Dec 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
Oct 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 […]

Sean R. Roberts
counterterrorism , Cultural Genocide , Kassym-Jomart Tokayev , Nursultan Nazarbayev , Uyghur , Xi Jinping , Xinjiang
Oct 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’ commitment to a multipolar world […]

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

Contemplating US Policy on China and the Indo-Pacific: Some Thoughts regarding a Possible Biden Administration

By most accounts, the last four years have been something of a sea change in US foreign policy. During this time, the US has stepped back from its familiar leadership role in several multilateral initiatives, cast aspersions at global governance efforts, flirted with dictators and authoritarian regimes more openly and brazenly than ever in the […]

Amanda Trea Phua , Liow Joseph Chinyong*
COVID-19 , Donald Trump , free and open Indo-Pacific , Hong Kong , Joe Biden , Taiwan , US-China rivalry , Xi Jinping , Xinjiang
Aug 31,2020 National Commentaries

A South Korean Perspective

South Korea places human rights as one of its main policy principles and is a member of seven international treaties. In recent months, the Moon administration has faced increased international criticism over its handling of human rights issues among its two neighboring countries – North Korea and China. President Moon Jae-in, a former human rights […]

Yumi Ko
byungjin policy , Hong Kong , Moon Jae-in , Sunshine Policy , US-China rivalry , Uyghur , Xinjiang
Jul 29,2020 Country Reports

Country Report: Russia (July 2020)

In the late spring and early summer of 2020, Russians were pondering the meaning of the Sino-US downward spiral. Was it good for their country? Was bipolarity replacing their long-claimed framework of multipolarity? If bipolarity was ascendant, can Russia avoid entanglement and keep considerable autonomy strategically and as a civilization? How should the impact of […]

Editorial Staff (with the assistance of Olga Puzanova)
Bipolarity , COVID-19 , Greater Eurasia , Hong Kong , Sinophobia , Xinjiang
Jul 29,2019 Open Forum

Deciphering China’s Intentions: What Can Open Sources Tell Us?

Over the past several years, bold assertions about China’s long-range strategic goals have become common in the US public discourse. In 2015, Michael Pillsbury published his influential volume The Hundred-Year Marathon, which purported to disclose China’s “frightening plans” to overtake the United States as the world’s leading power by 2049 and rewrite the rules of […]

Joel Wuthnow
"Belt and Road" Initiative , 19th Party Congress , Chinese Communist Party , Huawei , Taiwan , Xi Jinping Thought , Xinjiang , ZTE
Dec 21,2018 National Commentaries

A US Perspective

The New Washington Consensus Washington DC is a sharply divided city these days. A recent Pew Research Center poll concluded that Americans have increasingly embraced “conflicting partisan priorities for US foreign policy.”1 On most major national security concerns—whether Russia, Iran, North Korea, or Afghanistan—there is little or no bipartisan agreement. On China, however, there is […]

Zack Cooper , Annie Kowalewski
"Belt and Road" Initiative , Meng Wanzhou , Nine-dash line , South China Sea , Tibet , Xinjiang
Dec 11,2018 Open Forum

The Last Asian Frontier? A Comparison of the Economic Cooperation Agendas of China, Japan, and South Korea with Uzbekistan

China, Japan and South Korea have regarded Central Asia (CA) as a new, and perhaps the last, Asian frontier in their foreign policies after the collapse of the Soviet Union.1 For all these states, CA represented an area where they had not been previously active. In addition, their foreign policies in this region, at least […]

Timur Dadabaev
"Belt and Road" Initiative , Arc of Freedom and Prosperity , Eurasian Economic Union , Islam Karimov , Shanghai Cooperation Organization , Shavkat Mirziyoyev , Xinjiang