Mark Jia is an intern for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

As speculation brims over China’s impending leadership succession, focus has centered on the political leanings of Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, seniors leaders who are expected to secure the top posts in the Politburo’s all-powerful Standing Committee this fall. However, recent Party machinations over another committee position, the one that oversees the country’s legal and security institutions, offer potentially more revealing clues into China’s prospects for future reform. Read more »

Chinese people power has arrived. As China’s top officials meet in Beidaihe to finalize their selections for the country’s new leadership, they are being overshadowed by a different, and increasingly potent, political class—the Chinese people. From Beijing to Jiangsu to Guangdong, Chinese citizens are making their voices heard on the Internet and their actions felt on the streets.   Read more »

In today’s New York Times, a detailed article notes that China’s Central Military Commission has approved “the deployment of a garrison of soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army to guard disputed islands claimed by China and Vietnam in the South China Sea.” This development is only going to ratchet tensions up even higher from the already sky-high level in the wake of the failed ASEAN foreign ministers’ meeting earlier this month. Read more »

Last week, the State Council issued a new policy opinion for promoting the development of Chinese information technology and information security. In the State Council’s view, “international competition over the acquisition, use, and control of information is increasingly fierce” and China faces urgent challenges. In particular, the policy opinion notes the disparity between China and developed countries in broadband infrastructure; a low degree of information sharing between the government and industry; the control of core technologies by foreigners; inadequate strategic planning for information security and weak basic network defense capabilities; and the rapid growth of mobile Internet and other new technologies. Read more »

South Korea’s Democratic United Party (DUP) failed yesterday in its motion to dismiss South Korea’s Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik for the Lee Myung-bak administration’s handling of the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) with Japan last month. South Korean public opposition not only forced the Lee administration to suspend the signing of this GSOMIA, but also cost the administration the resignation of one senior official. Despite the Lee administration already shelving its controversial plans to pursue cooperation with Japan, this being an election year, the DUP aimed to impose a higher political cost. Read more »

While the now six-years-old standoff in Bangkok between Thailand’s traditional elites and the pseudo-populist parties allied with former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has gotten most of the international press, a far more brutal struggle, in Thailand’s Deep South, has gone virtually unnoticed for more than a decade. Since the early 2000s, more than 5,000 people have been killed in the conflict in southern Thailand, and the war shows no signs of ending any time soon. Read more »

Although the meltdown of the ASEAN foreign ministers’ meeting in Phnom Penh last week seemed like an unmitigated disaster, and already has resulted in a flurry of press coverage blasting the organization, the situation in the South China Sea is not necessarily headed for a steep descent into real conflict. To be sure, both sides seem likely to send more “fishing vessels” and other boats that straddle the line between civilian and military vessels into the disputed waters, raising the possibility of further skirmishes. Meanwhile, in the wake of the summit Philippine opinion leaders, and the Philippine media, are both livid at Cambodia for allegedly scuttling any joint position and increasingly aware of how vulnerable the Philippines is, having allowed their armed forces to deteriorate badly over the past two decades. Read more »

In the wake of the disastrous break-up of last week’s ASEAN foreign ministers meeting in Phnom Penh, at which ASEAN failed to agree to any statement summarizing their position on the South China Sea, even some of the most ardent backers of the Southeast Asian organization have begun to wonder whether ASEAN’s traditional consensus way is now totally defunct. This emphasis on consensus, of course, allows even one country, no matter how small, to block any joint position taken by ASEAN – in this case, probably Cambodia and Laos, which are increasingly close to China, blocking any joint statement that criticized Beijing. But this is hardly the first time the consensus approach has proven utterly counterproductive: ASEAN failed for years to strengthen their charter to include strong new clauses on human rights, almost surely because of the objections of more repressive ASEAN members like Myanmar. ASEAN failed, in the past, to take strong positions even on conflict within Southeast Asia, as occurred in East Timor in 1999, because of this adherence – some might say slavish devotion – to consensus and noninterference, a sharp contrast from some other regional organizations like the African Union. Read more »

Dr. Yanzhong Huang is Senior Fellow for Global Health and the newest writer for Asia Unbound. His first post, “Time for China to Abandon Its Population Control Policy,” attracted significant attention, including a thoughtful response from Edwin A. Winckler, a Senior Research Scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University. Here we have posted both Dr. Winckler’s commentary and a new response from Dr. Huang. We hope you enjoy their discussion.

-Elizabeth Economy, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies

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The North Korean announcement of Vice Marshal Ri Yong-ho’s July 15 removal from all posts due to “illness” at a meeting of the General Political Bureau of the Central Committee “deal with the organizational issue” is the first purge of a senior figure in North Korea since Kim Jong-un assumed his father’s posts last April. It is all the more striking because Ri Yong-ho’s ascension to the top rung of power at North Korea’s September 2010 party conference placed him as the apparent guardian of the plan to implement a transition to a third generation of Kim family leadership. Read more »