Syrian rebels have been fighting Bashar al-Assad’s forces for nearly a year and a half in a conflict that has caused 20,000 deaths. As the world watches in horror, much confusion remains about the nature of the rebel troops, the identity of the regime’s supporters, and what actions — if any — should be taken by the rest of the world.
China’s rise, according to many analysts, has been the world’s most significant geopolitical and economic development of the 21st century. Central to China’s rise has been the energy it needs to fuel economic growth. Importing over 42 percent of its crude oil from the Persian Gulf, Beijing views the region as vital for this economic development. China growing influence in the world’s most oil-rich region is the subject of Bryce Wakefield and Susan L. Levenstein’s China and the Persian Gulf: Implications for the United States.
In a recent interview, the eminent geo-strategist Ian Bremmer suggested that a “nuclear-armed Iran” is inevitable because, in an emerging “G-Zero World” where no single bloc of countries can dominate international affairs, the emerging powers can frustrate the West’s efforts to thwart Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. But recent years have given lie to this argument.
We won our independence from the British in a hard-fought revolutionary battle. Today, no hard feelings: the Anglo-American alliance is strong, we all love Downton Abbey, and our skirmishes are largely confined to disputes over which version of The Office is funnier and how to spell and pronounce the word “aluminum.”
The highly publicized dispute between China and the Philippines over the Scarborough Shoal in recent weeks has become yet another reminder of the ongoing tensions in the South China Sea. The upheaval began when a former U.S. coast guard ship refitted by the Philippines navy attempted to detain Chinese fishermen off the shoal.
In her new book The China Threat, the distinguished American diplomatic historian Nancy Bernkopf Tucker combed manuscript collections, searched through oral histories, conducted interviews in both Beijing and Washington, and reviewed numerous other published documents to present the memories, myths, and the realities of the 1950s and 1960s.
Two parallel narratives surround globalization and the trade imbalance between China and the United States. One side moans that competition with China has squeezed traditional U.S. manufacturing jobs and caused the middle class to disappear. The other side declares that a new Chinese middle class is riding the wave of China’s inexorable economic boom. A particularly hyperbolic headline in Forbes, for example, proclaimed the rise of China’s middle class to be “The Biggest Story of Our Time.”
Asia is currently in the middle of an unprecedented arms race that is not only sharpening tensions in the region but also competing with efforts by Asian countries to address poverty and growing economic disparity. The gap between rich and poor—calculated by the Gini coefficient that measures inequality—has increased from 39 percent to 46 percent in China, India, and Indonesia. Although affluent households continue to garner larger and larger portions of the economic pie, “Children born to poor families can be 10 times more likely to die in infancy” than those from wealthy families, according to Changyong Rhee, chief economist of the Asian Development Bank.
Apple, the most profitable company in existence and one of the most popular brands ever created, has gotten used to being the glowing center of attention. The release of the next iPhone or the new iPad invariably stirs an orgy of conspicuous consumption. Recently, however, a series of exposés have shifted some attention to the darker side of Apple, shining a light on the working conditions at the Foxconn factories in China where its products are made.
Behind the political crisis that saw the recent fall of powerful Communist Party leader Bo Xiali is an internal battle over how to handle China’s slowing economy and growing income disparity, while shifting from an export-driven model powered by cheap labor to one built around internal consumption.