China & Taiwan

When the debate was in full swing several years ago, enthusiasts and skeptics of the gray zone concept generally agreed that the term was ill-defined and “stretched to the breaking point.” Most analysts have since acknowledged the gray zone’s...

In May 2019, Chinese President Xi Jinping made a well-publicized visit to a rare-earth-metals company in Jiangxi province. On the same day, he gave a speech in which he called on his country to prepare for a “new Long...

Chinese President Xi Jinping is heading to Pyongyang for the first state visit by a Chinese leader to North Korea in well over ten years. It’s a high-profile event, and given how stalled the diplomatic process is between the...

On a recent trip to Taiwan, I visited the island of Kinmen, one of Taiwan’s outlying islands located off the coast of China’s Fujian Province. Kinmen, more commonly known as Quemoy to a Western audience for its role in...

When Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping meet at the G-20 summit in June 2019, there are hopes that they will come to some agreement to end the trade war between China and the United States. But such hopes...

Each year since its founding in 2002, high-ranking officials of Asian-Pacific states gather for what is billed as the area’s premier defense summit to debate the region’s most pressing security challenges and, according to its website, “come up with...

China has long occupied a special place in the American imagination.  In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Americans envisioned a Christianized China that would become an Asian counterpart to the US.  That and other dreams were dashed...

In January 2018, the Chinese Communist Party put forward a Central Committee Opinion developing the idea for creating a Chinese international commercial court, aimed at servicing Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) disputes. Six months later, two Chinese International Commercial...

Once again, Taiwan’s participation in the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an observer was the focus of heated debate in its plenary session. Taiwan’s diplomatic allies and like-minded supporters spoke up for Taiwan, arguing that the WHA should include...

Over the past 30 years there have been many moments when Taiwan-watchers worked themselves into a tizzy worrying about the potential for conflict in the Taiwan Strait. Whether it was Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui describing the relationship between Taipei...