Wall Street Journal (June 18)
“Hong Kong democrats celebrated Thursday as the city’s legislature blocked passage of the Beijing-backed election law that sparked last year’s 75-day mass protests.” In response, Beijing’s tactic will probably risk “further alienating the people of Hong Kong from the mainland. The more Beijing paints its opponents as radicals and revolutionaries, the more it risks creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Tags: Beijing, Democrats, Election law, Hong Kong, Legislature, Mainland, Radicals, Revolutionaries
Institutional Investor (April 15)
“As a demonstration of China’s growing economic and political clout, few things rival the launch of the Asian Infrastructure Investment bank, Beijing’s challenge to the U.S.-dominated international financial order…. In the end, only Japan among major economies sided with Washington in shunning the AIIB.”
Wall Street Journal (April 13)
“We need to get used to slower Chinese growth,” writes former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. He adds that “if, as Beijing has promised, the slowdown is accompanied by deep and serious structural reform that opens up new growth opportunities, such as allowing the private sector to compete against state monopolies in service sectors like banking and telecommunications, then China will still grow robustly compared with all other major economies.”
Tags: Banking, Beijing, China, Competition, Growth, Monopolies, Paulson, Private-sector, Slowdown, Structural reform, Telecommunications
The Economist (January 10)
“North Korea’s strange juggling act is becoming ever more precarious. The hubbub over The Interview has attracted unwanted attention. “Just because Mr Kim runs a paranoid, delusional despotism, does not mean that the outside world is not out to get him.” In fact, it increasingly seems “the comforting calculation for North Korea’s regime—that, painful though its existence is to its people and the outside world, its collapse would be worse—may not hold for ever in Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo and Washington.”
Tags: Beijing, Collapse, Delusional, Despotism, Kim, North Korea, Paranoid, Regime, Seoul, The Interview, Tokyo, Washington
Financial Times (November 12)
An unexpected announcement at the summit in Beijing may jump start efforts to combat climate change. “China and the US have set aside nearly 20 years of discord over how to combat climate change and laid out their respective plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions.” The breakthrough may “galvanise efforts to seal a global climate pact at the end of next year in Paris.”
Tags: Beijing, Breakthrough, China, Climate change, Greenhouse gas emissions, Paris, Summit, U.S.
Bloomberg (October 6)
“Eleven days into the Umbrella Revolution, it’s clear Beijing won’t back down. President Xi Jinping won’t accede to the movement’s universal suffrage proposal or sacrifice Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying to ease tensions.” Unless the students “face reality and plot an endgame,” they risk becoming “irritants” to average Hongkongers. If, however, they can win a few concessions, the students “can demonstrate that they gave Goliath a good fight and achieved something substantial.”
Tags: Beijing, Concessions, Endgame, Hong Kong, Leung Chun-ying, Risk, Students, Tensions, Umbrella Revolution, Universal suffrage, Xi Jinping
Los Angeles Times (October 3)
“Fear of China is not a Western machination.” China likes to blame the West for stirring up trouble, but this year’s “massive protests in Taipei and Hong Kong show that fear of China is most acute along its own borders…. It is the inhabitants of greater China—the ones whom Beijing hopes one day to incorporate into a unified motherland—who fear China the most. They are protesting Chinese encroachments in far greater numbers than either the Vietnamese or Japanese.”
Wall Street Journal (July 2)
The decision by the Cabinet to reinterpret the constitution and allow for Japan’s collective self-defense is “a momentous and long overdue decision that strengthens the security of Asia’s democracies. Perhaps as important, it will force Beijing to contemplate how its aggressive behavior in the East China Sea invited Japan to take a more active role in the region.”
Tags: Aggressive, Asia, Beijing, Cabinet, Collective, Constitution, East China Sea, Japan, Region, Reinterpret, Security, Self-defense
Institutional Investor (June 3)
“It’s been 25 years since the government cracked down on pro-democracy demonstrators in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.” Today, most younger Chinese have little awareness of the seminal event, and authorities are “taking extraordinary measures” to make sure the anniversary “passes without incident, or indeed recognition of any kind.”
Tags: Anniversary, Authorities, Awareness, Beijing, China, Crack down, Demonstrators, Government, Pro-democracy, Tiananmen Square
Wall Street Journal (June 1)
At this year’s annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, tensions were on full display. Chinese officers spoke in ways that “only reinforced fears that Beijing is on a collision course with the U.S. They accused the U.S. and Japan of using coercion and acting hegemonically, when everyone else in region says that describes Chinese behavior.”
Tags: Beijing, China, Coercion, Collision course, Japan, Officers, Shangri-La Dialogue, Singapore, Tension, U.S.
