4 Items

SUMMARY REPORT: U.S.-China 21

Report - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

SUMMARY REPORT: U.S.-China 21

| April 2015

The future relationship between China and the United States is one of the mega-changes and mega-challenges of our age. China’s rise is the geopolitical equivalent of the melting polar ice caps – gradual change on a massive scale that can suddenly lead to dramatic turns of events.

In this Summary Report of a longer forthcoming work, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, a senior fellow at the Belfer Center, asks if this defining trend of the 21st century can be managed peacefully? He argues that it can – if Washington and Beijing commit to placing their relationship on a stable, long-term footing.

Rudd's findings emerge from a major study he led at the Center on the possibilities and impacts of a new strategic relationship between China and the United States.

U.S. President Barack Obama, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, shake hands following the conclusion of their joint news conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2014.

(AP Photo)

Analysis & Opinions - Financial Times

Xi and Obama have shown leadership on emissions

| November 13, 2014

In the cynical world of politics it is important, just occasionally, to give credit where it is due. The commitments on carbon emissions announced on Wednesday by President Barack Obama of the US and President Xi Jinping of China, supported by the significant diplomacy of Secretary of State John Kerry, are both environmentally substantive and politically influential. Between them, these countries account for 44 per cent of global carbon emissions – a share that is still rising.

After using water cannon to turn around a flotilla of Taiwanese fishing and Coast Guard vessels on Sept. 26, 2012, the Japanese Coast Guard has shown increasingly vigilance in defending the waters off of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands.

Al Jazeera English Photo

Analysis & Opinions - The Washington Post

How to Navigate the East China Sea Dispute between Japan and China

| April 18, 2014

"...[T]he best we can aim for is to revive the wisdom of the original Zhou-Tanaka formula. One way of doing this, as some have suggested, might be to declare the islands a maritime ecological preserve dedicated to the larger good of the region. There would be no habitation and no military use of the islands or the surrounding seas. Ideally, China and Japan would agree, but that may be unlikely in the current climate. Other mechanisms could be explored to produce the same end."