The SAIS held a panel in the fall of 2014 in regards to the relationship between the United States, The Peoples Republic of China and the Republic of Taiwan. one of the panelists, Richard Bush, who is the current director of the center for northeast Asian policy policy studies at the Brookings institution. He decides to try to explain the relationship between the US, PRC and Taiwan on three different levels of analysis. The first of these levels was the strategic triangle between Washington, Beijing and Taipei. He states that there are four real options for the strategic triangle. first that the United States once attempted to being the mediator between Chinese and Taiwanese relations but since that attempt failed miserably, The United States has devolved a policy against being the mediator between the two states. Second is that the United States detaches itself from the relationship like it did in 1949 under Harry Truman and the third is that the United States and Hong Kong work together to balance the power of China. The fourth is that the United States and China work together to create a situation where Taiwan has no say in its fate. He states that in today’s world it serves Taiwan to position itself in the triangle so that it does three things. To reassure Beijing about its intentions, to strengthen itself and maintain good relations with the United States.

In late January the council of Foreign affairs held a roundtable discussion of some of the leading experts on Chinese politics to discuss the growing power of Chinese president Xi Jingping. Among those on the panel were former United States secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, Jin-Yong Cai, David M. Cote and Jon Huntsman. Huntsman opened the debate by discussing the leadership style of President Xi. He stated that the consolidates power in a manner that has not been seen since the days of Mao Ze Dong. He also states that he believes that Xi will eventually expand his anti-corruption campaign to include actively serving party members instead of just attacking retired ones. He stated that despite a reversal towards unilateral leadership, Xi Jingping is making a push towards rule of law to be established first over the economic structures and ultimately over all of civil society.  Secretary Albright took a more pessimistic approach to what is happening in China stating that Xi JIngping reforms as part of his anti-corruption campaign were just a clever way of removing any threats to his total power. She states the Xi Jingping seems like a man seeing himself in power for many years to come long past the terms of many U.S presidents. Therefore what happens in China today will affect the American-Chinese relationship for many years to come.

Over the past few decades the government of the PRC has been increasing defense spending significantly.  Despite the changes in spending, the PRC has remained opaque in what they are spending their money on. This led to many foreign leaders, especially United States secretary Rumsfeld to find this confusing and disconcerting. Liff and Erickson co-wrote a piece that tried to explain this new spending. They found that while China had increased their gross military spending, the percentage of GDP that was made up by military spending has remained generally speaking the same.  They state that this means that military spending remains a lower priority to the CCP and the PRC compared to other domestic expenditures. Because of this and the growing evidence that the PRC is spending more for the peaceful reasons of insuring the security of its territorial claims. In addition they find that the defense spending is more and more “on the books”. These trends should be encouraging and comforting to countries around the world who may feel threatened by the growth of power in the PRC.

In The United States today there is a significant fear that the rise of power in the PRC could threaten the American hegemony of military power. The actual significance of this change may simply just be a perceived notion with no foundation in fact. Andrew Scobell and Andrew Nathan recently co-wrote China’s Overstretched Military, an article about the limits of Chinese power in the world. They state that while The LPA poses a much greater threat than it did twenty years ago, it is still no major threat to the United States military supremacy. The majority of this may lie in China’s geography. China is vast territory that is not yet fully under the control of the central government. The majority of all LPA actions taken over the next few years will almost certainly be in the protection of domestic security. The PRC’s borders are massive in scale with over 14,000 miles of land border and 9000 miles of coastline. Compare this with the United States roughly 8000 miles of land border and you can see the significantly greater task that the Chinese face over the United States. Also combined with the American beurocratic structure known as homeland security alleviates the stresses of border protection from the army. This coupled with the problems of the ability of the PRC to establish sovereignty over the Taiwan Island and other regional problems coupled with the persistent and increasing United States’ presence has continued to outstrip the Chinese military capabilities despite its increasing power.

Over the last few classes we have been discussing the aspects of the Chinese political structure that impacts the effectiveness of environmental reform. In the PRC the majority of these problems are related to the promotion structure inside of the CCP. As a successful party members climbs through the ranks he ascends from small localities to larger areas based on performance. Because a rising party leader only stays in one area for slightly over three years, they tend to focus on parts of the locality that can be improved rapidly and in which success is easily measured, namely, the economy. Environmental factors have long been neglected since the current promotion structure simply does incentivize actions taken in these areas mainly for two reasons. First, environmental change is a long process that any meaningful results would only occur years after reforms were put in place and most likely long after the leader who implemented them has moved on. Second is the difficulty in measuring success. Even if there was meaningful environmental improvement during the time of an individual party rep it would be very difficult to define and measure and because of this most party reps have neglected the pressing environmental issues to further self gain.

