by Admin | May 28, 2014 | Editorial Board
Member of Editorial Board, Boston Global Forum, Professor of Department of Political Science, Northeastern University
Suzanne Ogden is a Professor in the Department of Political Science, and a Faculty Associate in the Center for Emerging Markets, Northeastern University. She is also a Research Associate in Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. As a China specialist, she has focused primarily on the interplay of culture, development, and politics.
Prof. Ogden is best known for her books Inklings of Democracy in China; China’s Unresolved Issues; 11 editions of Global Studies: China; and China’s Search for Democracy: The Student and Mass Movement of 1989 (the last co-authored with Kate Hartford, Lawrence Sullivan and David Zweig). In recent years, she has shifted her research focus to research on China’s role in the Mekong River Basin and the Greater Mekong Subregion.
by Admin | May 28, 2014 | Highlights
Over the past two years, the world has watched the escalating tensions in the East and South China Sea. There are disputes and conflicts between China and its neighbors – Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines. These situations are threatening peace, stability, and maritime security and safety in the East and South China Sea.
In order to help ease tensions, the Boston Global Forum builds up the Boston Global Forum Initiative to resolve this issue, and call for peace in the East and South China Sea. The Initiative’s mission is to alleviate the threat of war in the region by facilitating open dialogue amongst involved nations. In doing so, BGF will hold an international conference with leaders from the United States, Asia, and the United Nations. Distinguished Professors, Michael Dukakis and Joseph Nye, will moderate the discussion, and BGF calls on Secretary of State John Kerry to host the event. Due to the travel schedules of many participants, the conference will either take place on July 2, 2014, in Boston, MA or will occur remotely. Like all BGF events, the conference will be live-streamed so that global citizens can join the conversation through social media and the BGF website.
In addition to the conference, the Boston Global Forum Initiative seeks an immediate international response to the escalating crises in Asia and urges the United States and the European Union to deploy naval ships to the region as observers, particularly toward the Chinese HD981 oil rig, which has ventured into Vietnamese waters, and risks sparking a war between China and Vietnam.
The Boston Global Forum recently announced its new Global Media Award and will soon uncover its new Global Art Competition; both contests are part of the overall Initiative to bring peace and stability to the region of the East and South China Sea.
by Admin | May 27, 2014 | Highlights
(Photo Credit: AP/Vietnam Coast Guard)
CONTACT: Tuan Nguyen
May 27, 2014
Boston Global Forum [email protected]
Boston Global Forum announces new Initiative; Plans international conference re urgency in East and South China Sea
Cambridge, MA – Today, the Boston Global Forum (BGF) announced its new Boston Global Forum Initiative to take swift action for a call to peace in the East and South China Sea. The escalating tensions between Japan and China; China and Vietnam; and China and the Philippines threaten regional stability and security.
The Initiative’s mission is to alleviate the threat of war in the region by facilitating open dialogue amongst involved nations. In doing so, BGF will hold an international conference with leaders from the United States, Asia, and the United Nations. Distinguished Professors, Michael Dukakis and Joseph Nye, will moderate the discussion, and BGF calls on Secretary of State John Kerry to host the event. Due to the travel schedules of many participants, the conference will either take place on July 2, 2014, in Boston, MA or will occur remotely. Like all BGF events, the conference will be live-streamed so that global citizens can join the conversation through social media and the BGF website.
In addition to the conference, the Boston Global Forum Initiative seeks an immediate international response to the escalating crises in Asia and urges the United States and the European Union to deploy naval ships to the region as observers, particularly toward the Chinese HD981 oil rig, which has ventured into waters claimed by Vietnam, and risks sparking a war between China and Vietnam.
The Boston Global Forum recently announced its new Global Media Award and will soon uncover its new Global Art Competition; both contests are part of the overall Initiative to bring peace and stability to the region of the East and South China Sea.
For more information, the media can contact the event organizer direct at [email protected]/
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by Admin | May 27, 2014 | News
(Photo Credit: AFP/Getty Images)
(BGF) – Recently The Boston Globe published an article discussing Vietnam’s history of conflict with, and resistance against, China. In light of Vietnam’s long history of resisting Chinese actions, H.D.S. Greenway argues that, although Vietnam does not compare to China’s military power, it should come as no surprise that Vietnam will prove to be a difficult neighbor for China to push around. Click here to read the full article or visit The Boston Globe‘s website.
