China and East Asia

April 2002
Sunset for Kim Dae-jung's Sunshine Policy?
by Manwoo Lee
"Although Kim Dae-jung's sunshine policy has been buffeted by political turbulence, it is not dead; his successor can only modify his policy, not abandon it altogether."

April 2002
Japan's Slow-Moving Economic Avalanche
by Scott B. MacDonald and Jonathan Lemco
"For now Japan is too integrated into the world financial system and too big to fail. . . . But a time of reckoning is coming if changes are not made."

April 2002
Post-Crisis Asia: Economic Recovery and the Challenges Ahead
by Shalendra D. Sharma
Almost all the East Asian economies have recaptured the economic momentum disrupted by the 1997 financial crisis in the region. Although that momentum was slowed with the global economic downturn in 2001, the process of financial and corporate rebuilding and restructuring in response to the crisis has not.

September 2001
Cracks in the Wall: China's Eroding Coercive State
by Murray Scot Tanner
China's coercive system still shows a capacity to suppress individuals deemed threatening to the state. Beneath the surface, this system is facing unprecedented challenges to central control, effectiveness, and discipline, all of which could produce a growing crisis of governability for Beijing.

September 2001
China as Number One
by Soong-Bum Ahn
The inferred assumption in most American scenarios is one in which a dominant China is a threat to its neighbors and the United States. Yet what if China acts as a benevolent hegemon, or at least a benign one?

September 2001
The United States and China: Rhetoric and Reality
by David Bachman
The rhetoric of the Bush administration can be seen as part of the "positioning" process as one party replaces the other in the presidency, working hard to show it is breaking with the past before it moves in the direction of the prior administration. But such a sanguine conclusion appears premature.

September 2001
Human Rights and the Lessons of History
by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom
When attempting to bring pressure on Beijing, the United States should stop using vague universal standards or comparisons with the contemporary United States. Washington's criticisms of the Chinese Communist Party should instead build on Beijing's own claims about history and politics.

September 2001
China's Media: Between Politics and the Market
by Judy Polumbaum
Were it not for the shifting sands into which the bold and the hapless alike sometimes fall, the persistence of official rhetoric portraying media as the standard-bearer of correct guidance and orientation would seem laughable. At the least it is irreversibly anachronistic.

September 2001
Tibet: Myths and Realities
by Barry Sautman
As the myths surrounding the Tibetan cause are challenged by scholars, emigre leaders may reconsider their claim that an independent Tibet is inevitable. And China's leaders may confront the self-delusion that because the Tibet question will end with the Dalai Lama, a compromise settlement is unnecessary.

September 2001
Hong Kong: Still "One Country, Two Systems"?
by Craig N. Canning
After four years of Hong Kong self-rule, the overriding question remains whether the "one country, two systems" experiment is working. So far the answer is yes-with some qualification.

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."