East Asia Archive

In the short time since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office in May, he has revolutionized his country’s foreign relations. Modi has defied conventional wisdom, upended national traditions and launched a peripatetic campaign of rebuilding India’s ties to other nations. The hallmark of India’s foreign policy under Modi is the pursuit of tangible, preferably signed results. Its motivating objective is fomenting investment and economic growth. Ideological concerns have been relegated far down the priority list. Modi’s international relations early in his term are reminiscent of Turkey’s old “Zero Problems” formula from a few years ago, a philosophy that collapsed […]

Last month, Taiwan’s ruling Kuomintang (KMT) party lost local elections, receiving only 40 percent of the vote. The defeat caused Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou to reshuffle his Cabinet and step down as KMT party chairman. In an email interview, Joel Atkinson, research fellow at the Institute for Poverty Alleviation and International Development at Yonsei University, South Korea, discussed Taiwan’s domestic politics. WPR: What factors led to the Kuomintang’s defeat in local elections, and what are the implications for the national-level political balance with the Democratic Progressive Party? Joel Atkinson: The results reflect widespread dissatisfaction with where Taiwan is going. The […]

I had the opportunity to spend the past week in China and South Korea discussing various issues related to U.S. policy toward Asia with government representatives, academics and think tank counterparts. In general, I found that some previously hot-topic issues had decreased in salience, even as there remains confusion over U.S. President Barack Obama’s strategic and tactical priorities in the region during his remaining two years in office. One takeaway in particular seemed strikingly clear: The next U.S. president, whether Democrat or Republican, will need to take early action to dispel the misperception that Washington is either unwilling to defend […]

For centuries, the trade routes of the Silk Road have evoked spices, empires and deserts. However, if a new strategy planned by the Chinese government proves successful, it may well come to be associated with China’s ascent in world politics. On Nov. 8, during the annual meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged $40 billion for the creation of a Silk Road Investment Fund to “break the connectivity bottleneck” in Asia. Only five days after the APEC announcement, the China Securities Journal reported that “relevant departments” are trying to establish a private […]

The recent announcement that investigators seized a metric ton of cash, jewels, antiques and other luxury goods from the villa of retired Gen. Xu Caihou sheds new light on corruption within China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Xu, who had been a vice chairman of the Chinese Communist Party’s powerful Central Military Commission (CMC), was the second senior PLA commander to be charged with corruption in recent years. In 2012, Gen. Gu Junshan, a deputy commander of the PLA General Logistics Department, was detained after years of rumors that he had been involved in under-the-table deals involving PLA-controlled land. Several active […]

As the end of each year rolls around, foreign policy pundits inevitably churn out columns reviewing the past 12 months and guessing at what comes next. These pieces will make for consistently bleak reading this year. Viewed in geopolitical terms, 2014 has been egregiously nasty. It is now conventional wisdom that the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, coupled with China’s increasing assertiveness in the Pacific, signal the looming implosion of the American-led international order. Like most conventional wisdoms, this may prove to be incorrect. While many analysts will make pronouncements about the future of the world in 2015, […]