I have never been comfortable with the term “China watcher.” It is an awkward expression. It brings to mind a beardy, near-sighted academic in his ivory tower, peering through a spyglass at a country the West has never entirely managed to make sense of. Throughout
China abolished the constitutional limit on the number of terms the president and vice-president can serve. The message is clear: Xi Jinping can remain China’s president beyond 2023. The daring move stunned the world as reports first emerged at the end of February. However, this
On March 13, President Trump fired his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson via Twitter and replaced him with CIA Director Michael Pompeo. The news was hardly surprising. There has been a noticeable disconnect between Trump and Tillerson since the day the former CEO of ExxonMobil
On March 8, US President Donald Trump defied sage economic advice and followed his political gut by signing tariffs on imported steel (25%) and aluminum (10%). Anyone who has taken Economics 101 knows the refrain ‘trade makes everyone better off,’ but the case against these
Nuclear weapons expert and founder of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), David Albright, recently published a damaging report about Shenyang Machine Tools Company. The large Chinese company, which builds military aircraft among other commercial products, allegedly supplied North Korea with banned technology
When peaceful protests against the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, began in 2011, they were met with violent oppression, which eventually led to the current civil war. By the United Nations' definitions, Bashar al-Assad is a war criminal through his “intentionally directing attacks against the civilian
In much of the world, the political current has changed course from globalization towards nationalism. While military spending and sharp upticks in nationalism are not always entirely related, one often follows the other. The president of the United States, Donald Trump, ran on a campaign of,
The largest trade deal in history died before it could live. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) took years to negotiate and the finished product was going to cover 12 countries, an array of economies and resources, and about 40% of global trade. Led by the big
All eyes are on Vietnam. A country that exactly two decades ago had 51% of its population living under the World Bank’s poverty line, now finds itself at the center of Southeast Asian affairs and great power politics. It was in this hallmark year of
Over the past 30 years, China has undergone an immense economic and social transformation. For centuries, China was predominately an agrarian society where the vast majority lived in rural villages. However, in the beginning of the late imperial period a shift began to emerge as
