December 10,2020 Country Reports

Country Report: Japan (November 2020)

The late fall of 2020 was eventful for Japanese foreign relations because it meant the start of a new relationship with a US president—this time with a new Japanese prime minister; renewal of diplomacy with China—more intent than before on driving a wedge between Japan and the US; the signing of a broad trade agreement—RCEP was perceived as giving China greater clout even as China ra..

Editorial Staff
ASEAN , free and open Indo-Pacific , Hong Kong , RCEP , Senkakus , South China Sea , Tokyo Olympics , TPP , US-China rivalry
December 10,2020 Open Forum

Washington Insights, Vol. 8, No. 6

The late fall of 2020 saw attention turn to Joe Biden, including his nominees for policy posts in national security and their thinking on the Indo-Pacific region. He prioritizes rebuilding alliances and partnerships, but some asked what would he seek from these countries. If Biden would not follow Trump’s lead in top-down diplomacy with Kim Jong-un, few expected that the staggered pac..

Editorial Staff
BRI , free and open Indo-Pacific , Korean War , SCO , strategic patience , the Quad , US-China rivalry
December 02,2020 Country Reports

Country Report: Russia (November 2020)

Sino-US relations were foremost on Russian observers’ minds in the autumn of 2020, both before and after Joe Biden’s election victory. Anti-Chinese sentiments in the post-Soviet space drew attention, as did China’s troubling discourse about the Arctic and talk of the Arctic-Pacific as a construct—a new way of showcasing Russia’s centrality. India was another focus ..

Editorial Staff (with the assistance of Olga Puzanova)
Arctic Council , free and open Indo-Pacific , Hindu nationalism , Joe Biden , Sinophobia , Tibet , turn to the East , US-China rivalry , Xinjiang
November 02,2020 Country Reports

Country Report: China (October 2020)

In the fall of 2020, Chinese analysts assessed the likely impact on Sino–US relations of the US presidential election and praised the effectiveness of China’s pandemic-era foreign policy. They continued to carefully monitor South Korea’s foreign policy and ROK–DPRK relations. They also contested allegations that China’s BRI loans create a “debt trap” for vu..

Danielle F. S. Cohen (assisted by Dong Jiaxin)
"Belt and Road" Initiative , COVID-19 , Debt trap , Donald Trump , Joe Biden , US presidential election , US-China rivalry , US-ROK alliance
October 23,2020 National Commentaries

Kazakhstan’s Ambiguous Position towards the Uyghur Cultural Genocide in China

There is a cultural genocide ongoing in the Uyghur region of China. As I detail in a recently published book, large swaths of the Uyghur population has been incarcerated or put in mass internment camps, the local population outside these institutions are subjected to omni-present surveillance, and they have no choice but to acquiesce to forced assimilation measures as signs of their culture a..

Sean R. Roberts
counterterrorism , Cultural Genocide , Kassym-Jomart Tokayev , Nursultan Nazarbayev , Uyghur , Xi Jinping , Xinjiang
October 23,2020 National Commentaries

Mongolia’s Response to China’s New Educational Policy in Inner Mongolia

As Chinese authorities began to introduce the new educational policy in Inner Mongolia, protests have been staged by ethnic Mongolian communities in Chinese northern provinces. The new educational policy, which has already been implemented in minority ethnic schools in autonomous regions of Xinjiang in 2017 and Tibet in 2018, requires three subjects—“language and literature,” &l..

Mendee Jargalsaikhan
"Belt and Road" Initiative , “Save the Mongolian Language” , Battulga Khaltmaa , China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor , Dalai Lama , Shanghai Cooperation Organization , Xi Jinping
October 23,2020 National Commentaries

Chinese Cultural Policies in Tibet: A Perspective from India

Indians have at least two vantage points from which to view what is happening in Tibet. Large parts of Himalayan India border Tibet, and the perspective from these regions is often different from the capital in New Delhi. Lay and monastic populations of Himalayan India, Bhutan, and Tibet have been closely knit in networks of kinship, religious patronage, pilgrimage, and trade for centuries. ..

Swati Chawla
communism , Dalai Lama , Narendra Modi , One Child Policy , Sinification , Tibet , Xi Jinping
October 19,2020 Open Forum

Kazakhstan in Sino-Russian Relations: Cooperation and Competition between the EEU and BRI

On the sidelines of the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) foreign ministers’ meeting in Moscow on September 12, 2020, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, issued a joint statement hailing the Sino-Russian “comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership.”1 While containing a boilerplate restatement of the two parties’..

Michael Clarke , Dana Rice
"Belt and Road" Initiative , Commonwealth of Independent States , Eurasian Economic Community , Eurasian Economic Union , Shanghai Cooperation Organization , Xinjiang
October 08,2020 Special Forum

Introduction

In the early autumn of 2020, when Joe Biden was leading decisively in the polls, many in the Indo-Pacific region were reflecting on what his policy would be to China, Japan, India, and the region more broadly. Would he break sharply from Donald Trump’s approach? Would he revert to the Obama administration’s policies? Are there grounds to foresee a multilateral Democratic foreign..

Gilbert Rozman
Donald Trump , Joe Biden , Narendra Modi , US-China rivalry , Xi Jinping , Yoshihide Suga
October 05,2020 Open Forum

Weighed in the Balance: Abe’s Legacy of Searching for Supplementary Security Partners

The lives of Japanese diplomats and security planners were simpler in the old days. During the Cold War, Tokyo’s priority was to monitor the activities of Soviet aircraft and naval vessels in the vicinity of Japan, and to prepare to resist a hypothetical invasion from the north. Matters were made easier by the fact that, in dealing with Japan’s main potential adversary, security..

James D.J. Brown
Abe Shinzo , Cold War , CPTPP , free and open Indo-Pacific , Quad , Self Defense Forces , Suga Yoshihide , US-China rivalry