TOPICS

Chinese diplomats behaving badly

Commentary / World Jun 15, 2020

Chinese diplomats behaving badly

by Minxin Pei

Chinese diplomats have long had a reputation as well-trained, colorless and cautious professionals who pursue their missions doggedly without attracting much unfavorable attention. But a new crop of younger diplomats are ditching established diplomatic norms in favor of aggressively promoting China’s self-serving COVID-19 narrative. ...

WHAT PEOPLE ARE READING

On Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s watch, China has more than doubled its trade surplus with India and the PLA has continued to encroach on disputed territories.

/

India’s appeasement policy toward China unravels

by Brahma Chellaney

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is “not in a good mood,” U.S. President Donald Trump recently declared, as he offered to mediate India’s resurgent border conflict with China. After years of bending over backward to appease China, Modi has received yet another Chinese encroachment on Indian te...

People commute in Tokyo on June 5. Researchers have found that death rates were lower in countries like Japan that have a combination of high government efficiency and high cultural “tightness” — strong norms and a pressure for conformance.

/

Is Japan’s low COVID-19 death rate due to a ‘higher cultural level’?

by Rochelle Kopp

I was sent scrambling for my dictionary on June 4 when Finance Minister Taro Aso declared that the different "mindo" between Japan and other countries was the reason behind Japan’s low COVID-19 death rate. A quintessentially nebulous Japanese word, mindo denotes the standard of living and cult...

U.S. President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi meet in February. Growing tensions between India and China present Washington with an opportunity to further strengthen ties with New Delhi, which is becoming a key ally in the U.S. effort to contain Beijing's Indo-Pacific ambitions.

/

China’s border invasion will push India toward the U.S.

by Hal Brands

A flare-up in a long-running border dispute between China and India has raised the temperature in their bilateral relationship. Yet it may be just as significant for the trilateral U.S.-China-India relationship, which will do a great deal to shape the strategic landscape of the 21st century. A...

/

A chill descends on Chinese scholars in Japan

by Shaun O'dwyer

In higher education sectors in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, the “China threat” debate has become divided between those emphasizing the national security dangers in the Chinese Communist Party’s projection of influence into universities abroad, and those emphasizing the ris...

The selection of Ariana Miyamoto as Miss Universe Japan in 2015 prompted a tsunami of online nastiness, raising issues of not only Japan's racial complexes but also its contempt for a wide range of others.

/

Face the reality of racism in Japan

by John G. Russell

Recent events continue to suggest that discussions of racism in Japan typically prove problematic. This is largely because those discussions typically present it as a "uniquely" Western phenomenon, a matter of black and white or white and nonwhite, from which a mythic "uniquely monoracial" Japan ...