China and East Asia

September 2009
Is Japan Lost Again?
by Edward J. Lincoln
“Japanese society may become more inward-looking—absorbed in problems ranging from reforming the economy to coping with a shrinking population.”

September 2009
In China’s Economy, the State’s Hand Grows Heavier
by Barry Naughton
“China’s policy makers have pulled the economy out of an incipient recession, but at the cost of unleashing a flood of liquidity on the system.”

September 2009
Perspective: The North Korea Problem: Dealing with Irrationality
by Bruce Cumings
Why is it so hard for Washington to learn from its mistakes in responding to Pyongyang's regularly recurring provocations?

September 2009
Book Reviews: The Revolution Will Be Digitized
by Kate Merkel-Hess
A new book argues that online mobilization and contention in China are not so much a force for change as they are a manifestation of developments already occurring in society.

September 2009
The Month in Review
by The Editors of Current History
April-July 2009

September 2009
Map of China and East Asia
by Editors of Current History
Map of China and East Asia

April 2009
A Country on the Move: China Urbanizes
by Kate Merkel-Hess and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom
“China’s government has managed rural-to-urban migration through heavy-handed policies that have guarded the prosperity of the cities at the expense of rural areas. . . .”

November 2008
Asia’s Democracy Backlash
by JOSHUA KURLANTZICK
“Leaders of nations like Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam have begun to debate how they can apply a Chinese model to their own nations.”

November 2008
People Power Sours: Uncivil Society in Thailand and the Philippines
by MARK R. THOMPSON
“In both countries, mass-based urban campaigns against authoritarianism have degenerated into an assault on democracy.”

November 2008
Indonesia’s Reform Era Faces a Test
by GREG FEALY
“Upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections will be important in determining whether Indonesia continues along its present path of uneven but nonetheless substantial reform.”

November 2008
Perspective: A New Strategy on Myanmar
by MORTON ABRAMOWITZ and JONATHAN KOLIEB
International indignation and efforts to isolate the brutal junta have not helped the very people whom outsiders want to aid—Myanmar's long-suffering citizens.

September 2008
Forced Harmony: China’s Olympic Rollercoaster
by Dali L. Yang
"The Chinese leadership is caught between the demands of populism and internationalism. Again and again, in order to win international approval, the government has had to buck public sentiments that the party propaganda machine itself has helped to foster."

September 2008
Japan’s New Politics: Quiet Before the Storm?
by Steven Vogel
"Koizumi convinced Japanese voters that he could do more to change Japanese politics than the opposition; his successors will be hard-pressed to repeat that feat."

September 2008
South Korea’s Not-So-Sharp Right Turn
by David C. Kang
"The scope of Lee's foreign policy, and the type of change he achieves, will depend as much on the factors constraining him as on his own ideas about how best to govern."

September 2008
Beyond Demonization: A New Strategy for Human Rights in North Korea
by Katharine H. S. Moon
"Persistently engaging and formally recognizing North Korea are the measures that hold most promise on many contentious issues, including human rights."

September 2008
Does China Face a “Lost Decade?”
by Richard Katz
"When smart policy makers make big miscalculations over a considerable period of time, some fundamental political imperative is usually distracting them from economic rationality."

September 2008
Taiwan’s Liberation of China
by Randall Schriver and Mark Stokes
"There is reason for guarded optimism that—as long as Taiwan's process of democratic consolidation continues—the island will continue to exert influence

September 2008
Beijing Eyes a Bear Market
by Lyric Hughes Hale
Has China now reached a critical developmental limit, and is this being played out in its no-longer buoyant stock markets?"

September 2008
The Party-State Studies Abroad
by David Shambaugh
"The CCP has been willing to search for useful ideas abroad, with a view to selectively borrowing, adapting, and grafting them to indigenous Chinese institutions and practices."

September 2008
China’s Next Revolution
by Elizabeth Economy
Only environmental changes of a magnitude equal to Deng Xiaoping's sweeping economic reforms can rescue the People's Republic from disaster