China

Graham Allison, Director of Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs from 1995 until July 2017, is a leading analyst of US national security and defence policy. His latest book, 'Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?', was published by Houghton

I am reassured to see from Ely Ratner's most recent post in our exchange on US-China relations and the South China Sea how much he and I agree about, because I have such a high regard for his ideas on these important questions, and for his lucid and gracious way of presenting them. In fact, we

In May, when China organised a major summit in Beijing around its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as 'One Belt, One Road', or OBOR), one invited country was completely absent: India. In response to queries, New Delhi issued only a short statement that underscored the benefits of

Recent reports that Thailand, with Chinese money, is planning to build a new canal between the Pacific and Indian Oceans have set off a new wave of alarm bells over China’s plans to dominate the region. If – and it is a big if – the project goes ahead, it will create some big winners and

Earlier this year, The New York Times reported that Yang Jisheng, a former senior journalist for China’s main state-owned news agency, Xinhua, was forbidden from traveling to Harvard to accept an award for his book on the famine induced by Chairman Mao’s policies in the late 1950s. While China

I'd like to thank Hugh White for his continued thoughtfulness and collegiality in our ongoing exchange on the South China Sea. I thought it might be interesting to pivot from debating strategic dynamics in the region to a dialogue about what our divergent assessments mean for the making of US policy

Recent posts in The Interpreter (by Iain Henry, Euan Graham and James Goldrick) have commented on the presence of a Chinese intelligence-gathering ship off the Queensland Coast during Exercise Talisman Sabre. All these posts are broadly correct – the incident suggested Chinese hypocrisy with its

Once the domain of only a handful of states, weaponised drones are now part of the military arsenal of no less than a dozen countries. That number is set to expand after China announced it would begin to sell and export its most powerful drone, the CH-5 Rainbow, that's modelled on the US MQ 9 Reaper

It seems to be widely agreed that Washington’s current policy of well-worn talking points and low-key FONOPS in the South China Sea [SCS] isn’t working. Ely Ratner and I have been debating how to do better. Ely has proposed a more robust approach. He suggests that Washington could deter China

The reaction in China to the death of Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo last week is both surprising and illuminating. Surprising in that few in the West would have expected anger at the West to feature so strongly, and illuminating in what that anger tells us about Chinese attitudes to the West

The cluster of foreign policy initiatives labelled the 'China Solution' has evolved over the past two years, from a strategy that spoke to the aspirations of a still dev­eloping China to those of a nascent major global power. Brexit and the election of US President Donald Trump precipitated a

Last weekend marked the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong's handover from the UK to China, with Xi Jinping making his first trip to Hong Kong as President to hail the occasion. On Saturday night, Hong Kong's skyline was lit up with red and gold fireworks to mark the event. But not all were in a

Several days ago some very upsetting footage surfaced online of a woman being hit by car in the central Chinese province of Henan. She was ignored by passers-by as she lay injured on the road, and then hit again, this time fatally. The incident - not the first of its kind - has caused a resurgence

Much has been said about US President Donald Trump’s recent visit to the Middle East but it’s worth remembering that only a few weeks earlier a mirror image of Trump’s Middle East tour took place in China. In mid-March, King Salman of Saudi Arabia and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

As most readers of The Interpreter already know, last weekend the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) hosted the 16th Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore (SLD17). Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull provided the keynote speech. US Defence Secretary Mattis gave a much-anticipated

People often argue that America’s alliances in Asia are a decisive advantage in its contest with China for regional strategic primacy. China’s only ally, they say, is North Korea, while America has an entire alliance system encompassing many key regional states, as well as a wider circle of

As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Sri Lanka earlier this month, reports emerged that the Sri Lankan government had turned down China's request for a submarine docking in Colombo harbor. Beijing, apparently, wanted one of its submarines (ostensibly on its way to the Gulf of Aden for '

A divide has once again opened between Australian economic commentators and defence hawks, this time over China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and what Australia's response to it should be. The latter accuse the former of being naïve about Beijing's geopolitical intentions and the BRI's

Among the 29 Heads of State who converged on Beijing for the Belt and Road Summit earlier this week were leaders of seven of the ten ASEAN states. One leader was noticeably missing: Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Various observers have noted this absence, including Hugh White, who

Somewhat obscured in last week's outpouring of penny dreadful news from Washington (such as Sean Spicer ensconcing himself in the White House shrubbery) was the announcement of a US-China 100-day economic action plan. It is a pedestrian, workmanlike document, committing to a raft of

Stephen Blank's very generous comments on A Wary Embrace arrived too late to cover in my response to the original contributions in The Interpreter debate. But he brings up a number of additional points that deserve a reply. The nature of the China-Russia relationship Blank somewhat