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Miles Yu

yu123@washingtontimes.com

Miles Yu is the director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. His Red Horizon column appears every other Tuesday in The Washington Times. He can be reached at mmilesyu@gmail.com.

Columns by Miles Yu

Chinese tourists cross the street in front of the Grand Palace in Bangkok, Thailand, Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2015. The bomb blast that ripped through a Bangkok shrine, leaving scores of casualties, may take a toll on the country's tourism industry, the one bright spot in Thailand’s blighted economy. (AP Photo/Penny Yi Wang)

Inside China: Chinese tourism on the uptick

Little attention has been given to one spectacular story out of China these days: the massive numbers of Chinese tourists who are spreading out around the globe. And the rest of the world finds itself overwhelmed and largely unprepared for the growing onslaught of happy Chinese masses eager to spend and explore.

February 11, 2016
A petition drive aimed at giving Nebraska voters the final say on executions is running up against national opposition, led by a $400,000 donation from the Proteus Action League in Amherst, Massachusetts, a liberal nonprofit with ties to progressive billionaire George Soros. (Associated Press)

Inside China: George Soros vs. China

China's leaders are furious with the liberal U.S. business magnate George Soros for telling the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week that "a hard landing is practically unavoidable" for the Chinese economy, and that monumental debt levels and deflation in China's slowing economy are to blame for the current global stock market turbulence.

January 28, 2016
In this Saturday, Jan. 16, 2016 photo, Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party, DPP, presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen raises her hand as she declares victory in the presidential election, in Taipei, Taiwan. (AP Photo/Wally Santana, FIle)

Inside China: Taiwan’s referendum on China

Last Saturday voters in Taiwan overwhelmingly elected a Western-educated lawyer named Tsai Ing-wen of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to be the country's first female president. It was a watershed event in Taiwanese political history, not just for the lopsidedness of the result but, more importantly, for what it said about voter attitudes on an existential issue: the relevance of communist China to the island democracy.

January 21, 2016
Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the Second World Internet Conference in Wuzhen Town, east China's Zhejiang Province, Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2015. (Chinatopix via AP) CHINA OUT

Inside China: Military reform is not a song-and-dance party

The People's Liberation Army's powerful and controversial "entertainment corps," collectively known as "the PLA Culture Work Units," is finally being dismantled after decades of public outrage and repeated official efforts to rein in its excesses and influence.

January 7, 2016
FILE - In this Thursday, June 27, 2013 file photo, South Korean President Park Geun-hye, left, and her Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping wave during a welcoming ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Xi Jinping’s first visit to the Korean Peninsula as China’s president is to Seoul, not Pyongyang, meaning that North Korea’s best friend has snubbed it for its most bitter rival. A flurry of recent rocket and missile tests, the latest on Wednesday, has made the North’s displeasure crystal clear. (AP Photo/Wang Zhao, Pool, File) **FILE**

Inside China: Seoul seeks a border with Beijing

China and South Korea ended another round of high-level maritime border demarcation talks in Seoul earlier this week. And just like the previous 14 rounds of talks on the same issue held between 1996 and 2008, the revived talks failed to produce a final agreement.

December 24, 2015
Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Chinese President Xi Jinping exchange documents at the signing ceremony in the Kremlin in Moscow, Friday, May 8, 2015. Russian and Chinese leaders have signed a plethora of deals in Moscow, giving Russia billions in infrastructure loans. (Associated Press) ** FILE **

Inside China: Russia, China still fierce competitors despite recent arms deals

The public celebration over recent arms deals belies the fundamental rifts, distrust and suspicion that still divide the two neighbors. In a larger sense, China and Russia hold fundamentally different strategic visions and are fierce competitors for regional and global dominance in key areas.

December 10, 2015
Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a major restructuring last week of the People's Liberation Army. (Xinhua News Agency via Associated Press/File)

Inside China: Xi Jinping’s military overhaul tightens Communist Party grip

Every 15 years or so, the Chinese Communist Party makes a major structural or doctrinal change to the People's Liberation Army, the world's largest. It's that time of the cycle again as Chinese President Xi Jinping announced last week that a massive defense restructuring was underway.

December 3, 2015
South China Sea Flyover Video

Inside China: China clarifies Natuna Islands sovereignty to Indonesia

In a rare move to avoid further isolation in a region where it has territorial disputes with nearly all of its maritime neighbors, China made a major concession last week by publicly clarifying and acknowledging Indonesia's sovereign right to the Natuna Islands in the South China Sea.

November 19, 2015
LOCKHEED MARTIN F-22 RAPTOR Role: Stealth air superiority fighter Manufacturer: Lockheed Martin Status: In service The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor is a single-seat, twin-engine, all-weather stealth tactical fighter aircraft developed for the United States Air Force (USAF). The result of the USAF'sAdvanced Tactical Fighter program, the aircraft was designed primarily as an air superiority fighter, but has additional capabilities including ground attack, electronic warfare, and signals intelligence roles.[6] Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor and was responsible for the majority of the airframe, weapon systems, and final assembly of the F-22, while program partnerBoeing provided the wings, aft fuselage, avionics integration, and training systems. The aircraft was variously designated F-22 and F/A-22 prior to formally entering service in December 2005 as the F-22A. Despite a protracted development as well as operational issues, the USAF considers the F-22 a critical component of its tactical air power, and states that the aircraft is unmatched by any known or projected fighter. The Raptor's combination of stealth, aerodynamic performance, and situational awareness gives the aircraft unprecedented air combat capabilities. The high cost of the aircraft, a lack of clear air-to-air missions due to delays in Russian and Chinese fighter programs, a ban on exports, and development of the more versatile and lower cost F-35 led to the end of F-22 production. A final procurement tally of 187 operational production aircraft was established in 2009 and the last F-22 was delivered to the USAF in 2012. (U.S Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Taylor Worley)

Inside China: Storm over Russia border rages

Last week, a seemingly innocuous news item in China's state media sparked an unexpected firestorm in China and Russia, exposing the shaky foundation upon which the much-hyped Beijing-Moscow united front challenging the West and the existing geopolitical order has been built.

November 12, 2015
China's alleged on-going reclamation of Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. (Ritchie B. Tongo/Pool Photo via AP) **FILE**

Inside China: Luo Yuan: A profile in chutzpah

He is arguably China's most jingoistic senior military voice, heralded by some as a national hero while hated by many more for his unvarnished battle cries for military actions when tensions soar between Beijing and its many adversaries and rivals, including Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines and most prominently, the United States.

November 5, 2015
A man smokes near a portrait of late Chinese leader Mao Zedong hung on a replica of the Tiananmen Gate in Yinchuan in northwestern China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2015. Research published in the medical journal The Lancet says one in three of all the young men in China are likely to die from tobacco, but that the number can fall if the men quit smoking. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Inside China: Toxic voice of history

One of China's most outrageously cool superstars is a high school history teacher, wildly popular among the nation's young, who follow him online and offline in the tens of millions. Ironically, he is also one of the nation's most censored public intellectuals.

October 22, 2015
Chinese President Xi Jinping said his country will give $1 billion toward U.N. peacekeeping efforts, including those in Syria. (Associated Press) **FILE**

Inside China: Marxism: The opium of the Chinese masses

Last week, Beijing hosted the inaugural "World Congress on Marxism," accompanied by much celebratory fanfare in the capital city. Over 400 luminaries, government officials and scholars from the United States, Egypt, Cuba, North Korea and more than a dozen other countries were flown in for the proletarian extravaganza. The event lasted for two days and it will be held every other year in Beijing, the newly self-anointed center of global Marxism studies.

October 15, 2015