Engagement

Winds From the East: How the People’s Republic of China Seeks to Influence the Media in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia
A Report to the Center for International Media Assistance
by Douglas Farah, Andy Mosher

Published on September 8th, 2010
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is using various components of public diplomacy to influence the media in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. China’s primary purposes appear to be to present China as a reliable friend and partner, as well as to make sure that China’s image in the developing world is positive. As part of its efforts to do this, the Chinese government seeks to fundamentally reshape much of the world’s media in its own image, away from a watchdog stance toward the government to one where the government’s interests are the paramount concern in deciding what to disseminate.

Looking Forward: The End of NATO?
by Arthur Waldron, Ph.D

Published on October 1st, 2009
Institutionally NATO remains intact but whether it would actually function in a conflict is a question that has long been becoming more and more puzzling.

Post Olympic Prospects
by Arthur Waldron, Ph.D

Published on August 25th, 2008
Cleaning up after the party often reveals a lot, and the world situation post Beijing Olympics is no exception. Let’s start with China, not forgetting, however, that the unexpected Georgia crisis effectively drove the Olympic events out of the headlines.  The story-board before the games began was essentially this: long humiliated and poor, China is announcing her return to the world stage in style, with the most lavish Olympics ever staged, featuring venues of the purest ultra-modern architecture, a multi media opening that will outshine anything seen before, the deployment for the first time of superb Chinese athletic talent garnering more gold medals than anyone, foreign heads of state making the trip who conspicuously had scheduling conflicts when it came to Athens--and lest anyone see it all as orchestrated or regimented, the whole package done up in the finest human rights rhetoric, with promises of full internet access and even an officially recognized right to protest.

Foreign Aid and the Fight Against Terrorism and Proliferation: Leveraging Foreign Aid to Achieve U.S. Policy Goals
Testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs
by Douglas Farah

Published on July 31st, 2008
There is growing recognition that there is no purely military solution in the fight against terrorism, whether the use of this tactic is driven by religion (radical Islamism), ideology and nationalism (Tamil Tigers), control of natural resources or “honey pots” (multipronged wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo, recent wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia) or a mixture of these elements (The FARC in Colombia, Taliban in Afghanistan, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the janjaweed in Sudan). Our approach to combating terrorism, and the aid we give, is often limited by our confinement to dealing with individual states as entirely separate entities. But this is an increasingly unsustainable.

What Is Happening In China?
by Arthur Waldron, Ph.D

Published on March 25th, 2008
Posed at this time, the question is enormous. Washington is singularly ill-prepared to address it, for what is happening, bluntly speaking, is that the interlocking set of hopes and assumptions about China that for thirty years have ruled policy, is being tested as never before and may not survive.

'Peace Mission'
Asian Wall Street Journal
by Richard Fisher, Jr.

Published on August 15th, 2007
The world will understandably have some questions this Thursday when Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian leader Vladimir Putin meet at Garrison Chebarkul in Russia to review troops from both their countries, as well as four states of former Soviet Central Asia. The event will mark the end of maneuvers called Peace Mission 2007, and it raises some important questions. Does this exercise signal a stepping up of already substantial military cooperation between Moscow and Beijing? And if it does, cooperation against what or whom?

Arthur Waldron's Dissent to CFR China Report
by Arthur Waldron, Ph.D

Published on June 21st, 2007
Council on Foreign Relations member and Vice President of IASC, Arthur Waldron, was a member of the Council Task Force the report of which, "An Affirmative Agenda, A Positive Course" was recently released. Task force members had the option of signing the report without reservation, signing with reservation, or--if they found themselves in complete disagreement--not being listed as taking such a position, but rather not being listed at all, even though they had participated. Professor Waldron chose to sign with substantial reservations. Owing to Council on Foreign Relations rules, however, he did not have the opportunity to present these in detail in the report as published, though he--and others having reservations--were permitted to publish brief dissents or additions, as he did.

The Chinese Stock Market
by Arthur Waldron, Ph.D

Published on May 13th, 2007
How will the Chinese stock market rally end? The answer is important not only for investors there, but for ordinary Chinese farmers who have never laid eyes on a stock certificate.  Chinese stocks are grossly overvalued. But a buying frenzy is driving them higher—a frenzy that reflects the fundamental irrationality of a system that now lets people earn money but closes off almost all avenues for investing it—except a swelling stock market bubble.  We know the bubble will burst. When it does, the fundamental bargain between the repressive Chinese government and its people—you let us rule and we will make you rich—may burst too. With unfathomable, but no doubt very serious, consequences.

Pollution: A Real Political Issue
by Arthur Waldron, Ph.D

Published on May 9th, 2007
Reports are that at an internal party meeting China’s inscrutable premier Wen Jiabao, recently delivered a scathing indictment of his government’s failure to control the pollution that is rapidly turning much of his country to waste land.

Briefly: China Unsettled By Shifts in Korean Peninsula
by Arthur Waldron, Ph.D

Published on February 7th, 2007
The latest sign that things are not going Beijing’s way in the Korean peninsula came on Friday February 2 at the Winter Asian Games in Changchun, China. During the awards ceremony, five South Korean female skaters held up seven placards proclaiming" Mount Paektu Is Our Territory." This was a shock, since China has long claimed the mountain, which it calls Changbai, as its own territory. And has assumed that its Korean vassals would go along.