Since the early 1980s, the cross-strait relationship between Taiwan and mainland China has exploded, driven by economic and political reforms. As a result, each would suffer great economic pain and dislocation in the event of a major disruption in that rapidly growing economic relationship. This monograph analyzes the political impact of that relationship and evaluates the prospects for Beijing to exploit it by employing economic coercion against Taiwan.

For the past decade, Chinese military strategists have keenly observed the changes in U.S. national strategy and military transformation. This report examines the constraints, facilitators, and potential options for Chinese responses to U.S. transformation efforts and offers possible U.S. counterresponses (particularly in light of whether Taiwan moves toward or away from formal independence).

China's struggle to develop it's legal system is helping to drive an `inadvertant transition' towards democratization in the future. Since Mao Zedong's death, the China Communist Party's (CCP) leaders have increasingly shifted to drafting most of their key policies as laws rather than Partyedicts. The result has been a quiet but dramatic change in Chinese politics, recasting the relationship between the key lawmaking institutions: the Communist Party bureaucracy, the Cabinet (State Council), and China's legislaturethe National People's Congress (NPC). No longer a rubber stamp, NPC leadersand deputies, though still overwhelmingly members of the Communist Party, have become far more assertive and less disciplined in their dealings with other top Party and government leaders. Deputies now commonly stall, amend, block, and increasingly vote `no' on proposals approved by the PartyPolitburo and the Cabinet. China's NPC, like successful legislatures elsewhere, has also used its growing bureaucracy and subcommittees as institutional weapons to expand its influence over policy. The Politics of Lawmaking in China is the first book to examine all of the changing political institutions involved in lawmaking, and show how their evolution is reshaping Chinese politics. Drawing on internal documentation and interviews, it includes new information about how the CCP leadershipattempts to guide the increasingly important process of lawmaking, and how this power has eroded greatly since 1978. Through detailed case studies, the book demonstrates how and why the top leadership is often forced to settle for far less than it wants in hammering out laws. Rather than encouraging the sort of anti-communist mass uprising from below that occurred in Eastern Europe in 1989, this book argues that China's changes in lawmaking are contributing to a more quiet transition from within the Communist system.

Testimony presented to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission on February 3, 2006.

"The growing importance of India-China relations to the security of the Asia-Pacific region requires that the United States better understand the forces and trends that shape this relationship. This study evaluates the major sources of tension and cooperation between India and China, and analyzes how leading security specialists and policymakers in the two countries see future trends in their relations. China and India's potential for serious conflict is mitigated by four powerful strategic desires common to both countries: Avoiding a major threat on a secondary strategic front, Maintaining a relatively peaceful environment to permit their governments to focus on economic growth and stability concerns, Deferring conflict with the other country in the hope that time may favor their long-term strategic position, Enjoying the benefits of security cooperation on issues of overlapping interests."--Exec. summ.

This study employs underexploited Chinese-language law enforcement publications to analyze China's concerns over the rapid expansion of illegal drug smuggling from the "Golden Crescent" region (Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran) into western China since about 2005.