China

A book review of Robert Kaplan’s Asia’s Cauldron

May 27, 2015 / Asia, security / , , , , , , , ,

Robert D. Kaplan is a well-known journalist who has authored popular works on international issues, such as Balkan

South China Sea from Wikipedia Commons.
South China Sea by NASA from Wikipedia Commons.

Ghosts and the Coming Anarchy. Kaplan has a knack for writing books on topics about to rise to international prominence; in his most recent work, he has sought to understand the international competition in the South China Sea, which is in the global news this week because of a naval confrontation between Vietnam and China.

Kaplan’s works typically try to show the legacies of history for contemporary issues, and this book is no exception. He begins by describing the historical influence of India upon Vietnam, which he depicts as a kind of cultural shatter zone between two great Asian powers. One of the strengths of his work is that he has traveled widely in Asia while writing it, so he can draw on conversations that he has had from Vietnam to Singapore. He also has read widely in history, so the work is interspersed with allusions to Walter Benjamin, Livy, Machiavelli and Thucydides, which are are generally well-chosen and insightful. It is this ability to put contemporary issues into a broad historical and geographical context that is Kaplan’s strength. …

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Beijing to Seattle Railroad

April 17, 2015 / Asia / , ,
Berengia present day from Wikipedia Commons
Berengia present day by the U.S. Geological Survey on Wikipedia Commons

According to a recent article in the Guardian, China is planning to build a high-speed railway to the United States. The rail trip would take two days to travel through China and Russia, underneath the ocean in the Bering Strait, through Alaska and Canada, before arriving in the continental United States. As the article points out, there are many reasons to doubt the seriousness of this proposal, not the least of which neither the United States or Canada (and perhaps Russia as well) have been consulted. But what is interesting is the historical background to this story, which represents a dream that can neither achieve fruition nor die. James Oliver’s The Bering Strait Crossing, discusses the lengthy history of exactly this idea. Of course, Siberia and Alaska in ancient times were united by Beringia, a land bridge that allowed camels and horses to travel to the Old World, and people to arrive in the Americas. But the two regions have been separated since the end of the last glaciation, when rising sea levels sank Beringia. Oliver’s work discusses the early history of Russian exploration in the Americas, which represented an effort to bring these two regions back into sustained contact. Vitus Bering, a Danish sea captain in the service of the czar, first reached the Western hemisphere on 15 July 1741. This launched a Russian empire in Alaska that endured until 1867, when the Czar sold Alaska to the United States. In the end, Russia’s heartland was too far, and the U.S. dream of manifest destiny was too powerful, for this empire to endure.  But the realization that only a brief stretch of ocean separated Russia from the United States led people to discuss building a railroad to connect the two nations. …

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Nicaragua Dreams of a New Canal

April 17, 2015 / economics, globalization, Latin America / , ,
Photo of the Panama Canal at Night by David Castillo
Photo of the Panama Canal at Night by David Castillo

In an earlier post, I talked about the United States’ declining influence in the Americas. I think that nothing may symbolize this as much as Nicaragua’s vote this week to grant a Chinese company a 50 year concession to build a canal across this country. The idea of a canal across Nicaragua dates back at least to the early nineteenth century. As David McCullough described in his magnificent book, The Path Between the Seas, Nicaragua was favored because it was closer to the United States, and Lake Nicaragua seemed to make the task of building the canal easier. After the Civil War, U.S. President Grant sent five expeditions to Central America to explore a route for a canal, most of which went do Nicaragua. But since it was the French who began the project -reflecting Europe’s influence in the hemisphere- proximity to the U.S. did not shape their choice, and they began work on the Panamanian isthmus. Although the project was headed by the French hero de Lesseps, the man who had built the Suez canal, his decision to build a sea level canal likely doomed the project from the start.   …

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H7N9 Influenza and the WHO’s Pandemic Influenza Plan

June 10, 2015 / Asia, global health / , , ,
Photo courtesy of hyena reality and freedigitalphotos.net
Photo courtesy of hyena reality and freedigitalphotos.net

Like many of you, I’ve been carefully following the news about H7N9. A few of my favorite blogs or sites for this are Avian Flu Diary, Virology down under, the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, and the Bird Flu Report. A couple of thoughts about what we know so far. First, it is always difficult to make a vaccine for an H7 virus. For this reason, it’s unlikely that sufficient vaccine could be ready in six months, even in the United States. It is true that some newer vaccine technologies are now proving their potential. But we aren’t in a fundamentally different position than in 2009, when most vaccine became available too late for swine flu. …

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Drug Resistant Tuberculosis in China

April 18, 2015 / Asia, global health / ,

I’ve talked about multi-drug resistant tuberculosis on this site before, but I want to return to the topic because of some recent articles on the topic covered on NPR. Last year there was some good news about tuberculosis globally, as researchers found that the total number of cases was declining, particularly in China. A new national tuberculosis survey in China this year, however, reveals that 10% of all new cases of tuberculosis diagnosed that country are multi-drug resistant, while 8% of these cases were infected with XDR, or extensively drug resistant tuberculosis. For these people, the treatment options are limited, and may not be successful. The article in the New England Journal of Medicine described the problems within the Chinese health care system that are driving this problem. But these challenges sound very similar to difficulties in other nations, including India and South Africa …

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