The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) “Defense Policy Blue Paper,” could not have come out at a more opportune time for Taiwan’s main opposition party. Less than a month after its June 6 publication, Taiwan’s defense establishment was thrown into turmoil by the death of Corporal... MORE

Recent developments have shown the volunteer recruitment systems in Taiwan and China moving on decidedly different trajectories. The Taiwan military’s attempt to implement a volunteer transition fully by the end of 2015, which already faced serious problems, appears to be in jeopardy after the death... MORE

The Mongolian Minister of Mining, Davaajav Gankhuyag, meeting with journalists in an August 9 press conference, confirmed the continuing decline in coal exports to China, Mongolia’s most important trade partner: “The slow speed of economic growth of Mongolia is caused by a drop in China’s... MORE

Every August 1, like clockwork, China’s official media publishes editorials commemorating “Army Day,” the anniversary of the founding of the Chinese military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). This Army Day was no exception, as the media carried editorials celebrating the 86th anniversary of the PLA.... MORE

Writing in the last two issues of China Brief, Andrew Chubb raised an important analytical question about reading Chinese official sources: how much sense can we make of them without thinking about the audiences expected to read them? Chubb focused on the hawkish rhetoric of... MORE

If outspoken Chinese military officers are, as Part One suggested, neither irrelevant loudmouths, nor factional warriors, nor yet the voice of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on foreign policy, and are instead experts in the PLA-party propaganda system, then what might explain the bad publicity... MORE

On June 27, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi gave a speech at the World Peace Forum on the new foreign policy concept called “Major Country Diplomacy with Chinese Characteristics” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, June 27) [1]. Delivered at Tsinghua University in Beijing, the speech was... MORE

The senior cadres currently meeting for their annual brainstorming session at the seaside Beidaihe retreat are putting the finishing touches on a blueprint for seminal reforms to the Chinese economy (Duowei, August 7; South China Morning Post, August 5; Xinhua, August 5). Given the signals... MORE

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “mass line” (qunzhong luxian) education campaign echoes in content and format a similar effort initiated by Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, to improve the party’s governance capacity. The current campaign’s effort to leverage Mao’s authority points to an increased sense of... MORE

On July 30, Xi Jinping oversaw a meeting of the Politburo to discuss economic reform, ahead of the widely-anticipated discussions at Beidaihe leading up to the release of a new economic reform package at the Third Plenum in October (Xinhua, July 30). The official press... MORE