NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE B efore Matthew Pottinger served the president as deputy national-security adviser, and before he deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan with the Marines, he was a China-based journalist, often reporting on politically sensitive topics that brought him to small villages.

“I always had a rule that when I arrived in a sensitive spot like that in China, I would always leave before sundown,” he said during a lecture hosted by the University of Virginia’s Miller Center in 2011. If he stayed too long, local police would find and hassle him. In one case, he broke this rule; he was on a roll, interviewing …