In 1949, Taiwan's Nationalist Party or Kuomintang (KMT) was defeated by the communists and fled from the mainland to Taiwan. At that time the party's future looked dim. Recently there is pessimism in the party not heard since those days. Thrown out of power for... MORE

By Willy Wo-Lap Lam Chinese military forces have just finished an elaborate war game off the Fujian coast that involved more than 100,000 crack troops as well as the latest missiles, jetfighters and submarines. High on the agenda of President Jiang Zemin's recent trip to... MORE

By Jean-Pierre Cabestan Since Chen Shui-bian's election as president of Taiwan (Republic of China) in March 2000, Beijing has constantly refused to resume its unofficial dialogue with Taipei. Channels of indirect communication, however, have multiplied. China's impending entry into the WTO and its need to... MORE

After close to fifteen years of on-again, off-again, arduous negotiations, the People's Republic of China (PRC) is finally poised to enter the World Trade Organization, the institution governing the international trading system. Premised on the principles of free trade, the WTO requires new member nations... MORE

During the June Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Shanghai, the United States made further concessions to Chinese demands in order to move Beijing closer to World Trade Organization (WTO) membership. The concessions gave China de facto status as a developing country, which will allow... MORE

They are never reported in the official New China News Agency. Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or government spokesmen would not even confirm that the so-called Beidaihe conferences exist. Yet every summer since the 1980s, senior leaders from Beijing and the regions have gathered at a... MORE

By David G. Wiencek The South China Sea is a potential international security flashpoint stemming primarily from several significant territorial disputes between the countries of the region. But recent attention in this area has focused on a different set of concerns. On April 1, 2001,... MORE

By Arthur Waldron As the Jamestown Foundation inaugurates its coverage of China it may be worth considering the parallels-and the differences-between the Soviet Union of a dozen years ago and the People's Republic of China today. In particular, let us ask whether China's future may... MORE

By Willy Wo-Lap Lam One of the favorite sayings in Beijing's political circles compares the achievements of the three "leadership cores." "Mao Zedong, the core of the first generation leadership, created heaven and earth," so goes the bon mot. "Deng Xiaoping, the core of the... MORE

By Richard D. Fisher, Jr. President George W. Bush's decision to seek a European conventional submarine design to sell to Taiwan, and the brusque refusal of two European countries to do so, highlights Europe's increasing conflicts about arms sales to China and Taiwan. As a... MORE