Javier Solana at the 2012 SDA Presdient's Dinner, Brussels, Belgium, May 27, 2012 (Security and Defence Agenda photo licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license).

World Politics Review’s Maria Savel had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Javier Solana regarding the European Union’s relations with China, ASEAN and Asia as a whole. Dr. Solana is president of the ESADE Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics and previously served as the European Union high representative for the common foreign and security policy, NATO secretary-general and Spanish foreign minister. The following is a condensed version of their conversation. World Politics Review: Germany-China ties indicate a lot of the fault lines in the European Union and its approach to China in terms of balancing national and European interests. […]

Missile launchers on the deck of the Chinese destroyer Haikou, U.S. Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, July 5, 2014 (Kyodo via AP Images).

On July 23, China conducted its third declared ballistic missile defense (BMD) test in the past four years, with the Defense Ministry announcing afterward that the test had “achieved the desired objectives.” But it would be premature to conclude that Beijing now embraces BMD. China lacks the capabilities to establish an operational missile defense network, even as Chinese officials continue to attack U.S.-sponsored BMD efforts. Instead, the recent tests are designed primarily to overcome adversary missile defenses as well as to develop China’s anti-satellite systems, a capability renounced by the United States as strategically destabilizing, which ironically is the same […]

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden at the World Cup soccer match between Ghana and the United States, Natal, Brazil, June 16, 2014 (AP photo by Julio Cortez).

The United States missed out on a rare geopolitical opportunity this past week. Vice President Joe Biden, who has emerged in Barack Obama’s second term as more of an alter ego for the president on both the domestic and international stages, should have taken a short trip to Brazil for the World Cup final. Sure, the U.S. team had already been eliminated, but as the fabled “reassurer” who travels to different parts of the globe to shore up American commitments, Biden still had a plausible excuse to drop in at the close of the tournament: to congratulate Brazil on a […]

Chinese President Xi Jinping at Seoul National University, South Korea, July 4, 2014 (photo from the website of the Republic of Korea licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license).

SEOUL, South Korea—Washington’s plan to shift its attention toward Asia, the famed “pivot,” has been postponed or at least slowed by the rash of crises in the Middle East over the past three years. But East Asia, as it turns out, is not waiting for the U.S. Major countries in the region, including America’s key allies and its top emerging rival, are actively jockeying for influence, assertively reassessing relations with their neighbors and generally stirring for what could become a significant realignment of power in the world’s fastest-growing region. America’s strategic and diplomatic position on the eastern shores of Asia […]

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There is a timeless observation according to which younger generations never fail to rebel against their parents’ values. In reality, most rising generations of youth do not overthrow the ways of their ancestors, but rather carry them forward, even teaching them to their own descendants. This is evidenced by the simple fact that, generation after generation, certain cultural beliefs and traits continue to be identified with particular regions. Today in the Middle East, for example, as in the past, the Koran continues to be revered. And in China, many of the basic precepts of Confucianism still hold sway, as they […]

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China’s post-1980s generation—around 240 million people born between 1980 and 1990—has received greater media coverage in China than any previous generation; moreover, assessments of this generation have varied widely. Often called the “me generation” and noted for an addiction to online games, Western fast food chains and Hollywood films, they have also received high praise for their selflessness and altruism after their response to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Such a diversity of perceptions is not surprising since this generation, which is crucial to China’s continuing economic success and international rise, clearly holds values that are far more contradictory than earlier […]

Chinese President Xi Jinping (Defense Department photo by Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo).

On July 14, Xi Jinping began his second official visit to Latin America as president of China. The trip touches off with Xi’s participation in the sixth BRICS summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, which begins today. After this meeting of emerging market leaders, Xi will attend a Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) meeting in Brasilia, followed by visits to Argentina and Venezuela, where China maintains substantial energy-related interests. Xi’s Latin America tour will conclude on July 23 after a stop in Cuba. Xi’s trip is largely consistent with China’s previous state visits to Latin America. Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela […]

Students leave a testing site for China’s national college entrance examinations, in Nanjing, China, July 7, 2020 (Chinatopix photo via AP Images).

