Eastern Asia

The middle of April 2017 has been marked by a new aggravation on the Korean Peninsula and a high probability of a US preemptive strike on the facilities of the North Korean nuclear missile program. However, amidst the exchanges, it soon became clear that, contrary to earlier statements by Donald Trump and representatives of the US administration, instead of advancing straight to Korea, the strike group led by the carrier Carl Vinson went on patrol several thousand kilometers away from the region.

The election of Donald Trump as US President has seen the ramping up of US rhetoric about North Korea. Trump recently demanded that China should use its influence with the North Koreans and if China did not intervene, then, according to an interview Trump gave to the UK Financial Times, the “US would act alone.”
US Vice President Mike Pence, currently on a visit to Australia where he will undoubtedly seek Australian support for the US position, said that his country’s

At the end of the last month, the UN Headquarters in the city of New York witnessed the first session of the International Conference that was aimed at drafting a comprehensive plan that would allow the international community to pursue an utter and complete prohibition of nuclear weapons.

Touching upon the topic of difficulties with the PRC and RK, we will talk about the DPRK. Here, on the one hand, Beijing demonstrates loyalty to the UN resolutions on sanctions, which it can formally fulfill; on the other, it does not go beyond them.

South Korean media has used the escalation of crisis in relations between China and South Korea, which has been all-the-more fueled in the wake of the deployment of an American missile defense system on South Korean territory, to regale the audience with stories about Chinese authorities and governmental agencies instigating hatred and rage against the Koreans.

Big-league politics, like everyday life, is characterized by the fact that focusing on minor events may confirm or cast doubt on customary opinions on some important processes, especially when these events are superimposed on other relevant events and facts.
One of such extremely important processes in modern geopolitics is the so-called ‘Taiwan Problem’. This immediately stands out when, for example, you read a report about an incident that happened in late March 2017 at Haneda Airport in Tokyo.

It didn’t take long. After all the talk about stopping US involvement in expensive foreign wars, a new target has emerged – North Korea, the one country no one wants to pick a fight with because you never know what it is likely to do.

As China’s Xi Jinping is visiting Washington, the US-China relations have seen a dramatic twist on the question of North Korea’s nuclear programme. While North Korea remains a contentious issue on its own, it is the Sino-US trade imbalance that continues to provide the necessary fuel to the fire of bi-lateral rivalry. Under the Trump administration, China is largely seen as a “currency manipulator”, leading Trump to advocate a policy of greater protectionism in the form of restricting imports from China.

Two notable events of late March of this year on the European and Asian continents provide a good reason to once again turn to the current state of China-EU relations.

China’s “soft” diplomacy is aimed at increasing the country’s attractiveness and improving its image to increase its influence in the world and create favorable conditions for strengthening its economic positions by means of such political tools as culture, education, ideology, as well as trade and investment. According to the Chinese leadership, the country cannot become a great power without implementing the soft power policy.