The recent two-day talks between the United States and North Korea were a good start, but it also shows that a diplomacy contingent upon denuclearization will not likely break the deadlock. Perhaps the pending leadership succession from Kim Jong-il to his heir apparent Kim Jong-eun provides a window of opportunity for the United States to effectively engage the North through a different strategy, and denuclearization can happen from there.
First of all, it’s not earth nor it’s rare, as they say
It lies under our feet, sparkling the soil we farm
Red, green, yellow, blue, purple, sky of grass
And buffalos, patches of rice, bamboos, sweet yams
Jobs may have been an exceptional designer, but when it comes to the multifaceted corporate malfeasance that has come to characterize the global electronics industry, Apple is exceptional for its profit margins alone.
Washington, which has focused for years on North Korea’s small but developing nuclear arsenal, has barely been paying attention to the larger developments in Asia. Nor will Asia’s looming transformation be a hot topic in our own presidential election next year. We’ll be arguing about jobs, health care, and whether the president is a socialist or his Republican challenger a nutcase. Aside from some ritual China-bashing, Asia will merit little mention.
Japan needs China’s market for its technology. It also needs low-priced daily necessities made in China.
An implicit social contract underlies the Chinese people’s relationship with its government. The people accept the autocratic Communist Party of China regime with its corruption and minimal public participation, and the regime delivers a continuous and rapid improvement in the economic standard of living. But that social contract is now at risk, as China is on an unsustainable path that will result in economic stagnation or decline in the coming decades.
Recent months have witnessed renewed tensions over disputed territories in the South China Sea. In response to China’s encroaching military maneuvers and the country’s designation of the whole area as part of its indisputable sovereignty, several South East Asian countries have found themselves dangerously vulnerable. A murky legal regime has led to the emergence of a series of overlapping territorial claims in the area, but at the center of tensions are five key-actors: China, the Philippines, Vietnam, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and increasingly the United States.
It’s about time China started factoring into its decisions the impact of its international trade policies on the world.
In their new book China, the United States, and Global Order, British scholars Rosemary Foot and Andrew Walter put U.S.-Chinese relations into a global context. Rejecting the realist assumption that norms do not matter, Foot and Walter try to identify the factors that shape Chinese and U.S. behavioral consistency (or lack thereof) with global norms. They provide an in-depth analysis of five key global normative frameworks: the non-use of force except in self defense and the responsibility to protect (R2P); international macroeconomic surveillance regarding exchange rates; nuclear non-proliferation; climate change; and financial regulatory norms.
As the largest U.S. foreign creditor, China has a huge stake in ensuring the safety of its investments in U.S. treasury bills. Having closely observed the U.S. debt turmoil, China has likely concluded that the U.S. economy is in deep trouble and that full economic recovery might take quite some time. The Chinese, on the contrary, are convinced that their economy is on the rise. Consequently, they are more vocal than before when it comes to pointing fingers at U.S. economic behavior.