Authors: Yiping Huang and Bijun Wang, Peking University
Despite its extraordinary growth performance during the past decades, China’s structural risks have also increased significantly. Premier Wen and other senior leaders have repeatedly emphasised that the existing growth pattern is unstable, unbalanced and unsustainable.
One of the most widely identified imbalance problems is the rising share of investment in GDP, which increases the risk of excess capacity and low returns. Read more »
Authors: Sherry Tao Kong, Xin Meng and Dandan Zhang, Australia National University
The global financial crisis (GFC) reduced export orders sharply and led to a decline in China’s economic growth. As China’s exporting industries are labour intensive and most likely to employ rural migrants, it was widely believed that the GFC has had significant negative impacts on the employment and/or wages of rural migrants.
Reflecting this, at the height of the crisis, laid-off Chinese migrant workers protested outside closed factories and millions lamented lost jobs and embarked on journeys home. Read more »
Author: Carlyle A. Thayer, UNSW@ADFA
If China has made the running in Southeast Asia on the basis of soft power over the last decade, the tide now seems to be turning and the United States is re-engaging with smart power. The United States has signed the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation; President Obama has attended the first ASEAN-United States leadership summit (and will host the second meeting in the US this year); Secretary Clinton has not only attended two ASEAN Regional Forum meetings in a row, but offered US good offices to help settle diplomatically one of the pressing security issues in Southeast Asia, the South China Sea dispute. In sum, Secretary Clinton has turned the multilateral table on China. The United States is back and engaged in Southeast Asia working with the support of regional states. Read more »
Jiaolong China's Jiaolong sub, shown here under construction, will search for energy sources and rare-earth metals in the deep sea. China Daily
Based at a new multi-million-dollar energy research station, a Chinese deep-sea sub will search for new energy sources and rare-earth metals on the ocean floor, according to Chinese state-run media.
Chinese officials announced Thursday that the new Jiaolong sub made 17 dives in the South China Sea this summer, the deepest to 12,332 feet (3,759 meters). The feat makes China the fifth country to dive past the 3,500 meter mark. Read more »
Author: Georgy Toloraya, CSCAP, Russia
The Asia Pacific is a global region of primary significance. It is imperative that Russia grasps this fact, and lays out a comprehensive vision for its role in the region. If Russia can do this, it can greatly advance the cause of developing effective arrangements in the region.
What are the key elements of the economic, political and security situation in the Asia-Pacific region?
Read more »
Author: Yanrui Wu, UWA
After three decades of rapid growth, the Chinese economy is now at a crossroads, heading towards the next phase of development. While China’s economic growth has indeed been phenomenal, it has also been resource intensive and environmentally damaging.
For high growth to be sustained in the coming decades, the role of technological progress has to be boosted. This can either occur through technology transfer flows from abroad, or through indigenous innovation. While the former has been widely discussed, the latter has largely been under-documented.
China has adopted an active technology development program since the foundation of the People’s Republic in 1949. But up until recently, the program has been overly biased towards defence-related sectors. The idea that science and technology are independent sources of economic growth has only just taken hold. Read more »
Author: Jane Golley, ANU
In the three decades since Deng Xiaoping declared that China’s economic development would necessarily involve some people becoming rich before others, inequalities have risen steadily across (and within) China’s provinces and regions.
Author: Joel Rathus, Adelaide University and Meiji University
In November of last year, President Barack Obama pledged that he would be a ‘Pacific president.’ While the audience in Suntory Hall may have wondered about what exactly that statement meant, few in attendance doubted the sincerity or conviction of the president. As relationships between the US, ASEAN and China have been re-drawn, especially since the latest series of ASEAN-hosted diplomatic meetings in Hanoi, the meaning of a Pacific president is starting to become clearer. Three sites of change in particular warrant special mention; the East Asia Summit, the South China Sea and the Korean Peninsula. In all three cases, the United States and ASEAN states are becoming closer, while China is finding itself distanced from the decision-making process. Read more »
Author: Mi Luo, Peking University
Internet usage is on the rise in China, especially amongst the younger generation. Faced with the problem of extensive online censorship, this generation has designed software packages to ‘scale the Great Firewall’ which blocks content deemed sensitive by the Ministry of Public Security.
Author: Louise Merrington, ANU
When thinking about China’s role in Asia, the relationships that are most obvious are those with its East and Southeast Asian neighbours, from Japan, Korea and Taiwan down to the ASEAN countries. But looking west across China’s hinterland we can see a new set of relationships developing in one of the most strategically important areas of the world: the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.
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