The US Department of Defense has released its annual Congress-mandated report on Chinese military power, available for download here. (Hat tip: China Digital Times)For a China hawk's take on this year's report, check out this article by Bill Gertz in the Washington Times. Gertz manages to spin a relatively tame report, the product of a …
Tag: Sino-US relations
The naval arms race in Asia continues
Back in April, Paul Kennedy, professor of history at Yale best known for his The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, had an op-ed in the IHT in which he discussed the meaning of the growing naval arms race in Northeast Asia in terms of the center of balance of the international system, with …
The story that wouldn’t die
Bill Gertz, Washington Times reporter and leading proponent of the "China Threat" thesis, has published yet another item in his weekly "Inside the Ring" feature talking about how "pro-China officials" in the administration are undermining Japan's bid to purchase F-22 stealth fighters.I previously discussed here that General Jeffrey Kohler, head of the Defense Department's Defense …
The Bush administration has left the building (in Asia, anyway)
South Korea's Dong-A Ilbo reports that the Asia team for the denouement of the Bush administration is complete...Daniel Drezner could not have been more right when he said that the Bush administration is looking for "September call-ups" for its foreign policy team.Look at the roster provided by Dong-A. While some, including Dr. Paul Heer and …
Continue reading The Bush administration has left the building (in Asia, anyway)
"We would…help them"
Having previously written about the strategic and political questions surrounding China's rumored aircraft carrier program, I found this VOA article (hat tip: China Digital Times) on Admiral Keating's visit to China fascinating.VOA reports that Keating discussed the operational difficulties of deploying and maintaining aircraft carriers with Vice Admiral Wu Shengli of the PLAN — but …
Idealism, realism, and US China policy
Over at Foreign Policy, China scholar David Lampton and journalist James Mann debate the argument presented in Mann's new book, The China Fantasy: How Our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Repression. (The subtitle really says it all.) (Hat tip: China Digital Times)There is no love lost between Lampton and Mann in this debate, and its implications …
Keating in China
Admiral Timothy Keating, newly minted chief of US Pacific Command, is currently visiting China to meet with PLA brass. As documented by Dana Priest and Robert Kaplan, among others, the heads of the US Military's unified combatant commands wield tremendous military power, of course, but also diplomatic power (America's "proconsuls," to use the imperial metaphor …
Asia’s shifting balance
The past week has brought a host of stories pointing to how the balance of power — both globally and in Asia — is shifting, suggesting that the assumptions made by each major regional power will have to change accordingly.First, Taiwan's place as the most likely cause of war between China and the US (with …
The China enigma
After an afternoon of walking around in slums located within blocks of Tiananmen Square — festooned with flags for the national holiday — I am ever more convinced that the only way to think about China in the early twenty-first century is by drawing upon the Jain parable of the blind men and the elephant.For …
Observing China
George F. Will writes in the Washington Post about whether advocates of engagement with China are overly optimistic in their assessment that economic liberalization and the profusion of choices that comes with a modern service economy will result in political liberalization.While I disagree with the more rosy assessments of the benefits of engagement -- whose …
Tobias S. Harris 