China and East Asia

April 2011
Why India Is Becoming Warier of China
by Shashank Joshi
“Beijing’s recent behavior has strengthened hard-liners in India by legitimating the assumptions on which their worldview is built.”

February 2011
The New Mercantilism: China’s Emerging Role in the Americas
by Eric Farnsworth
“Beijing offers to the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean the opportunity to forge a path independent of the United States and liberal economic orthodoxy.”

September 2010
A New China Requires a New US Strategy
by David Shambaugh
“The worst thing Washington could do is to operate on autopilot, to assume that past strategies and policies (which have generally served the United States well) are ipso facto indefinitely useful.”

September 2010
Australia Faces a Changing Asia
by Michael Wesley
“Tensions between Australia’s strategic alignment and its economic alignment . . . heighten Canberra’s anxieties about having to choose between security and prosperity in the event of a confrontation between the United States and China."

September 2010
Japan’s Long Road to Competitive Politics
by Steven Vogel
“The Democratic Party of Japan achieved a historic victory in 2009, one that will have a lasting impact on Japanese politics. Yet the party since then has delivered . . . too much political overhaul and too little policy substance.”

September 2010
North Korea: How Will It End?
by Christoph Bluth
“[Adopting] unification as the central goal of policy toward the Koreas . . . . would constitute the first step on the road toward a resolution of the crisis on the peninsula.”

September 2010
China’s Population Destiny: The Looming Crisis
by Wang Feng and Mara Hvistendahl
“China’s population is likely to peak less than 15 years from now, below a maximum of 1.4 billion. After that will come a prolonged, even indefinite, population decline and a period of accelerated aging.”

September 2010
The Uncertain Fate of “Chindia”
by Shalendra D. Sharma
“Although Sino-Indian relations have greatly improved over the past decade, . . . [u]nresolved territorial disputes, China’s unconditional support of Pakistan, and growing competition for energy resources and regional influence could quickly derail hard-won gains.”

September 2010
Thailand: From Violence to Reconciliation?
by Catharin Dalpino
“Thailand runs the risk that future protest, a right and a mainstay of liberal democracy, will escalate quickly into violence and eventually be constricted as a matter of course.”

September 2010
Perspective: Asia’s Dangerous Security Dilemma
by Paul Godwin
The military modernization that Beijing regards as defensive is provoking apprehension and countermoves. The resulting dynamic could threaten the regional stability that all sides want.

September 2010
Books: China Policy for Dummies
by Reviewer: Devin Stewart
A new book argues an established truism: that China’s model of state capitalism is finding favor with authoritarians in the developing world.

September 2010
The Month in Review
by the editors of Current History
An international chronology of events in April, May, June, and July 2010, country by country, day by day.

September 2010
Map of Asia
by the editors of Current History
Map of Asia

May 2010
Books: Behind China’s Rise in Africa
by William W. Finan Jr.
A new book likens Beijing’s proliferating interests on the continent to the dealings of a “Godfather” engaged in everything from oil and uranium to textiles and infrastructure.

April 2010
Vietnam and America: Parameters of the Possible
by Frederick Z. Brown
“The connection with the United States [is] a geopolitical asset in the competition that the Vietnamese have long carried out with China.”

November 2009
Pax Americana and the Rising Powers
by Rajan Menon
“While unipolar triumphalists deny historic changes are under way, multipolar pessimists exaggerate the pace of these changes and are cocksure about what lies ahead.”

September 2009
The China-US Relationship Goes Global
by Kenneth Lieberthal
“If the two sides can engage effectively…, Sino-US relations will enter a new stage in which ties will become deeper, stronger, more stable, and more important for the international system than ever before.”

September 2009
Is Beijing Ready for Global Leadership?
by Evan S. Medeiros
“Beijing has been largely working within—indeed, deftly leveraging—the current international system to advance its foreign policy objectives.”

September 2009
Unruly Stability: Why China’s Regime Has Staying Power
by Andrew G. Walder
“The overall political situation in China is far more favorable for the regime than it was during the relatively tumultuous and strife-torn first decade of economic reform.”

September 2009
China’s Beleaguered Intellectuals
by Merle Goldman
“Although efforts to assert political rights in China are quickly suppressed, and although few political reforms have been introduced, it would be wrong to discount the impact of such efforts.”