In her paper From Dispute to Decision, Rachel Stern follows the growing field of environmental law in China to determine how environmental law works in China. To do this she decides to follow a case from the beginning with the complaints of the citizens to the end with a decision in the court room. What she finds, however, may in fact say more about the state of Rule of law in China overall as opposed to simply the problem of pollution in the cities. She finds that the best way to describe the situation in the Chinese legal system. She determines that how the courts operate towards a case and plaintiff success is largely dependent on what issue the case involves and what locality the court serves. This is certainly a problem that needs to be addressed by the central government as the Rule of law is not something that should vary from locality. She ends with a rather pessimistic view on the outlook of Chinese environmentalism stating that she expects the CCP to show utter disregard towards the law when protecting large corporations. This could have profound impacts on not only environmentalism in China but the rule of law government accountability in the PRC.

In his talk, exterminate the foreigner, Dr. Silbey discussed the unanswered questions in regard to the Boxer rebellion in China to remove foreign interests from the mainland. He first discussed the traditional textbook story of the Boxer rebellion. From their siege of the British, American and French Embassies in China to the Boxers victory of the original British force sent to liberate the embassies, the Chinese empresses audacious declaration of war against the eight strongest global powers, the abandonment of the Chinese army by the Boxers and the final defeat of the Chinese army and the liberation of the embassies in Beijing led by the American 9th Infantry. There are some aspects to this event that he claimed were not fully explained by the traditional story of the Boxer uprising in China. The first was that how were this ragtag group of farmers armed with hatchets and single shot rifles able to defeat the modern British army armed with bolt action rifles in battle. The second question that remained unanswered was why the Boxers left the Chinese army to fight the western powers alone.
To reexamine these new questions he looked at the professions of the Boxers. They were farmers but because of a horrendous drought that had hit the region they had been unable to fully sustain themselves through farming alone and had taken up stealing from the rich who traveled through the province as bandits. This is an important note as it is essential to remember that in the face of poverty and starvation people will behave in ways the otherwise would not. Thus natural disasters, economic depression or other domestic issues can have a profound impact on the international world outside the state. Second, he wanted to examine why the Boxers seemed to simply vanish before the second engagement with western forces. He found it partly by random chance when looking at NOAA’s website and realized that there was rainfall data available for the months of the rebellion. Through this data he confirmed that the drought had ended and made the reasonable assumption that the boxers had simply returned to their farms. This is important in that it reminds us that sometimes the missing piece of analysis may come from unexpected sources. That more impacts global issues and conflict than battlefield tactics and the decisions of politicians. Even weather can change history.

In his lecture, “Korean Unification and Northeast Asia,” ambassador Chun Yungwoo presented an argument regarding the triangular relationship between South Korea, Japan and China, the role of the United States in the pacific and the eventual reunification of the Korean peninsula. Ambassador Chun Yungwoo began his talk emphasizing on the current and historical relationships between the three principle powers of east Asia: Japan, China and South Korea. Ambassador Yungwoo started by saying that a century ago Japan was on the rise and China was declining but today China is on the rise towards hegemony in the region. Ambassador Yungwoo seemed fearful of an overly powerful Chinese state and made the claim that hegemony is the most violent of the international systems and that balance of power is necessary to sustain peace. However, if history can be used as a guide when their was a true balance of power in Europe in the early 1900’s it resulted in one of the most violent conflicts in human history and when there was extreme hegemony under the United States in today’s modern political system it is one of the most peaceful periods in human history. Ambassador Yungwoo then expanded his argument to the response of Japan to the expansion of Chinese power. Japan has increased American ties and expanded military alliances with the US to counter the expansion of Chinese power. He stated that while Korea has extremely strong economic ties with China they also have equally strong security ties with the United States by default Japan. Ambassador Yungwoo then transitioned his argument to that of reunification of Korea. Ambassador Yungwoo then transitioned his argument to that of reunification of Korea. Ambassador Yungwoo envisioned a reunited Korea as a “stimulus” package for all of East Asia as billions of dollars are poured into rebuilding the North Korean territory. However, he believed that the reunification would be rather peaceful and nearly completely discounted the possibility for a violent power transition. I would have preferred the ambassador discuss how reunification would occur instead of merely stating his perceived end states.