Despite western press fearing the next Philippine president as a “strongman,” President Duterte won the majority of votes from an election with a record 82 percent turnout. For the first time, Philippines is poised to have its first president who is a self-declared socialist, and who wants to hedge bets between U.S. security assurance and Chinese economic cooperation.

The following are the opening remarks by James A. Baker, III at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in Washington DC on May 12, 2016.

Chinese media is already weighing in on the implications of a race between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump. Clinton presents to Chinese politicians an undeniably superior alternative to Trump’s loose cannon: a known entity with predictable behavior who will maintain the current tenor of bilateral diplomatic dialogue.

While Duterte seriously values the Philippines’ long-standing security alliance with the U.S., he seems to be more enthusiastic in repairing the Philippines’ damaged political ties with China. Rommel Banlaoi warns, however, that excessive accommodation of China could potentially undermine the Philippines’ long standing alliance with the United States.

Much can be accomplished before President Obama leaves office in developing the new model of major-power relations along the lines China’s President Xi has proposed, and there is good reason to expect such accomplishments.

The US strategy ignores the legitimate desire of most countries for peace and development and upsets the natural balance in the region. If Washington insists on playing the role of “regional balancer” under a misguided Cold War mentality, it would achieve nothing but create imbalance and walk right into the “hegemon’s trap” despite repeated historical lessons.

The following is the text of the prepared speech by C.H. Tung, chairman of the China-United States Exchange Foundation, at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC on May 11,2016.

China is but one factor in the two Anglophone countries’ diverging outlooks: President Obama has warned that China should not undermine international order and that the rules of global economy cannot be written by China, the UK has sensed that the evolution and reform in international system bring about opportunity for Britain, and is ready to seize upon it.

Obama will visit Hiroshima on May 27th when he attends the G7 summit held later this month in Japan. However, the visit may backfire and hurt Japan by touching off an inconvenient chain reaction. By fixating on the nuclear trauma while blotting out recollections of Japan’s victimization of others, Japan’s sense of its role as a victimizer has been weakened.

The following is the prepared speech by Antony J. Blinken, Deputy Secretary of State of the United States in his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations C