At the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Honolulu, President Obama continued his march towards massive free trade expansion, and the most prominent headlines from the summit had to do with a the radical new proposal for a mega free trade area—the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (TPP).
As the geopolitical chessboard of Asia evolves, it is becoming clear that Myanmar is an increasingly critical piece. Still Myanmar’s future is both crucial and uncertain.
Since the beginning of its economic reforms in 1978, the People’s Republic of China has become our lender and our factory, our second-largest trading partner and our number one economic competitor.
Here’s the good news: the United States has enjoyed 20 years of unchallenged and unprecedented supremacy as a world power. The bad news?
After centuries of humiliation, domination, and colonization by the West, nearly three billion residents in the Pacific region are rising to claim what is rightfully theirs: economic prosperity, diplomatic influence, and national pride. Yet this newfound power breeds new challenges for the United States policy in Asia. The greatest headaches for US policymakers arise, of course, from the People’s Republic [...]
China’s recent activity in Africa goes beyond the mere muscle-flexing and oil-grabbing tendencies of an emerging global power. In the last five years, media reports of China’s growing presence in Africa have increasingly reinforced and intensified Western fears of an unrestrainable imperialist state. Articles brandishing headlines such as “China’s Economic Invasion of Africa” and “Africa: China’s New Backyard” depict Africa as the victim of China’s rapacious neo-imperialism.
It is difficult to doubt today that China will ascend the power hierarchy and rise as a global superpower within the next century. News headlines constantly remind us of China's remarkable economic growth and increasing political clout. Particularly as the power of the United States appears to be waning, speculation of a Chinese 21st century runs rampant. Boasting a GDP growth rate of 9.6 percent and surpassing Japan as the world's second largest economy, China has unequivocally become an influential global power.
The Columbia Political Review has joined with other college political publications to form the Alliance of Collegiate Editors (ACE), hoping to generate cross-campus dialogue on political issues. Rebiya Kadeer, a prominent Uighur rights activist currently living in exile in the U.S., has agreed to answer some of our questions. You can read Ms. Kadeer's biography, including information on her involvement in the July 2009 unrest in Urumchi, in the New York Times here. For background information on Xinjiang/East Turkmenistan, and the Uighurs, click here.
During the winter break between my two semesters abroad at Tsinghua University in Beijing, I made the trek to Xiaoshan, an administrative district of Hangzhou, one of southern China’s biggest cities. The occasion for this visit to Xiaoshan was a family member’s wedding. My grandmother’s cousin’s daughter, Chen Xingmei, was getting married to a young man, Chen Xingjiang, whom she met through work and with whom, by chance, she shares two of three characters in her name.
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