A Strategic Discovery: Rare Earth Elements Bonanza in the DPRK
Memo #258 By Marie-Pier Baril – mariepier.baril [at] gmail.com Earlier this month, MiningWeekly announced the world’s largest known single reserve of rare earth elements (REE) was discovered in Jongju, North Pyongan province, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea). The DPRK’s mineral resources have always been substantial, but the discovery of such rare […]
Xiaomi: The Rise of an Indigenous Chinese Tech Industry
Memo #257 By Grégoire Legault – gregoire.legault [at] alumni.ubc.ca Xiaomi (小米), a Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer, represents the dawn of a new era in China: the shift from low-tech to high-tech industry. What’s more, Xiaomi’s business model heralds the emergence of Chinese tech firms not just as producers, but as competitive innovators that are poised to explode […]
Japan-China Relations: Issues and Prospects (Video Interview with Akio Takahara) – Part 2 of 2
Memo #254 Featuring Akio Takahara In part two of his interview with the Asia Pacific Memo (see part one here), Dr. Akio Takahara , a professor in the Graduate School of Law and Politics at the University of Tokyo and a recognized authority on contemporary Chinese politics and Japan-China relations, talks about bridging the divides in Japan-China […]
Japan-China Relations: Issues and Prospects (Video Interview with Akio Takahara) – Part 1 of 2
Memo #253 Featuring Akio Takahara Recently the Asia Pacific Memo sat down with Dr. Akio Takahara, Professor in the Graduate School of Law and Politics at the University of Tokyo and a recognized authority on contemporary Chinese politics, international relations in East Asia, and Japan-China relations in particular. In this first part of a two-part video memo, […]
Keeping Neighbours Closer: Beijing’s Geopolitical Pitch
Memo #249 By Jargalsaikhan Mendee – mendee [at] alumni.ubc.ca Lately, Chinese leaders have been busy bolstering relations with their immediate neighbours. As evidence, the Prime Ministers of India, Mongolia, and Russia arrived in Beijing for bilateral meetings with China’s President Xin Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang on the same day—October 24, 2013. While Russian Prime Minister Dmitri […]
Security or Nationalism? Making Sense of Tibetan Resistance against China
Memo #247 By Tsering Topgyal – t.topgyal [at] bham.ac.uk Scholarship on the Sino-Tibetan conflict maintains a primarily binary representation of the Chinese as security-driven and the Tibetans as ethno-nationalistic. In reality, for Tibetans it is the sense of identity security or insecurity (that is, the relative prospects for the survival and reproduction of their identity) that informs […]
China’s Turn Against Law Fuels Rising Social Unrest
Memo #246 By Carl Minzner – cminzner [at] law.fordham.edu Over the past decade, central Chinese leaders have changed course with regard to legal reforms they had pursued in the late twentieth century. This has eroded earlier state progress towards improving citizens’ access to justice, a reality that is fanning the flames of social unrest. Over […]
China’s Environmental Education: A Mandate Unfulfilled
Memo #245 By Rob Efird – efirdr [at] seattleu.edu China’s environmental impacts are front-page news. We have all seen the pictures of smog-choked cities and fouled waterways, and many of us know that China is the single largest source of the carbon emissions that drive global warming. It is encouraging, then, that in 2003 China’s Ministry of Education […]
Enter the “Chinese Dream”
Memo #244 By Grégoire Legault – gregoire.legault [at] alumni.ubc.ca After decades of political and socio-economic turmoil China is finally able to dream again. It is now prosperous and powerful enough to confront a new problem: how it should use its wealth and power towards social, environmental and political development. Enter the “Chinese Dream” (Zhongguo meng 中国梦). […]
Is the Pacific Big Enough for All of Us?: China’s Shifting Role vis-à-vis North Korea and U.S.-China Strategic Cooperation
Memo #242 By Key-young Son – skyquick [at] hotmail.com A fundamental shift is taking place in China’s idea of its leadership role in Northeast Asia that may have profound implications for the region and its strategic relations with the United States. As a treaty ally of North Korea, China has long been known as a […]