by Admin | May 29, 2014 | News
(Photo Credit: Hoang Dinh Nam/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images)
(BGF) – Yesterday, May 27, 2014, a Vietnamese fishing vessel was sunk in the vicinity of China’s contested oil rig in waters claimed by both China and Vietnam. The story was covered by Jane Perlez for The New York Times. According to Perlez, the Vietnamese vessel allegedly sank after being rammed by a Chinese vessel approximately 17 miles from the oil rig. The sinking of the vessel has only further enflamed the tensions between the two countries. China alleges that the Vietnamese fishing vessel was the aggressor and was ramming a Chinese vessel. This sparked a barage of nationalistic comments on Chinese social media. Additionally, a woman in Vietnam recently set herself on fire, and later died, in Ho Chi Minh City in protest of China’s oil rig being placed in waters claimed by Vietnam. The tensions between China and Vietnam have been continuing to escalate in recent months. Click here to read the full article or visit The New York Times‘ website.
China and Vietnam Point Fingers After Clash in South China Sea
By Jane Perlez
BEIJING — Tensions in the South China Sea escalated sharply on Tuesday as China and Vietnam traded accusations over the sinking of a Vietnamese fishing vessel in the vicinity of a Chinese oil rig parked in disputed waters off Vietnam’s coast.
The sinking further aggravated the worsening diplomatic and economic frictions between China and Vietnam, whose relations have plummeted to the worst point in decades after anti-Chinese riots two weeks ago that killed at least four people and injured more than 100 in Vietnam. China evacuated several thousand workers from Vietnam last week.
In the latest incident, a Chinese vessel rammed and sank a Vietnamese fishing boat about 17 nautical miles southwest of the oil rig on Monday afternoon, the state-run Vietnamese television network, VTV1, reported. All 10 crew members were rescued, the network said.
But China labeled Vietnam as the aggressor, with the Chinese state-run news agency, Xinhua, saying the Vietnamese fishing boat “capsized when it was interfering with and ramming” a Chinese fishing vessel from Hainan, a province of China. Then China accused Vietnam of sabotage and interfering with the operations of the oil rig, which has become a flash point ever since Vietnam learned that the Chinese had anchored the rig in waters contested by both nations.
At sea, armadas from both countries are jousting as the Chinese try to protect the $1 billion oil rig operated by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, known as Cnooc.
Chinese and Vietnamese boats have rammed each other in the area around the oil rig, and the Chinese have acknowledged that they used water cannons to keep the Vietnamese away from the rig, which stands as tall as a 40-story building.
The rig arrived in the waters off the Paracel Islands, which are claimed by both China and Vietnam, on May 1, a move that showed China was trying to establish its control of the waters without consulting other claimants.
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by Admin | May 28, 2014 | News
Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. His fellowship began in February 2014. At the Belfer Center, Rudd will lead a major research effort on possibilities and impacts of a new strategic relationship between China and the United States. Mr. Rudd served as Australia’s 26th Prime Minister from 2007 to 2010, then as Foreign Minister from 2010 to 2012, before returning to the Prime Ministership in 2013. As Prime Minister, Mr. Rudd led Australia’s response during the Global Financial Crisis. Australia’s fiscal response to the crisis was reviewed by the IMF as the most effective stimulus strategy of all member states. Australia was the only major advanced economy not to go into recession. Mr. Rudd is also internationally recognized as one of the founders of the G20 which drove the global response to the crisis, and which in 2009 helped prevent the crisis from spiraling into a second global depression. As Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Mr. Rudd was active in global and regional foreign policy leadership. He was a driving force in expanding the East Asia Summit to include both the US and Russia in 2010. He also initiated the concept of transforming the EAS into a wider Asia Pacific Community to help manage deep-routed tensions in Asia by building over time the institutions and culture of common security in Asia. On climate change, Mr. Rudd ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 2007 and legislated in 2008 for a 20% mandatory renewable energy target for Australia. Mr. Rudd launched Australia’s challenge in the International Court of Justice with the object of stopping Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean. Mr Rudd drove Australia’s successful bid for its current non-permanent seat on the United Nation’s Security Council and the near doubling of Australia’s foreign aid budget. Domestically, Mr. Rudd delivered Australia’s first national apology to indigenous Australians as his first act as Prime Minister. His government introduced Australia’s first ever nation-wide school curriculum. He legislated for the biggest school modernization program in Australian history with the construction of new state-of-the art libraries, classrooms and multi-purpose facilities for every Australian primary school. To overcome the digital divide, he provided lap top computers for every year 9-12 secondary school student. On health, Mr. Rudd in 2010 negotiated with the Australian states a National Heath and Hospitals Reform Agreement, the biggest reform and investment in the health system in 30 years. In defiance of Big Tobacco, his government introduced the world’s first plain-packaging regime for all tobacco products. To improve the rate of organ and tissue donation, he established Australia’s first National Organ and Tissue Transplant Authority. In 2010, his government introduced Australia’s first ever paid parental leave scheme. He also established Australia’s first ever dedicated Australian Children’s Network. Mr. Rudd remains engaged in a range of international challenges including global economic management, the rise of China, climate change and sustainable development. He is on the International Advisory Panel of Chatham House. He is a proficient speaker of Mandarin Chinese, a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University and funded the establishment of the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University. He was a co-author of the recent report of the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Global Sustainability – “Resilient People, Resilient Planet” and chairs the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Fragile States. He also remains actively engaged in indigenous reconciliation.
by Admin | May 28, 2014 | News
Currently Dean of the School of Political Science and Economics. After he earned his BA at the School of Law, Meiji University, he has shifted his focus of study from law to political science. He earned his MA in Comparative Politics at the Graduate School of Political Science and Economics at Meiji University. And, immediately after he completed all the necessary course work for Ph,D, he was given a position of lecturer at the School of Political Science and Economics. He has been with the same school ever since. In the meantime, he was a visiting scholar and professor at various institutions such as Asian Pacific Studies Institute of Duke University, the Department of Politics of Northeastern University, the National School of Public Administration of Laos, and the National University of Laos. Currently he has been studying the relationships between “political corruption” and the structure of government.
by Admin | May 28, 2014 | News
Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renee Belfer Professsor of International Affairs. He previously taught at Princeton University and the University of Chicago, where he served as Master of the Social Science Collegiate Division and Deputy Dean ofSocial Sciences. He has been a Resident Associateof the Carnegie Endowment for Peace and a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution, and he has also served as a consultant for the Institute of Defense Analyses, the Center for Naval Analyses, and the National Defense University. He presently serves on the editorial boards of Foreign Policy, Security Studies, International Relations, and Journal of Cold War Studies, and he also serves as Co-Editor of the Cornell Studies in Security Affairs, published by Cornell University Press. Additionally, he was elected as a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in May 2005.
Professor Walt is the author of The Origins of Alliances (1987), which received the 1988 Edgar S. Furniss National Security Book Award. He is also the author of Revolution and War (1996), Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (2005), and, with co-author J.J. Mearsheimer, The Israel Lobby (2007).
by Admin | May 28, 2014 | News
M. Taylor Fravel is Associate Professor of Political Science and member of the Security Studies Program at MIT. Taylor is a graduate of Middlebury College and Stanford University, where he received his PhD. He has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University, a Predoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, a Fellow with the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program and a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also has graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. In March 2010, he was named Research Associate with the National Asia Research Program launched by the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center.
