Parents, what would you do with four hours of child-free time? We launched a Parents’ Night Out program with NYC Parks to give NYC parents a little time back for themselves, because we’re committed to making it easier to raise a family in the greatest city in the world.
Dave Kang
@daveckang.bsky.social
Going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm! (Also: USSF "National B" license, when "A" was as high as it went.) https://www.daveckang.net/
Given that JJM and I are both in the summer IS issue that just came out, I thought I'd re-up this debate from 2022 between myself and John Mearsheimer about whether Asia will contain China. (Sotto voce: I think I won!) www.youtube.com/watch?v=wafC...
Debate: Should the U.S. Seek to Contain China?
YouTube video by Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
youtube.com
China considering summit with Seoul in November, South Korean foreign ministry says reut.rs/4ifypJR
China considering summit with Seoul in November, South Korean foreign ministry says
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Wednesday that Beijing was "actively considering" a summit between the leaders of South Korea and China at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen in November, Seoul's Foreign Ministry said.
reut.rs
🚗☀️ Solar panels are moving beyond rooftops. Chinese automotive glass manufacturer Fuyao Glass says it now has mass-production capabilities for vehicle-integrated solar roofs, with PV cells built directly into laminated car glass.
Chinese automotive glass giant announces vehicle-integrated solar roof - pv magazine Global
Fuyao Glass has confirmed mass-production capabilities for solar sunroof glass, with photovoltaic cells embedded in laminated automotive glass to power auxiliary vehicle loads. While reports have link...
pv-magazine.com
More grist for the mill... www.yahoo.com/news/article...
China, Indonesia navies to hold drills in sensitive waters to east of Taiwan
BEIJING, Aug 11 (Reuters) - The Chinese and Indonesian navies will hold a drill together in the sensitive waters to the east of Taiwan this month, China's defence ministry said on Tuesday, where
yahoo.com
This is...wow. I need to think about this for what it implies and what it shows about what Americans say and what they actually do. apnews.com/article/airc...
US pulls last aircraft carrier in Asia as Trump focuses on Iran and the Western Hemisphere
President Donald Trump’s war against Iran is stretching the limits of the nation’s aircraft carriers and leaving the western Pacific without one of the key American warships.
apnews.com
One critique that keeps coming up is how "East Asia will balance China" or "we need a pacific defense pact." The IS correspondence, Foreign Affairs articles, etc. make that claim. By now, shouldn't we finally admit that "just wait for" is not going to happen? www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Still Getting Asia Wrong: No “Contain China” Coalition Exists
Published in The Washington Quarterly (Vol. 45, No. 4, 2022)
tandfonline.com
“Correspondence: The Challenge of Studying What China Wants.” Rushi Doshi, Todd Hall, Andrea Ghiselli, @onegruffydd.bsky.social, and Arash Heydarian Pashakhanlou respond to @daveckang.bsky.social, Jackie Wong, and Zenobia Chan’s Summer 2025 article. doi.org/10.1162/ISEC...
Correspondence: The Challenge of Studying What China Wants
David Kang, Jackie S. H. Wong, and Zenobia T. Chan analyze Chinese Communist Party material by building innovatively on methods that they generously credit to Paul Godwin, Alice Miller, Michael Swaine...
doi.org
Interesting set of critiques of our "What does China want?" article. Read the correspondences, and our response, and decide for yourselves! I'll post more later. direct.mit.edu/isec/article...
Correspondence: The Challenge of Studying What China Wants
David Kang, Jackie S. H. Wong, and Zenobia T. Chan analyze Chinese Communist Party material by building innovatively on methods that they generously credit to Paul Godwin, Alice Miller, Michael Swaine...
direct.mit.edu
Thanks for having me -- was a great discussion. We covered why Taiwan probably learned more about the US reluctance to fight a war against a nuclear-armed superpower far from US borders than did China; how the US is still mired in ME rather than EA, and lots more. Take a listen, everybody!
🔴LIVE: How Will the #US Israel Iran War Transform Asia's Balance of Power? 🎤 @daveckang.bsky.social The conflict involving the #UnitedStates, #Israel, and #Iran is reshaping global geopolitics far beyond the Middle East. But what could it mean for East/North-Asia? www.youtube.com/live/cwnJVEe...
This is going to be another great issue from IS! And we respond to our critics about "What does China want?" direct.mit.edu/isec/article...
What Does China Want?
