If global economists are distraught over the gloomy numbers coming out of China, imagine how Xi Jinping must feel. China’s president, officially in the post for barely a month, is still consolidating his power. At home, he confronts a widening rich-poor gap and endemic pollution, not to mention bird flu and rivers overrun with dead pigs. […]
Kim Kyong-hui has battled alcoholism and the killing of her lover to stand alongside her nephew, North Korea’s youthful leader Kim Jong-un, as a reminder that he is the true heir of the dynasty’s blood-line. The 67-year-old daughter of North Korea’s founder Kim Il-sung cuts a rare female figure in Pyongyang’s male-dominated hierarchy and ranks as […]
There are many shortcomings in the preemption argument. First, it reflects a failure to recognize the realities and continuities in DPRK diplomacy, where threats, insults, and relatively minor shows of force are simply the first step in the negotiation process. The motives that underlay this strategic approach are still debated, but the fact is that […]
Amid a storm of bluster and posturing in East Asia, there has been scarce analysis on recent attempts at regional integration. Despite this, the rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula have actually served to temporarily move the microscope away from maritime security issues and territorial disputes in favor of punditry over Pyongyang’s nuclear wish list. […]
Is China, under its new president, Xi Jinping, undertaking its own diplomatic pivot, parallel to the United States’ “pivot to Asia”? Xi’s first significant international initiatives – making Russia his first official visit abroad, followed immediately by his attendance at the BRICS summit in South Africa – suggest that China may be seeking to place […]
The man at the helm in North Korea today is an accident of history, surrounded by vestigial assertions of narcissistic genius that are de rigueur for North Korea’s depiction of its own leaders. More than any time since the young Kim Il-song was surrounded by Soviet generals in the 1940s, the North Korean leader today […]
Sino-US economic and trade relations are the most powerful proof of the win-win and interdependent nature of bilateral relations. But the good momentum that has been achieved has also encountered some obstacles because some people in the US always want to politicize the relationship and Washington has been maintaining restrictions on high-tech exports to China. […]
North Korea celebrated the 101st anniversary of its founder’s birth with flowers on Monday, although there was no sign of tension easing as South Korea warned that the North’s survival could be in question without change and development. Saying it with The North has threatened for weeks to attack the United States, South Korea and Japan after new U.N. […]
India and China are working towards stacking up more confidence building measures (CBMs) during a period of frequent consultations that could lead to the first-ever back-to-back visits by the two Prime Ministers, in coming months. Both sides, according to informed sources, are currently finalising details of a visit by the new Chinese Premier, Li Keqiang, […]
South Koreans look a little puzzled when asked whether they’re concerned about North Korea’s daily barrage of threats that, if carried out, would be the worst conflagration of modern times. What worse can a regime, governed ostensibly by a 29-year-old heir to his father and grandfather’s power, vow than a “thermonuclear war” that would annihilate […]
looking beyond borders 