Asia-Pacific Archive

One of the recurring subtexts of China’s relative opening to the world has been the tightrope the Chinese leadership is forced to walk between mobilizing nationalist sentiment to push back against Western human rights criticism, and actually keeping a lid on that nationalist sentiment to keep it from getting out in front of the official line of a peaceful rise. Case in point: Over the weekend there were demonstrations in several Chinese cities converging on the French supermarket chain, Carrefour, in part to protest the French government’s very muted grumblings about the goings-on in Tibet, in part to respond to […]

SEOUL, South Korea — Washington this weekend will roll out the red carpet for the newly inaugurated president of South Korea. On Saturday (April 19), Lee Myung-bak will hold his first overseas summit with President Bush. The two will meet at Camp David, about 60 miles outside of the capital in Maryland. A Korean leader has not visited the presidential retreat since 1942. And in the eyes of many figures inside the Bush administration, none is more deserving than Lee. Since taking office in February, the CEO-turned-politician has pledged to break with previous South Korean administrations and embrace the 50-plus-year […]

In a move hailed by Southeast Asian heads of state and ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan, the U.S. Senate April 9 confirmed Scot Marciel as the first U.S. ambassador for ASEAN affairs. The move comes at a key time in the development of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as an institution, after the organization adopted a landmark charter in November 2007 that, among other things, obliges member countries to appoint permanent, senior representatives to the ASEAN secretariat in Jakarta. The appointment of Marciel is a significant gesture, making the United States the first ASEAN partner country to create such […]

Although the Western media has become preoccupied with the protests against Beijing’s repression in Tibet, Chinese policymakers perceive a comparably serious threat from another minority: the Muslim Uighurs. Concerns about separatist agitation among the Uighurs have had a considerable impact on Chinese foreign policy. On April 10, Chinese authorities announced they had exposed a plot by Muslim terrorists to kidnap foreigners and carry out suicide attacks in Chinese cities during the Summer Olympics. In a news conference, an official from China’s Ministry of Public Security revealed that authorities had detained 45 suspects involved in two terrorist groups. The detainees allegedly […]

Via FP Passport, it looks like the EU got a promise from Turkmanistan President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov to deliver some gas. At 10 billion cubic meters, the deal is a start, even if it’s just a drop in the 500 bcm bucket of European demand. But there’s still the little question of how to get the gas to Europe. Nabucco, if it ever happens, won’t be operational for another five years. So the EU is looking at either building links to existing pipelines, or liquifying the gas and shipping it. Needless to say, Russia has remained stoic about the deal.

The reviews from NATO’s Bucharest summit are all in, and they generally conclude that the United States — and more specifically, President George W. Bush — failed. For instance, Bloomberg News headlined the summit this way: “NATO Snubs Ukraine, Georgia, Macedonia; Blow to Bush.” The New York Times declared, “NATO Allies Oppose Bush on Georgia and Ukraine.” And the Boston Globe reported, “Allies Reject Bush’s Call for NATO Role for Ukraine, Georgia.” It is true that Bush pressed NATO to issue membership action plans (MAP) to these former Soviet republics, but it is just as true that he wanted other […]

TOKYO — As expected, at the meeting here of G-8 development ministers earlier this month, rich countries reaffirmed their commitment to tackling poverty in Africa and pledged to fulfill past promises of aid to developing countries. Yet for host nation Japan, the meeting came at an awkward time, coinciding with the release of a report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development stating that Japan’s net official development assistance (ODA) fell 30 percent in real terms in 2007 from a year earlier. The latest figure means Japan has now dropped to fifth place among the world’s major aid donors, […]

SEOUL, South Korea — Onlookers watch as a man tied up in ropes is led down a crowded pedestrian street by a woman holding a plastic assault rifle. Another man holding a megaphone explains that the re-enactment depicts a scene that has become an everyday occurrence in China. A multinational coalition of activists, calling themselves the 4-4-4 Campaign, holds this demonstration each weekend in downtown Seoul. In Chinese culture, the number 4 symbolizes death. Protester Nam Hyang Soo says the activists chose their name because Beijing’s refugee policy is killing North Koreans who try to escape their impoverished homeland. “The […]

