Category Archives: China

Invite Taiwan Navy To RIMPAC Exercise In Hawaii

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 5, No. 7, July 2017

The nose of the guided-missile cruiser USS Princeton (CG 59) is photographed following behind Chinese Navy multi-role frigate Hengshui (572), guided-missile destroyer Xian (153) and replenishment ship Gaoyouhu (966).

The guided-missile cruiser USS Princeton (CG 59) steams behind Chinese Navy multi-role frigate Hengshui (572), guided-missile destroyer Xian (153) and replenishment ship Gaoyouhu (966) while participating in maneuvering drills during Rim of the Pacific, 2016. A Chinese navy fleet, including five ships (the missile destroyer Xi’an, the missile frigate Hengshui, the supply ship Gaoyouhu, the hospital ship Peace Ark, the submarine rescue vessel Changdao), three helicopters, a marine squad and a diving squad with 1,200 officers and soldiers, set sail from Zhoushan to Hawaii to join the RIMPAC 2016 on June 15. It is the second time that Chinese navy has participated in RIMPAC, a multilateral naval exercises led by the USA and held every two years. Source: Picryl.

Anders Corr, Ph.D.
Publisher of the Journal of Political Risk

In 1971, the U.S. started holding international naval exercises in Hawaii, and called them RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific). We invited our closest allies to participate. Now, the U.S. Navy is inviting not only allies, but Russia and China as well. Since a brief thaw in the 1990s, Russia and China are increasingly acting as adversaries rather than responsible international partners to the U.S. Most recently, China seems to have helped rather than stopped North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. It is time to invite Taiwan, not China, to RIMPAC.

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China Expert: I’m Drunk

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 5, No. 7, July 2017

Beijing partiers are photographed in black and white dozing off at a bar on tables full of empty bottles.

Beijing partiers doze off at a bar, 2013. Source: Andrea La Rosa via Flickr.

Anders Corr
Publisher of the Journal of Political Risk

The following conversation between myself and a drunk China expert, who published a well-reviewed book on China recently, covers a wide-ranging set of topics, including the hard-to-decipher policy intentions of the U.S. and China. The conversation, which occurred by email starting Friday night, April 21, is sometimes humorous, and may be politically incorrect to some. But it succinctly and candidly addresses critical themes of U.S.-China relations, and touches on the politics of China analysis in the U.S. and Europe.

The expert, once he sobered up, gamely gave me permission to publish the exchange, but not to use his name. “I don’t want to be seen as a panda hugger,” he said, “because I’m not.”

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Nuclear Deterrence and Four Types of Force: Definitive, Coercive, Catalytic, and Expressive

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 5, No. 6, June 2017

Four soldiers are photographed standing and waving on a military tank holding a missile at a Victory Day military parade.

Victory Day military parade, North Korea, 2013. Source: Stefan Krasowski via Wikimedia Commons.

Captain Robert C. Rubel
USN (Ret)

North Korea’s drive to attain a nuclear warfare capability is currently on the front burner in the Pentagon, and is a driver of tensions in East Asia. This has precipitated plenty of dialogue in the national security community, including on the issue of extended deterrence, the policy of the US that threatens nuclear response if an ally is attacked with nuclear weapons. One input from a former colleague at the Naval War College was the final catalyst that got me tapping on the keys. First, he quoted one of his scholars as saying that the real question concerning nuclear weapons “… is whether strategic nuclear forces have any genuine relevance today in the context of deterrence and warfighting, or whether they’re troublesome legacy weapons of a bygone era.” In a subsequent email he said that he was “interested in deterrence stopping all wars, not just nuclear.” It may be that the general umbrella of nuclear deterrence did suppress some wars that might have otherwise taken place during the decades after 1945, but it is almost impossible to know. However, my colleague’s faith in the utility of the manifold uses of deterrence is not that distant from those who advocate tailored deterrence, which is a scaled or graduated deterrence structure that includes the option of preemptive strikes.[1] Tailored deterrence to some extent reflects the logic behind the DoD concept of flexible deterrent options (FDO), which are defined as “…a wide range of interrelated responses that begin with deterrent oriented actions carefully tailored to produce a desired effect.”[2] In my view, such policies would incur considerable risk, as they ascribe, in an a priori manner, effects on an opponent’s political decision making and strategic planning processes in lieu of any specific intelligence (frequently) and certainly without any historical track record, especially in the nuclear arena. In this short article I will discuss a different way to analyze deterrence and gain insight into the thought processes of my colleague.

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Death of Celebrated Conductor Yan Liangkun Marks End of Era in China

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 5, No. 6, June 2017

Xian Xinghai is photographed in black and white. He is wearing a suit and is seated.

Shanghai, China. Xian Xinghai at about 23 years old in the 1920s. He composed the Yellow River Cantata, a classical work that uses a series of powerful Chinese melodies to evoke the beauty of China and the heroism of the war of resistance against Japan (1937-1945). Source: People’s Republic of China

Arthur Waldron, Ph.D.
University of Pennsylvania

Yan Liangkun, last of the legendary conductors of The Yellow River Cantata (1939) the powerful classic composed by Xian Xinghai in wartime, is dead. With him dies a precious and authentic Chinese revolutionary tradition, that of those who once truly believed. Our house echoed with the music all morning. It filled with tears the eyes of me, a simple white boy from the Boston suburbs, still unable to distinguish the five grains, and prompting all sorts of reflections.

We are drawing very near to the end of an era, when people are still alive who remember the radiant vision of the New China that would arise, somehow from the good land and rivers themselves, of war ravaged China (Rana Mitter tells us 20 million dead). In their imaginations that vision still lives, under the layers of tragedy, personal suffering and disappointment, as what guided them and consumed their spirits when they were young and has never died.  Somehow we must capture this, for these were sincere people, whose love of country was simple and absolutely authentic (though few ever carried a gun: that was for the lower orders).

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Scare of War with China in the Philippines:  Its Source and Implications to the Allied Nations

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 5, No. 5, May 2017

A large, green rice field is photographed. Figures are visible in the field in the background.

Rice farm in Palawan. Source: Cedric Buffler via Flickr.

Sannie Evan Malala
Small Farmer in the Philippines

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte revealed on Friday, May 19, that Chinese President Xi Jinping had threatened war if the Philippines forced its claims in the South China Sea.  Duterte and Xi had a restricted meeting last May 15 during the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing.  There Duterte expressed his plan to drill oil in the South China Sea, as he claimed.  And he said the response was “we’re friends, we don’t want to quarrel with you, we want to maintain the presence of warm relationship, but if you force the issue, we’ll go to war.”  (I think I’m familiar with this pulling of words.) This is clear lawlessness.