Republican presidential candidates stand at attentiond during the singing of the national anthem during the CNN GOP National Security debate on November 22, 2011. (Jim Bourg / Courtesy of Reuters)

Truth be told, I don’t think that foreign policy—other than matters related to war—is likely to play a significant role in this year’s presidential election. Moreover, as decades of U.S. electoral politics have demonstrated, whatever candidates say about China is likely to bear little resemblance to what they actually do once they are in the Oval Office. Nonetheless, as a matter of character and competence, it is fascinating to look at what each of the Republican candidates has to say about China. Even though I have followed the Republican race fairly closely, I was surprised—both pleasantly and not—by what I found.

Talk the talk but don’t walk the walk: Rick Perry breathes fire on China: “Communist China is destined for the ash heap of history because they are not a country of virtues. When you have 35,000 forced abortions a day in that country, when you have the cyber security that the PLA has been involved with, those are great major issues both morally and security-wise that we’ve got to deal with now.” Well maybe, but exactly how Perry is dealing with them by courting Huawei to invest in Texas is unclear. The U.S. government has three times denied China’s telecom giant business opportunities in the United States because of security concerns related to spying and the People’s Liberation Army. Mr. Perry, however, has praised Huawei’s “really strong worldwide reputation.” The end result of candidate Perry’s China policy to date? Huawei has a corporate headquarters just outside Dallas. Read more »

A floating restaurant is stranded in a branch of the Yangtze River in Chongqing Municipality on March 21, 2010. (Stringer Shanghai / Courtesy of Reuters)

Jared Mondschein looks at the key stories behind the headlines in Asia.

- One less hurdle to the dam – The New York Times is reporting that the Xiaonanhai Dam along the Yangtze River, a $3.8 billion project that environmentalists have derided for its dire ecological impacts, is back on track for construction. China’s State Council decided to reduce the boundaries of a Yangtze River preserve—that had been established to protect biodiversity in the wake of the Three Gorges dam—signaling that overall approval for the project is imminent. According to one Chinese geologist, the dam will displace 400,000 people and flood 18 square miles of fertile farmland. All this to produce power at a cost of about $2,144 per kilowatt, triple the cost of the Three Gorges Dam.

- Where does China want foreigners investing? The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planning agency, announced the latest revision to the foreign direct investment catalogue. The catalogue, a list of industries that the NDRC divides into the categories encouraged, allowed, and restricted, for the first time deemed car-making and polysilicon plants as only allowed – not encouraged, as it had done previously. Are foreign carmakers worried? For the most part, those already in the country aren’t, but the future does not look at bright for those still waiting to be allowed to enter the market, such as Japan’s Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd, the maker of Subaru. Read more »

The body of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il lies in state at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace in Pyongyang. (KCNA/Courtesy Reuters)

If there were one word to describe Asia in 2011, it would likely be tremors—not only the physical ones that devastated Japan, but also the political ones that reverberated throughout the region shaking India, China, and Thailand, waking up Burma, and further unsettling North Korea.

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An employee hoses a China Railway High-speed Harmony bullet train at the high-speed train maintenance base in Wuhan, Hubei province on October 19, 2011. (Stringer Shanghai / Courtesy Reuters)

Jared Mondschein looks at the key stories in Asia behind the headlines.

- Clamping down in cyberspace: With more than 485 million Internet users and 300 million microbloggers, the Internet in China allows “netizens” to voice their opinions on everything from Wukan to Beijing’s air quality to North Korea. Beijing, however, has never been quite comfortable with such an open marketplace of ideas. Now, in an attempt to “purge online rumors and enhance social credibility,” Guangzhou and Shenzhen have joined Beijing in requiring new users of China’s microblogs to register with their real names. China’s netizens unsurprisingly have not taken well to the clampdown, as one microblogger wrote: “There will only ever be a single voice speaking now.”

- Who’s the fairest of them all? There’s no doubt that the center of economic gravity in Asia is China, while the United States holds the security card for the region. But whom do regular citizens across the region prefer? According to a Gallup poll of citizens in Cambodia, Australia, South Korea, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines, for the most part there is a higher approval for U.S. leadership: The median approval rate for U.S. leadership stands at 44 percent while China’s is at 30 percent. Respondents ranked U.S. leadership more highly than Chinese in eight out of the nine countries polled. Read more »

Residents observe a moment of silence for a local leader who died in police custody, during a demonstration in Wukan village on December 13, 2011. The banner reads: "Everyone has a responsibility in fighting corruption and graft." (Stringer / Courtesy of Reuters)

It all began with a protest over illegal land sales and rigged elections. According to the investigative Chinese journal Caixin, the local government in Wukan village in southern Guangdong province had earned over 700 million yuan (roughly US$110 million) from selling collectively-owned farmland but it disbursed only 550 yuan (roughly US$86) to each villager. Moreover, the highly unpopular village party secretary and director had rigged the local elections, managing to hold on to power for 40 years as a result.  The villagers had been unhappy about the situation for a number of years and have complained by petition since 2009. However, there was no resolution until they finally took to the streets in September.

The good news is that by late November after a few months of protest—some of it violent—the villagers succeeded in ousting the two village leaders. The Chinese media argued at the time that Guangdong, under Party Secretary Wang Yang (a candidate for the Standing Committee of the Politburo in the 2012-2013 leadership transition), was pursuing a new approach to social unrest, one that tried to “balance maintaining stability and basic rights while helping people to express their needs.”

The bad news is that the balance still isn’t quite right. Read more »