Editor’s note: The following article is one of 30 that we’ve selected from our archives to celebrate World Politics Review’s 15th anniversary. You can find the full collection here. China’s post-Mao generation, born since Mao Zedong’s 1976 death, has had formative life experiences that fundamentally differ from China’s older generations. Unlike their elders, Chinese born in the post-Mao era have not suffered the trauma of civil war, revolution, collectivization, starvation or the chaos of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. They also have been far more geographically mobile than older generations, whose ability to move freely was highly constricted by the government’s strict residential […]

German Chancellor Angela Merkel shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, China, July 7, 2014 (Kyodo via AP Images).

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was in China last week, where she visited Chengdu, in the west of the country, and Beijing. This marks Merkel’s seventh official trip to China since she took office in 2005, a further sign of the growing importance of Berlin’s special relationship with Beijing. Germany and China have been steadily boosting ties since the late 1990s, when Gerhard Schroeder was chancellor. In 2012, then-Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, while visiting Berlin, announced the goal to increase bilateral trade with Germany from $180 billion to $280 billion by 2015. Trade between the two reached $193 billion in 2013, […]

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari walks with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, Baghdad, Iraq, Feb. 23, 2014 (AP Photo by Ahmed Saad, Pool).

Like it did with the crisis in Ukraine, China is trying to keep out of the chaos in Iraq. But as the central government in Baghdad confronts the Sunni militants spearheaded by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an al-Qaida splinter group that aims to create an Islamic caliphate from eastern Syria to northwestern Iraq, it will be hard for China to preserve a policy of noninterference. This time around, unlike what happened in Ukraine, China cannot keep out of another sovereign nation’s internal affairs—until now a cornerstone of its diplomacy—given Beijing’s huge economic and commercial interests in […]

Chinese President Xi Jinping at Seoul National University, South Korea, July 4, 2014 (photo from the website of the Republic of Korea licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license).

Last week’s China-South Korea summit confirmed the good relations between Beijing and Seoul under Chinese President Xi Jinping and South Korean President Park Geun-hye. When they met in Seoul on July 3 for their fifth personal meeting since Park assumed office in March 2013, the two leaders announced ambitious economic goals and reconfirmed their opposition to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Nonetheless, despite Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang’s pre-summit forecast that Xi’s trip would “take the strategic cooperative partnership between China and South Korea to a new level,” no breakthrough occurred, and their bilateral relationship remains essentially the same. […]

Commanding officer of the current Thai military junta Prayuth Jan-ocha, Jun. 17, 2010 (photo from the website of the Government of Thailand).

Last month, a Thai army delegation visited China for talks on their security ties, which include joint military training. In an email interview, Joshua Kurlantzick, senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, discussed Thailand’s relations with China. WPR: What was the status of ties between Thailand and China before the May military coup? Josh Kurlantzick: The status of relations was quite good, probably better than between China and any other large country in Southeast Asia. Thailand has always, through its history, done an excellent job of balancing between major powers and still promoting Thai interests. WPR: […]

China's Taiwan Affairs Council Minister Zhang Zhijun and Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council Minister Wang Yu-chi, Taoyuan County, Taiwan, June 25, 2014 (Kyodo via AP Images).

Zhang Zhijun, director of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, recently concluded a four-day visit to Taiwan. He is the highest-ranking official from the People’s Republic of China ever to have visited Taiwan, making the trip something of a milestone in relations across the Taiwan Strait. First up on Zhang’s itinerary was a meeting with his Taiwanese counterpart, Wang Yu-chi, the director of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council. The two had held the first such government-to-government talks in February in Nanjing, where they agreed in principle to establish mechanisms for official communication, including representative offices. This time they moved one step closer to […]

Protesters in Hong Kong, China, July 1, 2014 (AP photo by Kin Cheung).

Hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators took to the streets of Hong Kong last week on the anniversary of its handover to China, and more than 500 were arrested. In an email interview, Simon Young, a law professor at Hong Kong University, placed the protests in the context of Hong Kong’s relationship with the mainland. WPR: How has Hong Kong’s status within China developed since the end of British rule in 1997? Simon Young: Hong Kong’s status within China, known as “one country, two systems,” grew out of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration framework and is formally defined in the […]