East Asia

East Asia

For more than seventy years, East Asia has been the nexus of US presence and engagement in Asia. Today, the region is becoming a hotbed for the return of great power competition, with long-term US allies and partners like Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Taiwan next door to competitors and challengers including China, Russia, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. While East Asia continues to navigate a number of longstanding traditional security issues, it must also address the rise of online disinformation, competition to pioneer emerging technologies, and more.

Explore

Confronting What We Don’t Know About the Korean Crisis

New Atlanticist
Mar 31, 2025

Dispatch from Hong Kong: How the ‘geoeconomic city’ is weathering global headwinds

By
Josh Lipsky, Ananya Kumar

From Chinese and US economic growth to stablecoin regulations, a recent visit to Hong Kong offered important insights for two Atlantic Council GeoEconomics Center experts.

China
Digital Currencies

Confronting What We Don’t Know About the Korean Crisis

New Atlanticist
Mar 25, 2025

Reading between the lines of Taiwan’s new Quadrennial Defense Review

By
Kitsch Liao

The recently released Quadrennial Defense Review offers a window into the Taiwanese military’s issues with prioritization, operational readiness, and manpower retention.

China
East Asia

Confronting What We Don’t Know About the Korean Crisis

Report
Mar 24, 2025

How Beijing uses inducements as a tool of economic statecraft

By
William Piekos

As strategic competition between the United States and China intensifies, Washington and Beijing seek every possible advantage to gain an edge. In this environment, both countries are increasingly turning to economic statecraft—the use of economic coercion or inducement to pursue strategic goals—to advance their interests.

China
Economy & Business

Programs

The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Indo-Pacific Security Initiative equips the transatlantic community to “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific and to position the Atlantic Council to serve as the essential link between high-level transatlantic and Asian leaders and thinkers

EXPLORE THE Initiative

Content

New Atlanticist

Apr 1, 2013

Confronting What We Don’t Know About the Korean Crisis

By Rajan Menon

War cries, threats and counter-threats, moves and counter-moves are emanating from the Korean peninsula. Pundits have pronounced on what’s going on and where things are headed. So this may be a good time to engage in some humility and to reflect on how little we know.

Korea

New Atlanticist

Mar 29, 2013

Building BRICS

By Julian Lindley-French

They represent 25.9 percent of the world’s land mass, 43 percent of the population and 17 percent of global trade. The UN Development Program states that by “2020, the combined economic output of three leading developing countries alone Brazil, China, and India–will surpass the aggregate production of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States.”

Brazil China
Xi Jinping in Russia

New Atlanticist

Mar 25, 2013

Xi’s Kissinger Move

By Julian Lindley-French

At the start of his historic visit to Russia last week newly-installed Chinese President Xi Jingping said that the “two countries spoke a common language.”  If America sees itself as the indispensable global pivot China clearly has the ambition to become the other global pivot in a new bipolar order.

China

New Atlanticist

Mar 25, 2013

What Xi Sees in Africa

By Peter Pham

Just days after completing his ascent by adding the state presidency to his posts as Communist Party general secretary and Central Military Commission chairman, Xi Jinping has embarked on his first trip overseas as China’s top leader, a journey that includes a week in Africa, with stops in Tanzania, South Africa, and the Republic of […]

Africa China

New Atlanticist

Mar 22, 2013

Russo-Chinese Energy Relations: Never-ending Foreplay?

By David Koranyi

As the officially anointed Chinese President Xi Jinping is on his first state visit abroad to Moscow, speculations are abound about a long-awaited breakthrough in energy relations between the two giants. Caution, however is warranted. The honeymoon in Russo-Chinese energy relations has been elusive and progress rather slow and uneven in the past years. China’s […]

China Energy & Environment

Issue Brief

Mar 19, 2013

Does Beijing Have a Strategy? China’s Alternative Futures

By Robert A. Manning and Banning Garrett

This Atlantic Council brief, authored by Robert A. Manning and Banning Garrett, assesses the challenges China faces–worsening pollution, corruption, and a growth model that needs sweeping reforms and examines the difficulties Beijing faces in addressing them.

China Politics & Diplomacy

New Atlanticist

Mar 15, 2013

Power, Prejudice, and Paranoia

By Julian Lindley-French

“The ides of March have come” says Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Standing in the Vatican’s Saint Peter’s Square Tuesday, watching on a big, incongruous screen the princes of the Roman Universal Church file into mass I was struck by the power of this moment when a new pope is chosen to lead the world’s 1.3 billion […]

China Europe & Eurasia

New Atlanticist

Mar 7, 2013

North Korean Albatross Around China’s Neck

By Robert A. Manning

North Korea’s recent nuclear test was a stark reminder to China that the days of a “lips and teeth” relationship with Pyongyang, of Mao Zedong and Kim Il-sung half a century ago, are long gone. Nuclear test after nuclear test, missile test after missile test, Pyongyang has time after time ignored Beijing’s pleas not to […]

Korea National Security

New Atlanticist

Feb 26, 2013

Fighting Chinese Cyberespionage: Obama’s Next Move

By Jason Healey

Finally the Obama administration has come into the open in their calls against other nations’ stealing of trade secrets, especially through cyberespionage. The just-released “Administration Strategy on Mitigating the Theft of US Trade Secrets” is the next in a promised string of new cyber policies and actions from a newly invigorated White House. Like the […]

China Cybersecurity

New Atlanticist

Feb 25, 2013

How the US Should Respond to Chinese Cyberespionage

By Jason Healey

A U.S. cybersecurity company has released details proving beyond any reasonable doubt that the Chinese military, through its Unit 61398, has intruded into at least 141 organizations over seven years, stealing terabytes of data from each. Now that attribution is clear (and, more importantly, public) the U.S. government has its best opportunity in years to […]

China Cybersecurity
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Experts

Millennium fellow

Danial Abdul Rahman

Chief Executive Officer, Asian Strategy & Leadership Institute

Millennium Leadership Program

East Asia Education

Fellow

Ahmed Aboudouh

Former Nonresident Fellow

Rafik Hariri Center & Middle East programs Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative

Arabic China

Fellow

Michael Allen

Nonresident Senior Fellow

GeoStrategy Initiative Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Cybersecurity

Fellow

Peter Arvo

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Freedom and Prosperity Center

China Human Rights

Staff

Rayhan Asat

Senior Legal & Policy Advisor, China Lead

Rafik Hariri Center & Middle East programs

Central Asia China

Fellow

Kelsang (Kaydor) Aukatsang

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Global China Hub

China Civil Society
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