Asia

China’s simmering discontent with its place in the world—and, more specifically, its relationship with the West and, more specifically still, with the United States — has bubbled to the surface in several recent incidents. Forced to land on Hainan...

The first several months of the George W. Bush administration have underscored a simple but vexing truth about the United States’ Taiwan policy: the basic goal is deceptively easy to state but crafting the means for achieving it is...

In May 2000, Philippines president Joseph Estrada visited Beijing and signed five accords to ease tensions over disputed islands in the South China Sea. It is surely encouraging to see two countries that have sparred in recent years take...

U.S. policymakers seem to have given up on Japan. Who can take a country seriously when its June 25 elections featured almost no debate on how to revitalize a stagnant economy? When the electorate returned to power one of...

How did the United States get into Vietnam? What was it doing there? What happened at home? How did we get out? What have we learned? For two days, these questions were explored in great depth by some of...

Note to Teachers: I taught a course on the Vietnam War and the antiwar movement at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1980s. Each time I began the very first class with a “pop quiz.” It wasn’t a serious...

When Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui told a German interviewer this month that relations between the Republic of China on Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China were a form of state-to-state relations, a diplomatic firestorm predictably erupted over his...

1. Focus on Social Development We are all aware that not everything learned in school is academic. It is in school that Japanese children confront the paradox inherent in social life: while social existence requires that every person sacrifice...

The success of James Clavell’s Shogun as both novel and miniseries demonstrated the popular appeal of the samurai to modern Americans. A spate of other novels with Japanese warriors or ninjas, plus the popularity of figures like Bruce Lee...