Latest Articles about China and the Asia-Pacific
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
Amid Taiwan Tensions, Airline Spat Shows Sino-US Failure to Communicate
On May 25, while the United States passed a weekend of rest and remembrance in commemoration of Memorial Day, Taiwan’s air force scrambled fighters to trail two H-6 heavy bombers, sent by the PLA Air Force to trace a half-circle around the island’s south and... MORE
Why India Won’t Play Its ‘Tibet Card’
On February 22, India’s Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale issued a directive calling on leaders and government officials to stay away from events planned by the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA)—the Tibetan government-in-exile—to mark the 60th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s exile to India. In his note,... MORE
Chinese-Russian Defense and Security Ties: Countering US Encirclement
China recently announced plans to contribute to Russian support of the Assad regime in Syria, just one of many ways in which Chinese-Russian security ties have strengthened over the past five years (MOFA, May 14). Since the early 2010s, the two countries have been brought... MORE
Moscow Set to Establish Second Military Base in Kyrgyzstan
After almost five years of fits and starts on the question, Moscow is set to open a second military base in Kyrgyzstan. With this strengthened military presence, Russia will be in a better position to respond to any militant or terrorist threats potentially spilling over... MORE
New Evidence for China’s Political Re-Education Campaign in Xinjiang
This article is condensed from a longer paper, available for download here. (Editor's note: longer paper was updated with corrections September 2018) Since summer of 2017, troubling reports in Western media outlets about large-scale detentions of ethnic Muslim minorities (including Uyghurs, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz) in... MORE
This article is condensed from a longer paper, available for download here. Since summer of 2017, troubling reports in Western media outlets about large-scale detentions of ethnic Muslim minorities (including Uyghurs, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz) in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have multiplied (The Guardian,... MORE