Sam Roggeveen of The Interpreter has a thought-provoking post about whether China represents a special case in the normally direct relationship between economic prosperity and politicial liberalization. This strikes me as spot on: [Chinese leaders] seem to have struck just the opposite bargain with their people: if you accept perpetual rule by us, we will make you rich. That bargain is now the path to continued legitimacy for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), rather than any promise of political liberalisation. It’s impossible to separate China’s prosperity from the globalized market. But the reality is that the West probably has an […]

It didn’t get much notice, but the first India-Africa Summit just wrapped up in Delhi today with the adoption of the Delhi Declaration and the Africa-India Framework for Cooperation. The biggest news to come out of the summit, which included delegations from 14 African countries, was India PM Manmohan Singh’s announcement of tariff-free market access for products comprising 92.5% of Least Developed Countries’ exports (34 of 50 LCD’s are in Africa), but the Framework is also noteworthy for the ambitious agenda it lays out for Indian economic and political involvement on the continent. Among other things, it includes a Post […]

Last June, local “auxiliary” police in southern Afghanistan, fighting alongside Dutch troops, helped repel a major Taliban assault on the lush Chora Valley. In the aftermath of the fighting, the Dutch commander singled out the local cops for praise. “Their morale is very high,” said Lt. Col. Gino Van Der Voet. But now NATO commanders in Afghanistan have decided to end local police training, fearing that cops in remote areas — most of whom once fought for tribal warlords — might one day turn their weapons against Kabul and the U.S.-led coalition. The change in policy perhaps signals a shift […]

Once again, the Korean Peninsula is witnessing increased tensions, and once again North Korea has initiated the crisis. Yet Pyongyang’s latest acts of hostility are little more than hollow bluster that should not distract from the ongoing international effort to dismantle its threatening nuclear capabilities. Last week, Pyongyang unleashed a barrage of criticism of the policies of the recently inaugurated president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak. Lee is seeking to break with the policies of his predecessors, who sought accommodation and gradual engagement with the North. An editorial in North Korea’s state-run newspaper, Rodung Sinmun, called Lee an “impostor” and […]

The Defense Department late last month delivered its 4,000th Mine-Resistant, Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle to the Southwest Asia war zone, a rapid pace of deliveries that reflects the importance DOD places on its top procurement priority. Months after U.S. Transportation Command began shipping massive numbers of MRAPs by ship to ports in the Middle East, sealift has yet to surpass airlift as the primary means of delivery. At the end of March, more than 1,700 MRAPs had been delivered overseas from the United States by large container ship — but nearly 2,300 had been delivered by Air Force C-5 and […]

In the aftermath of the Tibet uprisings, India’s External Affairs Minister called on the Dalai Lama, whose government-in-exile India hosts, to refrain from “. . . any political activity in this country that harms India-China ties.” Meanwhile, there’s news out of Xinjiang that Uighur “extremists” were arrested as they attempted to incite an uprising. I’ve argued before that this is a great advantage America has in the globalized age over multicultural countries that either, a) inherited their minority populations from arbitrary colonial maps (India); or else b) absorbed them through expansion (China). There’s still racism and xenophobia in the States, […]

The initiative of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to repeal the country’s headscarf ban has received a great deal of attention in both the Turkish and international media over the past month. Analysis has been divided on whether this signals a creeping Islamization of the country or rather, quite to the contrary, it is a signal of growing civil liberties — a maturing liberal democracy moving towards Western ideas of decency and freedom. It is unusual that a singular political initiative can be viewed in two such diametrically opposed ways. It’s a perfect illustration of the difficulty of […]

Parag Khanna wrote an article for WPR recently about the challenges facing India as it rises to global prominence. This post on Indian education (via Think Change India) adds some more color to the image. With over half a billion students, the sheer size of the Indian education system orients thinking towards top-down models. But as the post’s author, Neil Patel of the Siksha Foundation, suggests, that sheer size also renders the system more resistant to top-down change. Siksha offers a different model, typically NGO and decidedly bottom-up: microfinanced scholarships for individual students with team-oriented follow-up. In his post, he […]

From the TV footage coming out of Nepal these days, it is easy to forget that the Himalayan nation is struggling to build a viable democracy. Almost every day since mid-March, when anti-Chinese protests erupted in Tibet and other countries, images of Nepali police beating Tibetan demonstrators have been beamed around the world. Nepal’s major political parties and former Maoist rebels have promised to build an open and inclusive state after years of turmoil. The people are preparing to vote April 10 for a new assembly that would write a new constitution embodying a federal democratic republic. Yet barely two […]