– U.S. Senator Jim Webb (Dem. VA) recently met with the Burmese Junta and Aung San Suu Kyi and successfully secured the relief of the John Yettah, the Americans whose odd actions initiated the latest Aung San Suu Kyi trial and conviction. If the Obama Administration really wants to take take proactive and pragmatic steps […]
– Former Filipino President Corazon Aquino, the nations first female president, died at age 76 from colon cancer. Current president, Gloria Magapacal-Arroyo, who was a protege of Aquino, before a split with her over corruption charges, has declared a 10 day period of national mourning. Aquino is best known for being the widow of Benigno […]
United States and China to Cooperate on Climate Change and Energy is the word from the excellent weekly, “EERE Network News,” put out by DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). As I noted recently here, DOE Secretary Steven Chu was in China recently and the pressure is building on the Chinese to […]
Hosted by the Obama Administration, the U.S. and China are holding two-days of top-level bi-lateral talks in Washington, D.C. this week. The talks are being held Mon-Tues, July 27-28th and will cover a broad range of economic, national security, diplomatic, energy and environmental issues. China sent a 150-man delegation led by State Councilor Dai Bingguo […]
I wrote before that – Future political integration is dependent on ASEAN resolving its many territorial disputes. There is still a high level of nationalism in the region; member-countries are suspicious of each other due to centuries of conflict, followed by colonial isolation. These disputes were recently surveyed on Capital Hill, by Richard P. Cronin, […]
The United States maybe in the initial stages of a Southeast Asian foreign policy overhaul; the Obama Administration is not only reconsidering its sanctions against Myanmar, but also reevaluating America’s policy toward the entire Southeast Asian region. Brian McCartan has an informative article on the recent removal of Cambodia and Laos from the United States’ […]
Notwithstanding the paralysis of the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round and the current global economic recession, bilateral and regional trade deals have continued to progress in Southeast Asia. Over the last decade, ASEAN has negotiated free trade agreements (FTA) at breakneck speeds, signing deals with Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. It is also in the […]
In light of this week’s racially motivated violence and unrest in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Province it may be helpful to reassess China’s ethnic policies in the Autonomous Region. They have been called everything from “genocide” to “stability promotion” but what they really happen to be lies somewhere in between. Since the 1950s the Chinese government […]
Australian Foreign Minister Steven Smith stated today that Stern Hu, General Manager of Rio Tinto China, was detained on espionage charges earlier this week. Hu’s firm, Rio Tinto, is a major Australian supplier of iron ore (a necessary ingredient for making steel). The company is currently negotiating annual contracts with China that dictate pricing terms […]
Memo to Obama Administration: Now would be a good time to re-hyphenate your India policy, less India-Pakistan more India-China. Rising Sino-Indian tensions are causing people, including this blogger, to wonder whether Obama has a plan to deal with a pivotal security challenge of the 21st Century: the management of Chinese ambitions and Indian anxieties. It […]
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev attempted to allay global fears that Moscow is trying to amass access to natural resources this week during a trip through Egypt, Nigeria, Namibia and Angola as he signed billion dollar energy deals providing Russia a greater foothold in Africa . In Angola, Medvedev emphasized that these resource contracts were important […]
Cross-strait relations between the Chinese mainland and the Republic of Taiwan have made significant progress with an extension of goodwill to Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which strives for Taiwanese independence. Earlier this month, Kaohsiung municipality Mayor Chen Chu became the highest ranking DPP official to have set foot on the mainland. Not only is […]
I just wanted to flag what I thought were some pretty good items out and about in the media lately. China and Climate Change – One of the go-to guys for progressive economics, Paul Krugman, has a column today, Empire of Carbon, that is both pessimistic and optimistic. (Boy, do I know that feeling when […]
A recent analysis of China’s media censorship practices deftly analyzes and explains the country’s system of repression and control of the media by using the threat of economically punishment. The piece, published on May 2 in the Far Eastern Economic Review, is aptly titled “China’s Commercialization of Censorship“. The piece not only explains how China […]
OPEC and large Asian oil consuming countries led by Japan, India and China met on Sunday for the third Asian Ministerial Energy Roundtable. The group’s goal is to To foster dialogue between Asia’s resource producers, primarily Middle East countries, and consumers, such as China and India, and to send a message to the world that […]