CFR.org | Backgrounder: China’s Anti-Satellite Test

China caused an international uproar in January when it destroyed one of its own satellites, an action that left hundreds of pieces of dangerous debris in space and led to alarm over the possibility of a space arms race. A month later, Beijing announced it plans no further similar tests, but the January 11 test had already established the growing prowess of China's space program as well as its capability to protect itself from satellite surveillance in the event of war. Despite immediate global demands for an explanation for the test, China waited several days before releasing an official response, prompting questions about its goals and just how soft China's “soft rise” policy may be.

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CFR.org | China’s Olympian Challenges

When China won the bid to host the 2008 summer Olympics, it pledged to address environmental concerns, human rights grievances, and restrictive press laws. International Olympics Committee inspectors gave Beijing high marks when they held their first review (Reuters) of the city’s preparations in mid-January. 

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CFR.org | Esarey: China's New Media Laws An “Experiment”

Ashley W. Esarey, a China media expert and author of a Freedom House report on Chinese press censorship, discusses the new regulations giving foreign journalists press freedoms through the end of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. He calls the new laws an “experiment” by the Communist Party and says the press freedoms may become permanent unless they “lead Chinese journalists to call for more freedom themselves.”

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CFR.org | Bird Flu Season Again

In late January came another reminder of the sturdiness of avian flu. Britain was hit by its first major outbreak in domestic poultry when 2,600 turkeys died (Times of London) at a farm run by one the country’s biggest producers. Roughly 160,000 birds were gassed to contain the disease while authorities sought answers about the source. Although the spread of bird flu can often be traced to migrating wild waterfowl, the British outbreak is likely linked to a poultry plant in Hungary owned by the same company, according to the UK’s Department for Food, Environment, and Rural Affairs.

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CFR.org | Asian Military Drift

Four months after promising power would be “returned to the people,” leaders of a military coup in Thailand remain in charge, with half the country under martial law. Talk of a coup is also in the air in Bangladesh, amid a political crisis (The Economist). In Sri Lanka, the revival of the country’s lengthy civil war has raised the prominence of military voices on its political scene.

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CFR.org | Crisis Guide: The Korean Peninsula

Over half a century since Korean War's end, conflict persists on the peninsula. Explore the military, economic, and nuclear dimensions of this frozen conflict.

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This interactive helped CFR.org win a 2007 Knight-Batten for Innovations in Journalism for its for its Crisis Guide Series.

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CFR.org | U.S.-North Korea: Behind Closed Doors

While attention focused on the Bush administration’s new Iraq war plan in recent weeks, the White House strategy shifted significantly on another foreign policy conundrum: North Korea’s nuclear program. CFR.org presents an in-depth, multimedia look at the standoff on the Korean peninsula in this new Crisis Guide.

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CFR.org | Kux: Musharraf Has Little Control of Border with Afghanistan

Ambassador Dennis Kux, a senior policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Asia program and former Foreign Service South Asia specialist, discusses the porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Under international pressure to control the Taliban and other extremists from making cross-border raids into Afghanistan, the government of President Pervez Musharraf recently proposed mining and fencing the border. Kux says the idea is not a viable solution and that the Pakistanis cannot stop “individuals going across what has long been an open border.” He also says that the Pakistani intelligence agency’s longtime links to militant groups as well as sympathy for the Taliban in tribal areas near the border serve as obstacles to stopping incursions into Afghanistan.

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CFR.org | Rising Moon atop the UN

New UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was known as “slippery eel” by journalists in his native South Korea for avoiding direct answers to difficult questions. But Ban landed himself in hot water on his first day at work over comments during a UN press conference about Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s execution last week. Asked whether Saddam should have been hanged, Ban departed from traditional UN opposition to the practice by saying: “The issue of capital punishment is for each and every member state to decide.”

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CFR.org | Ford’s Impact on Foreign Policy

America honored Gerald R. Ford Jr., the thirty-eighth U.S. president, with a state funeral on Tuesday, a man credited by presidents past and current for helping shepherd the country through the aftermath of the Watergate scandal. Ford is remembered most for his pardon of predecessor Richard M. Nixon, but his two-and-a-half years as president were also marked by some significant foreign policy developments.

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CFR.org | Probing U.S. Global AIDS Policy

Four years after President Bush launched an ambitious plan to address the global HIV/AIDS crisis, the program’s policies will now face ideological scrutiny. The five-year, $15 billion President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), supports prevention, treatment, and care for the dying and for orphans. The plan requires spending at least a third of prevention funds on abstinence-until-marriage programs—a stipulation that set off a policy debate (PBS). But November’s Democratic congressional victory could spell changes in PEPFAR’s abstinence-until-marriage policy by elevating the chances for passage of the Pathway Bill, sponsored by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA). The bill would revise current practice by focusing more on preventing the spread of AIDS among women and girls, and would remove the abstinence-only spending limitations (BosGlobe). AVERT, an international AIDS prevention agency, offers this statistical analysis of PEPFAR policies.

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CFR.org | Which Way Will Turkmen Gas Flow?

Peculiarities marked the career of Saparmurat Niyazov, the hard-line dictator who ruled Turkmenistan for twenty-one years until his unexpected death on December 21 (AP). Even as nearly 60 percent of this gas-rich, largely Muslim Central Asian country lived in poverty, Niyazov funded lavish projects (Guardian), including an ice palace outside the capital, Ashgabat, and a manmade lake in the middle of a desert. But the self-obsessed Niyazov, architect of one of the world’s most bizarre personality cults, failed to name a successor. This raises questions about the prospects of a reprieve for the country’s beleaguered citizens, and leaves in doubt Europe’s energy security (FT).

