By Michael H. Armacost

Napoleon was uncommonly prescient more than 200 years ago when he described China as “a sleeping giant.” He added, “When it awakens, it will astonish the world.” As we all know, the Chinese, after a couple of bad centuries, are again wide awake.

China, which recently surpassed Japan as the world’s second largest economy, has increased its GDP at a rate of roughly 10 percent per year.

The tale of China’s recent “rise” is laced with dazzling statistics. In more than 30 years China has increased its GDP at a rate of roughly 10 percent per year, recently surpassing Japan as the world’s second largest economy.

As a global manufacturing hub, China is an exceptionally efficient producer of steel, ships, chemicals, and an amazing array of consumer goods. Its share of global trade has increased ten fold since 1978, and this year it supplanted Germany as the world’s largest exporter of goods.
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By Josh Friedman

Under a blazing sun and temperatures rising to nearly 90 degrees, Mongolia’s Prime Minister Batbold Sukhbaatar and all 12 of his cabinet members held their August 27 cabinet meeting seated at tables and chairs set up in the sand in the middle of the Gobi Desert, 415 miles south of the capital Ulaanbaatar.

The Gobi Desert stretches across 30 percent of Mongolia's land. Last week, cabinet members gathered here for a cabinet meeting to draw attention to global climate change. Photo by Flickr user Munkho Gehrke, used under a Creative Commons license.

Wearing green “Save Our Planet!” baseball hats, the ministers met for one hour to discuss Mongolia’s national response to climate change and issue a statement pledging to fight against global warming.
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By Scott Snyder

I spent last week at several meetings in Tokyo, Seoul, and Jeju that revolved around the Cheonan incident and its implications for regional security. The Lee Myung-Bak administration got high marks for its handling of the immediate aftermath of the incident. It is important to remember that in the hours following the Cheonan’s sinking on March 26th, there was no rush to judgment, but rather a deliberate decision to mount an international investigation of the incident. The day after the sinking, Yonhap quoted a South Korean senior official as saying that chances are “slim” that North Korea was involved.
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By Birger Stamperdahl

In the farmland regions of Pakistan’s southern Punjab, what used to be fields are now covered with water. Acknowledged as the worst humanitarian crisis in Pakistan’s history, flooding that began three weeks ago in northwestern Pakistan has now displaced more than 20 million people.

Pakistani families carry their belongs in search of higher ground. Over the past three weeks, more than 20 million people have been displaced from flooding. Photo credit: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

Bringing together Give2Asia’s private donor community and The Asia Foundation’s program expertise in Pakistan, the two organizations are working to attract much-needed philanthropy and aid for flood survivors.
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By Anthea Mulakala

Last week, the Malaysian Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development reported three more incidents of “baby dumping” in a 24-hour period, bringing the total to 60 abandoned babies this year. Many of these children have been found in dumpsters and toilets.

In hopes of deterring such incidents, Malaysia’s Cabinet has recently requested that the police start classifying baby dumping investigations as attempted murder, or if found with intent, murder.

But critics say capital punishment is not the answer. Rather, says Women’s Aid Organisation President Ivy Josiah, sex education and better access to help for pregnant mothers is what’s needed.
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By John J. Brandon

Recently I attended the Shanghai Expo, which has been labeled as “the biggest expo ever.” China spared no expense spending $55 billion – more than twice the amount Beijing spent on the 2008 Olympics – to ensure that people could get to the Expo by adding metro lines, airport terminals, railway stations, and other infrastructure.

China's pavilion at the Shanghai 2010 Expo is three times taller than any other country pavilion. Photo used under a Creative Commons license.

By the time it ends in October, Chinese officials anticipate 70 million people will have passed through the Expo’s turnstiles. Even if there were no long lines, it is absolutely impossible to see everything in one day. With 192 countries represented, one could easily spend a week at the Shanghai Expo.
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By Steven Rood

Last week, two separate quantitative studies on the May 10 elections underscored the striking gains demonstrated by automating the elections; however, evidence remains of serious deficiencies in the electoral process. Some entertain more fundamental doubts, but survey readings of the opinions of ordinary voters, systematic study of the experience of poll workers, and an official parallel “random manual audit” all show gains.

June SWS surveys declared the first automated elections in the Philippines a success, despite some glitches with the new scanning machines, above.

Social Weather Stations, the leading non-governmental polling organization in the Philippines, on July 28 released the results of June surveys sponsored by The Asia Foundation on experience of both citizens and (separately) poll workers, known as BEIs (for Board of Election Inspectors).
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By Scott Snyder

Two months ago, the sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan appeared to mark a turning point in inter-Korean relations. The South Korean interim investigation identified a North Korean torpedo as the cause of the sinking, providing South Korea and the United States with a strong case to take the issue to the UN Security Council and hold North Korea accountable for its actions. But the July 10 UN Presidential Statement failed to explicitly hold North Korea accountable. This series of events has turned out to represent a setback for all concerned.
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By Gavin Tritt

Last week, after much anticipation, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC) issued the verdict in case 001 in the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. The trial found Kaing Guek Eav, commonly known under his alias “Duch” – the warden of Tuol Sleng prison, or S-21 – guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The guilty verdict was not a surprise, but the sentence – 35 years, reduced for time served to 19 years – surprised some, and enraged others who said it wasn’t long enough for someone who had admitted to overseeing the torture and deaths of 16,000 people.
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“The U.S.-China relationship is fundamentally stable and will remain so for the foreseeable future,” begins David Lampton, Asia Foundation trustee and director of China Studies at The Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, in his new paper “Power Constrained: Sources of Mutual Strategic Suspicion in U.S-China Relations.” “This is so because the relationship is anchored in the two societies’ respective preoccupations with their own domestic problems, the United States’ draining commitments elsewhere, and the requirement for cooperation on transnational issues such as proliferation, global production chain security, energy, the environment, stabilizing the world economy, and many other positive-sum opportunities.”

Dr. Lampton was recently awarded the prestigious Scalapino Prize for this landmark paper in recognition of his contributions to America’s understanding of the vast changes underway in Asia from the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Asia Policy Assembly.

A full version of Dr. Lampton’s paper can be downloaded from NBR’s website.