Andrew J. Nathan Journalist Profile

Articles

The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age

Oct 21, 2024 | foreignaffairs.com | Thomas S Mullaney |Andrew J. Nathan

In This Review In This Review The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information AgeMost people who compose texts in Chinese characters no longer use brushes or pens; they use QWERTY keyboards. They do so through a more complicated version of the autocomplete software now familiar to people who write in English on computers or cellphones.
Institutional Roots of India’s Security Policy

Oct 21, 2024 | foreignaffairs.com | Andrew J. Nathan

In This Review In This Review Institutional Roots of India’s Security PolicyVaishnav and his contributors find pervasive “capacity gaps” afflicting India’s key security institutions—the army, navy, air force, paramilitary and border forces, intelligence agencies, and police and investigative agencies.
Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century

Feb 20, 2024 | foreignaffairs.com | Joya Chatterji |Andrew J. Nathan |Wei Cui |Minxin Pei

In This Review In This Review Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth CenturyThis historiographic plum pudding is full of delights, ranging from memories of Chatterji’s childhood in a multigenerational compound in Bengal to a deep history of the violent politics of division that separated Pakistan from India in 1947 and Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971.
Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia

Feb 20, 2024 | foreignaffairs.com | Carolyn Eisenberg |Andrew J. Nathan |Wei Cui |Minxin Pei

In This Review In This Review Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast AsiaEisenberg recounts the last phase of the U.S. war in Vietnam with new details and caustic moral clarity, based on declassified papers and transcripts of taped conversations between President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger.
Book Review: "Some People Need Killing" by Patricia Evangelista

Feb 20, 2024 | foreignaffairs.com | Patricia Evangelista |Andrew J. Nathan |Wei Cui |Minxin Pei

In This Review In This Review Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My CountryEvangelista has written an intense, emotional lamentation for the thousands of suspected drug pushers, users, and innocent victims—including children—extrajudicially executed by corrupt cops and vigilantes during the rule of Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte from 2016 to 2022.
Stalemate: Autonomy and Insurgency on the China-Myanmar Border

Dec 12, 2023 | foreignaffairs.com | Andrew Ong |Andrew J. Nathan |Mireya Solís |Suisheng Zhao

In This Review In This Review Stalemate: Autonomy and Insurgency on the China-Myanmar BorderOng’s illuminating political ethnography of Wa, perhaps the least known of Myanmar’s ethnic minority regions, challenges the conventional view of it as a warlord-governed drug haven. Wa consists of two areas located on the borders with China and Thailand and is home to around half a million people of diverse ethnicities, many of whom speak Chinese and use Chinese currency in daily life.
The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline

Oct 24, 2023 | foreignaffairs.com | Yasheng Huang |Andrew J. Nathan |Zongyuan Liu |Axel Dreher

In This Review In This Review The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to Its DeclineThe EAST in Huang’s title stands not only for China but for the four keys to its history listed in the subtitle. The imperial examination system dating back to the sixth century forced aspiring elites to unite around the single goal of service to the state.
Contemporary Japanese Politics and Anxiety Over Governance

Oct 24, 2023 | foreignaffairs.com | Andrew J. Nathan |Zongyuan Liu |Ken'ichi Ikeda Routledge |Ken'ichi Ikeda

In This Review In This Review Contemporary Japanese Politics and Anxiety Over GovernanceThe Japanese public’s assessments of its government’s performance have been anemic for years, but Ikeda finds that the COVID-19 crisis crystallized an even more pessimistic attitude: the fear that the government is not capable of solving potential future problems, such as job insecurity, terrorism, and war.
Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances Its Global Ambitions

Oct 24, 2023 | foreignaffairs.com | Zongyuan Liu |Andrew J. Nathan |Axel Dreher |Andreas Fuchs

In This Review In This Review Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances Its Global Ambitions “Follow the money,” Liu advises, and in doing so, she shows that Chinese sovereign funds are so different from better-known sovereign wealth funds, such as those of the governments of Abu Dhabi and Norway, that she prefers to call them “sovereign leveraged funds.” That is because most of their vast foreign exchange holdings (over $2 trillion as of 2019) are in effect borrowed in...
Japan’s Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety Governance

Oct 24, 2023 | foreignaffairs.com | Florentine Koppenborg |Andrew J. Nathan |Zongyuan Liu |Axel Dreher

In This Review In This Review Japan’s Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety GovernanceJapan’s traditionally weak system for regulating nuclear safety, created by the long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party and its allies, allowed what came to be known as the 3.11 disaster (after the March 11 earthquake in 2011), when a tsunami spurred the meltdown of one of the nuclear power plants at Fukushima.