; it is also a gaze upon loneliness and the shadows of the times. It raises a question: How does the man being watched respond to being watched?