The recent ASEAN Summit held in Vientiane, Laos could have broken new ground in Asian integration and community-building, as China is slated to play an accelerated role in building this future East Asian Community. Optimism was thus high for East Asia following the conclusion of... MORE

China Brief Readers: In light of Taiwan's recent Legislative Yuan elections, Jamestown is pleased to present this special coverage issue of China Brief to analyze its potential impact on US-China-Taiwan relations. In the interest of maintaining balanced discourse, we have included two articles from the... MORE

The good news about the Taiwan Legislative Yuan elections last month, from the perspective of Beijing, Washington, and at least half of the Taiwan electorate, is that nothing will happen. Chen Shui-bian and his pan-green coalition remained a legislative minority, meaning a radical push ahead... MORE

In a series of fiery speeches during the last two weeks of the campaign, Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian turned the December 11th legislative elections into a referendum on "Taiwan subjectivity" (Taiwan zhutixing). This concept is significantly more abstract than "Taiwan independence" and more philosophical than... MORE

Beijing has heaved a sigh of relief at the results of Taiwan's Legislative Yuan (LY) elections. There will be some fine-tuning of the Hu Jintao administration's Taiwan-related policies. For example, more emphasis will be put on "united front tactics" to win over the majority of... MORE

On December 11, the pan-green coalition failed to secure a majority in Taiwan's Legislative Yuan. The hope that this setback for Chen Shui-bian and his Democratic Progressive Party would lead to a relaxation of relations between China and Taiwan did not last long. Within a... MORE

In one of his farewell interviews with the televised Wall Street Journal Report, retiring Secretary of State Colin Powell once again made the claim that Sino-American relations are now in their "best state in three decades." The Report ironically illustrated the interview with shots of... MORE

The UN Security Council's mid-November meeting in Nigeria highlighted China's growing interest in Africa since the end of the cold war. The talks on November 18-19 were aimed at resolving the conflicts in Sudan by advancing the peace process between Khartoum and rebels in the... MORE

Now that the Sino-Russian diplomatic season celebrating 55 years of formal relations comes to a close, an opportunity exists to reassess the fundamentals of this dynamic and challenging relationship. After viewing Russian President Vladimir Putin's summit with his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao in Beijing last... MORE

While much of the world is fixated on China's booming economic growth and its ravenous appetite for energy, untidy diplomatic loose ends in the form of territorial disputes with neighbors have many of the countries bordering the Asian giant nervous. Though Beijing's claims over Taiwan... MORE