Lanya Olmstead was born in Florida to a mother who immigrated from Taiwan and an American father of Norwegian ancestry. Ethnically, she considers herself half Taiwanese and half Norwegian. But when applying to Harvard, Olmstead checked only one box for her race: white. (more)
NEW YORK (AP) — The United States has announced a $5.85 billion arms sales package that will upgrade Taiwan’s fleet of 145 F-16 fighter jets, saying it will help ensure the island’s ability to defend itself. (more)
The Taiwanese government and its political allies in the United States are conducting a full-court press to get the Obama administration to sell newer, more advanced F-16 fighters to Taipei. Conflicting diplomatic pressures are making this a difficult decision. When Washington approved a more limited arms sale package in 2010, the Chinese government reacted with unexpected vehemence. Among other actions, Beijing suspended military-to-military ties with the United States. (more)
Henry Kissinger’s January 13, 2010, column in the Washington Post, “Avoiding a U.S.-China cold war,” lays out the former secretary of state’s vision for the future of U.S.-China relations on the eve of Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to the United States. In classic Kissinger style, he offers a geo-strategic vision for how the world’s two dominant powers of the 21st century should get along. “The aim should be to create a tradition of respect and cooperation so that the successors of the leaders meeting now continue to see it in their interest to build an emerging world order as a joint enterprise.” A lofty goal, to be sure, but is building a new world order with China as a joint enterprise in America’s best interests? (more)
The Obama administration’s approach to China is entirely consistent with establishment foreign policy thinking over the last 40 years, with a few brief exceptions, through Republican and Democrat administrations. (more)
As Secretary of Defense Gates noted, any question about North Korea has only one response: “I don’t know.” There is indeed so little we know about this barbarian kingdom with nuclear weapons. Hence almost anything one does say is speculative. (more)
In his October 20th “Inside the Ring” column, Bill Gertz of the Washington Times reports on the current China-policy debate within the Obama administration. He identifies two opposing groups — the “kowtow” group and the “sad-and-disappointed” group. Twenty-five years ago we called them the “convert-them-to-Christianity-and-democracy” group and the “let’s-just-outsmart-them” group. The U.S. players in the perennial China-policy debate change as administrations come and go, but the fundamental differences between the two classic approaches to China remain the same. (more)
Unemployment remains high, with Washington politicians clamoring for job creation. China is ever more confident, challenging the U.S. economically and politically. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) even has displaced America as the number one trading partner of such leading East Asian states as South Korea. (more)
Advocates of Big Government are forever creative in concocting new justifications for old programs. Supporters of more military spending are no different. One of the most unique arguments is that a bigger Pentagon budget is necessary to simultaneously protect and suppress the Europeans. (more)
BEIJING — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates met his Chinese counterpart in Vietnam on Monday for the first time since the two militaries suspended talks with each other earlier this year, calling for the two countries to prevent “mistrust, miscalculations and mistakes.” (more)
The House Ways and Means Committee has just approved a bill that would attempt, albeit modestly, to crack down on Chinese currency manipulation, a key cause of America’s trade deficit. The Ryan-Murphy currency bill (HR 2378) would allow the Commerce Department to treat currency manipulation as an illegal subsidy for the purpose of calculating countervailing duties intended as retaliation. This bill has to be passed by the full House of Representatives and then the Senate before becoming law, but already the prophets of doom are squealing about the dangers of starting a trade war with China. They are wrong. (more)
No need to understand the language. The pictures alone tell quite a story. (more)
A private zoo in Taiwan has become the first on the island to see the birth of “ligers”, hybrids of lions and tigresses, with the owner facing a fine for violating wildlife rules, officials said Monday. (more)
The visit Sunday to the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, cruising off coast of Vietnam, by high-ranking Vietnamese military and government officials was not a big story in the United States. Teams of U.S. military personnel have been conducting MIA-remains-recovery operations in Vietnam for 20 years. U.S.-Vietnam relations have been steadily improving since 1995 when the two countries normalized diplomatic relations. A U.S. warship visited Ho Chi Minh City in 2003. It was, however, big news in China, especially in the news reports circulated among China’s ruling elite. (more)
HANOI, Vietnam — North Korea on Friday threatened the United States and South Korea with a “physical response” to planned weekend naval exercises as tensions with the communist nation rose in the aftermath of the sinking of a South Korean warship blamed on the North. (more)
The same Taiwanese news guys who animated the Al Gore sex poodlemassage incident and the Tiger Woods-gets-golf-clubbed-by-his-wife kerfuffle have finally lent their talents to this video re-enactment of the iPhone 4 saga, from start to finish. It’s all here: Apple taking its place as the world’s most ‘evil’ tech company, the destruction of a Gizmodo editor’s door, Steve Jobs’ reality distortion field, Consumer Reports’ destruction of said distortion field, the Foxconn factory working conditions, the bumper case pseudo-fix, and even some super subtle humor (‘iCrap for sale!’). (more)
China has at least $2.5 trillion in foreign exchange and must, due to its own balance of payments rules, invest it all overseas. Most unavoidably goes into American bonds, the only market big enough to absorb it.[1] However, since the beginning of 2005, the PRC has invested almost $200 billion in foreign assets outside bonds. Official Chinese data are unhelpful, but The Heritage Foundation’s China Global Investment Tracker sorts non-bond spending by country and sector. The tracker is current through June 30, 2010. (more)
If there’s one thing everyone knows these days, whether they’re happy about it or not, it’s that we live in a “global” economy. This fact is taken as so obvious that anyone who disputes it is regarded as not so much wrong, but as simply ignorant—not even worth arguing with. So it may come as a shock to many that, in reality, the cliché that we live in a borderless global economy does not survive serious examination. The key is to ignore the Thomas Friedmanesque rhetoric flooding the media and get down to some hard numbers. (more)
“I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” said Captain Renault to Rick in Casablanca as a croupier hands him a pile of money. The police captain had the good sense to at least feign indignation when he found himself in an awkward situation involving illegal activity. Renault, of course, condoned the gambling by participating in it. (more)
Solving the problem of cleaning up the waters in the Gulf of Mexico may depend not on government, nor on the corporate giant BP, but on innovation and commitment to free enterprise. One promising and persistent example is Mr. Nobu Su of Taiwan, CEO of TMT Corporation. (more)
