PATRICK LAWRENCE: Hong Kong’s Inevitable Showdown
This reckoning with Beijing’s authority was baked into the cake 22 years ago when the Union Jack came down over Government House. It is impossible not to admire the bravery and commitment pro-democracy demonstrators display daily as they clog Hong…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The US-China Decoupling
The long, dense economic relationship appears to have passed its peak, writes Patrick Lawrence. President Donald Trump’s trade war with China is swiftly taking a decisive turn for the worse. Step by step, each measure prompting retaliation, a spat so…
How China Is Building the Post-Western World
Beijing’s Belt and Road project may be the largest single infrastructure program in human history. Not infrequently, I bang on in this space and elsewhere about “parity between West and non-West.” I consider achieving this the single most pressing necessity…
How Our Foreign-Policy Elites Manufactured the Korea Crisis
The attack on the Syrian airfield was a message to North Korea and China—and a demonstration of Trump’s capitulation to the imperial clique. The crisis over North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs now builds to a perilous pitch with no…
Trump Will Be Steadier on China Than His Taiwan Call May Suggest
There’s only one smart way to take all the heavy breathing since Donald Trump’s 10-minute telephone conversation last Friday with Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’s president. Ignore it: Most of what’s been ricocheting around the press last week misses the point by…
Trump’s Taiwan Kerfuffle—and How the Policy Wonks Got It Wrong
The claim that he had no idea of the political and diplomatic implications when he took his call from Taipei does not hold water. Are you paying attention to the commotion over Donald Trump’s 10-minute telephone conversation last week with…
Why Clinton’s China Policy Puts More at Risk than Trump’s
The two confirmed presidential candidates we’ll have by the end of this week have little in common, except they’re both wealthy New Yorkers. Among the many differences between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, China policy ranks very high. How the…
The Pentagon Is Endangering Our Economic Ties With China
When China refused to allow the USS John C. Stennis to dock in Hong Kong 10 days ago, it got only modest mention in the news reports. Keeping the nuclear-powered supercarrier and its strike group out of a port where…
Why China’s Slowdown Will Lead to Sustainable Growth
In less than a week China’s modest, by-the-book devaluation of its currency appears to have escalated into a full-scale political crisis, complete with reports of a Mao-style purge of top leaders and tanks in Tiananmen Square. Suddenly, the world’s highest-flying…
Behind the Tensions Over China’s Artificial Islands
There are two useful ways to view the current dispute over the artificial islands China is building atop reefs in much-contested zones of the South China Sea. It’s a mistake to see China’s construction projects in the Spratly Islands as…
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