China has come far. But it has even further to go. Where it ends up is likely to depend on whether the government comes to trust its people and becomes accountable to them. If not, the 21st Century is unlikely to end up as the Chinese Century.

At Hippo, we are grateful to publish this final piece, a glimpse into Prof. Cooper's long and colorful relationship with China and further testament as to the need for both serious academic scholarship and a light-hearted perspective in such a complicated, yet beautiful world.

Among the defining years of the 20th century, 1989 had a lasting impact on the social, political and economic structures of modern diplomacy.

While the U.S. and Japan have no aggressive designs on China, Beijing understandably looks uneasily at the alliance of its old enemy with the globe's dominant power. Thus, China is developing a military capable of confronting American as well as Japanese military action, no easy task.

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia -- As long as Washington is seen by Moscow and Beijing as trying to contain them geopolitically and subvert their domestic political regimes, the entente between Russia and China will only grow stronger