Dec 14, 2023

The Indo-Pacific aims to contain China's influence but struggles with unclear membership and diverse objectives. By contrast, the economic region of Pacific Asia, centered on China, emphasizes interdependence, but grapples with political uncertainties due to concerns about overreliance on China. The member states of both have agency and will pursue their own interests, but China’s behavior will likely determine which grouping has the greater strategic salience.

Oct 30, 2017

Jinping has started his second term by announcing a new era in Chinese politics, and evidently part of the new era is to leave open the question of his successor in 2022. No one on the new PBSC is young enough to meet the age requirement for successor, though there are several possibilities in the full Politburo. Does this mean that Xi plans to break precedent and take a third term himself?

Apr 27, 2017

ASEAN’s commitment to regional consensus and to global inclusiveness has been one of the world’s most successful diplomatic initiatives of the past fifty years. While nationalists in China and Vietnam as well as global media remain fixated on sovereignty disputes in the South China Sea, faster growth of the developing world than the developed world is the tectonic trend in the world political economy.