China and East Asia

September 2006
Driven to Protest: China’s Rural Unrest
by LIANJIANG LI
"Beijing may wish to keep the rural population as apolitical and passive as possible, but it must understand that this is fast becoming an impossible task."

September 2006
Little Emperors or Frail Pragmatists? China’s ’80ers Generation
by YUNXIANG YAN
"If idealism, compassion, and naïveté are defining features of youthhood, the '80ers in China are hardly youthful. If efforts to resist and subvert the dominating ideology and symbolisms of the establishment are the core of youth culture, then China's youth hardly have a culture of their own."

September 2006
Rumsfeld’s Take on the Chinese Military: A Dissenting View
by DENNIS J. BLASKO
"The Pentagon's 2006 report provides little credible new information to support its suppositions about China's lack of transparency, undeclared motivations, or 'military expansion.'"

September 2006
China’s Charm Offensive in Southeast Asia
by JOSHUA KURLANTZICK
"Many Southeast Asians now regard China as a benign presence to be emulated—a sharp contrast with current regional views of the United States."

September 2006
Japan’s Historic Change of Course
by KENNETH B. PYLE
Japan is on the threshold of a new era in the way it relates to the international environment. As it becomes an assertive political-strategic actor, foreign observers will once again be surprised. . . ."

September 2006
Vietnam’s Bumpy Road to Reform
by SOPHIE QUINN-JUDGE
"As in China, political and intellectual reform in Vietnam has lagged behind the stunning transformation of the economy."

September 2006
The Withering of Philippine Democracy
by PATRICIO N. ABINALES and DONNA J. AMOROSO
"The 'democracy' brought about by people power is not working for the benefit of the majority of poor Filipinos. It has simply returned to power the clans and warlords that once dominated pre–martial-law politics. . . ."

May 2006
China’s Africa Strategy
by JOSHUA EISENMAN and JOSHUA KURLANTZICK
"Beijing has enjoyed considerable success in Africa, building close ties with countries from Sudan to South Africa, becoming a vital aid donor . . . , and developing military relationships with many of the continent's powers."

April 2006
America Confronts the Asian Century
by MORTON ABRAMOWITZ and STEPHEN BOSWORTH
"The United States has been the regional power in Asia since the end of World War II. But change is under way."

April 2006
Asia in Transition: The Evolving Regional Order
by DAVID SHAMBAUGH
"The emerging and evolving Asian system today is a mixture of realist, liberal, and constructivist elements—with major powers vying for influence, while interdependence deepens, and behavioral norms and multilateral institutions develop. Such cross-trends may not make for conceptual clarity, but they do constitute the current reality."

April 2006
China’s Unpeaceful Rise
by JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER
"International politics is a nasty and dangerous business, and no amount of goodwill can ameliorate the intense security competition that sets in when an aspiring hegemon appears in Eurasia."

April 2006
India and the Asian Security Architecture
by VARUN SAHNI
"By building robust political and economic links with both China and the United States, India could end up playing an important catalytic role in bringing both countries together in a new cooperative Asia."

April 2006
Asia’s Challenged Giants
by SHALENDRA D. SHARMA
"China and India are already major players in the global economy. However, their impact in coming decades on the world's economic and strategic landscape will depend . . . on how each deals with its structural and economic challenges."

April 2006
Curbing Asian Corruption: An Impossible Dream?
by JON S. T. QUAH
"Many leaders have adopted 'hopeless' strategies that perpetuate corruption instead of stifling it."

April 2006
Fueling the Dragon: China’s Strategic Energy Dilemma
by MICHAEL T. KLARE
"Unless the world's existing powers are prepared to descend into the sort of resource-driven geopolitical competition that resulted in World War I . . . they must make room at the table for an energy-hungry China."

April 2006
The Koreas, Unification, and the Great Powers
by JOUNGWON ALEXANDER KIM and MYUNGSHIN HONG
"The Korean Peninsula has been Asia's Berlin Wall, where communism and democracy have directly confronted one another."

October 2005
The Great Powers in Central Asia
by MARTHA BRILL OLCOTT
"The United States, Russia, and China have spent the past few years jockeying for position in the region. . . . [But] the challenges facing Central Asian states remain largely unchanged, and governments there have received few new tools to address them."

September 2005
America’s Bismarckian Asia Policy
by Eric Heginbotham and Christopher P. Twomey
"US policy is not achieving the goals set out for it. It is ceding regional leadership while seeding regional rivalry. It is missing opportunities to help shape the development of a new security environment through regional institutions and instead acting to exacerbate the rise of nationalism. . . ."

September 2005
Chinese Nationalism: Challenging the State?
by PETER HAYS GRIES
"It would be a mistake to attribute to the Communist Party complete control over Chinese nationalism today. With the emergence of the Internet, cell phones, and text messaging, popular nationalists in China are increasingly able to act independently of the state."

September 2005
Corruption, Growth, and Reform: The Chinese Enigma
by Yan Sun
"The cumulative unfolding of corruption's many paradoxes in China has, above all, built up momentum and public support to improve state capacities, rather than further weaken them. Beijing does not suffer a legitimacy deficit despite corruption's staying power as a top public