Vietnam Won’t Be Pushed Around By China
By H.D.S Greenway
VIETNAM MAY prove harder to push around than some of China’s other maritime neighbors in contested waters. Vietnamese and Chinese ships recently rammed each other and fired water cannons to contest China’s bringing in a giant oil rig off the barren sandspits called the Paracel Archipelago that both claim in the South China Sea. It was not the first such confrontation.
Forty years ago, when there was still a South Vietnam, I watched South Vietnamese war ships holed by gunfire limp home into the port of Danang. They had not been fighting their mortal enemy, North Vietnam. They had clashed with Chinese forces off those same disputed Paracel islands that lie about equidistant from the Chinese and Vietnamese coasts. China made a big fuss over the confrontation at the time, saying its forces had protected the motherland. South Vietnam scored a propaganda victory over Hanoi by calling upon all Vietnamese, of whatever political persuasion, to denounce the Chinese occupation of sacred Vietnamese soil.
The following year, as North Vietnamese forces were closing in on Saigon and South Vietnam was in its death throes, the North Vietnamese attacked and displaced a small South Vietnamese garrison on the Spratly Islands further south which were, and are today, also claimed by China as well as Vietnam, the Philippines, and even tiny Brunei. The significance was that, even though the war between the two Vietnams was still raging, Hanoi made the decision to steal a march on China, its vital ally, just to make sure that, once the war was over, a Vietnamese garrison remained on the remote islands Vietnam claimed.
In 1979 China actually attacked Vietnam along its northern border, not over islands in the South China Sea, but in order to punish Vietnam for its invasion of Cambodia in order to oust the loathsome Khmer Rouge regime, a China ally. In that encounter the Chinese army received a bloody nose from the more battle-hardened Vietnamese.
Many of Vietnam’s traditional heroes, such as the Trung sisters in the first century AD and Le Loi in the 15th century, gained their place in history for anti-Chinese resistance. China occupied Vietnam for nearly 1,000 years from the first century BC until the 10th century AD. There were other periodic Chinese invasions during the Ming Dynasty.
After World War II the Chinese were back again when Chiang Kai-shek’s troops were tasked with disarming the Japanese in the north. When Ho Chi Minh was criticized by Vietnamese nationalists for agreeing to have the French return to their old colony to replace Chinese troops, Ho told them that European colonialism was dying. He said he would rather smell French excrement for a few years more than Chinese excrement for another millennium.
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by Admin | May 27, 2014 | News
(BGF) – As the Philippines’ InterAskon News reported, China has transferred two destroyers, with one each to operate in the East and South China Seas and nine other ex-navy vessels, including tugs, icebreakers and survey ships to its maritime surveillance fleet in a move to strengthen up its position in bitter territorial rows with Japan and other neighbours.
Beijing has been sending maritime patrol vessels into waters around the East China Sea islands – which it claims as the Diaoyu and which Japan controls and calls the Senkaku.
Click here to read the full story or visit the InterAskon website.
China sends destroyers to boost ‘surveillance’ ops in South China Sea
31 December, 2012 | By Agence France-Presse
Chinese navy vessels. (Photo Credit: Agence France-Presse)
BEIJING – China has transferred two destroyers and nine other ex-navy vessels to its maritime surveillance fleet, reports said Monday, as it moves to beef up its position in bitter territorial rows with Japan and other neighbours.
Beijing renovated the ships and transferred them to surveillance operations to “alleviate the insufficiency of vessels used to protect maritime interests”, said a report on Tencent, one of China’s major news portals.
China is embroiled in a maritime dispute with Japan that has seen tensions between the two Asian giants, the world’s second- and third-largest economies, at times reach fever pitch.
It is also engaged in a simmering row with its southern neighbours over its claim to vast swathes of the South China Sea.
Beijing has been sending maritime patrol vessels into waters around the East China Sea islands – which it claims as the Diaoyu and which Japan controls and calls the Senkaku – since Tokyo nationalised the chain in September.
China is apparently seeking to prove it can come and go in the area at will and on Monday three of Beijing’s ships were spotted in the waters around the islands, according to Japan’s coastguard, in the latest perceived incursion.
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