On the face of it, it is hard to explain why a minor collision between a Chinese fishing boat and a Japanese Coast Guard vessel this past September escalated to the point of Beijing and Tokyo nearly breaking off relations. But the incident mirrors policies that both nations see as vital to their self-interests. It is also connected to the aggressive U.S. push to defend its traditional power in the region.
Apparently reluctant to take any measures that curb economic growth, China looks the other way when Chinese businesses help Iran with its nuclear program.
Much as the United States needs to withdraw from Afghanistan, it needs to keep in mind the effects that our military standdown would have on India.
“Why would China jeopardize its relationship with the United States, the former Soviet Union, Vietnam, and much of Southeast Asia to sustain the Khmer Rouge and provide hundreds of millions of dollars to postwar Cambodia?” asks Sophie Richardson in China, Cambodia, and the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. An advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, Sophie Richardson not only offers an explanation of China’s foreign policy but also dispels the notion that it is irrational, inherently threatening, and malevolent. Through careful historical examination, Richardson argues that a set of beliefs, referred to as the five principles of peaceful coexistence, have been driving Chinese foreign policy since the 1954 Geneva Conference.
Thanks to U.S. diplomatic blundering, China ekes out a victory over Cheonan.
Instead, increasingly acrimonious exchanges between Beijing and Washington reveal the contradictions inherent in attempting to shoehorn an authoritarian, mercantilist, and suspicious nation into a refurbished world system that ostensibly promotes democracy, open markets, multilateralism, while forcefully advancing American interests.
On a busy day, Shanghai’s World Expo can usher in crowds on par with the population of Boston. A ticket gets you dazzling oddball architecture, glittering ceremonies, and long, sweat-drenched lines. This is the latest episode in Shanghai’s aspiration to join the top tier of global cities that assert their worldwide political, cultural and economic influence. It is but one phase in China’s tectonic physical transformation, fueled by near-perennial double-digit growth and ethereal land valuations.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa was in India earlier this month making promises to resettle the war-displaced Sri Lankan Tamil minority one year after his government’s forces won a crippling victory over the Tamil Tiger insurgency. But can he deliver on his pledge and begin the healing of Sri Lanka’s deep ethinc wounds?
The future is no longer in plastics, as the businessman in the 1967 film The Graduate insisted. Rather, the future is in China.
If Kyrgyzstan becomes a pawn on a larger board, then the “Great Game” will shift from Afghanistan and Pakistan to the rest of Central Asia.