October 11,2018 Open Forum

As China and Russia Draw Closer, Mongolia Feels the Squeeze

In September 2018 Russia carried out the largest military exercise since the height of the Cold War.1 Vostok-2018, held in Siberia, drew considerable attention in the Western media, not just because of the sheer scale of the event (declared as involving 300,000 troops and thousands of tanks and airplanes) but also because China sent an unprecedentedly large contingent force to join in the show..

Sergey Radchenko
BRI , EEF , EEU , Khaltmaa “Genco” Battulga , SCO , third neighbor policy , Vladmir Putin , Xi Jinping
October 08,2018 Country Reports

Country Report: Japan (October 2018)

Setting aside the rush of publications on China and North Korea—from Abe’s October visit to China to Japan’s response to plans for a new Trump-Kim summit—this report covers Russia, South Korea, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and India. The time span is the summer of 2018. Late in this period, Abe saw Putin surprise him with an unwelcome and even rude proposal on their bilateral dis..

Editorial Staff
AIIB , ARF , BRI , BRICS , comfort women , EEF , free and open Indo-Pacific , Sharp power , the Quad , US-China trade war
October 01,2018 Country Reports

Country Report: Russia (September 2018)

More than bilateral relations, the big picture interested Russian writers as the summer drew to a close. The prevalent assumption was that the West is in rapid decline and a new world order of some kind is just over the horizon. The positive forces for that include Putin’s assertive foreign policy, China’s rise and close relationship with Russia, and North Korea’s demands ..

Editorial Staff (with the assistance of Olga Puzanova)
BRI , BRICS , EEF , Khasan-Rajin railway , Power of Siberia-2 , Russian Far East , Southern Kuriles
September 27,2018 Country Reports

Country Report: South Korea (September 2018)

The second half of the summer saw the build-up to the third summit of Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un as well as more wide-ranging diplomacy in North-South relations in the background. One occasion was the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) foreign ministers’ meeting in Singapore. Another was the closely-watched presidential speech on August 15. Finally, as the summer was ending Moon traveled to Py..

Kim Kimberly
ASEAN Regional Forum , inter-Korean summit , Kaesong Industrial Complex , Mount Geumgang , Panmunjom Declaration , Pyongyang Declaration
September 27,2018 Open Forum

Washington Insights Vol. 6, No. 5

The start of the fall brought further confirmation that Trump is driving the agenda, whether by launching trade wars, disheartening allies, or refusing to attend the annual summit in East Asia. DC presentations and discussions proceeded against this unprecedented turmoil. At times, the Trump effect stayed well in the background as currents in the region were intensely explored. On other occ..

Editorial Staff
BRI , Eastern Economic Forum , JSOMIA , New Northern Policy , Quad , SCO , Silk Road
September 04,2018 Open Forum

Can China Seduce Japan? 14 Reasons for Its Overtures in 2018

As Sino-US relations have deteriorated in 2018, Beijing has looked elsewhere in Asia for closer ties: to the Korean Peninsula, where Kim Jong-un was desperate to improve relations in order to pursue diplomacy with Donald Trump with his “back covered” and Moon Jae-in was awaiting pressure from Trump after enticing him into diplomacy with Kim that was bound to break down; to Russia,..

Gilbert Rozman
BRI , Confucius Institutes , South China Sea , trade war , US-Japan alliance
August 31,2018 Special Forum

International Law in US-China Relations: Trade Wars and Maritime Rights in the Era of Xi and Trump

In an increasingly fraught US-China relationship, issues of international law have become important in their own right and illustrative of broader patterns. A pair of particularly salient and illuminating arenas are trade (and related economic matters) and maritime rights (including related security issues, especially in the South China Sea). In each of these fields, the Trump administration..

Jacques deLisle
BRI , CPTPP , Made in China 2025 , RCEP , South China Sea , TPP , UNCLOS , WTO
August 31,2018 Special Forum

A Prognosis of the Current Sino-American Malaise

The current relationship between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the United States has been described by reputable China scholars as the worst it has been since normalization in 1979.1 How bad can it get?  The easy answer to that question is, of course, no one can know the future. That granted, we focus here on three more empirically answerable but still relevant questions. Fir..

Lowell Dittmer
BRI , Socialism with Chinese Characteristics , South China Sea , UNCLOS , Xi Jinping Thought
August 31,2018 Special Forum

US-China Rivalry and the Future of the Korean Peninsula

The ongoing “trade war” between the United States and China is not just a trade dispute in light of the two sides’ intensifying rivalry in the area of strategic technologies. The rivalry has deepened as China has stepped up efforts to overtake western countries in advanced technologies, especially for semiconductors (the silicon brains required to run smartphones), connect..

Kim Sung-han*
alliance transition , CVID , Panmunjom Declaration , Quad , THAAD , US-ROK alliance , value alliance