East Asia Archive

In this special edition of the Trend Lines podcast, WPR Editor-in-Chief Judah Grunstein and host Peter Dörrie talk about China’s rise as an economic and political power and the implications for Asia and the rest of the world. The discussion coincides with a panel WPR is sponsoring on China’snaval, economic and cyber ambitionsand the implications for the U.S. at the St. Petersburg Conference on World Affairs on Feb. 19. Listen:Download: MP3Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Relevant articles on WPR: The Challenge of China’s Bid for Cyber Suzerainty China’s Naval Modernization: Where Is It Headed? Do China’s Global Economic Ambitions Really Threaten […]

Editor’s note: This article is one of three briefings on China’s rise and its implications for U.S. regional and global interests, coinciding with an upcoming panel, in collaboration with WPR, at the St. Petersburg Conference on World Affairs on Feb. 17-19 in St. Petersburg, Florida. The first, on China’s global economic ambitions, appeared Monday; the second, on China’s naval modernization, appeared Wednesday. The Internet revolution began in the 1990s, when China was still recovering from the damage done during Mao Zedong’s reign and the world was adjusting to the West’s post-Cold War pre-eminence. Under such circumstances, Chinese leaders saw the […]

This week on the Trend Lines podcast, WPR Editor-in-Chief Judah Grunstein talks to host Peter Dörrie about the future of the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carriers, President Barack Obama’s nuclear nonproliferation legacy, what declining oil prices mean for Equatorial Guinea’s stability, and other stories from around the world. For the Report, Abraham Newman joins us to explain the politics that led to the nullification of the Safe Harbor agreement between the United States and the European Union and how a new regime to protect digital privacy could be structured. Listen: Download: MP3Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Relevant articles on WPR: What Does […]

Editor’s note: This article is one of three briefings on China’s rise and its implications for U.S. regional and global interests, coinciding with an upcoming panel, in collaboration with WPR, at the St. Petersburg Conference on World Affairs on Feb. 17-19 in St. Petersburg, Florida. The first, on China’s global economic ambitions, appeared Monday; the third, on China’s cyber strategy, will appear Friday. The past two years have seen impressive advances in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy’s capabilities. In 2015, China revealed that it had begun building its second aircraft carrier and that it had begun its first submarine […]

Although its previously explosive economic growth has slowed, China’s growing geopolitical clout continues to reshape the balance of power, regionally and beyond. From its relations with the U.S. and its aggressive actions in the South China Sea, to its regional foreign policy and economic prospects, China remains a mixed bag of promise, risk and uncertainty. The following articles are free for non-subscribers until Feb. 18. Testing Time for U.S.-China Ties Xi’s Visit Exposes Mismatch in U.S. and Chinese Expectations Following Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington last September, Timothy R. Heath wrote that incremental progress in relations has “been […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the impact of falling oil and commodities prices on resource-exporting countries. As a commodities-exporting country deeply linked to the Chinese market, Mongolia faces heightened risks from the current commodities slump and China’s economic slowdown. In an email interview, Jonathan Berkshire Miller, director of the Council on International Policy, discusses the impact of the commodities slump on Mongolia. WPR: How important are commodities for Mongolia’s economy, and what effect have falling commodities prices had on public spending and, by consequence, political stability? Jonathan Berkshire Miller: Commodities, and their prices, […]

The results of Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections, which were held on Jan. 16, were important, and not only for its domestic politics and relations with China. For the third time in Taiwan’s history, there was a peaceful transfer of power through the ballot box, with Tsai Ying-wen of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) beating Eric Chu of the ruling Kuomintang party (KMT) for the presidency. Tsai garnered more than 56 percent of votes cast, significantly more than what she managed in her last presidential bid in 2012, when she finished with just over 45 percent. For the first […]

After the collapse of multilateral trade talks at the World Trade Organization in Geneva in 2008, governments around the world went back to the drawing board to devise new trade strategies. As a second-best solution, trade officials increasingly looked to bilateral and plurilateral trade negotiations to generate commercial opportunities for domestic businesses and strengthen their economic and geopolitical positions in regions of strategic importance. In anticipation of the failure of the WTO’s Doha Round, European Union leaders had already ended, in 2006, the EU moratorium on bilateral trade talks and made concluding comprehensive trade and investment agreements with emerging and […]