East Asia

Is China Choking on Success?

By Robert A. Manning

A popular app on smartphones in Beijing is the US Embassy’s Air Quality Index measurement. No wonder: Until last year, even as the air in China’s capitol has increasingly come to resemble that of an airport smoking area, its ruling elite have refused to make public its air-quality levels or even admit a problem.

Beijing Misreads US Rebalancing in Asia

By Robert A. Manning

Writing in the Global Times Thursday, Chinese scholar Zhou Fangyin argued that the US rebalancing to Asia is having significant regional effects, largely targeted at China.A great deal has been written about the Obama administration’s “rebalancing” in Asia by Chinese analysts. Unfortunately, much of it overstates the amount of change in US policy, the impact […]

China Beige Book Shows New Perspectives on Chinese Economy

On January 31, the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security hosted a Cross-Strait Seminar Series public event featuring Leland Miller, president of The China Beige Book International, Albert Keidel, a nonresident senior fellow with the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, and Robert Goldberg, a principal with the Scowcroft Group. Mario Mancuso, a […]

In Disputes Over Asian Seas, Winner May Take Zilch

By Robert A. Manning

It may be Asia’s 21st century equivalent of the assassination of Austria’s Archduke Ferdinand that sparked World War I. Growing tensions over territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas threaten to disrupt the oft-heralded Asian Century. Whatever the outcome, many see more than just competing nationalisms, the scars of national memory and the […]