Axel Berkofsky
While the international press did not cover China’s foreign and security policies as priority issues on the agenda of Beijing’s new leadership, China’s incoming leadership under President Xi Jinping...
If US election opinion polls are anything to go by, Mitt Romney will not get a chance to rock the
boat of US-Chinese relations from November 2012 onwards. Most (moderate and well-informed)
analysts...
While nobody says so openly in Beijing, Chinese policymakers and Central Asian scholars are confident that Beijing will replace Russia as the region’s most influential and powerful actor, albeit ‘non...
In the first fifteen years following the USSR dissolution, the process of hegemonic transition in post-Soviet Central Asia was defined by a deep dichotomy between opening efforts to cooperation with...
North Korea will continue to remain East Asia’s trouble-maker. Pyongyang’s active missile and nuclear programs leave the region’s main powers - China, Japan, South Korea and the ‘offshore balancer’...
Japan is facing hard times. Domestic politics is stuck in a stalemate and is as ever replacing Prime Minister every 12-18 months. Economic growth remains sluggish, the country is burdened with public...
China matters globally. Not only in international trade and economics, but also and increasingly in international politics and security, be in East Asia, Central Asia and further away from home in...
2010 was a bad year for the Korean Peninsula. Unless there are dramatic policy changes in North Korea related to the development of its missile and nuclear programs, 2011 could become an equally...
From September 2009 to May 2010, Japan-US relations were dominated by a controversy regarding a 2006 base relocation agreement – the so-called “Futenma issue”. Whereas Japan’s newly-elected...
Gone are the days when Brussels and Beijing referred to each other as ‘strategic partners’ – a formula ‘invented’ in 2003 to pay tribute to the admittedly impressive expansion of EU-Chinese...
In 2010, Japan and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK - hereafter North Korea) are as far away as ever from maintaining anything resembling “normal” relations, let alone official...
Yukio Hatoyama whose Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won a landslide general elections victory over the incumbent Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP) 9 months ago announced to resign yesterday citing his...