Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, EastAsiaIntel.com Who is in charge of China’s macro-level financial and economic policy? Most observers will say President Xi Jinping, who is head of the two highest-level decision-making bodies: the Central Leading Group on Finance and Economics (CLGFE) and the newly set up Central Leading Group on Comprehensively Deepening Reforms […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com Donald Trump may be running neck and neck with Hillary Clinton in the U.S. presidential sweepstakes if the polls are at all credible, but there’s one constituency in which he appears to be well ahead. That’s within the ruling circles in Pyongyang. He’s winning popularity there for two […]
by WorldTribune Staff, May 23, 2016 China is building a base in the disputed Spratly Islands for an advanced rescue vessel complete with drones and underwater robots. Chen Xingguang, political commissar of the ship, said the ship is scheduled to be deployed in the second half of the year, the official China Daily reported on […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By EastAsiaIntel.com On April 29, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi issued a joint statement objecting to the contemplated deployment in South Korea of the U.S. Theater High Altitude Area Defense [THAAD] missile interceptor system. But what is unusual is that the joint Russian-Chinese objection to THAAD […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com GWANGJU ― The ghosts of the uprising of May 18, 1980, hover over this old but new city in a restive spirit that shows the disunity, the factional splits and the regional hatreds that persist in undermining the ability of South Korea to stand effectively against challenges from […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Lee Jong-Heon, EastAsiaIntel.com On the heels of the Party Congress in which North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un presented a five-year economic plan, North Korea has kicked off tougher “work-harder campaigns.” North Koreans, already struggling with hunger and the stresses of survival in the repressive society, are being mobilized for new construction […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Parris H. Chang Foreign policy is an integrated structure of assumptions, objectives and means. Critics of American foreign policy contend that the decisive factor of the failure of U.S. policy toward China has been the imbalance between political ends and military means. Professor Tang Tsou’s classical study “America’s Failure in China […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com We keep hearing about all the influence the Chinese have over North Korea. If only they’d exert their power, maybe cut off or slow down the flow of oil that’s the lifeblood of the country, then the North Koreans would start talking seriously about giving up their nukes. […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Lee Jong-Heon, EastAsiaIntel.com SEOUL — North Korea has prioritized increasing the rage of its submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) to 2,000 kilometers, a military source here said. The North is also said to be building 3,000-ton submarines that can carry multiple SLBMs, the source said. “North Korea is believed to have made […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com Kim Jong-Un celebrates his “coronation” in Pyongyang Friday while forgetting about one unpleasant reality that deepens North Korea’s isolation in an already hostile world. He presides over North Korea’s biggest-ever party, the Seventh Workers’ Party Congress, while Iran, his longtime partner in nuclear crime, vastly improves its ties […]