Latest China Brief Articles

China Flaunts Growing Naval Capabilities

The year 2009 is set to become a watershed in the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) development into a force capable of long-distance, multi-pronged power projection. This is despite the perception that owing to the global recession, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership under President Hu... MORE

Hu Jintao’s ‘Six-Points’ Proposition to Taiwan

On the eve of 2009, the President of the People’s Republic of China and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee, Hu Jintao, delivered a capstone speech commemorating the 30th anniversary of the "Message to Compatriots in Taiwan" (Xinhua News Agency, December... MORE

The Ascent and Plateau of China’s Urban Centers

Urbanization in China has an obvious economic but also a profound social and political significance for the authorities in Beijing. It can not be simply understood as a concomitant output of China's industrialization, nor does it only refer to the changes in a population's geographic... MORE

China’s Poor, Young and Restless

The "Economic Blue Paper," a report published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) on December 2 (China Brief, December 8), stated there will be 6.1 million college graduates entering the job market in 2009, among those graduates some 30 percent to 40 percent—approximately... MORE

Fusing Chinese Commercial and Military Aviation Industries

The year 2008 will be remembered as a turning point in the history of China’s aviation industry from its slow to accelerated pace of restructuring. The restructuring process began in June 2007 with the separation of the commercial aircraft industry from its military sector. The... MORE

The Russo-Chinese Energy Follies

Chinese and Russian officials habitually proclaim that their bilateral relations have never been better and thereby invoke a great congruence in their agenda for the international regime.  Thus Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director of the U.S. and Canada Institute in the Russian Academy of Sciences, writes... MORE