Asia

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspecting a missile facility, May 2024. KCNA / Reuters

MundoAsia

U.S. President Joe Biden has plenty of foreign policy crises on his hands. But unfortunately for him, as the United States heads into November’s elections there’s a high chance of yet another emergency: renewed provocations from North Korea. Pyongyang has a history of acting out during U.S. elections. Research by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, for example, found that North Korea stages more than four times as many weapons tests in U.S. election years than in other years.

The situation on the Korean Peninsula is already growing fraught. On January 10, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared South Korea to be an enemy state, ending all talk of peaceful reunification and setting the stage for more hostilities.…  Seguir leyendo »

Taiwanese President-elect Lai Ching-te holds a press conference in Taipei, Taiwan, January 2024. Ann Wang / Reuters

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On May 20, in a ceremony in Taipei, Lai Ching-te is scheduled to be inaugurated as the next leader of Taiwan. Currently vice president, Lai is taking over from President Tsai Ing-wen at a delicate moment in Taiwan’s relations with Beijing. The Chinese Communist Party regards the self-ruling island of 23 million people as a renegade province to be unified with the mainland by force, if necessary. And although Taiwan has managed to maintain significant trade and interpersonal ties to mainland China while postponing discussions over its sovereignty, this ambiguous status quo has recently frayed amid political headwinds from both Beijing and Taipei.…  Seguir leyendo »

New Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (C) smiles next to President Tharman Shanmugaratnam (R) during the swearing-in ceremony at the Istana in Singapore on May 15. Edgar Su/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

MundoAsia

It’s a little startling when a senior civil servant begins to casually ruminate about the inevitability of the end for any nation and political order and, in the longue durée, the finite lifespan of the one that they serve. If this were the Second French Empire as Prussians besieged Paris and the Commune ran the streets or Myanmar today one could understand. But what does Singapore have to worry about?

On April 15, then-Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, the son of Singapore’s revered first prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, announced that he would be stepping down. The succession is proceeding with a smoothness that is near-soporific.…  Seguir leyendo »

The End of TikTok Is a Propaganda Win for Beijing

MundoAméricaMundoAsia, ,

When President Biden signed a bill requiring that TikTok be divested from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, members of Congress hailed the law as a blow to Beijing. They shouldn’t be so quick to celebrate. The law would at best partially mitigate the hazards of misinformation or the risks to national security posed by China. The Communist Party, meanwhile, looks forward to a propaganda windfall, prizing off Washington’s mantle as champion of a free and open internet.

America’s moral authority on maintaining open internet platforms will look very different if it bans TikTok. After years of enduring American sermonizing about free speech and open trade, autocrats would now be able to cite Washington’s own example when they interfere with speech platforms that displease them.…  Seguir leyendo »

A suspect from the Crocus City Hall attack in court in Moscow, March 2024. Yulia Morozova / Reuters

MundoAsiaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional,

In March, terrorists affiliated with Islamic State Khorasan, also known as ISIS-K, attacked Moscow’s Crocus City Hall, killing 145 people and wounding several hundred. The authorities swiftly arrested 12 young men, all of whom were from Tajikistan, the most southern and poorest republic of the former Soviet Union. Tajikistan’s economy is moribund, and the combination of a low growth rate and a youthful population has created an immense diaspora: at least a quarter of Tajikistan’s working-age men live abroad. The country they left behind is repressive, with a government as hostile to many forms of Islam as it is to any signs of dissent.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia,

La montée en puissance de l’Inde commence à modifier la place des affaires internationales dans la compétition électorale ouverte le 19 avril et qui sera close le 1er juin. L’idée selon laquelle la politique étrangère n’est pas la préoccupation majeure des électeurs reste sans doute fondée, mais quelque chose se transforme, car la construction du récit nationaliste hindou a pris, sous Narendra Modi, au pouvoir depuis dix ans, une coloration internationale d’ampleur inédite. Une triple rhétorique électorale est ainsi à l’œuvre.

Un premier volet du discours prend acte de cette montée en puissance, l’Inde étant désormais le pays le plus peuplé du monde.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia

A unos cientos de metros del recinto que guarda los magníficos templos de Kajuraho, el turista se encuentra con la misma miseria y la misma basura de la India de siempre, Entre tanto, su economía es la quinta del mundo, con un crecimiento que supera al de China. Tal éxito garantiza la reelección por una mayoría abrumadora del líder hinduista Narendra Modi, que ya barrió en 2019. A principios de junio se conocerán los resultados de las elecciones iniciadas el 19 de abril y que se desarrollan en siete fases. La campaña de Modi registra una sucesión ininterrumpida de aclamaciones, concentraciones masivas y lluvia de flores a su paso.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsiaInternacionalEconomía

On separate visits to Beijing last month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen bore a common message: Chinese manufacturing overcapacity is flooding global markets with cheap Chinese exports, distorting world trade and leaving American businesses and workers struggling to compete.

