Latest Articles about China and the Asia-Pacific
The Lessons China Taught Itself: Why the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Matters
China’s changing political landscape and the recent accession of India to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) marks the beginning of a new chapter for one of China’s first self-founded multilateral groupings. First established in June 2001 by China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, the... MORE
As SCO Admits New Members, Central Asian Countries Want Greater Focus on Economic Issues
From June 8 to 10, the Chinese port city of Qingdao hosted the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s (SCO) annual head of states meeting. For the first time, seventeen years after the creation of SCO in 2001, the organization officially welcomed new members—India and Pakistan. Two years... MORE
Reminding Russia About Its Lost Seat at the G7 Table
This year’s G7 summit, held in Quebec, Canada, on June 8–9, was overcome by seemingly unprecedented controversies even before United States President Donald Trump suggested bringing Russia back into this elite club of the world’s largest liberal-democratic economies. Only the newly appointed Italian Prime Minister... MORE
Terror in the Sulu Archipelago: A Profile of Filipino Abu Sayyaf Leader Yassir Igasan
The Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) of the southern Philippines has always found itself perched on a fine line between Islamic jihad and organized crime. [1] Active since the early 1990s, some factions of the group are devoted solely to kidnapping-for-ransom, though some leaders have tried... MORE
Rice Bunnies and Iron Rice Bowls: Women’s Rights and National Security in China
Since January 2018, as part of a movement some experts are calling the largest student demonstration since June 1989, thousands of college students across China have been organizing both online and offline to demand that their universities take action against professors accused of sexually assaulting... MORE
Cyber Sovereignty and the PRC’s Vision for Global Internet Governance
Over the past eighteen months, major Western media outlets have followed every step of Facebook’s slow and painful fall from grace, including the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal. However, while the stories focus heavily on Trump and Putin, it is CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping who... MORE
Living in the Day after Tiananmen: A Special China Brief Issue
A note from the Jamestown Foundation on the occasion of our first issue on human rights in the PRC: June 5, 2018 marks twenty-nine years since the day after Deng Xiaoping ordered the PLA to forcefully put down pro-democracy protests in central Beijing. A great... MORE
Dangerous Amateurs: Indonesia’s New Generation of Jihadists
Shortly after 7 AM, on Sunday May 13, a woman on a motorcycle, Puji Kuswait, with two young girls also riding on the vehicle, approached Santa Maria Catholic Church, a prominent building in Surabaya, in eastern Java. A church volunteer tried to prevent the trio... MORE
The Many Sides of Tentative Sino-Japanese Rapprochement
A recent, unexpected rapprochement between China and Japan has emerged more quickly than many observers thought possible. And unlike previous instances since the two countries recognized each other in 1972, the initiative this time seems to have come from the Chinese side. It must be... MORE
China’s Evolving Naval Force Structure: Beyond Sino-US Rivalry
During a recent discussion with PLA analysts, one interlocutor observed to the author that American strategists are slaves of their own history. That is, in interpreting the facts on the ground Americans cannot help but look to their own history to interpret the nature of... MORE