President-elect Donald Trump is set to make his mark on U.S. foreign policy. As a sign of the great anxiety that has taken hold across the Asia-Pacific, Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe has scurried across the Pacific to be the very first foreign leader to meet the president-elect. On the other “flank”, all signs point…
The developing economic, political and military links binding Iran, China and Russia in what I see as an emerging Golden Triangle in Eurasia, are continuing to deepen insignificant areas. This, while it seems to be US geopolitical strategy in a prospective Trump Administration to distance Washington from both Iran and from China, while dangling the…
After months of negotiation, the United States and South Korea announced on July 8 their decision to deploy the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system in South Korea. During a press briefing, China’s Defense Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun said that Beijing is “firmly opposed to the proposed THAAD deployment… and will take necessary…
China has launched a quantum communication line 712 kilometers in length that is meant to safely transmit sensitive information. It is expected to be extended to 2,000 kilometers soon. The line connecting Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province, and Shanghai, a coastal trade hub, has 11 trusted nodes along its length, Xinhua news agency reported…
In yet one more spectacular chapter of his running Marco Polo in reverse saga, Chinese President Xi Jinping made a strategic stop in Sardinia, Italy, on his way to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Lima, Peru. Why beautiful Sardinia? Certainly not for a yacht cruise in the Costa Esmeralda. This is all about,…
Introduction Four decades of rapid economic growth in China has come at a huge price to the environment, from smog-ridden skies to contaminated rivers, toxic soils and “cancer villages”. These increasingly intolerable costs have emerged as a major source of social unrest in recent years. Premier Li Keqiang acknowledged this in his opening address to…
