This is the fifteenth in a series of articles that looks at China’s borders. As China has grown in the last 30 years, so have the often complicated relationships it has with its many varied neighbors. In this article, we take a look at Afghanistan.

By Andy Scott

Sept. 23 - At one time, Afghanistan was center for some of the world’s most important civilization. The arts and sciences thrived, cultivation and advanced farming techniques turned the plains around Kabul into a great bread basket. Then in 1219, the Mongols came. They left a devastating path of destruction that that the country has never quite recovered from. Since then, the land has become one that has inevitably been in between, acting as a bit player in The Great Game, and a staring role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Following the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, Afghanistan once again played host to world powers. Situated as it is in Asia, it is something that shouldn’t have come as a surprise. (more…)

This is the fourteenth in a series of articles that looks at China’s borders. As China has grown in the last 30 years, so have the often complicated relationships it has with its many varied neighbors. In this article, we take a look at India.

By Nazia Vasi

Sept. 15 - China and India, half of the world’s population, continue to move closer and closer to one another; but it’s often hard to tell whether the proximity will result in an embrace or a donnybrook. (more…)

This is the thirteenth in a series of articles that looks at China’s borders. As China has grown in the last 30 years, so have the often complicated relationships it has with its many varied neighbors. In this article, we take a look at Pakistan.

By Joyce Roque

Sept. 12 - On August 14, 1947, the state of Pakistan was born. Like all births, it would prove to be painful, messy and jarring affair. The subcontinent was effectively ripped at the seams into a Muslim East Pakistan and a Hindu West Bengal after 89 years under the British Raj.

National assets like the British Indian Army, the Indian Civil Service, railways, central treasury and other administrative services had to be divided accordingly. The divorce proved chaotic. It is one thing to divide a nation on paper but another thing to fracture lives. People suddenly found themselves living at the wrong side of the partition.

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This is the twelfth in a series of articles that looks at China’s borders. As China has grown in the last 30 years, so have the often complicated relationships it has with its many varied neighbors. In this article, we take a look at Bhutan.

By Joyce Roque

Sept. 8 - Bhutan shines like a jewel wedged between China and India. It remains one of the most mysterious places on earth -the land of stunning mountain ranges where mystics and monks have long searched for spiritual enlightenment.

The country’s name comes from the Bhutanese term, Druk Yul, or “Land of the Thunder Dragon.” Bhutan is the only Vajrayana Buddhist nation in the world. Its policy of cultural isolation has served well to preserve much of its traditions and religious teachings leading some people to refer to it as the last Shangri-la.

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This is the eleventh in a series of articles that looks at China’s borders. As China has grown in the last 30 years, so have the often complicated relationships it has with its many varied neighbors. In this article, we take a look at Myanmar.

By Joyce Roque

Aug. 27 - On a map, Myanmar sits squeezed between two emerging players: India, to its northwest and China, to its northeast. There is also Thailand on its southeast and Bangladesh on the west and the Bay of Bengal to the southwest.

But for all its proximity to the world’s most promising neighbors, Myanmar might as well be another world. It is country mired in its own self-created vacuum of corruption, oppression and intolerance. A former British colony, the country has been ruled by a military junta since 1962.

The junta has been ruthless in its efforts to maintain power at any cost. There have been reports that thousands of Buddhist monks and civilians have been killed in a series of massacres and efforts to clamp on dissent. (more…)

This is the tenth in a series of articles that looks at China’s borders. As China has grown in the last 30 years, so have the often complicated relationships it has with its many varied neighbors. In this article, we take a look at Nepal.

By Joyce Roque

“In Buddhism we have relative truth and absolute truth.”
-Dalai Lama

July 25 - Nepal is a country that traces its land at the spine of the great Himalayan mountain range. As a landlocked territory in South Asia, it acts as a buffer state between China to its north and India to its south, east and west. The country is poor but what it lacks in economic riches it makes up with its inspiring scenery and ancient culture.

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This is the ninth in a series of articles that looks at China’s borders. As China has grown in the last 30 years, so have the often complicated relationships it has with its many varied neighbors. In this article, we take a look at Tajikistan.

By Joyce Roque

May 22 - Tajikistan belongs to the group of the Central Asian “Stans” formerly under the mantle of the Soviet Union: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Its name means the “Land of the Tajiks” in Persian. The mountainous landlocked country is surrounded by Afghanistan to its south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east. The country’s population is made up of mostly the Tajik ethnic group, who share history and culture with the Persian people.

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This is the eighth in a series of articles that looks at China’s borders. As China has grown in the last 30 years, so have the often complicated relationships it has with its many varied neighbors. In this article, we take a look at Kyrgyzstan.

By Joyce Roque

April 25 - The Kyrgyz Republic remains to be a country in the process of unraveling itself. It is the second smallest country of the five central Asian states bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the southwest and China to the east. Despite being a land blessed by breathtaking natural beauty - some calling its Tien Shan range the Switzerland of Central Asia – it is one of the poorest in the world with an estimated 40 percent of its population living below the poverty line.

The Tulip Revolution
In 1991, the country declared independence from former Soviet Union led by Askar Akayev. The divorce from Kremlin would lead to devastating effects on its economy when an estimated 98 percent of its exports depended on the Soviet market. It hindered the country’s goal of transitioning to a free market economy. Akayev would later on be ousted in popular revolt in 2005 called the Tulip Revolution on accusations that government interfered with parliamentary elections aggravated by the country’s widespread poverty and corruption. (more…)

This is the seventh in a series of articles that looks at China’s borders. As China has grown in the last 30 years, so have the often complicated relationships it has with its many varied neighbors. In this article, we take a look at Russia.

By Joyce Roque

April 14 - The Russian Federation is a nation foisted in two realities: the East and the West. As the largest country in the world, it hugs the planet starting from northern Asia spanning to about 40 percent of Europe. It is Eurasia; a country with the breath of 11 time zones and the depth of topography that includes vast frozen tundra, grasslands and steppe.

The country’s beginnings can be traced back to as early as the 3rd century A.D. when the East Slavs were ruled by the seafaring Vikings. The centuries have gone and steeped its history rich with culture, science and ideology. There comes to mind the names of such luminaries as Tolstoy, Nabokov, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky to name a few. More importantly, Russia is a self-sufficient with its abundant stores of raw materials needed to keep any industrial economy running. It produces an estimated 20 percent of the world’s total oil and natural gas production making it a global energy leader. (more…)

This is the sixth in a series of articles that looks at China’s borders. As China has grown in the last 30 years, so have the often complicated relationships it has with its many varied neighbors. In this article, we take a look at North Korea.

By Joyce Roque

April 5 - Like father, like son. When history is written it will remember Kim Jong-Il as remaining true to his father’s memory. Fourteen years after the death of patriarch and founder, Kim Il-sung, North Korea, officially known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, still maintains the distinction of being one of the most secretive and rigid states in the world.

Located in the northern half of the Korean Peninsula, North Korea shares boundaries with China, Russia and South Korea. To its north, it shares a 1,416 kilometer border with China and a 19 kilometer one with Russia; to its south there is the 238 kilometer Korean Demilitarized Zone separating it from South Korea.

North Korea is still largely isolated and cut-off from foreign influences. Kim Jong-Il has continued to rule by the philosophy of Juche, or self-reliance to run the country’s communist regime with no tolerance for any form of dissention. In its annual World Press Freedom Index, Paris-based international non-governmental organization, Reporters Sans Frontiers, ranks North Korea at the bottom for not allowing privately-owned media and having no freedom of expression. (more…)