Haley Grizzell

In November, Chinese media revealed shocking images of a new village built inside an area that has been disputed by China and Bhutan for decades. All this despite recent statements by Lotay Tsering, the prime minister of Bhutan, saying that negotiations over the Bhutan-China border had been progressing well. The Chinese village, Pangda, had been built in a short period and already had residents living in it by the time Bhutan discovered it.

Since its independence from the United Kingdom in 1965, other countries have known the Republic of Maldives mostly as a honeymoon destination for Bollywood actors. However, the archipelago is now seeing renewed attention for a more strategic purpose. The sea surrounding the islands is the Laccadive Sea, which connects Maldives, India, and Sri Lanka. The Laccadive Sea has stable waters throughout the whole year, which makes it ideal for a naval base, something the United States might try to establish in the coming years, given its activity in base-building in other parts of the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Behind green barbed-wire fences sit rows of men and rows of women, segregated by gender. They have been stripped of any religious clothing and instead wear royal blue jumpsuits. Behind these fences, Uyghur Muslims go to have “their thoughts transformed.” China claims these camps are necessary for preventing future acts of terrorism perpetrated by Muslim extremists. The country has built more of these camps at an alarming rate, all the while claiming that it is scaling back re-education efforts. These actions have brought the condemnation of some countries in the United Nations, as well as the United States. Attempts at further “re-education” will likely increasingly be met by more aggressive economic sanctions because detention camps violate international law and China’s promised obligation to protect human rights.

The People’s Republic of China has been recruiting retired intelligence officers to leak classified information to the Chinese government. In just the latest part of uncovering this trend, the United States arrested Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, a former CIA officer, on August 14, 2020. In response to the incident, Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers commented, “The trail of Chinese espionage is long and, sadly, strewn with former American intelligence officers who betrayed their colleagues, their country and its liberal democratic values to support an authoritarian communist regime.” Chinese intelligence has been using a combination of traditional espionage techniques, artificial intelligence, and misinformation to achieve its recruiting and espionage goals. The Chinese government has had clear successes in hiring spies from within the United States, and if this trend continues, it will undermine American intelligence and national security aims.

Filipino policy has changed drastically in the last few years, with ramifications for Southeast Asian geopolitics. President Rodrigo Duterte has launched a campaign to break up “oligarchies” in the Philippines’ economy, stripped journalists critical of his policies of their licensing, and conceded to Chinese claims in the South China Sea. Duterte’s critics worry that if he isolates himself and the Philippines from the United States and traditional allies too much, China will replace them.