Not surprisingly, China’s leaders did not like what they heard, and they didn’t budge. They can’t. Years of erratic and irresponsible policies, excessive Communist Party control and undelivered promises of reform have created a dead-end Chinese economy of weak domestic consumer demand and slowing growth. The only way that China’s leaders can see to pull themselves out of this hole is to fall back on pumping out exports.…  Seguir leyendo »

Ursula von der Leyen acompaña a los presidentes Emmanuel Macron y Xi Jinping en París. REUTERS

MundoAsia

"Cuando China despierte... el mundo temblará". Esta frase atribuida a Napoleón condensa un sentimiento muy generalizado en Europa tras la recién concluida gira del Presidente Xi. El Imperio del Medio llevaba más de diez lustros despertando y proyectando un relato de emergencia tranquila, que hoy carece de virtualidad en el panorama pos-COVID; en nuestro territorio transido de incertidumbre de futuro por la invasión rusa de Ucrania. El agorero anuncio decimonónico es, asimismo, el título de un libro que cayó en mis manos allá a principios de los 70, memorable porque fijó un interés personal de por vida. Su autor, Alain Peyrefitte, fue enviado a Pekín por De Gaulle para desbrozar negociaciones, con una misión clara: "[...]…  Seguir leyendo »

¿Qué explica el ascenso del partido BJP?

MundoAsia,

India, con 968 millones de votantes inscritos, actualmente lleva a cabo el mayor ejercicio de derechos democráticos del mundo. En términos generales, se espera que gane el partido gobernante Bharatiya Janata (BJP) del primer ministro Narendra Modi -el partido político más grande del mundo.

El BJP ha llegado a dominar el panorama electoral de India por varias razones: se centró incansablemente en construir su fuerza organizacional, promovió la meritocracia dentro de sus filas, amplió su base de votantes y entregó beneficios a los pobres de manera eficiente.

El BJP, un partido socialmente conservador pero económicamente de centro, se creó formalmente en 1980, aunque sus raíces vienen del Bharatiya Jana Sangh, un partido que surgió en los años 1950 con la intención de ofrecer una alternativa nacionalista hindú de laissez-faire para la mentalidad socialista prevaleciente de esa época.…  Seguir leyendo »

Men dressed as frontline workers from the First Indochina War parade by a poster of the late general Vo Nguyen Giap as Vietnam marks the 70th anniversary of the Dien Bien Phu battle, on 7 May 2024 in Dien Bien Phu City. Photo: Linh Pham/Getty Images.

MundoAsia

In just a few weeks, the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) has shredded its reputation for boring political stability. A long-running power struggle, disguised by a wider anti-corruption campaign, has resulted in the sudden sacking of both the country’s president, Vo Van Thuong, and the chair of the National Assembly.

The outcome of this fight should cause those who still hope that Vietnam could join an ‘anti-China’ coalition to think again. Although this power struggle is not about foreign policy, it will result in a turn towards China and away from the West.

The sackings in March and May this year follow the dismissal, early last year, of the then president and deputy prime minister.…  Seguir leyendo »

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic (R) walks with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a welcome ceremony in Belgrade, on May 8, 2024. (Photo by ELVIS BARUKCIC/AFP via Getty Images)

MundoAsiaEuropa

During President Xi Jinping’s trip to Europe this week, he must have discovered some parts of Europe have become an entirely different place since his visit five years ago.

Gone are the heydays of economic globalization, when China was viewed as an indispensable investment destination. Instead, the mood among European leaders is to ‘de-risk’ – moving investments and supply chains away from the world’s second largest economy.

Judging from his statements in Paris, Beijing’s assessment of Europe has also shifted. This is certainly a renewed charm offensive, hoping to tempt Europeans to continue to invest in China.

But equally Xi gave the EU tough warnings on Europe’s trade protectionism and its current diplomatic stance.…  Seguir leyendo »

Por qué China ofrece evidencia para optimistas y pesimistas por igual

MundoAsia

Es poco frecuente que las evaluaciones sobre el desempeño y el potencial de una economía diverjan tan marcadamente como sucede en el caso de China. Mientras que algunos economistas elogian los logros pasados y las perspectivas futuras de China, otros se centran en las supuestas fallas de su modelo de desarrollo y sugieren que la trampa del ingreso medio está a la vuelta de la esquina. Pero inclusive más remarcable que la marcada divergencia de opiniones sobre la economía de China es el hecho de que ambas partes pueden reunir una evidencia sólida que respalda sus puntos de vista.

Pocos cuestionarían que China le debe su éxito económico pasado, en gran medida, a la imitación tecnológica, que fue posible y estuvo alimentada por el comercio con economías desarrolladas -y la inversión directa que ellas le inyectaron-, especialmente durante los años 1990 y en la primera década de este siglo.…  Seguir leyendo »

A demonstration in support of Ukraine, Taipei, Taiwan, February 2023. Ann Wang / Reuters

MundoAsiaEuropa, , , ,

The Russian invasion of Ukraine was a wake-up call: it was time to move past the vision of a post‒Cold War world in which regimes in Moscow and Beijing would become responsible stakeholders in a rules-based international order. What has emerged, instead, is an increasingly contentious world plagued by authoritarian aggression, most dangerously exemplified by the “no-limits partnership” between China and Russia, through which the two countries have bolstered each other’s repressive, expansionist agendas.

