China

Readers of this blog will find there is little new to be discussed in the much anticipated China Military Policy White Paper [Full English Text here.]    The paper was released 2 months late because military experts in Beijing wanted to take the time to add additional  nationalist spin to give additional consideration to specific issues […]

A couple of weeks ago, our colleague, Adam Minter wrote an article looking at  the Shanghainese response to the recent Sendai Earthquake.  It was a good read, but I wanted to flesh out the topic a bit,  expand it to the general Chinese internet blog/BBS (netizen world)  response to the earthquake.  Then, perhaps, look at […]

Last week, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao called for political reform once again, while at the same time he rejected (again) any comparisons between his country and the autocracies now collapsing in North Africa and the Middle East.  Premier Wen is right when he says that the current socio-economic conditions in China are nothing like the […]

Last week’s ruling by the WTO Appellate Body on the U.S. trade remedies regime went mostly unnoticed, due to the dramatic developments in Japan and Libya.  However, its implications could be significant… thought not immediate.  The Appellate Body reversed a previous panel decision which allowed the U.S. government to apply higher tariffs to imports from […]

This week the White House announced that Gary Locke, current Secretary at the U.S. Department of Commerce would success outgoing U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, who is stepping down to possibly run for president.  Mr. Locke is one of the two first ever Chinese-Americans to serve in the Cabinet, and is well known and […]

Amongst all the political upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa, with people rising against dictatorial regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere, this week China embarked on its annual legislative session.  The legislative session of the National People’s Congress, which officially enacts legislation, will rubber-stamp the government’s 12th Five-Year-Plan (2011-2015), which was […]

Two years ago, I wrote a long post discussing the political and economic relationship between Mainland China (People’s Republic of China) and Taiwan (Republic of China) ahead of  the implementation of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA).  The ECFA was signed on June 29, 2010, in Chongqing, PRC, and went into effect on September 12 […]

By now, everyone monitoring the developments in the Middle East can’t help but liken them to dominos: once the first dictatorship fell (in Tunisia), the rest were just a matter of time.  Of course societies do not behave like toys – what is common among the revolting populations of the Middle East is that they […]

This is a follow-up to Nasos’ earlier post on China’s response to the Egyptian Lotus Revolution.  As has already been discussed, China used it’s elaborate 30-50,000 man strong  internet shield, known as the Golden Shield (金盾工程: jīndùn gōngchéng) to censor references to the recent social upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa from the […]

Last year we saw developments in the EU-China trade relationship that can signify a greater convergence between these two trading partners.  The global financial crisis that led to temporary drop in western demand for Chinese goods during 2009 was followed by an aggressive investment strategy by China in 2010, acquiring a number of businesses in […]

News and Media coverage in China, is generally not my area of expertise… but this is the best account I have seen of the reaction by China’s authorities on developments in Egypt.  Willy Lam has an intimate knowledge of developments in China, which is why I am reproducing his recent commentary on Beijing’s response to […]

The recent official state visit to Washington, DC, by China’s President Hu Jintao, was as boring and as uneventful as all the experts expected to be but hoped it would not.  President Obama pulled out the red carpet for President Hu, with all the majesty and fanfare that the Chinese leader ‘deserves:’ two dinners at […]

There has been much discussion in the Western media as to what effect Chinese President Hu Jingtao’s recent State visit to the U.S. will have on the future trajectory of  Sino-U.S. relations, if any.  Due to the fact the world economy has been in a slump, with the U.S. at it’s center struggling to recover, […]

According to a recent article by Charles Wallace, posted on the Daily Finance (Currency Wars: How Ben Bernanke Outsmarted China), the U.S. has already taken the first ‘shot’ of the U.S.-China – often proclaimed, never materializing – trade war. Mr. Wallace reported that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s program of quantitative easing is targeting the Chinese […]

Last fall, an article by the Economist praised the consolidation of railway companies in the former Yugoslavia as a development that will ease the movement of freight from Turkey to Central Europe.  The Economist went on to argue that a future rail tunnel under the Bosporus and plans between Turkey and China to link Beijing […]