https://www.scmp.com/rss/329869/feed Ambassador J. Stapleton Roy is the founding director emeritus and a distinguished scholar at the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States. From watching the Chinese civil war from the roof of his school, to participating in the secret negotiations to establish US-China diplomatic relations, to serving as assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, Roy has lived through, navigated, and studied the development of China and modern Asia for more than 70... en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com As the democracies of the world assemble to celebrate their forms of governance, they would be wise to reflect on some of the deficiencies of democracy along with its successes. Properly functioning democracy is the only truly modern form of governance. The just powers of governance, in other words the legitimacy of democratic systems, rest on elections that reflect the will of the people, and such systems rely on checks and balances to prevent the concentration of power that leads to... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3159031/us-should-not-encourage-taiwan-court-destruction?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3159031/us-should-not-encourage-taiwan-court-destruction?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 09 Dec 2021 17:00:16 +0000 In a vast majority of circumstances, engagement, like honesty, is the best policy. I spent 45 years as an American diplomat. That’s more than 20% of our history as a nation. I found that even in the worst circumstances, there were possibilities for engagement. Thirty-five years of my foreign service career was during the Cold War, and over that span of time, I spent nine years dealing with the Soviet Union and 13 years with the People’s Republic of China, our two principal communist... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/j-stapleton-roy-engagement-best-way-avoid-war/article/2178659?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/opinion/j-stapleton-roy-engagement-best-way-avoid-war/article/2178659?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 19 Dec 2018 05:15:30 +0000