There can be no doubt that China and Japan are the giants of East Asia, both in economic and political terms. The bilateral relationship is, therefore, of great importance to both the region and the wider world.
Among the numerous causes of friction between China and its neighbors, the continued failure to resolve a series of territorial disputes remains one of the most pressing.
If China is to be the world’s next superpower, then Southeast Asia is its ‘backyard’, just as Central Asia was to Russia during its superpower era, and Central America is to the US.
The two most populous nations in the world, China and India share a disputed border, are both on the rise economically and politically, and both possess fearsome nuclear arsenals.
To many in the West, China’s continued rule in Tibet is often considered to be a foreign occupation, though few inside China accept this point of view. Tibet is of great psychological importance to China and to Chinese people in terms of national identity and the maintenance of Chinese national unity.
Before 1949, only 22 large dams existed in China. A dam study by Oregon State University concluded that since that time, the People’s Republic of China has undergone four waves of dam construction.
The state of Chinese environment today must be placed in the context of the extraordinary development that it has accomplished and of the continuing challenges it will face in the upcoming decades. Since 1981, China has lifted approximately 500 million people out of absolute poverty, an unprecedented achievement.
China, a country of continental scale, has experienced inequality in many shapes and forms throughout its 4000-year history. Part of this inequality is regional; attributable to China’s sheer size and the diversity of its geography.
More than sixty years after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China when Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalists fled to the island, Taiwan remains at the core of domestic and foreign policy decisions for Beijing.
China faces severe water shortages. Its current water per capita is one quarter of the world average, yet its overall per capita usage is still low by international standards but this will increase over the coming decades. The water that China does have is often badly polluted and is inefficiently used.
