China Archive

It’s déjà vu all over again. Where’s the beef? And speak loudly, but forget the stick. Those were among the clichés that came to mind during the Trump administration’s China trade policy gyrations over the past few weeks. Almost exactly a year after Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced the results of a “herculean” effort to get a deal with China to boost U.S. exports of energy and agricultural goods, and six months after Ross announced another set of deals purportedly worth $250 billion in increased American exports of natural gas, soybeans, beef and pork, the White House released a joint […]

Say you had just awoken from a long slumber and glanced at today’s headlines. You would conclude, no doubt, that Iran and North Korea are America’s greatest security threats. The attention those admittedly malign nations receive from the Trump administration surpasses all other adversaries or potential adversaries. In reality, though, Iran and North Korea are second-tier challenges, unlikely to strike directly at vital U.S. national interests. Russia is more worrisome, given its recent and continuing political meddling against the United States and President Donald Trump’s perplexing lack of concern with its attacks on American elections. Ultimately, though, Russia is devious […]

The historic inter-Korean summit on April 27 drew global attention, but it overshadowed another important meeting that began the same day between two other neighbors in Asia with their own fraught history. Billed as an “informal summit” between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuhan, China, it was a welcome development in their strained relationship that revealed the domestic priorities driving both countries in the short term, as well as the strategic undercurrents that are shaping the Asia-Pacific. Modi’s visit to the central Chinese city of Wuhan was seen by some as an effort to […]

Forty years after China embarked on the economic reforms that have helped transform it from an isolated and impoverished communist outpost into an increasingly confident and capable global power, a growing number of observers in the United States have, understandably, concluded that Washington adopted the wrong strategy toward Beijing. Their judgment is largely rooted in two propositions. First, the United States was mistaken to assume, or hope, that China would become more democratic as its economy grew. Second, by persisting with efforts to integrate China into the postwar international order, the United States ultimately enabled the rise of a country […]