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 »

Leaders walk during dinner at the East Asia Summit gala dinner in Nusa Dua, Bali November 18, 2011 (Beawiharta/Courtesy Reuters).

Although this weekend’s East Asia Summit (EAS) is the sixth in the series, it will be part of American awareness for the first time as a result of America’s decision to join the group (with Russia) and President Obama’s first-time participation. In some respects, it will be a new start for the organization. EAS priorities do appear to have been reshuffled as a result of American membership away from economics and toward three main issues that mesh well with American priorities: disaster relief, nonproliferation, and maritime security. While the United States has reportedly been careful not to usurp leadership within the EAS, ASEAN thus far seems very responsive to American priorities. However, Korea University’s Lee Shin-wha argues in this month’s Korea Update essay that there is a deep disconnect between East Asian summitry and Northeast Asian security needs that is likely to remain. The sixth EAS may feel like a new start, but there is a long way to go in establishing effective regional-based solutions to acute and longstanding security problems such as the standoff on the Korean peninsula. Read more »

A Kyrgyz customs officer talks on a radio in front of workers as they reload cargo from a Chinese truck to Kyrgyz one at the Irkeshtam border crossing in southern Kyrgyzstan. Courtesy Reuters/Vladimir Pirogov.

Chris Rickleton, a Bishkek-based journalist, has a fascinating piece up on EurasiaNet about prospective Chinese rail construction in Kyrgyzstan. The piece cuts directly to tough political choices—namely, the push and pull between Russian and Chinese interests in Central Asia and, more important, how politicians in landlocked countries, like Kyrgyzstan, must try to balance among the larger countries on whom their economies depend for transit.

I’ve written a lot on efforts to reconnect trade and transit routes across continental Asia. You can read some of what I’ve argued here, here, here, here, and here.

But Rickleton’s piece got me thinking about two questions:

(1) Since the obstacles to continental trade and transit are so high, is the game really worth the candle?

This is especially relevant because Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is vigorously promoting a “New Silk Road” concept, drawing heavily on a decade of prior efforts and experiences.

(2) With so much focus on the interests of the outside powers—Russia, China, Iran, and the United States, among others—what about the interests of the landlocked countries themselves?

Read more »

U.S. Special Envoy for North Korea Policy Stephen Bosworth (R) and U.S ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency Glyn Davies (L) leave their hotel for the United States Mission in Geneva October 25, 2011. (Denis Balibouse/Courtesy Reuters)

U.S.-DPRK meetings in Geneva held early this week with the objective of reviving denuclearization negotiations have ended with a whimper. The apparent lack of sufficient progress to move forward will underscore lingering doubts about the North Korean will to pursue denuclearization via negotiations, which along with diplomatic normalization, economic development, and peace were the main agenda items of the moribund Six Party Talks. Despite Chinese exhortations to come back to Six Party Talks and Kim Jong-il’s willingness to return to talks as soon as possible based on the “principle of simultaneous action,” Six Party Talks can have no utility—and should not proceed—unless North Korea affirms that denuclearization is on the agenda.

Despite the disappointing outcome, the Obama administration was right to pursue the dialogue and to reiterate its insistence that North Korea take actions to restore the status quo ante that existed at the time of the last round of Six Party Talks in December 2008. This is the significance of the “pre-steps” for resumption of six-party negotiations: that North Korea pledge not to continue to pursue nuclear and missile tests, that it not engage in military provocations with South Korea, and that it come clean on the uranium enrichment program it revealed to Sig Hecker in November 2010. A failure to insist on these actions would allow North Korea to use resumption of the Six Party Talks to claim international recognition, if not acceptance, of its nuclear accomplishments, while a North Korean affirmation of the denuclearization agenda provides a pathway by which to return to Six Party Talks and abandon nuclear weapons development.

Read more »

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (center, L) and Defense Secretary Robert Gates (center, R) co-host the U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto (L, back to camera) and Japanese Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa (R, back to camera) at the State Department in Washington, June 21, 2011. Courtesy Reuters/Kevin Lamarque.

At the June 21 meeting of the U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee, Washington and Tokyo jointly agreed to promote trilateral strategic dialogue with India. And that announcement provided a nice opportunity to use my latest “DC Diary” column in India’s financial daily, the Business Standard, to revisit a theme from The United States in the New Asia, the CFR Special Report I wrote with Bob Manning in 2009.

What’s the point of all this geometry, anyway?  Innovation has been sadly lacking in the creation of various new Asian geometries, no matter whether they are large or small, trilateral or multilateral.

Read more »

Leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization walk during a meeting in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg June 15, 2009. Courtesy Reuters/RIA Novosti/Vladimir Rodionov/Pool.

Over at another CFR blog, The Internationalist, my colleague, Stewart Patrick, has posted a good piece about the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Boy, did that take me back to old times.

The SCO stokes up all kinds of opinions in the United States—some informed, some less informed; some vituperative, and others merely skeptical.

Back in 2007, while serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Central Asia, I became, I think, the only U.S. official ever to devote an entire speech to the SCO.  Just two years earlier, the SCO had called for a timeline to end the Coalition military presence in Afghanistan.  And since the U.S. was in the midst of prosecuting a war, there was a great deal that we in the United States were forced to wrestle with as a result. For one, we sought to forestall any repeat statements from the group.  But for another, we aimed to sort through the SCO’s deeper (and perhaps darker?) intentions.

Read more »

The author chats with Chinese traders in the Kara-Suu Bazaar, near Osh, Kyrgyzstan, October 2006. (Photo from the author)

I have a new article out in The Washington Quarterly, with a slightly provocative title, “Why America No Longer Gets Asia.”

It’s a think piece. And so it probably won’t be 100 percent persuasive to 100 percent of its readers in 100 percent of its aspects. But the article pulls together the strands of a lot of themes I’ve harped on in recent years, from speeches I was giving while at the State Department to a few years’ worth of articles and blogs. I also worked on an array of projects directly related to these themes while serving in the U.S. government, especially during the period from 2003 to 2007.

Here’s the headline: Asia is reintegrating, but the United States simply isn’t adapting quickly enough. And it is essential to adapt U.S. policy to the contours of change in Asia if the United States wishes to remain vital and relevant there.

Read more »