https://www.scmp.com/rss/323741/feed Sourabh Gupta is a senior fellow at the Institute for China-America Studies in Washington en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Seventy-five years ago this month, American diplomat George Kennan published an influential essay in Foreign Affairs in which he unveiled the idea of “containment” for the first time. In “The Sources of Soviet Conduct”, he advocated applying this strategy to Soviet expansionism at a time when Moscow was encroaching on the interests of a stable world order. The essay struck a chord with the Euro-Atlantic world, which was grappling with the Kremlin’s intransigent ways in the aftermath of World War... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3186883/why-us-using-cold-war-containment-strategy-against-china-would-be?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3186883/why-us-using-cold-war-containment-strategy-against-china-would-be?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 30 Jul 2022 01:15:18 +0000 WHAT A DIFFERENCE a year makes. This time last year, Donald Trump triumphantly strode the Asia-Pacific stage on his way to completing the longest visit to the region by an American president in a quarter-century. During Trump’s stopover in Beijing, President Xi Jinping conferred an honour not granted to any of his predecessors since the normalisation of ties with the US – a state dinner inside the Forbidden City. Twelve months later, at the height of Asia’s summit season, Trump is nowhere to be... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2173581/trumps-vanishing-act-sours-asia-ties-just-china-hits-sweet-spot?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2173581/trumps-vanishing-act-sours-asia-ties-just-china-hits-sweet-spot?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 16 Nov 2018 21:01:17 +0000 The reigning Bishop of Rome, Francis, is not your typical stodgy pontiff. In the five short years since his elevation as the first non-European head of the Roman Catholic Church since 741AD, he has displayed latitude of mind, courage of conviction, and deftness of diplomatic skill that is rare even among statesmen. In August 2014, on entering Chinese airspace during a flight to Seoul, he broke six decades of silence between the Vatican and the head of China’s government by posting a message of... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2166226/pope-has-made-china-can-dalai-lama?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2166226/pope-has-made-china-can-dalai-lama?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 28 Sep 2018 11:00:45 +0000 August may come to be remembered as that momentous month when the foundations of Donald Trump’s domestic and international policy agenda began to wobble, fatally. While his long-time personal lawyer and his former campaign manager were found guilty on a number of criminal charges just minutes apart in courtrooms in New York and Washington, the US’ two key antagonists in Asia delivered uncompromising messages to The Donald. A negotiating team headed by Chinese commerce vice-minister Wang Shouwen... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2162044/trump-joined-china-trade-and-north-korea-hip-each-now-drags?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2162044/trump-joined-china-trade-and-north-korea-hip-each-now-drags?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 30 Aug 2018 12:00:00 +0000 On March 12, 1947, as the spectre of Soviet communism loomed over the horizon of newly liberated Europe, President Harry Truman vowed that it would be the policy of the United States to “support free people who are resisting subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure”. Three months after enunciating the Truman Doctrine, his secretary of state, George Marshall, launched a US$13.5 billion Economic Recovery Plan, better known as the Marshall Plan, to rebuild and revitalise war-torn... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2158203/china-scores-asean-play-trumps-america-loses-its-way-south?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2158203/china-scores-asean-play-trumps-america-loses-its-way-south?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 03 Aug 2018 10:30:30 +0000 Fireworks, speeches , barbecues and feasts have traditionally marked America’s Fourth of July festivities going back to the 18th century. Add tit-for-tat retaliatory tariffs to the celebratory mix this year. In the week that America celebrated its 242nd birthday, the Donald Trump administration and its trade partners on both sides of the Pacific busied themselves enacting punitive duties on each other’s exports. Canada went first, imposing duties on US$12.5 billion of US exports on July 1... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2154163/us-and-china-who-tried-avert-trade-war-and-who-forced-it?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2154163/us-and-china-who-tried-avert-trade-war-and-who-forced-it?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Jul 2018 11:30:00 +0000 China is not the only country Donald Trump is targeting with his trade war – indeed, no American ally is likely to emerge unscathed. And while China may have sufficient muscle to fight its corner, others may not be so lucky. When he was campaigning to be president, in a seven-point economic plan to “Make America Great Again”, Trump had promised to employ Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 as well as Section 201 and Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 to punitively sanction countries... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2154133/not-just-china-trumps-trade-war-puts-allies-firing-line?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2154133/not-just-china-trumps-trade-war-puts-allies-firing-line?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 06 Jul 2018 10:00:00 +0000 The great tragedy of the “limited war” on the Korean peninsula that snuffed out 2 million civilian lives in the early 1950s was that it ultimately resolved very little: the status quo was restored, and a tenuous armistice held the peace thereafter. That is until earlier this week. On June 12 in Singapore, US President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jong-un paved a pathway which, if faithfully trod upon, will durably close this painful chapter in Asia’s modern history and set the peninsula on a... