China

The global financial crisis which had been brewing for some time began to unfold in the middle of 2008. Stock markets around the world have nosedived, large financial institutions have collapsed or been bought out, and governments of even the wealthiest nations have had to come up with rescue packages to rescue their financial systems. The crisis stemmed from the collapse of the US sub-prime mortgage market and the reversal of the housing boom in other industrialised economies.

• Gunjan Singh
• December 04, 2008
• Comment

Hydrocarbon rich Bay of Bengal seems to be emerging as another centre of oil politics. This was recently manifested by a standoff between Myanmar and Bangladesh, when Dhaka sent three naval vessels to stop Myanmar from conducting exploration activities in their disputed Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs). The crisis has since been diffused, though it is far from over.

• Anand Kumar
• November 27, 2008
• Comment

External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee's recent outburst that China poses a security challenge indicates a dangerous ambiguity in India’s China policy. The fact that Mukherjee has aired such a view after his intense and long diplomatic rapport with the leadership of that country needs to be noted seriously. It is not that China has not been a puzzle to Indian strategic thinkers. Even former Defence Minister George Fernandes considered China as India’s number one enemy, but his views were transformed after he paid an official visit to Beijing.

• P. Stobdan
• November 18, 2008
• Comment

If current developments are any indicator, the long road to economic integration on either side of the Taiwan Straits has commenced. In a first of its kind, a sixty member delegation led by Chen Yunlin, Chairman of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) visited Taiwan from November 3-7, 2008 to hold talks with his counterpart Chiang Pin-kung, Chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF). ARATS and SEF are two non-governmental organisations authorised by China and Taiwan in the early 1990s to examine the entire gamut of cross-Strait relations.

• Raviprasad Narayanan
• November 14, 2008
• Comment

President Bush will host the first ever financial summit of the G-20 on November 15, 2008 in Washington to discuss the current global financial crisis which threatens the economic and political stability through out the world. The crisis comes on the heels of an economic crisis in the global economy in the first half of 2008 which was characterised by a record level of oil prices, global food shortages, high inflation and rising inflation in most countries.

• Arvind Gupta
• November 05, 2008
• Comment

Many scholars assume that the European model of Realpolitik will prevail in Asia as the dual rise of China and India reorders regional politics. Others predict that Asia's China-centric tradition of hierarchy will reassert itself. But Indians look as much to 19th century US history as to any European or Asian model. Indeed, successive prime ministers have explicitly cited the Monroe Doctrine to justify intervention in hotspots around the Indian periphery. The Monroe Doctrine, however, underwent several phases during the USA's rise to world power.

• James R. Holmes , Toshi Yoshihara
• November 2008
• Strategic Analysis

Chinese military modernization and its resulting aggressive posturing have serious implications for Asian stability and Indian security. This article is an attempt to understand the main security challenges from a Chinese perspective; the kind of responses, especially military, that China has undertaken; and the way Chinese military strategy has evolved from Mao's People's War days to a modern hi-tech military force today.

• Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan
• November 2008
• Strategic Analysis

• P. K. Gautam
• November 2008
• Strategic Analysis

The two recent glorious achievements - the Olympics and spacewalk mission – seem to have transcended China to a new global height with wide implications for the world’s strategic balance. From all accounts, analysts suggest that China will not only survive but has also gained from the recent global financial meltdown.

• P. Stobdan
• October 27, 2008
• Comment

On October 7, 2008, the PLA Daily reported that the Central Military Commission (CMC) and the four general departments of the Chinese military celebrated in great style the success of the Shenzhou-VII manned space flight mission. Shenzhou-VII, carrying three astronauts (Zhai Zhigang, Liu Boming, and Jing Haipeng) returned successfully on September 28 after conducting a historic spacewalk mission. This success made China the third country after the United States and Russia to conduct a space walk mission.

• Jagannath P. Panda
• October 16, 2008
• Comment