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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New Security Order In N-E Asia Poses Challenge

China and Japan are beginning to show two-track tactics toward their latest territorial row over a group of islands in the East China Sea.  On the one hand, China is taking a hard-line; a flotilla of 16 Chinese surveillance ships on Tuesday entered Japanese territorial waters off the islands, known as Diaoyu in China and […]

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Japan’s Next Leader Faces One Of World’s Toughest Jobs

Yoshihiko Noda will doubtless win his party’s leadership race this week. There’s little certainty, though, that Japan’s prime minister is up to putting his country, the world’s No. 3 economy, on stronger footing. For starters, Noda’s victory may be Pyrrhic. He is under pressure to dissolve parliament and hold national elections, perhaps as soon as November. […]

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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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China’s Rise Inspires A Mix Of Awe, Fear And Skepticism. But What Will Its Global Role Be?

In his new book, The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate, Robert Kaplan (Stratfor Global Intelligence) contends that current global conflicts, including wars, political instability, and clashes over religion, can be better understood and even forecasted through close examination of the maps that chart our world. Read […]

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