Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Chinese Think Tank Helping Restart North Korea Nuclear Talks


This is from Reuters:
A Chinese government-backed think-tank will host a forum with officials from six countries involved in stalled talks on North Korea's banned nuclear weapons program, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday, in China's latest push to resume discussions.
Numerous efforts to restart the six-party talks have failed after negotiations collapsed following the last round in 2008. At the time, North Korea declared the deal void, after refusing inspections to verify compliance. 
Academics and experts from China, the United States, Russia, South Korea, Japan and North Korea will attend the Beijing event, hosted by the China Institute of International Studies think-tank, on Friday and Saturday.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will address the gathering, the Foreign Ministry said in a short notice on its website, without saying who else will attend.

According to the latest University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings, the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS) is ranked as the world's 36th best think tank.  It is ranked as the third best think tank among the countries of China, India, Korea, and Japan.

This summer, CIIS and Brookings held a closed-door session in Washington, DC on US-China relations.

Technically, CIIS is the think tank of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  It was founded in 1956 under the name Institute of International Relations, and eventually became CIIS in 1986.  Its current president is Su Ge.

In related think tank news on China, it has just been reported that this month will mark the first time that representatives from top security think tanks in both the US and China will make public exchanges at the International Security Conference in Beijing.

Here is a recent Think Tank Watch piece on a US think tank's use of satellite photographs of islands being developed by China and how they could sour the upcoming US visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping.