East Asia Archive

This past week’s 44th annual U.S.-South Korea Security Consultative meeting chaired by South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin and U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta provides an opportunity to benchmark the health of the alliance at a moment when at least one of the presidential administrations, that of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, is certain to leave office soon. At their meeting, the two countries’ defense establishments agreed to continue transitioning wartime operational command responsibilities to the South Korean military, retain 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea, expand U.S.-South Korea cooperation in new areas such as outer space and the cyber […]

As China’s once-in-a-decade political transition nears, the announcement this week of the promotions of five generals has brought the parallel transition in China’s military leadership into focus. The appointees are widely expected to become members of the Central Military Commission (CMC), the ultimate source of military authority in the country, according to the New York Times. Two experts who spoke with Trend Lines said these individuals are a piece of the larger puzzle of China’s military modernization. “These individuals are going to bring a worldview, a set of experiences, that will shape how China becomes a regional and global military,” […]

Following considerable speculation that it would be postponed or even cancelled, the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will convene in Beijing on Nov. 8. The meeting marks the beginning of the final leg of China’s extended leadership transition process and should give greater clarity on China’s direction in the coming decade. Over the past two years, China’s intricate and opaque leadership structure has been shaken to the core by a series of high-profile political scandals amid elevated economic uncertainty. Major disagreements on how to respond to these challenges have riven elite groups, and the factional coalition […]

Having already overseen a spectacular warming of ties with mainland China, with 18 signed cross-strait agreements to show for it, Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou took the latest step in his National Day speech on Oct. 10, approving a plan to allow both sides to set up representative offices on each other’s soil. But permitting Chinese officials to have a permanent presence on the de facto independent island is a controversial step, drawing inevitable comparisons to Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong, which is widely seen as meddling in politics there. On Sunday, Lin Join-sane, the new chairman of the Straits […]

With increasing tensions on display in the East and South China Sea, much attention has been given to the growing military capabilities of the People’s Republic of China. The attention is understandable: China recently commissioned its first aircraft carrier and is developing anti-ship ballistic missiles dubbed “carrier-killers.” But while China’s military build-up is in many ways being geared toward challenging America, no matter how unlikely a conflict between the two powers might be, an assessment of Chinese power must also gauge the prowess of Chinese forces against other possible challengers, especially the regional armed forces it could face in combat. […]

At the European Union-China Summit in Brussels last month, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao urged EU leaders to end the EU embargo on arms sales to China. In an email interview, Richard Bitzinger, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, discussed the EU arms ban on China. WPR: How is the ban currently affecting relations between the EU and China? Richard Bitzinger: Since being enacted in 1989, the ban has stood as an irritant to EU-China relations, but it has not harmed the relationship much, either when it comes to […]

In East Asia, warning signs are emerging that countries facing strained ties over continual territorial disputes are finding it increasingly difficult to isolate their economic decisions from their political disagreements. Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that China cancelled scheduled trips by its finance minister and central bank chief to the annual International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Tokyo, Japan. The article called this the latest example of how the “highly volatile territorial dispute” between China and Japan is beginning to damage the “huge economic relationship” between the second and third largest economies in the world. […]