As birthrates decrease and people live longer, the natural forces of aging will beat against public finances, political processes and educational institutions like waves on the shore. Communities will change on the most fundamental level: even family practices and cultural values are likely to bow to demographic pressures. Nowhere will these forces appear sooner and with greater foreshadowing than in Japan.

The geopolitical determinist would argue that the stage for the 1962 border dispute was set from the start; because the north-east and north-west extremities of India’s Himalayan border with China lacked buffer states, the two would eventually come into conflict. However, this oversimplifies the events that led to war. Domestic politics and national pride played a key role in China’s decision to go to war in 1962. The border conflict was far from inevitable.

The strong correlation between imports and exports of sophisticated products demonstrates that China imports unfinished sophisticated parts from other East Asian countries, and then it simply assembles the parts without adding much value in this portion of the production chain.

I propose that physical beauty plays a much smaller part in defining Korean womanhood than an analysis of the beauty industry would lead us to believe; it is not the most crucial factor in forming a woman’s identity. Hence, aesthetic decline poses less of a threat to Korean women’s sense of self and as such, aging is a less frightening experience for Korean women than American women.

K’ang hsi is considered one of the greatest emperors in Chinese history because he paved the road for the Qing Dynasty’s most stable and prosperous time for the next 100 years. In The Sacred Edict, K’ang hsi does a good job of portraying his ideal hierarchical and collective society, which reflects Confucian values. The Sacred Edict hints us clues how the informal institution in China has been implemented.

This article is an excerpt from The China Brief, reprinted here with the permission of the Forum for Chinese American Exchange at Stanford (FACES). FACES is an international organization dedicated to promoting constructive, bilateral US-China relations in the global community by fostering personal relationships and mutual understanding among future leaders in the US and China. Please find the original article at: http://faces.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/

In awarding Japan its first Nobel Prize in Literature, the Committee brought worldwide attention to the works of Japan’s premier modern writer and also to the classical works of Japan that he incorporated into his writings; works that they stated would help to “preserve a genuinely national tradition of style.”

Though the emerging superpower contender was relatively late to embrace the Internet phenomenon, a tremendous amount of web development has occurred in recent years. Despite the potential benefit of the Internet to its billion-plus denizens, the Chinese Communist Party has created one of the world’s foremost web sentry systems – the Golden Shield Project.

As the city gains diversity but loses its own national identity, its individuals lose their own sense of identity. As the market economy influences the city to adopt the impersonal exchange model, the individuals become increasingly alienated from their fellow citizens.

[Ending US arm sales to Taiwan] sacrifices none of the major U.S. goals in the Taiwan Strait and eliminates all the unpleasant consequences. The U.S. would avoid escalating the arms race with China and at the same time protect itself from Taiwanese entrapment and shirking.