With the summer winding down along with the tensions in the South China Sea, China engaged the principle disputants of this round of regional tensions. China hosted Philippine President Benigno Aquino III for a five-day state visit beginning August 30. In Beijing, Chinese and Vietnamese... MORE

On August 24, the head of Kazakhstan’s national nuclear monopoly Kazatomprom announced plans to increase its uranium fuel pellet shipments to China by one hundredfold,  from 2 metric tons this year to 200 metric tons in 2013 or 2014 (Bloomberg, August 22). This is welcome... MORE

On June 29, 2011, for the first time in a decade, a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force (PLAAF) J-11 crossed the center line of the Taiwan Strait in an attempted intercept of a U.S. Air Force (USAF) U-2 reconnaissance aircraft conducting a monitoring mission... MORE

The world caught a rare glimpse of Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping during U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s five-day visit to China last month. Xi is due to succeed Hu Jintao as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at its 18th Congress in... MORE

In mid-July, Taiwan published the 2011 edition of its defense white paper (“National Defense Report”). This was actually the third such document released in the last 38 months—the Ministry of National Defense (MND) having published a white paper in the final days of the Chen... MORE

Remarks made by Major General Jin Yi’nan of China’s National Defense University at a conference earlier this year provide new insights into Beijing’s reaction to foreign espionage, which Jin believes showed moral degeneracy within China. Jin’s lengthy speech originally appeared on and was later removed... MORE

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit at Astana on June 15, 2011 signalled Asia’s regional security order is slowly shifting as Afghanistan appears to be angling to become a new observer member in this decade-old Central Asian body (Ria Novosti, May 16). The Sino-Afghan relationship... MORE

Observers of politics in the Arab world and the broader Middle East continue to scrutinize China’s place in the region.  Dissecting the nuances of Chinese diplomacy and foreign policy towards such a large swath of energy-rich territory that is so deeply ensconced in a U.S.-led... MORE

China’s plans to construct more nuclear power plants in coming years than any other country have to surmount a major obstacle: China lacks sufficient domestic uranium to power them. China’ s cadre of scientists and engineers are busy seeking to develop alternative nuclear fuel cycles... MORE

While the July 23 bullet train crash in the east China city of Wenzhou has damaged the credibility of the country’s high-speed railway program, Beijing’s apparent failure to prescribe effective remedial measures such as restructuring the Ministry of Railways (MOR) has cast doubt on the... MORE