Asia

In November 2012, then president Hu Jintao's work report to the Chinese Communist Party's 18th Party Congress was a defining moment in China's maritime history. Hu declared that China's objective is to be a haiyang qiangguo— that is, a strong or great maritime power. China "should enhance our capacity for exploiting marine resources, develop the marine economy, protect the marine ecological environment, resolutely safeguard China's maritime rights and interests, and build China into a strong maritime power".[1] Hu's report also called for building a military (the PLA) that would be "commensurate with China's international standing." These two objectives were repeated in the 2012 PRC defense white paper, which was not released until April 2013, after Xi Jinping had assumed Party and nat

In an opinion piece for the American journal The National Interest, China's incoming foreign minister Qin Gang stated that Beijing wants to strengthen ties with New Delhi.  Days prior to Wang Yi's replacement, Qin addressed India-China border disputes in an article titled "How China Sees the World," stating that "both sides are eager to ameliorate the situation and mutually protect peace along their borders." The Galwan Valley and Pangong Lake in the west of the LAC, have hosted flashpoints in recent years. In the east in Tawang, the site of the latest scuffle, there are discussions about Buddhist holy sites whose control can have implications for China's authority over Tibet and its next spiritual leader according to a report in Newsweek. On December 20, India and China con...

Thanks to the attempts by the leaders of the Communist Party of China to exploit two neighbours of China of their resources, natural as well as financial, Chinese citizens are on the receiving end in Beijing’s all-weather ally Pakistan, as well as in Afghanistan which it has treated as its backyard since the exit of the United States from the scene. China’s “daydream of imperialism” seems to have received a jolt. A measure of the insecurity is that all Chinese nationals working in China Pakistan Economic Corridor in Pakistan have been asked to move in bullet-proof vehicles when outdoors; while on December 13, following a coordinated attack the previous day by Islamic State Khorasan Province militants on a Chinese-owned hotel in the heart of Kabul, Beijing advised Chinese citizens in Af

China’s superiority not only as a regional powerhouse but also as a predator in the global arena has prompted many of its neighbouring countries to adopt a cautionary approach to the red dragon.  China on its part, has initiated its quest for power by intensifying its multi-trillion-dollar pet project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which aims to ascend the Chinese state as the hegemon of the global world. The project however, has mostly been a contentious prospect of which global financial advisors have generally warned against. China’s ability to trap credit taking nations and is understood to be an economic bait in order to influence power over economically volatile countries. Throughout the previous decade, financial assistances in the form of developmental aid and financ