Today’s China is nowhere near the point of another Cultural Revolution, and the 50th anniversary of the start of that traumatic era will go unmarked in official circles. Chinese leaders “are frightened of the Cultural Revolution,” says the historian Frank Dikötter. “They think that’s what might happen if you give ordinary people a say.” Read […]
Beijing’s reading of history is intended to serve two purposes: to emphasize the war guilt of Japan, China’s archrival, and elevate the role of the Chinese Communist Party in defeating Japanese militarism. Both support President Xi Jinping’s aspirations for China to throw aside the postwar order in Asia and assert itself more vigorously. Read Here […]
U.S. foreign policy has reached a turning point, as analysts from across the political spectrum have started to dust off Cold War-era arguments and to speak of the need for a policy of containment against China. The once solid Washington consensus behind the benefits of “constructive engagement” with Beijing has fallen apart. Read Here – […]
Through history, China and India have not been neighbours. The current de facto border has its genesis in a line drawn on a map by Henry McMahon during a secret treaty between Britain and Tibet in March 1914. Both entities, British India and Tibet, are no more: one has been transformed into postcolonial India and […]
As China’s power and influence continue to grow in Asia and beyond, many analysts look to Chinese history to understand how a strong China will behave and view the world in the future. Many of these attempts to apply an historical lens engage in gross simplifications and misreadings of the relevance and meaning of hundreds […]
Though (Henry) Kissinger has come under attack from liberal circles—among the more notable assaults are Seymour Hersh’s The Price of Power, Christopher Hitchens’s The Trial of Henry Kissinger and, most recently, Gary J. Bass’s The Blood Telegram—he has also regularly incurred the ire of conservatives. Throughout the 1970s, he was steadily denounced as deaf to […]
Twenty-five years ago yesterday, a senior Chinese politician named Hu Yaobang complained of dizziness at a meeting in Beijing, and asked to be excused. Moments later, he collapsed with a fatal heart attack. The 74-year-old Hu, one of China’s most senior leaders just two years before, was dead. What happened after that is history. Read Here […]
Xi Jinping’s hold on political power is both more direct and came earlier than Deng Xiaoping’s, who had to combat Mao’s designated successor Hua Guofeng for influence. Even after winning the power struggle, Deng still ruled only indirectly, as he never formally served as the CCP’s general secretary or China’s president or premier. In contrast, […]
With his image gracing bank notes and staring out from Tiananmen Gate, Mao Zedong remains a constant presence in China 120 years after his birth, revered as a hero who founded the communist state and restored national pride – even as China moves ever further from his vision of a communist society. Read Here – AP
The Chinese leaders see no contradiction between economic and social liberalization on the one hand and more political control on the other. In fact, in their minds, the latter is the condition for the former. Lightening up and tightening up are two sides of the same coin. Read Here – Bloomberg
looking beyond borders 