Abstract. The conventional wisdom is that China is a rising hegemon eager to replace the United States, dominate international institutions, and re-create the liberal international order in its own im...
direct.mit.edu
See also four letters to the editors from @rushdoshi.bsky.social @andreaghiselli.bsky.social et al. plus a reply by @daveckang.bsky.social @zenobiachan.bsky.social et al.
I see lots of discussion about recent articles about NK in Foreign Affairs. My take, from 23 years ago: "Why are we afraid of dealing with the North? It makes no sense to criticize North Korea for being isolationist and then refuse to trade with them." Check it out! cup.columbia.edu/book/nuclear...
Nuclear North Korea | Columbia University Press
Victor D. Cha and David C. Kang’s Nuclear North Korea was first published in 2003 amid the outbreak of a lasting crisis over the North Korean nuclear progr... | CUP
cup.columbia.edu
Noel Foster, Zenobia Chan, and Jackie S.H. Wong map meetings between senior Chinese military leaders and foreign counterparts, 2000–2023. They find that China's public military diplomacy sharply expanded. Super interesting: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
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journals.sagepub.com
Here's a classical Greek joke (not mine): One day, Young Aristotle is out playing and he tears his jeans. He takes them to the tailor. The tailor says "Euripides?" and Aristotle says "Yeah, Eumenides?"
This is not mine, but it's totally accurate. I wish we could move on from debating Thucydides. The world - and history - is much wider than the lessons of one little war 2,500 years ago...
The US is so paranoid about Chinese tech, they've forced Polestar to withdraw from the US. Polestar is the best alternative to Tesla with high quality sedans, not to mention the excellent Android integration. What an absolute mess and self-own by the government. finance.yahoo.com/markets/stoc...
Polestar exits US market after government bans sales due to connected vehicle tech
Swedish-based EV-maker Polestar says it will no longer sell cars in the US, after the Commerce Department banned it from selling its cars in the country.
finance.yahoo.com
The only case I can see for gas in Asia now is that governments effectively make it illegal to build renewables. That’s not a totally outlandish scenario. It’s what Trump has tried to do, with limited success, and what the likes of Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia have done more effectively.
Renewables-plus-storage is so cheap that in large parts of the world it is cheaper to build a whole new clean power plant than just pay for the fuel and maintenance for a fully-depreciated gas generator. Renewables aren’t just threatening new-build gas — they are undermining existing plants.
You can point to forecasts that this will magically change — in 2026, when clean energy is a fraction of the cost, and after the biggest-ever disruption of LNG markets — but then consider some former forecasts:
1500km charge in 6 minutes!! “The boundaries of electrochemistry are still far from being reached, and the possibilities of materials science are still far from being exhausted" - Robin Zeng, CATL founder Still think its all subsidies & copycat & no science or innovation? www.ft.com/content/1773...
CATL claims 6-minute charge and 1,500km range for new electric vehicle batteries
Chinese group also slashes charging time in race against BYD for electric vehicle battery supremacy
ft.com
I have not seen a single wargame of a Chinese invasion of Vietnam, nor of a Chinese invasion of Korea. I've seen eleventy-jillion wargames of China-Taiwan of some type.
USA! USA! We’re going to win the World Cup!!! 😎🍺⚽️🦅🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
I really like this song. I just came across it, I'm late to the party: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRbP...
[MV] BOL4(볼빨간사춘기) _ Travel(여행)
YouTube video by 1theK (원더케이)
youtube.com
I'm going to the USA-Paraguay game. We're gonna win the world cup! USA! USA! 🇺🇸 ⚽ 🦅 (Caw! Caw!)
This is a really interesting article -- gift giving and authority in IR: academic.oup.com/cjip/article...
Gift-giving as a Source of International Authority
Abstract. This article discusses the diplomatic practice of gift-giving in the Ancient Near East and Early Modern East Asia. In both cases, gift-exchange s
academic.oup.com
for reference and comparison: conservatively, the United States spent two-thirds of that figure in the *first week* of the war on Iran. it's genuinely difficult to overstate how many world-historical own goals US politics has accumulated over the past few decades
'The real surprise from the OECD’s subsidy numbers is that it cost China less than $18bn in sectoral support over 15 years to build an industry that can now provide more clean power than the world can readily absorb.' @adamtooze.bsky.social @financialtimes.com www.ft.com/content/b6ca...
"The Rise and Fall of the Confucian Long Peace: A New Dataset for Analyzing Regional Conflict Management in East Asia" - very interesting article, including Ryukyu as a state (the right call, IMO): journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
journals.sagepub.com