Eastern Asia

Belief in historical progress was once abundant in the western world. In fact, some of the uglier crimes of western colonialism were justified in the name of progress. Colonizers and imperialists often claimed to be more advanced than those they repressed and brutalized…

Five years have passed since October 2013, when China unveiled its large scale and comprehensive OBOR project, which held the promise of quite a few benefits to its numerous participants for mutual trade and economic ties, financial hubs, infrastructure (port construction, high speed auto and railways, pipelines), tourist…

One of the more important consequences of the Trump Administration trade war against both China as well as Japan is the recent diplomatic and economic meeting between Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and China’s President Xi Jinping in Beijing. Not only was it the first such meeting…

So, the snap governor elections of the Okinawa Prefecture that were critical for the Japanese federal government were held on September 30 this year and ended in an unpleasant surprise for it. Despite Tokyo’s anticipation (and to its sheer disappointment) the former Ginowan City Mayor Atsushi Sakima supported by the ruling Liberal Democratic…

Officially called the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge, the 55 kilometre-long bridge-tunnel is an engineering marvel physically connecting Hong Kong and Macau to China’s mainland. Beyond providing links to the mainland, the bridge helps form a wider bay area, connecting several cities…

As the present author has written on more than one occasion, the reduction in tensions on the Korean peninsula can be largely attributed to the “double freeze” strategy jointly developed by Russia and China. And although the dialogue between the USA and North Korea is progressing slowly, and not as smoothly as hoped, no-one has claimed that we have…

On October 10, 2018, Kang Kyung-wha, the South Korean foreign minister, during parliamentary investigations into the activities of her ministry, stated that Seoul is looking at the possibility of lifting the unilateral sanctions that were imposed on North Korea on May 24, 2010…

The West’s human rights racket has once again mobilized – this time supposedly in support of China’s Uyghur minority centered primarily in the nation’s northwestern region of Xinjiang, China. Headlines and reports have been published claiming that up to a million mostly Uyghurs have been detained in what the West is claiming are “internment…

Our previous article on the South Korean – Japanese relations was dedicated to the wianbu issue, but the relations between the 2 states have not been limited to that during this year. On April 9, South Korea appealed the recommendation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to cancel…

After opening its first official fully fledged foreign base in Djibouti in July 2017, Beijing has continued developing it. According to the information provided by Jane’s Defence Weekly, the Chinese are quickly building large quays and moorings for battleships and secret…

The change in the relationship between the two leading world powers (the USA and China) is a key factor in the situation, not just in the Indo-Pacific, but in the world as a whole. The answer to the main question – the nature of that relationship in (at least) the first half of…

Following the overview of recent developments in relations between China and DPRK, let us now learn more about China’s cooperation with South Korea in the given time period. Political cooperation between the two countries mainly occurred at the level of multilateral meetings. The most…