Asia

Barely two weeks after President Bush pointed to Taiwan as an example of democracy that the PRC would do well to emulate, Taiwanese voters went to the polls yet again. This time, they selected county magistrates, county and city...

Walter McDougall opened the conference, speaking of Northeast Asia’s role as “a major hinge, and at times the most important hinge, of global geopolitics.” One could even argue that World War I was a direct result of the 1904...

On the eve of June 4, 1989, a statue dubbed the “Goddess of Democracy” stood opposite Mao’s giant portrait at Tiananmen Square, until the forces of the People’s Liberation Army brought it crashing down during an infamous night of...

On May 20, Chen Shui-bian began his second four-year term as Taiwan’s first president from the former opposition Democratic Progressive Party. Because he had been more assertive on cross-Strait and Taiwan status issues in his campaign than he had...

Democracy’s Limits and Prospects in the P.R.C. The possible sprouts of democracy and the prospects for democratization in the People’s Republic of China were the principal focus for many of the conference’s participants, who approached these questions from diverse...

The Big Mac can be effective tool in helping students achieve a better understanding of Japan. It can defeat Orientalist stereotypes about the Japanese–and also challenge young people who might have oversimplified notions of what exactly occurs when U.S....

Kokoro: The Heart Within (1998), Bonneville Worldwide Entertainment, 55 North 300 West, Suite 315, Salt Lake City Utah, 84110-1160. 300 minutes (five 60-minute tapes). $99.95 for the entire series on Amazon.com as of May 5, 2003). Scott Featherstone, producer,...

Over the past two decades, Americans have been preoccupied by Japan’s schools. Often the rhetoric has prevented educators and policymakers who seek a clearer understanding of Japanese education from acquiring objective information. Here, I attempt to separate myth from...

Earlier this year, FPRI convened a conference to assess Asia’s shifting strategic landscape. Participants addressed long-term trends that have transformed the strategic environment in Asia, including the rise of China as an economic and military power, Japan’s protracted reconsideration...

In this edition of our series of bulletins on Teaching about Japan, we review T.R. Reid’s Confucius Lives Next Door: What Living in The East Teaches Us about Living in the West. We also briefly describe a resource that...