China

As China’s influence continues to grow around the globe, many in Washington have expressed concern over whether this positively or negatively impacts the United States’ diplomatic efforts in regional flashpoints ranging from Iran to North Korea. The New York Times did an article highlighting the growing credibility gap the U.S. is experiencing due to lack of engagement. The following is an excerpt from it on China’s new global role:

…while some Americans express frustration at what they see as Chinese… more

Iraq has ordered $100 million worth of light military equipment from China for its police force, contending the United States was unable to provide the material and is too slow to deliver arms shipments, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said Wednesday [Oct. 3, 2007]....

The capabilities of Iraqi security forces are pivotal to the U.S. exit strategy in Iraq, with the creation of a viable police force critical to reconciliation. Talabani said only one in five Iraqi police officers is armed… more

The most dangerous thing being produced in China is neither lead paint-laden toy cars nor magnet-spewing Polly Pocket dolls and Batman action figures. Rather, it is a booming capitalist culture that, far too often, places value over values.

This reality was brought home again this week, as Mattel announced its second big recall of Chinese-made merchandise in a fortnight. The news, coming on the heels of Chinese food, drugs, and other items being recalled or fingered as… more

In 1913, a young Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote in a private letter that a war among the major European powers would be so deadly and destructive that it could not be imagined. In 1914, he learned differently.

There are so many historic examples of war being so unlikely, so terrible in its prospect that it just "could not" happen. And yet it did.

That is why, in the large sweep of history, people who want to see peace should never underestimate… more

Three years ago, Alejandro Gutierrez got a strange and tantalizing message from Hong Kong. Some McKinsey consultants were putting together a business plan for a big client that wanted to build a small city on the outskirts of Shanghai. But the land, at the marshy eastern tip of a massive, mostly undeveloped island at the mouth of the Yangtze River, was a migratory stop for one of the rarest birds in the world -- the black-faced spoonbill, a gangly… more

Over the past year the spotlight has come to fall on China's aggressive economic foray into Africa, where it secures energy stakes while doling out cheap credit. More cautiously, however, China also has been building new bridges to the Middle East, carving a place in a strategic region that is home to two-thirds of the world's proven oil reserves.The advance into the Middle East creates another front in Beijing's growing global rivalry with Washington and other western countries. "China's… more

There will be plenty of time to talk about Hillary, or American Idol or the antique ritual known as the State of the Union. Let’s talk instead about the fate of the union.

On Jan. 11, China used a "kinetic kill vehicle" to destroy one of its own weather satellites, 500 miles above the Earth’s surface. The implications of this action are enormous, because it shows that the Chinese are serious about fighting -- and winning -- a space war. The… more

Beijing’s new law criminalizing bad customer service sounds humorous at first. It’s fun to imagine calling the cops on a snooty shoe salesman at the Westside Pavilion.

But as funny as it sounds, the new law -- which makes it illegal for Beijing sales clerks to be rude to their customers -- is no joke. It not only exposes the bizarre contradictions of China’s brand of authoritarian capitalism, it makes the West’s policy of reforming the world’s most populous nation through… more

History is replete with examples of great power conflict that develops when the world’s dominant powers are not willing or able to accommodate the interests of rising powers into the international order of the day. The last time the world denied two major rising industrial powers, Germany and Japan, what they considered their rightful place in the sun the result was world war. Following World War II, another hot world war was avoided only because the Western powers accepted the… more

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- Encouraging fair play in the international oil market, not isolation, is the route U.S. policymakers should take, energy economists say.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, an isolationist attitude has been taken up by many organizations and members of Congress and the Bush administration have expressed similar sentiments, said Pierre Noel, research associate with the Electricity Policy Group at the University of Cambridge.

Their claims that the United States would be better off importing less… more