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2151030/trump-kim-statement-isnt-vague-its-just-flexible-enough-work?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2151030/trump-kim-statement-isnt-vague-its-just-flexible-enough-work?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 15 Jun 2018 14:01:57 +0000 Prime Minister Narendra Modi has become the first Indian leader to deliver the prestigious keynote address at the Shangri-La Dialogue, a conference which annually brings together defence ministers, military chiefs and strategists from across the Indo-Pacific region in Singapore. Modi was previously invited in 2015. But after the denunciations of China’s role in the South China Sea by Vietnam’s Nguyen Tan Dung and Japan’s Shinzo Abe in their 2013 and 2014 keynote addresses, respectively, Modi... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2148867/indias-actions-south-china-sea-will-speak-louder-its-words?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2148867/indias-actions-south-china-sea-will-speak-louder-its-words?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 01 Jun 2018 11:01:40 +0000 Less than three months after eliciting utter incredulity with his promise that trade wars were good and easy to win, Donald Trump showed how such conflicts are won – at least with China. It requires a sense of restraint, respect for international law, recognition of the other party’s inherent rights and a willingness to bring in the heavy artillery not only for one’s advantage but also in the service of mutually beneficial goals. Many of these features were not hitherto known to be core Trumpian... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2147792/trump-proves-trade-wars-china-are-good-and-easy-win?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2147792/trump-proves-trade-wars-china-are-good-and-easy-win?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 25 May 2018 07:15:00 +0000 The informal two-day summit between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in the Chinese city of Wuhan last week was carefully planned to showcase how the two nations can productively conduct business. But it was also a testament to the resolve and flexibility of India’s China policy. Modi, like his predecessors Manmohan Singh and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has been quick to pivot from hawk to dove and unreservedly engage Beijing in good faith whenever an opportunity in... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2144745/xi-jinping-and-narendra-modi-have-jump-started-new-era-china?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2144745/xi-jinping-and-narendra-modi-have-jump-started-new-era-china?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 07 May 2018 01:03:57 +0000 Ever since Kim Jong-un’s firm but conciliatory New Year’s Day Address, developments on the Korean peninsula have raced ahead at a breakneck pace. This week it culminated at the Peace House on the southern side of the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom as the two Koreas took a giant step towards winding down their cold war-era division and becoming the authors of their common 21st century destiny. Hang on, what language is Kim Jong-un speaking? The Panmunjom Declaration’s goal of declaring... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2143853/kim-meets-moon-real-peace-peninsula-leave-korea-itself?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2143853/kim-meets-moon-real-peace-peninsula-leave-korea-itself?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 29 Apr 2018 02:00:30 +0000 The United States has never been at a loss of words to criticise China’s intellectual property rights (IPR) policies and practices. But there’s very good reason why that rhetoric has never been translated into trade action – before Donald Trump came along, that is. In a sharply worded investigative report issued on March 22 under Section 301 of its domestic trade law, the office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) criticised China’s intellectual property and technology transfer... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2140645/china-us-trade-war-look-closely-trump-has-zero-ammo?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2140645/china-us-trade-war-look-closely-trump-has-zero-ammo?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 06 Apr 2018 11:30:45 +0000 As a candidate seeking the presidency of the United States,  Donald Trump had promised in his seven-point plan to “Make America Great Again” that he would “use every lawful presidential power to remedy trade disputes” if China did not stop its “illegal activities, including its theft of American trade secrets”. And as President Trump, he has drawn out an unusually detailed list of statutory and unconventional trade policy enforcement tools.  Slowly, but surely, the moment of sanctioning has... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2132598/locked-and-loaded-china-and-us-are-marching-trade-war?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2132598/locked-and-loaded-china-and-us-are-marching-trade-war?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 04 Mar 2018 00:00:30 +0000 Ten years ago, as early autumn set in and the Communist Party of China prepared to convene its 17th National Congress in Beijing, the names of two Lis – Liaoning party chief Li Keqiang and Jiangsu party chief Li Yuanchao – were making the rounds as odds-on favourites to emerge from the scrum of candidates to be anointed supreme leader-in-waiting of the party’s Fifth Generation. Newly appointed party chief of Shanghai, Xi Jinping, was not expected to contend for the post. He had just been... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2115749/will-xi-jinping-build-deng-xiaopings-legacy-or-unravel-it?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2115749/will-xi-jinping-build-deng-xiaopings-legacy-or-unravel-it?