East Asia Archive

BEIJING — While China’s much-hyped clean energy drive has become bogged down in problems of impracticality and policy incoherence, the U.S. has quietly effected a genuine energy revolution that creates huge cost advantages for America’s manufacturing base going forward. With major structural shifts already underway, changing international energy market dynamics present Washington with an opportunity to fundamentally reorient its foreign policy approach, toward China and a broader range of actors, in the decades to come. In 2011, China overtook the U.S. in terms of renewable energy investment and under current plans will surpass the European Union in 2014. Beijing plans […]

South Korea recently announced plans to open a diplomatic mission at the headquarters of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Jakarta. In an email interview, David Arase, a professor of politics at Pomona College, discussed South Korea-ASEAN relations. WPR: What has brought about South Korea’s renewed interest in improving ties with ASEAN? David Arase: For South Korea’s future, ASEAN encompasses a region second only to Northeast Asia in geopolitical and economic importance. ASEAN is also a key agenda-setter in East Asian cooperation. So Korea is stepping up its diplomatic game with this important regional grouping. The ASEAN Plus […]

The Chinese economy, which has been a driver of global economic growth even as the United States and the European Union have worked to handle their own economic crises, is slowing down. Falling real estate prices combined with a decline in exports and consumer confidence have finally become barriers to growth in an economy that has long seemed unstoppable. Headlines have warned of the ripple effects that a continued economic slide might have, and the two experts who spoke with Trend Lines said the downturn underscores the need for China to make some changes in its growth strategy. Patrick Chovanec, […]

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos visited China earlier this month, where he and Chinese President Hu Jintao signed an agreement to begin considerations for a free trade agreement. In an email interview, Benjamin Creutzfeldt, a lecturer and researcher in contemporary China studies at Externado University in Bogota, Colombia, discussed relations between Colombia and China. WPR: What is driving increased diplomatic and economic ties between China and Colombia over the past decade? Benjamin Creutzfeldt: The driving force behind contact between China and Colombia has been and continues to be trade. Over the past decade, China’s need for the types of raw […]

BEIJING — Senior leaders from China, Japan and South Korea met in Beijing last weekend for a trilateral summit, where they signed an eye-catching agreement to work toward establishing a free-trade zone, the latest in a flurry of trilateral economic deals in recent months. But despite these developments, the geopolitical situation in Northeast Asia remains fragmented, and a multilateral architecture capable of containing latent regional threats is some way off. Recent months have brought a series of initiatives to increase economic integration among the three countries. In March, Tokyo announced it would invest in Chinese sovereign bonds for the first […]

The agricultural ministers of China, Japan and South Korea signed an agreement last month to work together to improve food security and increase agricultural trade. In an email interview, Roehlano M. Briones, a senior research fellow at the Philippine Institute for Development Studies and research fellow of the Asia Pacific Policy Center, discussed East Asian cooperation on food security. WPR: What are the major food security priorities for China, Japan and South Korea, respectively? Roehlano M. Briones: Let me answer this question from the viewpoint of policymakers. For China the major food security priority is to ensure that the population […]

The leaders of China, Japan and South Korea, which together account for 20 percent of global GDP, will meet in Beijing this weekend for their fifth annual trilateral summit. The summit is intended to enhance cooperation in a wide range of areas, including security issues, but it will focus mainly on trade. Before leaving for Beijing, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda expressed his hope that the three leaders would announce the start of negotiations for a trilateral free trade agreement. But Claude Barfield, a resident scholar and international trade policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute, and Richard C. Bush […]

The saga of Chen Guangcheng, the blind legal activist who sought refuge in the U.S. embassy in Beijing this past week, is still unfolding. Yet the Obama administration appears to have encountered its own version of President Dwight Eisenhower’s “Hungary 1956” moment: the point at which idealistic rhetoric about U.S. support for freedom and democracy collides with the harsh realities of U.S. national interests. As long as Chen was detained in internal exile in the village of Dongshigu, he was an out-of-sight martyr for whom rhetorical support could easily be expressed without too much risk of damaging the larger Sino-American […]