Jessica Batke
Non-Resident Fellows
Jessica Batke is a non-resident fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) and a Senior Fellow at ChinaFile, where she researches China’s internet censorship and its global implications. She is also a Senior European Fellow at Cybersecurity for Democracy and a Senior Associate Fellow at the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS).
From 2017 until 2025, Jessica was a writer and editor at the online magazine ChinaFile, covering China’s “Foreign NGO Law,” domestic surveillance, internet censorship, and the Party-state’s approaches to governance. From 2009 until 2017, she served as a research analyst in the US State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, focusing on Chinese social issues, including developments in Tibet and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. In 2016, she was a visiting academic fellow at MERICS in Berlin.
Jessica holds a bachelor’s degree in linguistics from Pitzer College and a master’s degree in East Asian studies from Stanford University.