In The News

Is China Up to the Challenge?

David Shambaugh November 21, 2012
China has installed a new leadership team, but no one should hold his breath waiting for dramatic reforms, suggests China scholar David Shambaugh. China’s leaders understand the challenges of corruption, slowing growth, ethnic discontent, strained relations with neighbor states and trade partners, but may find these difficult to address. Shambaugh lists four constraints for the new generation of...

Obama’s Global Challenges

Bruce Stokes November 9, 2012
The US has the world’s largest economy and military and, like it or not, citizens around the world recognize that they must live with the presidential choice of US voters. Political analysts have estimated that US presidents tend to keep about 75 percent of their promises, and President Barack Obama has maintained a higher rate, reported at more than 80 percent during his first term in office....

Reelected Obama Looks at Fiscal Cliff

David Dapice November 7, 2012
President Barack Obama has won the hard fought battle for a second term. But he has no time to rest or celebrate. The president and US politicians must hurry to put finances in order, warns economist David Dapice. Congress failing to agree on raising taxes or cut spending invoked a deus ex machina of painful automatic cuts and deadlines. In summer of 2011, the US Congress came close to...

No Ancient Wisdom for China

James McGregor October 8, 2012
Economic growth and steady job creation stabilize societies. Yet China has unleashed a form of capitalist growth that few other nations dare follow, what author James McGregor calls “authoritarian capitalism.” The system achieves rapid economic growth based on tremendous government support for state-owned firms, led by powerful Communist Party leaders. But analysts and reformers in China argue...

Behind the Iron Curtain

David Hawk September 28, 2012
Isolation from the rest of the world, a shroud of obsessive secrecy, allows North Korean leaders to brutalize their own citizens. A ruined economy leads to desperation, with thousands of escapes reported in recent years. The horrific stories from victims take years to emerge, only after prisoners escape and survive – spending months hiding and traveling through China and Southeast Asia until they...

East Asia’s Free for All

Frank Ching August 30, 2012
More than half a century has passed since Japan occupied China or Korea. Mistrust and bitterness linger, with intense nationalism and territorial disputes flaring over two sets of small islands in the East China Sea – Senkakus/Diaoyu and Takeshima/Dokdo. The value of the islands extends beyond land and reputation, with deposits of oil and natural gas possibly resting in the nearby seabed. The...

Pakistan’s Taliban Nightmare

Zahid Hussain August 23, 2012
More than a decade of war in Afghanistan has devastated Pakistan economically and politically. Yet Pakistan is key to Afghan security, capable of acting as a regional enforcer or spoiler as the US and NATO plan to withdraw forces from Afghanistan before the end 2014. Contrary to what’s widely believed in the West, Pakistan isn’t pushing for Taliban rule in Afghanistan, but prefers that a...