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CFR.org | Dim Prospects for Six-Party Deal

As Six-Party Talks resumed in Beijing on December 18, North Korea maintained its defiance (Korea Times), going so far as to demand mutual disarmament talks with the United States. But Pyongyang's real objective, which its delegates have made a precondition for any other negotiations, is the lifting of U.S. financial sanctions (Asia Times). On Tuesday, finance officials from both countries met on the sidelines to discuss the U.S. restrictions (BBC), including those imposed on a Macao-based bank linked to North Korean money laundering. Ahead of the meeting, Christopher Hill, the State Department’s point man on North Korea, said he hoped for “significant progress” in the first round, though experts say that is unlikely. 

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CFR.org | Wary Peace in Indonesia’s Aceh

More than a year has passed since the Aceh peace agreement ended three decades of bloodshed that claimed some 15,000 lives. In the wake of the devastating 2004 tsunami, leaders of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) agreed to hand in their weapons and halt their demands for independence for the resource-rich Indonesian province. In return, Jakarta strengthened Aceh’s autonomy, solidified last week in local gubernatorial elections in which former rebel spokesman Irwandi Yusuf came away ahead in the polls (TIME).

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CFR.org | On Trade, A Superpower Summit

A high-profile delegation led by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, five other cabinet members, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke applied for trade relief in Beijing this week, a stark reminder for Americans of how the world has changed. Along with the Sino-U.S. trade imbalance, talks tackled China’s undervalued currency, intellectual property rights, and American hopes of opening up (China Daily) the Chinese market to foreign investors. The first semiannual Sino-U.S. economic summit was part of the “strategic economic dialogue” launched by Presidents Bush and Hu Jintao in September. Writing in the Washington Post, Paulson called the summit a “pivotal moment for China and for our relationship with that country.” But the trip yielded few signs of concrete progress. China agreed to allow the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq open offices in Beijing, but there was no agreement on letting the yuan appreciate. "We have a point of view that there's more risk in going too slowly than there is in going too fast, and the Chinese see that differently," (Reuters) Paulson said at the summit's close. This CFR.org Backgrounder examines the major issues—trade imbalance, currency concerns, protectionism, and intellectual property—dogging the Sino-U.S. economic relationship.

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CFR.org | Musharraf’s Kashmir Offer

President Pervez Musharraf said last week on New Delhi Television that Pakistan will give up its claim on Kashmir if India accepts a four-point resolution, including autonomy for the region under a joint government with Indian, Pakistani, and Kashmiri representation. Within days, a spokeswoman from Pakistan’s foreign ministry followed up by asserting that Islamabad did not consider the territory an “integral part” of Pakistan. Tasnim Aslam, whose remarks at a press conference in Islamabad drew criticism (The News) from Pakistani journalists, said that conflict between India and Pakistan was over the Kashmiris right to “decide their future” rather than claims on the India-controlled area of the Himalayan region. The comments have stirred speculation about whether Pakistan is making a break with decades-old policy or merely maneuvering to fend off international criticism on other fronts.

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CFR.org | Feeding India’s Energy Fix

The U.S. Congress has reached agreement on a bill approving a landmark deal allowing the United States to provide New Delhi with fuel and technology to expand its civilian nuclear energy program (AP). In July, President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced a framework for the pact, which lifts a three-decade U.S. moratorium on nuclear trade with India in exchange for its acceptance on safeguards on its civilian nuclear facilities. While both houses of Congress negotiated a compromise bill, Undersecretary of State Nicholas R. Burns headed to New Delhi to reassure India’s government (Times of India) about the U.S. version of the agreement. The deal still requires approval by India’s parliament. More difficult to secure is the necessary support of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which oversees guidelines for sale of the nuclear materials (Asia Times).

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CFR.org | Backgrounder: Modernizing the People’s Liberation Army of China

As the commander in chief of the massive People’s Liberation Army (PLA), President Hu Jintao plans to reinforce his leadership with his mandate to stamp out corruption among the force’s ranks. The PLA has already undergone major changes, becoming a more professional, modern force—despite its continued allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party. Beijing now seeks to modernize outdated weapons systems and structures and bring the PLA up to speed with the militaries of other major world powers. But the transformation of the PLA from a large ground force to a multifaceted military capable of projecting power beyond China’s border and coastline prompts concern about Beijing’s strategic ambitions.

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CFR.org | Facing China’s ‘Peaceful Rise’

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson heads to Beijing next week as China’s currency reserves hit the $1 trillion mark and the U.S. dollar slumps. Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve chairman, will join the Paulson delegation, which hopes to talk Beijing into opening up its economy (AP), letting its currency rise, and cracking down on piracy. The trip comes as the Bush administration finds itself under pressure to narrow its ballooning trade deficit with China. 

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CFR.org | Bangladesh’s Troubling Feud

A longstanding, bitter rivalry between the two main political parties in Bangladesh has led to widespread unrest, leaving a country typically perceived as a moderate Muslim democracy in a state of chaos. The political crisis threatens to roll back modest reforms in a country still riven by poverty and corruption.

The opposition alliance, led by the Awami League party, has imposed nationwide blockades and called for electoral reform. It accuses the ruling, right-wing Bangladesh National Party (BNP) of machinations to rig the upcoming January 2007 parliamentary elections. Protests began again when the central electoral commission announced a January 21 date for those elections, despite opposition requests to first investigate mass irregularities in voter rolls.

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