China

Hu Jintao, the new general secretary of the Communist Party of China, and his colleagues, who constitute the party's fourth generation leadership, have been armed by Jiang Zemin with a new ideological tool called Sange Daibiao (the Three Represents) which, like Deng Xiaoping�s Gaige Kaifang (Reform and Open Door), seems to be slowly capturing the imagination of the Chinese people. This formulation is seen by the left as an outrageous departure from Marxism. The right is equally disappointed by the refusal to grant full freedom to the propertied classes. Yet the Three Represents are carefully crafted guidelines for the party to face the challenges of the emerging world and to take the country forward in the new century.

In today's Taiwan one comes across a confident economic society. What is at stake is the Taiwanese polity, not because of any internal weaknesses but because the international situation has put a big question mark over its survival. There is a political discourse in Taiwan which is very close to cold war rhetoric. The counterpoint is still 'Communist China'. The logic of this situation is that the US will have an interventionist presence in the Taiwan Straits, which makes the future of the area, not just of Taiwan, far from easy to predict.

China's overarching obsession with stability risks stagnation due to a lack of political restructuring; the absence of political institutions to articulate rising social and political tensions may erode the system to a point where they erupt throwing the country into disarray and even chaos.

Asian Merchants and Businessmen in the Indian Ocean and the China Sea edited by Denys Lombard and Jean Aubin; Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2000; pp xiii+375, Rs 575.

Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam by John L Esposito; Oxford University Press, 2002; pp 196, Rs 295.

Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia by Ahmed Rashid; Orient Longman, 2002; pp 281, Rs 295