The Third Plenum of the Eighteenth Party’s Congress reflects recent efforts by the Chinese government to reform its military sector. By examining the historical challenges in reforming China’s military, Shen Dingli highlights the importance of forging a civil-military partnership that entails the upgrading of Chinese leadership institution and tapping the resources of each other.

The United States and China have different and distinct understandings and approaches over the issue of human rights, writes Liu Huawen.

The new leadership’s fresh approach to corruption has certainly been a heart-winner. Yet there have also been worries, because Xi and his colleagues still have a very long way to go, one that promises plenty of stumbling blocks and risks.

After one year as China’s top leader, President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive has become one of his most notable successes. However, as Minxin Pei explains, sustaining this drive will have many challenges.

Are leaders sleepwalking towards another war? Jeff Kingston examines rising tensions in the East China Sea and warns that many of the current disputed territory issues arose from differences in the Cairo Declaration and the San Francisco Treaty.

China was hardly lacking in policy pronouncements in the final months of 2013. But, seen in their entirety, the risk of incoherence has become evident, writes Stephen Roach.

For China, the nation and the civilization, "socialism with Chinese characteristics" has become a directional guide. And this directional guide, rooted both in its immediate revolutionary past and in its long cultural heritage, is guiding China forward, for the realization of the Chinese Dream in the short term and for further development of its civilization in the long run, writes Chung-yue Chang.

"The history of the world is but biography of great men." Mao Zedong, whose life left indelible marks on the lives of more than a billion people and changed the trajectory of the world, is to be studied with care and thoughtfulness, not to be judged with moral expediency, writes Eric Li.

You may have missed the funeral, but China’s new leadership has quietly buried the admonition of former leader Deng Xiaoping that as China rises in wealth and power it should maintain a low profile (known as taoguang yanghui), writes Douglas Paal.

At the recent Third Plenum of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee, China's leaders produced a 60-point "resolution" covering six areas. But a shopping list of reform objectives – many of which were not as bold or novel as promised – is inadequate to address the deep contradictions undermining China’s development.