Instituto do Oriente

Paulo Duarte

This article examines Chinese maritime strategy, emphasizing its current developments in comparisson with the past. It highlights the strategic importance to Beijing of the control/access to a set of islands, archipelagos and sea passages in the Indian and Pacific oceans and explains how the assumptions of Alfred Mahan are reflected in China's view of the sea. Beijing seems to be aware that a power that does not understand the importance of the oceans is a power without a future.

Tiago Ferreira Lopes

There are few places in the world in which the word complexity reaches its maximum potential like in the Caucasus. In the beginning of the XX century, John Frederick Baddeley explains that «the Caucasus is inhabited probably by a greater number of different tribes, races, and peoples than any similiar extent of territory on the surface of the globe, speaking, too, a greater variety of languages» (1908:xxv). Dagestan is by far the most complex of all the Caucasus subjects. The name of this republic with less than 3 million inhabitants derives from a hybrid between Persian and Turkish words meaning Land/Country of the Mountain. In the thirteen century the Mongol invasions erased the Arab influence (that had erased the Avar Christian kingdom of Sarir) putting the native clans and tribes under the influence of Sarai, the capital of the Golden Horde into which, curiously, Moscow also pledge allegiance (Miller, Vandome, McBrewster, 2009). Russia begins its military campgns in the Caucasus in the XVI century, but only in the XIX century it ensured the dominium over the region. During the Caucasian Wars several Russian strategies used local athno-complexity as a tool, to minimize bloodshed and maximize results (Gammer, 1994). Soviet officials followed a similiar path adding to these strategies the impact of the nativization and sovietisation policies. In the end an already diverse region became even more complex. The goal of this paper is to explore, in an historical perspective, the role of Russia to the augmentation of Dagestan's ethno-complecity. This paper will be divided in four parts corresponding to four historical moments: 1.) Dagestan previous to the Russian conquest; 2.) Dagestan under the Russian empire; 3.) Dagestan in the Soviet Union; 4.) post-soviet Dagestan. 

Teresa Almeida e Silva

The media present themselves as an object of temptation for terrorist organizations, since they allow them to broadcast their message on a global scale, earning a force that would never have alone. But this is not a one-sided relation. No. The media also benefit with the coverage of terrorist attacks, since thereby they increase their sales and profits as well as the audiences. The blood, the tragedy, the human despair continue to sell newspapers; they make the opening of the newscasts. Terrorism is a spetacle. Thus, it appears to be an important relationship between media and terrorism. Being the terrorism one of the greatest threats to contemporary society, it is necessary to think about the relation between them and if it may be cansidered an exasperation of the threat. This article focuses the role of the mass media on terrorism and it emphasizes the cost-benefit relation that it is established between them. We will analyze how terrorists use the media in order to achieve their objectives and how the media can be used as a vehicle for terrorist ideology's spread. On the other hand, we will explore the benefits that media have with terrorism.

Ming K. Chan

O papel de Macau no envolvimento revolucionário de Sun Yatsen, desde o final do século XIX, permaneceu muito menos conhecido e constitui um capítulo subestimado nas crônicas da transformação da China moderna. Este trabalho tem como objectivo destacar alguns aspectos e características marcantes que evidenciam o significado histórico do papel de portugueses e de Macau nas modernas revoluções chinesas de Sun Yatsen. Três perspectivas abrangentes e as suas abordagens distintivas serão adotadas nas páginas seguintes: (1) Focar na particulariedade de Macau - inserido numa rede geopolítica e sociocultural, na região chinesa do Delta do Rio das Pérolas/ Guangdong-Lingnan, - bem como nas influências intercontinentais lusófonas, destacando as dinâmicas interactivas transnacionais e transculturais do Oriente/Ocidente desse enclave português. (2) Olhando para além dos eventos imediatos de 1911 (o sucesso dos levantes Anti-Qing de 10 de outubro de 1911), observar Macau como uma importante fonte de influência sobre a vida e pensamentos de Sun Yatsen- sua priemira janela para o mundo, berço de novas ideias, a exposição inicial ao cristianismo, centro valoroso para os esforços revolucionários, e um cinturão vital para a transmissão das visões e missões revolucionárias de sun no intuito de uma nova china. (3) Prestar extrema atenção ao real impacto, tanto da experiência histórica lusa (a exemplo da Revolução portuguesa de 5 de outubro 1910) e influência das ideologias democráticas sociais de estilo europeu sobre as campanhas revolucionárias de Sun Yatsen para o republicanismo e para construir uma nova China- uma China independente, unificada, moderna, forte, rica, progressista e, acima de tudo, livre e democrática.