This remains, however, a globalized world of interconnected economies and societies: a single, indivisible theater in which the security of every country is intimately linked to the security of every other.…  Seguir leyendo »

Walking in Beijing, January 2024. Tingshu Wang / Reuters

MundoAsia

In the decades immediately ahead, East Asia will experience perhaps the modern world’s most dramatic demographic shift. All of the region’s main states—China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan—are about to enter into an era of depopulation, in which they will age dramatically and lose millions of people. According to projections from the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic Social Affairs, China’s and Japan’s populations are set to fall by eight percent and 18 percent, respectively, between 2020 and 2050. South Korea’s population is poised to shrink by 12 percent. And Taiwan’s will go down by an estimated eight percent.…  Seguir leyendo »

El dictador norcoreano Kim Jong-un, durante unos ejercicios militares. EFE

MundoAsia, ,

Durante los últimos días, el vigor de las sanciones impuestas por la comunidad internacional para conseguir la desnuclearización de Corea del Norte ha disminuido.

Los principales culpables de esta disminución son China y Rusia, dos miembros permanentes del Consejo de Seguridad de las Naciones Unidas.

El problema también deriva del hecho de que 62 de los 192 estados miembros de la ONU nunca presentaron informes nacionales de implementación de las sanciones contra Corea del Norte hasta 2022.

China y Rusia se han comprometido secretamente con Corea del Norte. Ambos países instigaron las ambiciones del programa nuclear de Kim Jong-un, lo que le permitió a Corea del Norte desarrollar con éxito misiles balísticos intercontinentales (ICBM, según sus siglas en inglés) y satélites de reconocimiento.…  Seguir leyendo »

¿Modi puede perder?

MundoAsia,

La India entró en el segundo mes electoral y la mayoría de las expectativas convencionales ya sufrieron cambios importantes: los entendidos complacientes habían concluido hace ya mucho que el primer ministro Narendra Modi y su partido, el Partido Popular Indio (Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP), obtendrían una cómoda victoria; pero después de las dos primeras de las siete fases de las elecciones —en las que aproximadamente 190 circunscripciones electorales ya votaron— la situación ya no parece tan simple.

La Comisión electoral autónoma de la India prohíbe que se publiquen resultados de encuestas a boca de urna hasta que se hayan completado las siete fases (algo que ocurrirá el 1 de junio; y el resultado se conocerá el 4 de junio).…  Seguir leyendo »

A demonstration of a human-piloted robot in Yokohama, Japan, September 2023. Issei Kato / Reuters

MundoAsia,

Japan and South Korea are innovation and tech powerhouses. They are home to leading firms in many of the high-tech sectors powering global economic growth and usually rank near the top of innovation indexes. To get to where they are today, both countries harnessed the combined power of their public and private sectors for decades. The innovation strategies they used challenge the model mythologized by Silicon Valley: the individual genius who comes up with a brilliant idea and receives funding from venture capitalists acting in a private capacity. In the United States, the perception is that startups should work by themselves, often with the aim of disrupting existing companies and industries.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia

A l’occasion de la première visite du président Xi Jinping en France depuis cinq ans, les débats portent essentiellement sur les enjeux économiques et géostratégiques, occultant l’un des volets essentiels au programme : les échanges humains et culturels, dont font partie les échanges académiques. Or, ce volet est de la plus haute importance car dans ce domaine aussi s’exerce l’influence de la Chine.

Si, comme le souligne [le chercheur et directeur du centre Asie de l’Institut français des relations internationales] Marc Julienne, les échanges académiques « sont absolument nécessaires pour permettre aux sociétés de tisser des liens, indépendamment et au-delà des échanges officiels », la porte est devenue de plus en plus étroite pour qu’ils servent le progrès des connaissances et de la pensée, en dépit de la reprise tous azimuts de la diplomatie universitaire chinoise suite à trois années d’interruption dues au Covid.…  Seguir leyendo »

Let’s All Take a Deep Breath About China

MundoAméricaMundoAsia,

The amygdala is a pair of neural clusters near the base of the brain that assesses danger and can help prompt a fight-or-flight response. A prolonged stress response may contribute to anxiety, which can cause people to perceive danger where there is none and obsess about worst-case scenarios.

America’s collective national body is suffering from a chronic case of China anxiety. Nearly anything with the word “Chinese” in front of it now triggers a fear response in our political system, muddling our ability to properly gauge and contextualize threats. This has led the U.S. government and American politicians to pursue policies grounded in repression and exclusion, mirroring the authoritarian system that they seek to combat.…  Seguir leyendo »