East Asia Archive

The American political discourse is rife with fear-threat reactions regarding rising China, embodied most saliently in the Obama administration’s strategic pivot to East Asia and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s repeated promise to hold “currency manipulator” China responsible for its economic sabotage of the U.S. economy. Eagerly cashing in on the hype, last week’s Economist greeted us with the most lurid of covers heralding — yet again! — “the rise of state capitalism.” We are immediately informed by the subtitle that this is “the emerging world’s new model.” Sad to say, this is the state of strategic thinking in the […]

Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba paid a two-day visit to Turkey earlier this month. In an email interview, Selçuk Esenbel, a Japan specialist at Bosphorus University, discussed Japan-Turkey relations. WPR: How deep are diplomatic and trade relations between Japan and Turkey, and what is their recent trajectory? Selçuk Esenbel: Since Japan and what was to ultimately become the modern state of Turkey first established relations in 1873, ties have been friendly with no serious conflicts of interest. Geographic distance has hampered the development of close trade ties, but generally speaking Turkey has always been very friendly toward Japan. Since the […]

Taiwanese voters will head to the polls on Jan. 14 to cast their ballots in a close presidential race that has focused largely on how to address relations with China, which claims Taiwan as a province. Ma Ying-jeou, the incumbent and chairman of the Kuomintang or Chinese Nationalist Party, has worked to strengthen ties across the Taiwan Strait. With James Soong, a candidate who trails a distant third, expected to bleed off some potential Kuomintang support, Ma is neck-and-neck with Tsai Ing-wen, the opposition candidate whose Democratic Progressive Party favors independence from the mainland. Expanding beyond the media focus on […]

Faced with irreversible long-term fiscal pressures to reduce the U.S. defense budget, late last week the Obama administration began unveiling its supremely focused rationale behind future cuts. The result is an elegantly slim strategic statement (.pdf) that indirectly names its deepest fear in its title: “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense.” According to the document, over the past decade the U.S. military force structure has been “by necessity” dangerously skewed by “today’s wars.” Now America must start “preparing for future challenges” arising from a frightening and apparently imminent “inflection point” in East Asia’s military balance of power. […]

According to an unnamed administration official cited by the Atlantic’s Steve Clemons this week, Vice President Joe Biden has been tasked by the White House with overseeing U.S.-China relations. As such, Biden will work directly with his Chinese counterpart, Vice President Xi Jinping, who is currently responsible for the Chinese side of the strategic dialogue between Beijing and Washington, but is widely expected to succeed to the Chinese presidency later this year. As Clemons concluded, the move reflects the Obama administration’s assessment that the “management of U.S.-China policy has become so central to a vast array of other policy challenges […]

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell met with his counterparts in China on Jan. 4 to discuss the situation in North Korea. The two discussed the maintenance of peace and stability in the country in the wake of the recent leadership change, as well as food aid and a possible resumption of talks over North Korea’s nuclear disarmament, according to Campbell. World News Videos by NewsLook