On January 1, the Multifiber Agreement (MFA), which had established a worldwide quota system for textiles and apparel products since 1974, expired. With no quotas in place, China is poised to dominate the world textile industry, having built excess capacity to put into operation as... MORE

Next month is the 50th anniversary of the Bandung Conference, where Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and Indonesian President Sukarno set out to carve a space for Asian and African countries based on principles of mutual interest, respect for national sovereignty and non-alignment with either the... MORE

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao spent a substantial part of his post-National Peoples' Congress press conference on Sino-Japanese ties, offering an olive branch to Tokyo with his "three principles, three recommendations" – if it stays out of the Taiwan issue. But what has clearly changed Sino-Japanese... MORE

The impending termination of the EU's embargo on arms sales to China has implications beyond EU-U.S. and EU-China relations. The motives of the players in this drama, as well as the repercussions of the embargo's likely end, are many and diverse. Certainly, they go beyond... MORE

As recently as the 1980s, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) operated on military doctrines that evolved during World War II and military means preceding the war. The country's political and economic evolution had far outstripped its military capacities, engendering a credibility gap in the overall... MORE

The saga of Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa's fall from grace has highlighted Beijing's tightening grip over the Special Administrative Region (SAR), as well as the dicey future of the "one country, two systems" model. While Tung indicated last Thursday that he had submitted... MORE

The European Union (EU) is poised to lift its arms sales embargo on China, imposed in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, within the next few months. But the move may well exacerbate Europe's relationship not only with the United States but... MORE

China possesses one of the oldest, largest, and most diversified military-industrial complexes in the developing world: an agglomeration of around 1,000 enterprises employing some three million workers, including 300,000-plus engineers and technicians. Moreover, China is one of the few countries in the developing world to... MORE

While China's space activities are largely supervised by its military, the civilian aspects are administered by the Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA). Charles Vick, chief of the space policy division at the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists (FAS) said that "In general, we should not... MORE

The likelihood of Beijing putting more pressure on Pyongyang regarding the nuclear issue has decreased given Hu Jintao’s perception that a plethora of “anti-China” actions have been emanating from the Bush administration. This has increased the possibility of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) flaunting the... MORE