Toward a New Phase of U.S.-China Museum Collaborations

By Melissa Chiu and Orville Schell on April 9, 2013

The 2012 U.S.-China Museum Directors Forum, organized by Asia Society and the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, brought together 17 Chinese and 15 American museum leaders for a two-day dialogue to assess common needs and develop new processes for museum exchanges.

The museum leaders identified various benefits of museum exchanges. Such programs provide information and experiences to museum audiences; foster tolerance and understanding between nations; and enhance cultural competence in a globalized world. The directors also identified obstacles impeding museum collaborations, including disparities in resources and practices; cumbersome bureaucratic, legal, and regulatory systems; a lack of familiarity between museum professionals; and the absence of institutional and funding mechanisms to facilitate exchanges.

Going forward, the museum leaders pinpointed three key areas of need and opportunity for the evolution of U.S.-China museum collaborations: improving people-to-people contacts; fostering institutional relations; and greater coordination within the museum sector in both countries. Taken together, the recommendations offer a blueprint for improving institutional interactions.

The directors suggested specific programs that their institutions, coupled with other museums, government agencies, and private funders, can pursue going forward. The consensus view among them was that the expansion of museum collaborations will require new funding and organizational mechanisms to spur and conduct exchange activities. Some of the goals outlined by the Chinese and American museum directors will be pursued by the Asian Arts and Museum Network, established in 2012 by Asia Society Museum.

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Orville Schell
Keywords: 
Museums
U.S.-China Relations
Organization: 
Asia Society

Tibet: The CIA’s Cancelled War

By Jonathan Mirsky on April 9, 2013

For much of the past century, U.S. relations with Tibet have been characterized by kowtowing to the Chinese and hollow good wishes for the Dalai Lama. As early as 1908, William Rockhill, a U.S. diplomat, advised the Thirteenth Dalai Lama that “close and friendly relations with China are absolutely necessary, for Tibet is and must remain a portion of the Ta Ts’ing [Manchu] Empire for its own good.” Not much has changed with the Fourteenth Dalai Lama one hundred years later.

A Day in the Life of a Beijing “Black Guard”

on April 8, 2013

After receiving his delayed wages, thirty-year-old Wang Jie decided to change professions.

On March 7, he pressed a fingerprint onto a receipt that read: “Today I have received settlement of the 12,000 yuan in wages owed to me by Mr. Shao.”

“Actually it was short by over 1,000 yuan,” said Wang, flipping through his notepad on which he had recorded the over forty trips he had made between Beijing and the southern province of Guangdong, including dates, addresses, and reimbursement details.

Dangerous Waters: China-Japan Relations on the Rocks

on April 8, 2013

The world’s second and third largest economies are engaged in a standoff over the sovereignty of five islets and three rocks in the East China Sea, known as the Diaoyu in Chinese and the Senkaku in Japanese. Tensions erupted in September 2012 when Japan purchased three disputed islands from their private owner to keep them from the nationalist governor of Tokyo. In response, Beijing implemented a series of measures including the establishment of overlapping administration in the disputed waters. Both sides’ law enforcement agencies and militaries currently operate in close proximity in disputed naval and aerial space. Unlike foreign ministries, these actors have less institutional interest in containing crises and enjoy an information monopoly allowing them to shape domestic perceptions. The two countries lack the mutual trust and communication mechanisms to manage incidents, let alone to discuss intentions or operating protocols. In the event of a skirmish, heightened nationalism, especially in China, could constrict the room for diplomatic maneuvers to de-escalate the situation.

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Military
Politics
Keywords: 
China-Japan Relations
Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands
Organization: 
International Crisis Group

Living Underground

An Excerpt From the Forthcoming book ‘From the Dragon’s Mouth’

By Ana Fuentes on April 5, 2013

They are called rats, and they have become a symbol of Beijing’s red-hot real estate market. Because of soaring housing costs, there are at least a million people living underground, only able to afford a rented room in the basements of skyscrapers or converted bomb shelters in their nation’s capital. Obsessed with the possibility of a Soviet nuclear attack, in 1969 President Mao Zedong ordered the construction of underground shelters that would stretch for eighteen miles beneath the city, able to accommodate half of the population if war ever broke out.

Christopher Hill on North Korea’s Provocations

By Ouyang Bin on April 5, 2013

The first months of 2013 have seen a rapid intensification of combative rhetoric and action from North Korea. In the sixteen months since Kim Jong-un assumed leadership of the country, North Korea has run through the whole litany of provocations his father’s regime had deployed over a seventeen-year reign—including launching missiles, conducting nuclear tests, nullifying the armistice with South Korea, and threatening to restart its nuclear reactor and launch missile attacks on the U.S.

The Transgressions of Apple Computer

By Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more on April 5, 2013

While foreign media coverage these last two weeks has focused on environmental disasters, over-fishing, and emerging forms of the avian flu, the Chinese state media has turned its gaze towards the transgressions of Apple Computer, which found itself excoriated by CCTV on World Consumer Rights Day for its warranty policy and for using refurbished parts in mainland phone repairs.

‘Hi! I’m Fang!’ The Man Who Changed China

Remembering Fang Lizhi

By Perry Link on April 4, 2013

In China in the 1980s, the word renquan (“human rights”) was extremely “sensitive.” Few dared even to utter it in public, let alone to champion the concept. Now, nearly three decades later, a grassroots movement called weiquan (“supporting rights”) has spread widely, and it seems clear that China’s rulers are helpless to reverse it. Even people at the lowest levels of society demand their rights.