Personnel issues are set to dominate the First Session of the Tenth National People's Congress (NPC), due to convene on March 5. After having nailed down a sizeable number of senior Communist Party slots at the 16th CCP Congress last November, the Jiang Zemin (Shanghai)... MORE

By Jonathan Mirsky On Christmas Eve the Chinese government released Xu Wenli, the founder of the country's tiny Democratic Party, into American exile. Xu has spent sixteen of the last twenty-one years behind bars. The most interesting comments on this event came from John Kamm,... MORE

New Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chief Hu Jintao is relying on two primary weapons in waging what could be a protracted struggle against the Jiang Zemin or Shanghai Faction: legalism and populism. By stressing the imperative of obeying laws and regulations, he is reminding President... MORE

By Robyn Lim North Korea, taking advantage of America's preoccupation with Iraq, is out to provoke a new nuclear crisis--seeking assurances that it will not be next on President Bush's hit list, and demanding to be rewarded yet again for bad behavior. The United States,... MORE

By Thomas Woodrow China's navy is developing a Taiwan-scenario strategy to defeat U.S. naval forces by luring them into predetermined target areas and ambushing them with an array of anticarrier attack forces. Recent Chinese military exercises and military commentaries have illustrated in detail how Beijing... MORE

While the Chinese Communist Party pledged at its 16th Congress barely six weeks ago to justify its mandate of heaven by building a "comprehensive well-off society," it is also beefing up the country's control mechanism to squash challenges to the socialist order. Rhetoric aside, President... MORE

By Gordon G. Chang The Chinese gangs, as they have penetrated Japanese society, have gone beyond robbery and burglary, have branched out into more sophisticated criminal activities like forging credit cards and rigging pachinko machines. And kidnapping the innocent. As time has progressed, their acts... MORE

On December 7, voters in Taiwan's two metropolitan cities, Taipei and Kaohsiung, went to the polls to choose their mayors and the members of their respective city councils. Taipei, Taiwan's largest city and its capital, and Kaohsiung, the country's largest city in the south and... MORE

China's recent proposal to exchange its missiles deployed against Taiwan for reduced U.S. arms sales to Taiwan is an unsuccessful attempt at diplomatic linkage that will actually end up drawing increased scrutiny to China's own ongoing military and missile buildup, as well as its unwillingness... MORE

By Thomas Woodrow The transfer and sale of Chinese-origin nuclear weapons and missile technologies has started a spiraling cycle of proliferation with grave consequences for security in South and East Asia. Beijing has made nuclear and missile transfers directly and indirectly through proxy states such... MORE