While the Middle East has a powerful claim on the world’s attention (or at least Washington’s), the world has no shortage of potentially explosive hotspots. Whether it’s conflicting claims on vital resources, or waterways and borders whose demarcation remains unsettled and contested, the world’s hotspots are simmering. Some are dangerously close to the boiling point; […]
One of the reasons why Tokyo’s relations with Seoul have been downplayed is that both sides, with newly-minted leaders, are playing a delicate political game of “no news is good news” in hopes of burying their vitriolic exchange of diplomatic barbs during previous administrations. The strategic partnership between Japan and South Korea has deteriorated to […]
The current crisis offers China and Japan an opportunity to create a framework for discussion that will allow their leaders to talk and meet. Read Here – Japan Times
One question typically receives little attention in connection with the ongoing dispute between Japan and China over the Senkaku Islands. That question is, what’s in it for the parties involved? To the extent this question is asked, China is accused of pursuing an aggressive if not expansionist military policy abroad while invoking nationalism at home […]
As China and Japan fight over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, Yeap Swee Chuan is benefiting. Yeap is president and chief executive officer of Aapico Hitech, a Thai auto parts maker that supplies Toyota and Honda as well as small and midsize Japanese companies. The company’s stock price has more than doubled in the […]
The sequel seldom improves on the original. Yet Shinzo Abe, Japan’s newly re-elected prime minister, has already displayed more conviction during his second spell at the Kantei than in the entire year of his first, unhappy premiership. Political energy is a plus only when it’s wisely deployed however, and some fear that Abe is picking a […]
CHINA and Japan are sliding towards war. In the waters and skies around disputed islands, China is escalating actions designed to challenge decades of Japanese control. It is accompanying its campaign with increasingly blood-curdling rhetoric. Japan, says the ChinaDaily, is the “real danger and threat to the world”. A military clash, says Global Times, is now “more […]
The overlapping power transitions in East Asia’s three main economies promise to mark a defining moment in the region’s tense geopolitics. After the ascension in China of Xi Jinping, regarded by the People’s Liberation Army as its own man, Japan’s swing to the right in its parliamentary election seems set to fuel nationalist passion on both sides […]
The year 2012 began with festering Chinese sovereignty claims in the South and East China Seas, but also with hope that a code of conduct brokered by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations would enable them to be resolved peacefully. The year is ending, however, with those hopes dashed and ASEAN more divided than it […]
Recent anti-Japanese street demonstrations in China may signal the start of economic decline for a nation that won its reputation as the “world’s manufacturing factory” in the late 1990s and surpassed Japan in 2010 to become the second-largest economy after the United States. Although the riots were ostensibly meant as a protest against the Japanese […]
looking beyond borders 