On ancient maps, the edges carried the warning: Here be dragons! Admiral Gary Roughead, the Chief of US Naval Operations, implicitly gave the same warning in an interview with the Financial Times. The comments have been taken to suggest that he does not see the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) …
At the 2009 Sino-American summit, President Obama committed the US to dispatching the head of NASA to China, in return for a reciprocal visit by his “appropriate Chinese counterpart,” i.e., a player to be named later. A year later, NASA Administrator Bolden has visited China (although it remains unclear to …
Hours before Secretary of Defense Robert Gates landed in China, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) staged a test flight of its new stealth fighter, possibly termed the J-20. In some quarters, it is being argued that this flight was deliberately scheduled to upstage the American visit. In …
In sharp contrast to this year’s Pentagon report on Chinese military power, this year’s report from Congress’s U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission includes a number of startling revelations. Perhaps the most notable is the report that the Chinese diverted 15 percent of global Internet traffic to Chinese servers at …
The decision by the United States to delayl military exercises in the Yellow Sea in order to placate “neighboring countries,” i.e., China, prior to the G-20 summit in the Republic of Korea (ROK) marks the latest in a series of ill-considered, costly concessions Washington has made toward China. A high-level …
The Obama administration has decided to terminate the suspensions of issuance of temporary munitions export licenses for exports regarding C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft that will be used in oil spill response operations at sea that might involve the People’s Republic of China (PRC). That’s bureaucratese for lifting restrictions on the …
With their meeting in Hanoi, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guanglie are expected to revive military-to-military relations between the two major powers, on hold since the sale of U.S. arms to Taiwan at the beginning of this year. Yet, recent reports indicate that there …
Over the weekend, President Obama notified House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–CA) that he intended to allow the issuance of temporary munitions export licenses for C-130 cargo aircraft for use in response to oil spills at sea. On the surface, this measure appears non-controversial. It is not, at least from what …
