East Asia Archive

When the Nobel committee selected Liu Xiaobo as the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, the distinction brought unwanted attention to China. For obvious reasons, Beijing did not want the world honoring a man who has dedicated decades to challenging the country’s political system. But Beijing, in fact, seems uncomfortable with any kind of attention. Earlier this year, when the Chinese economy overtook Japan’s to become the second-largest in the world, Chinese officials seemed determined to downplay what is by any measure an impressive achievement, declaring that the rising Chinese powerhouse remains “a developing country.” To be sure, China […]

Since the financial crisis broke in 2008, the United Nations Security Council has looked like a poor relation to the newly empowered Group of Twenty (G-20). While world leaders tackled the crisis at biannual G-20 summits, ambassadors in New York got on with the daily grind of reviewing peace operations and routinely condemning far-flung atrocities. The council has occasionally been in the limelight, not least during this summer’s tortuous negotiations over new sanctions on Iran. But a top-level meeting on the council’s role convened by Turkey this September was an illustrative bore, producing a statement calling for a “continuous process […]

One of the pitfalls of the kind of quick analysis that goes into blog posts is that it’s possible, and sometimes even necessary, to click that “publish” button before an argument is fully formed or developed. In my case, when that happens, what’s often missing are the intermediate thought processes that lead from whatever triggers a post to its takeaway. In reading back over it, I think this post on Asian currency cooperation from yesterday is a good example of what I’m talking about. The Ulrich Volz article that triggered the post essentially argued that singling out the yuan exchange […]

Writing at the East Asia Forum, Ulrich Volz argues that instead of pressuring China to allow the yuan to appreciate, we should be encouraging a regional approach to East Asian currency exchange rates. The problem with leaning on any one currency with regard to the dollar, but in isolation to the others, is that it threatens the exchange-rate stability upon which the increasingly specialized intra-regional chain of production depends. A coordinated regional approach, by contrast, would stabilize intra-regional networks independently of the dollar, thereby allowing for greater flexibility of the whole vis à vis external markets. In other words, the […]

After decades of peace and growing prosperity, the strategic environment in Asia is increasingly marked by tension and rivalry. China’s rise as an economic and military power has forced its neighbors to reassess their relative standing. Some, like India, have pushed back directly against growing Chinese influence where they can. Others, like Vietnam, have set aside historical enmity to seek closer ties with the United States. Meanwhile, a region-wide arms race is gathering steam, especially in naval capabilities. World Politics Review takes this opportunity to review the strategic environment in Asia through recently published articles on the Balance of Power […]

According to Sourabh Gupta, we’ve all been a bit quick to label China the neighborhood bully when it comes to the recent standoff over a Chinese trawler captain that Japan detained for fishing in coastal waters of the disputed Senkaku Island chain. The reason? The two countries already have in place coastal fisheries agreements that explicitly and wisely decouple fisheries disputes from any larger territorial disputes, for the express purpose of preventing them from triggering the kind of diplomatic incident that ultimately took place. And those agreements clearly give legal jurisdiction over any infractions off of the Senkaku Islands to […]