Days after his dominant showing at the 20th Party Congress, General Secretary Xi Jinping led the newly appointed Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC) on a visit to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) base of operations in the War with Japan and the Chinese Civil War in... MORE

Introduction In mid-July, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy and the Pakistan Navy (PN) held the “Sea Guardians-2” exercise in the waters off Shanghai (China Brief, October 4; Pakistan Television, July 12). The joint naval drills focused on neutralizing maritime security threats, particularly those that... MORE

Introduction Chinese diplomats contend that Beijing’s position on the “Russia-Ukraine conflict” (俄乌冲突  E wu chongtu) or the “Ukraine issue” (乌克兰问题, Wukelan wenti ) is “consistent and clear” (一贯的、明确的,  yiguan de, mingque de) (People’s Republic of China Ministry of Foreign Affairs [FMPRC], May 5). However, China’s... MORE

Introduction In a recent interview, Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo confirmed that both Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin plan to attend the upcoming Group of 20 (G20) summit in Bali from November 15-16 (Channel News Asia [CNA], August 19). The summit... MORE

Throughout the Russo-Ukrainian war and a period of tense relations between Russia and Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan has followed a proactive track of transport diplomacy to strengthen its geopolitical and geo-economic position through Eurasian rail trade. The main aim of Tashkent’s diplomacy is to transform itself from... MORE

While German politics remained relatively stable under former Chancellor Angela Merkel and we may observe a certain level of continuity under her successor, Olaf Scholz, Polish politics have undergone a profound change since 2015, when the United Right (Law and Justice) took charge. This shift... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” against Ukraine has severely impacted Eurasian transport logistics, particularly cargo traveling along the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) bound for Europe via Russian Railways (RZD). In 2021, China Railway Express (CRE), a subsidiary... MORE

Like most outside powers who have come to Central Asia, China has sought to treat the region as a single whole, a place from which it can extract natural resources and sell its own goods at a profit. The region represents a blank slate on... MORE

The latest summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, held on September 15 and 16, made numerous headlines in the international media (see EDM, September 19). Analysts watched two main summit developments most closely: how far its participants would go in asserting... MORE

General Secretary Xi Jinping has scored an overwhelming victory at the recently concluded 20th Party Congress and the First Plenum of the new Central Committee. Xi’s picks for the Politburo and its Standing Committee consist of unalloyed supporters, but these officials are also largely apparatchiks... MORE