Bringing Chinese Perspectives to Washington

The mission of China Security is to improve the understanding of China amongst Western policy practitioners and the public by providing Chinese experts' authoritative analysis on critical traditional and nontraditional security issues that impact China's Strategic Development and its relations with the United States and the world.

Note from the Chief Editor:

China Security is a quarterly English-language policy journal that expresses diverse Chinese views on a range of security issues of importance to China, Asia, Sino-American relations, and the world. With offices in both Beijing and Washington, we draw from specialists in all the major policy research and analysis centers in China, including academic institutions, think tanks, the government, the military and media, and we also invite top U.S.-China experts to submit articles in order to provide balance and promote dialogue.

The mission of China Security is important: while the Sino-U.S. relationship will crucially define international security in the 21st century, there is a lack of access in Washington to Chinese thinking and analysis regarding the vital issues that impact this relationship. American experts and pundits on China abound, but there is a limit to their understanding of China – and in many cases a lack of objectivity – for a variety of cultural and political reasons. The policy community in the United States needs a platform dedicated to providing a Chinese perspective on issues that will shape bilateral relations in the decades ahead.

By exposing American and Western audiences to original Chinese thinkers, China Security provides an alternative perspective to the dominant U.S.-centric view of China and contributes to a healthy dialogue that advances new ideas for improving relations. The journal also seeks to stimulate the policy discourse within China, and to foster independent contributions to the internal Chinese debate over the nation's future course. We hope to build a network of scholars who grasp the multidisciplinary nature of many of China's and the world's security challenges, and understand the need for a range of specialists to participate in solving problems whose transnational and non-military character often defy straightforward policy remedies.

We are developing new ways to introduce these views and voices to Western audiences, particularly the U.S. policymaking and opinion-making community. The thrust of this effort is to identify promising younger scholars as well as established experts, commission them to conduct research and write original articles and reports, translate and edit their analyses, and publish these works in China Security.

Our journal now reaches over 12,000 subscribers and is fast becoming a unique and authoritative source of alternative, diverse Chinese perspectives on traditional and nontraditional security topics. Past issues of the journal have addressed U.S. and Chinese nuclear weapons policies, China's space ambitions and policy, crisis management, and energy security, as well as policies toward North Korea. Future issues will explore a widening array of topics that reflect China's special and unique security concerns, including many topics historically excluded from mainstream security analysis – dimensions of human security and social welfare and stability, state-society relations and reform, environmental and economic development, and health care. Future issues will also tackle regional security issues ranging from China's policy toward North Korea's nuclear program, to Taiwan policy, to Sino-Japanese relations, to broader regional security cooperation and conflict.

China Security is published by The World Security Institute (WSI), an nonprofit think tank respected for its unbiased research, commentary and journalism. WSI's projects and publications are funded by thousands of individuals, and by foundations and corporations who are committed to WSI's innovative approach to global affairs.

Eric Hagt
Chief Editor, China Security

Download China Security Magazine, Winter 2008

PDF format, 1.8MB, 151Pages.

More Carrot Than Stick: Beijing's Emerging Taiwan Policy       Chong-Pin Lin
Peace Agreement: The Long Road Ahead PDF    Huang Jiashu
Wild Card: A Democratic Taiwan PDF    Ted Galen Carpenter
Peace or War: Taiwan at a Critical Juncture      Peng Guangqiani
Ensnared by Beijing: Washington Succumbs to the PRC's Diplomacy of Panic        Alan Wachman
Whither Taiwan-China Relations?      Arthur S. Ding
Time for "New" Thinking on Taiwan      Wang Jianwei
Change: Mainland's Taiwan Policy    Chu Shulong & Guo Yuli
How China "Wins" a Potential Space War?     Brian Weeden

More Carrot Than Stick: Beijing’s Emerging Taiwan Policy

Hu Jintao was expected to take a strident position toward Taiwan at the recent 17th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, convened in Beijing on Oct. 15, 2007. The reason was simple. Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian had for several months launched a campaign for his country to join the United Nations under the name of Taiwan, rather than the Republic of China (ROC), a provocative maneuver that was perceived by many as inching toward de jure independence.

A veteran China watcher from the Kuomintang (KMT), Taiwan’s opposition party, expressed with alarm that “the cross-Strait tension is now worse than in 1996 and 1999,” predicting that Beijing would surely “oppose Taiwanese independence with tough statements” at the upcoming Party Congress.

Surprisingly, Hu’s keynote speech before the Party Congress largely soft-pedaled the Taiwan issue, made no mention of Taipei’s United Nations campaign, and deleted the customary mantra of “oppos[ing] Taiwanese independence, one China one Taiwan, and two Chinas.” Moreover, he extended an olive branch to Taipei by offering to negotiate a “peace treaty.” This turn of events, in fact, may have been anticipated, had two trends already in progress been taken into consideration. First, Hu Jintao has advanced a signifi cantly different set of policies toward Taiwan than his predecessor Jiang Zemin. The second is the shift in factors that have determined Beijing’s posture vis-à-vis Taiwan since the 1990s. These trends augur a far more agile and sophisticated approach in Beijing’s policies toward Taipei that will likely continue through 2008. ...

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Published by World Security Institute China Program.

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