East Asia Archive

Vietnam’s prime minister, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, concluded a six-day state visit to China last week that included meetings with President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and top legislator Zhang Dejiang. Phuc also attended the China-ASEAN Expo and China-ASEAN Business and Investment Summit in Nanning and made a business-focused visit to Hong Kong. But the trip’s primary focus was deepening economic and people-to-people ties, which have been strained in recent years by spillover from China and Vietnam’s disputes in the South China Sea. During Phuc’s meetings in Beijing, he and his Chinese counterparts seemed eager to de-emphasize those South China Sea […]

China has a growing terrorism problem. For many years Beijing believed it could avoid transnational extremism simply by staying out of the security affairs of other nations. But this no longer works. Just as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan found that leaving extremists alone did not protect them from terrorism, China is reluctantly being drawn into the conflict with global Islamic extremism. Two things are driving this. China’s growing international presence, both governmental and business, has set off an “antibody reaction.” Chinese nationals have become targets of terrorism simply because they are foreigners from a rich great power, rather than because […]