Author: P. K. Ghosh, Observer Research Foundation Vietnam’s recent granting of seven oil blocks in the South China Sea for exploration by India is part of a plan to internationalise Hanoi’s territorial dispute with China. Hanoi hopes to create more…
Author: Sheryn Lee, University of Pennsylvania In 2013, Taiwan’s political and economic developments again centred on its relationship with China, and the effect of cross-Strait rapprochement on Taiwan’s domestic conditions. Yet even without China as a factor, Taiwan would still…
Author: Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Chulalongkorn University Never has Thai politics degenerated so quickly from uneasy accommodation to outright insurrection in just a month. It started with a broad-based opposition to an expansive amnesty legislation that would have absolved former Prime Minister…
Author: Joseph Cheng, City University of Hong Kong Around 120,000 people recently took to the streets to protest against the government’s decision not to grant a free-to-air licence to Hong Kong Television Network (HKTV). The decision sparked public outrage because…
Author: Le Hong Hiep, UNSW ADFA and VNU On 12 November 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin paid an official visit to Vietnam. This was his second visit to a country in the Asia Pacific since he regained the presidency in…
Prediction time: China will experience unprecedented terrorism over the next few years. On October 27, a carload of Xinjiang residents made headlines by crashing into a Tiananmen Square crowd, killing two people while injuring 38. Then, on Wednesday, a series of explosions rocked the provincial Communist Party headquarters in Shanxi province, killing one person while injuring 8. This recent uptick in political violence is not an anomaly for China, but a harbinger of terrorist violence to come.
There is something profoundly disturbing about the way most Western media and Xinjiang scholars have reacted to the attack in Tiananmen Square last Monday. As has been widely reported, the attack left five people dead, two of whom were tourists, and 40 injured. Shortly after the attack, in which a man with his wife and mother drove an SUV into a crowd of people and set it on fire, Chinese authorities identified the perpetrators as Uyghurs. Since then, Western experts have appeared in the media, attempting to shed some light on the tragic event. On October 31, three days after the tragedy, Sean R. Roberts wrote a piece for CNN significantly headlined “Tiananmen crash: Terrorism or cry of desperation?” Roberts is one of the leading Western experts on Xinjiang, and author last year of an important report in which he casts serious doubts on the existence of the ETIM as a capable terrorist organization.
I am not a supporter of the faddish idea that America is in decline. Despite all the hullabaloo about the rise of China, the United States still boasts the most formidable military force and the largest, most innovative economy. But as a student of international studies, I am keenly aware that the rise and fall of great nations are often associated with significant historical events. It is hard to deny that the 2008 financial crisis exposed the Achilles’ heel in our economy and accelerated the shift in the international power balance. This month, the self-inflicted U.S.
Author: Daniel Clausen, Florida International University Japanese pacifism appears to be fading. As the generation that experienced the Second World War is replaced by a new cohort that is psychologically detached from the horrors of the war, the number of…