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 17 Oct 2017 10:00:15 +0000 Just as imperceptibly as China and India were locked into a standoff in mid-June on a narrow plateau near the China-Bhutan-India trijunction area in the Sikkim Himalayas, so the standoff was wound down imperceptibly with deft diplomacy by both sides. On August 28, a week before President Xi Jinping was due to host Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Xiamen for the ninth BRICS summit, New Delhi and Beijing began implementing the terms of their disengagement understanding, commencing with the... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2109406/what-south-china-sea-rivals-can-learn-doklam-border-dispute?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2109406/what-south-china-sea-rivals-can-learn-doklam-border-dispute?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 03 Sep 2017 03:02:16 +0000 Over the first weekend of August, foreign ministers of the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) held their 50th ministerial meeting in Manila – the second such meet since the issuance of the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s award on the South China Sea that overwhelmingly favoured the Philippines in its case against China. Attention at the gathering, yet again, was inordinately focused on the language in their joint communique. Would China’s land reclamations be hauled up for... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2106419/forget-chatter-asean-china-relations-are-actually-stable?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2106419/forget-chatter-asean-china-relations-are-actually-stable?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 12 Aug 2017 02:47:23 +0000 On August 5, a day before the 72nd anniversary commemorations of the Hiroshima atomic bombing that snuffed out 140,000 unsuspecting lives – mainly civilian, the United Nations Security Council unanimously imposed its stiffest nuclear and ballistic missile-related sanctions yet on the Kim Jong-un regime in Pyongyang. Two sets of penalties were imposed on the regime. First, a full ban on the export of coal, iron and iron ore from North Korea is to take effect. Previously, these items could be... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2105932/why-nows-not-time-oil-embargo-north-korea?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2105932/why-nows-not-time-oil-embargo-north-korea?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 08 Aug 2017 08:04:24 +0000 China and India are locked yet again in a stand-off of Himalayan proportions. Almost five weeks after Indian troops trespassed and forcibly halted the activities of a Chinese road construction crew on a narrow plateau at the China-Bhutan-India tri-junction area in the Sikkim Himalayas, the two sides appear no closer to resolving their quarrel. The area in question, Doklam, is the subject of a legal dispute between China and Bhutan, is under the effective jurisdiction of China, and holds an... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2103656/indias-got-itself-fine-mess-doklam-its-time-get-out-and-let?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2103656/indias-got-itself-fine-mess-doklam-its-time-get-out-and-let?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 23 Jul 2017 02:00:15 +0000 Perceptive China-watchers have observed that President Xi Jinping ( 習近平 ) has modelled his political mission on Deng Xiaoping ( 鄧小平 ) – even if his methods bear a whiff of Maoism. Deng put an end to the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution and engineered China’s transformation towards socialist modernisation. Xi’s sweeping reforms and anti-corruption crackdown aim to engineer an analogous transformation that will deliver China to the cusp of a “moderately prosperous” society by the time of the... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2094170/what-chinas-belt-and-road-has-learn-1920s-america?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2094170/what-chinas-belt-and-road-has-learn-1920s-america?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 13 May 2017 06:00:30 +0000 As President Xi Jinping touched down in Palm Beach, Florida, in the early afternoon of April 6 for his first face-to-face encounter with the brash and flamboyant American president, US-China relations were poised in a state of suspended animation. Four questions loomed over the gathering at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s officially designated ‘Winter White House’. First, would Donald Trump be an exception to the presidential rule on America’s China policy? For four decades and counting, US presidential... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2086052/xi-and-trumps-message-mar-lago-yes-we-can?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2086052/xi-and-trumps-message-mar-lago-yes-we-can?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 08 Apr 2017 10:15:45 +0000 Using the same Bible that Abraham Lincoln used at his inauguration, Donald Trump, amid pomp and protest, was sworn in on January 20 as the 45th president of the United States of America. More than 150 years ago, with civil war looming, Lincoln had urged his countrymen to renew the common ties that bound them. “We are not enemies, but friends … we are not, we must not be, aliens or enemies but fellow countrymen and brethren,” he vainly noted. Lincoln had directed his words to a domestic audience.... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2064003/trump-about-turn-americas-back-asia?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2064003/trump-about-turn-americas-back-asia?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 21 Jan 2017 02:02:35 +0000 Cross-strait ties and the US-China-Taiwan relationship had, until recently, been a rare bright spot in the increasingly conflicted security dynamics of the Asia-Pacific region. For the past half-decade or more, cross-strait ties have kept on an even keel, even as tensions spiralled dangerously on the Korean Peninsula and episodically in the East and South China Seas. Judging by the early inclinations of Donald Trump, that period of calm may be coming to an abrupt end as he publicly questions the... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2055312/how-trumps-taiwan-gambit-could-suck-japan-korea-war?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2055312/how-trumps-taiwan-gambit-could-suck-japan-korea-war?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 18 Dec 2016 02:31:32 +0000