China and East Asia

September 2001
Reforming China's Financial Markets
by Stephen Thomas and Ji Chen
China has begun another major stage of its market reforms in its financial system. These reforms will continue to move China gradually but inevitably toward modern financial institutions that will provide an additional stimulus to China's overall economic development.

April 2001
East Asia: Security and Complexity
by Marvin C. Ott
"In Southeast Asia, the United States and China are natural geopolitical rivals. For United States security planners based in Honolulu and Washington, this creates a remarkably challenging environment."

April 2001
Coalition Politics in the Philippines
by Patricio N. Abinales
"To understand the rise and fall of the Estrada presidency, it is not enough to focus on the 'personalistic' leadership style for which Estrada was notorious. We must also look at the nature of coalition politics itself and how it will affect governing in the Philippines in the new century."

April 2001
Indonesia: Living Dangerously
by Scott B. MacDonald and Jonathan Lemco
"Politics in post-Suharto Indonesia remains in flux. President Wahid, the parliament, students, political parties, labor, and the military are all scrambling to find a foothold in the country's new power structure."

September 2000
Understanding Falun Gong
by Richard Madsen
"Why has the Chinese government mobilized vast resources to crush Falun Gong? The answer has less to do with the strangeness of its doctrines than with the effectiveness of its organization."

September 2000
China's Consumer Revolution
by Deborah S. Davis
"When within less than a decade millions of people gained access to advanced modes of communication, new vocabularies of social discourse, and novel forms of leisure through newly commercialized outlets, it does not seem an exaggeration to claim that a revolution in consumption had occurred."

September 2000
Cyberspace with Chinese Characteristics
by Kathlen Hartford
"Pundits outside China sometimes assume both the inevitability of the Internet's growth and the inexorability of the political opening-alternative sources of information, communications channels beyond government control-that may follow. But Internet growth is anything but inevitable, and in China, the government's efforts have both nurtured and structured the country's Internet."

September 2000
Global Capitalism and the Road to Chinese Democracy
by Michael A. Santoro
"American trade and investment in China is helping create a middle class with power and interests independent of the state. Will it be the fertile ground in which the seeds of democracy take root?"

September 2000
The Politics of China's Accession to WTO
by Joseph Fewsmith
"China's position shifted . . . in early 1999 to a more active and determined effort to join the wto. From a broad perspective, China's leadership had determined that globalization was unstoppable and that China could either join the trend or be left behind."

September 2000
Does China Have a Grand Strategy?
by Michael A. Swaine
"The guiding elements of China's calculative grand strategy are clearly reflected in the policies China is pursuing in four separate areas: policies toward the United States; policies toward military modernization; policies toward territorial claims and the recourse to force; and policies toward international regimes."

September 2000
Taiwan's Turnaround
by Shelley Rigger
"The election of Chen Shui-bian as president of the Republic of China on Taiwan was a political earthquake of even greater magnitude than the quake that struck the island in September 1999." The opposition party's "election revealed and reinforced changes that had been building beneath the surface of the Taiwanese political landscape for years."

September 2000
China, American, and Missile Defense: Conflicting National Interests
by Paul H. B. Godwin and Evan S. Medeiros
"The United States and China must engage in some deep soul searching. What type of strategic stability does the United States seek with China? Is China a large rogue state whose strategic forces must be neutered by defensive systems, or is it a small Russia where strategic stability is achieved through mutual deterrence?"