China’s Leaders: Who Holds the Real Power?

Sometime in the next few weeks, the Chinese Communist Party will likely convene its Party Congress, which meets every five years to set major policies and choose its Central Committee of about 370 members. This year a major leadership change will take place. China watchers are scrutinizing the personality and goals of Vice President Xi Jinping, […]

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China’s Online Commenters Greet First Aircraft Carrier With Doubt, Disdain

China has just taken another step in the direction of becoming a military power. On Tuesday, it put into service its first aircraft carrier, named the “Liaoning” after China’s northeastern Liaoning Province. According to the Ministry of National Defense, the carrier’s entry into service “has important meaning for raising the level of the modernization of China’s […]

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War By Other Means: China’s Political Uses of Seapower

China’s recent assertiveness in the South China Seas is a harbinger of things to come.  Beijing’s seapower project and the enormous resources it has enjoyed have opened up new strategic vistas for Chinese leaders and military commanders.  With larger and more capable seagoing forces at its disposal, Beijing is well positioned to fashion sophisticated strategies […]

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China’s First Aircraft Carrier Enters Service

China‘s first aircraft carrier has entered into service, the defence ministry says. The 300m (990ft) Liaoning – named after the province where it was refitted – is a refurbished Soviet ship purchased from Ukraine. For now the carrier has no operational aircraft and will be used for training. But China says the vessel, which has undergone extensive sea […]

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As Recriminations Over Anti-Japanese Protests Mount, Deep Divisions in China Emerge

The protest, argued all those engaged, was a spectacle of solidarity, and it appeared so at first glance: Beginning September 16, anti-Japanese grievances that had been simmering for months over the Diaoyu Islands, called the Senkaku in Japanese, overflowed into Chinese streets, engulfing more than a dozen cities in an arc along the country’s eastern seaboard. […]

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Is China Burning?

Chinese streets were quiet today after anti-Japan protests, many of them violent, rocked more than a 100 cities last week.  Large demonstrations continued through Tuesday, the 81st anniversary of Japan’s invasion of Manchuria. The disturbances, triggered by a territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, are commonly described as the worst anti-Japan riots […]

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China’s Brainwashed Youth

When the Japanese army invaded China in 1931, Mao Zedong, in those days still a guerrilla fighter, turned and ran. Chiang Kai-shek, China’s nominal president at the time, stayed behind to fight the Japanese in his wartime capital of Chongqing, but Mao’s Communist Party fled to the north to establish a base of anti-Japanese resistance in […]

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