China and East Asia

September 2004
Hong Kong: "One Country, Two Systems" in Troubled Waters
by Craig N. Canning
"Chinese central government officials are reluctant to allow political reform in Hong Kong to proceed too rapidly or to be driven primarily by public demonstrations and aggressive pro-democracy activists."

April 2004
Learning by Doing: Al Qaeda's Allies in Southeast Asia
by Zachary Abuza
"Al Qaeda and its affiliates will continue to attack soft economic targets, primarily in moderate Muslim states, whose secular regimes, closely allied with the United States, are Al Qaeda's real focus."

April 2004
Southeast Asia's Marred Miracle
by Carlyle A. Thayer
"Although midterm economic prospects for Southeast Asia appear reasonably good, the region's political and security dynamics pose considerable risks to a full recovery from the crisis of 1997."

April 2004
Gloomy Burmese Days
by Joshua Kurlantzick
The optimism surrounding the possibility of a democratic thaw in 2002 "was a mirage, a blip distracting attention from a more depressing long-term trend. . . . Burma's Asian neighbors, including democracies India and Thailand, increasingly are giving the junta free rein to dominate politics and abuse the citizenry."

December 2003
China's Dubious Role in the War on Terror
by Joshua Kurlantzick
"Although China has made some attempts to help the United States combat terrorist groups, its contributions have been limited and overpraised, and it has manipulated the war on terror for its own means."

September 2003
Changing Course on China
by Elizabeth Economy
Relations between China and the United States are perhaps the best they have been since 1989. . . . What accounts for this seemingly dramatic transformation?

September 2003
China and the Politics of SARS
by Joseph Fewsmith
"By challenging the Chinese to consider not only the accountability of their government, but also issues of openness, trust, responsiveness, and the ëright to know,' the sars crisis seems likely to provide a major impetus to new thinking about relations between society and state."

September 2003
Hong Kong and the Limits of People Power
by Frank Ching
"Hong Kong has little choice but to try to make the one country, two systems formula work. The alternative is not independence but absorption into the mainland's political system."

September 2003
"Houston, We Have a Problem": China and the Race to Space
by Joan Johnson-Freese
"If the United States continues to exploit the obvious military advantages of space and China feels compelled to respond, a space race seems inevitable. It is inevitable because both countries recognize that space can provide advantages, or at least avoid disadvantages, regarding the other. Space may inevitably make China the third man in the fourth battlefield."

September 2003
China's Brave New World
by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom
"China's leaders have shifted from relying on Orwellian strategies to policies that Huxley provides us with a better guide for understanding...[T]o see China today as a Big Brother state is to miss much that has been actually taking place in the People's Republic."

September 2003
Feeding China: From Wanting to Wasting
by Vaclav Smil
"The food-related China fears of yesterday-the country's predicted inability to feed itself, thus putting an unbearable burden on global food supplies-have today been replaced by new worries, about pandemic possibilities."

September 2003
China and North Korea: The Limits of Influence
by Andrew Scobell
"The Bush administration should recognize that on North Korea, only limited support will be forthcoming from Beijing. The best Washington can expect is a China actively pressing the United States and North Korea to talk and willing to host or participate in further meetings. But this presumes that both Pyongyang and Washington are ready to sit down in the first place."

September 2003
America and South Korea: The Ambivalent Alliance?
by Victor D. Cha
"If South Korean resentment of America's military presence is less clear-cut than many would suggest, so, too, are the policy differences supposedly dividing American and South Korean leaders."

September 2003
Democracy Endangered: Thailand's Thaksin Flirts with Dictatorship
by Joshua Kurlantzick
"Ultimately, if reformist elements . . . do not restrain [Prime Minister Thaksin], Thailand could develop into a larger version of Singapore: a state with a veneer of democratic politics covering a one-party system."

April 2003
North Korea: The Sequel
by Bruce Cumings
The current crisis with North Korea "has the same solution as the original [in 1994]: get North Korea's nuclear program mothballed and its medium- and long-range missiles decommissioned by buying them out at a set price. That price is American recognition of North Korea, written promises not to target the North with nuclear weapons, and indirect compensation in the form of aid and investment."

April 2003
The Nuclear Crisis on the Korean Peninsula: Avoiding the Road to Perdition
by The Task Force on U.S. Korea Policy
"Confrontational United States policies toward North Korea, adopted unilaterally, would not only exacerbate the nuclear crisis but also undermine United States relations with Northeast Asia as a whole. . . . The United States would end up with the worst of both worlds: a nuclear-capable North Korea and severely strained relations with key powers important to United States interests globally as well as regionally. Conversely, by pursuing constructive engagement in concert with its friends and allies in the region, the United States would maximize the pressure on North Korea for an acceptable nuclear settlement and promote the long-term United States objective of liberalizing the North Korean system."

April 2003
Asia's Nuclear Dominos?
by Jon B. Wolfsthal
"Nuclear proliferation is neither out of control nor inevitable. The tools required to reduce the demand for nuclear weapons exist and remain effective if they are used constructively by the United States and other concerned countries. But if these tools are left unused, . . . [the] dominos could start toppling."

April 2003
East Asia's Slow Recovery from Financial Crisis
by Jean-Marc F. Blanchard
"Given East Asia's positive economic attributes, it is easy to conclude that the region's long-term economic future will be bright. . . . Unfortunately, the capacity and political will to implement the right choices may be lacking."

December 2002
Tilting at Dominos: America and Al Qaeda in Southeast Asia
by Joshua Kurlantzick
"American officials have turned their attention toward Southeast Asian policymaking-something largely ignored since the end of the Vietnam War-and have declared Southeast Asia the 'second front' in the global campaign against terror. . . . [But] backing Southeast Asia's often brutal and compromised militaries, which themselves contain elements linked to Islamist radicals, will only boost human rights abuses, breeding popular resentment and setting the stage for more terror."

December 2002
Same War, Different Views: Germany, Japan, and the War on Terrorism
by Peter J. Katzenstein
"The tendency of the Bush administration to frame terrorism as a threat posed equally by evil states and nonstate groups is . . . distinctive. It is easy to lose sight of how atypical, even among liberal democracies, are the American view of international life in Manichaean terms and the American emphasis on the military dimension of society. Germany's and Japan's very different approaches to counterterrorism are useful reminders of American exceptionalism."