Play The Diplomat’s Quiz: October 25, 2015 Edition

Despite appearances, the Confucius Peace Prize is not an outcome of Chinese government policy.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif concluded his second official visit to the U.S. since assuming office in 2013. During his visit, Sharif met with Secretary of State John Kerry, addressed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and met with U.S. President Barack Obama. Sharif’s visit comes on the heels of the visit to the U.S. by Lt. Gen. Rizwan Akhtar, the chief of Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Sharif’s visit to the U.S. also comes at a time when his domestic position in Pakistan is significantly diminished. The Pakistan Army enjoys a monopoly on issues pertaining to national security, counter-terrorism, and relations with the U.S. and India. A few days prior to the Pakistani prime minister’s visit to the U.S., Sartaj Aziz, a confidante of Sharif, was replaced as the national security advisor by Lt. Gen. Naseer Khan Janjua, the former head of the Pakistan Army’s Southern Command.

China’s latest gross domestic product (GDP) data has failed to placate fears over the health of the world’s second-biggest economy. Despite beating market expectations, the communist giant’s worst quarterly performance since 2009 has sparked calls for more action by Beijing to prevent an even bigger slowdown.

Amid fears of another “China shock,” on Monday China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced a 6.9 percent rise in GDP during the third quarter, beating economists’ estimates of 6.8 percent but well ahead of more pessimistic forecasts.

The reason is simple. The U.S. Navy’s fiscal year 2016 30-year shipbuilding plan does not take into account the U.S. Navy’s and Marine Corps’ capability requirements for executing an “opposed amphibious assault” with two Marine expeditionary brigades (each brigade consists of roughly 14,000 men) in the event of war.

According to U.S. Navy plans, conducting such combat operations would require a fleet of 38 vessels rather than the 30 amphibious assault ships currently in service. However, due to fiscal constraints, the navy compromised, requesting a mere 34 ships in the latest 30-year shipbuilding plan.

“If 38 ships is the requirement … in the most engaging and most hard-to-fight plan, then that’s a reality. It’s not just a Marine Corps requirement. It’s a requirement for the nation and we ought to think about how we’re going to approach that,” Conant stated.

With Chinese leader Xi Jinping in the U.K. for a four day visit, we have another chance to observe one of the most striking ways he differentiates himself from his predecessors. A simple look at the list of countries he has visited as they are set out on the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs website shows in just 31 months since assuming the role of president, he has clocked up trips to 33 nations.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spent part of Thursday in the Mongolian capital, Ulaanbaatar, before heading off to Central Asia. Abe will spend the next week visiting capitals throughout the region with an entourage of Japanese business representatives looking to secure around two trillion yen ($16.5 billion) in deals. He’s the first Japanese Prime Minister to visit the former Soviet republics sinceJunichiro Koizumi traveled to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in 2006. Abe was last in Mongolia in 2013.

The United States is preparing to sell eight F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan in order to bolster bilateral ties between the two countries senior American officials toldThe New York Times.

Dushanbe has invited China’s Tebian Electric Apparatus Stock Co., Ltd. Company (TBEA) to take part in the construction of Saikhun, the first new city to be built in Tajikistan since its independence, Azernews reported last April. The new city is to be built on a 14,000-hectare desert land near Khujand, the country’s second-largest city in the Sughd province (northern Tajikistan), and will have 19 residential areas, 17 schools, 31 kindergartens, 40 sports centers, 140 shopping and services centers, a transport terminal, and other social facilities. It is also said to provide housing and jobs for some 250,000 people in nearest future helping to reduce the number of Tajik citizens working abroad and lessen Tajikistan’s dependence on remittances as an engine of growth.

In one of the biggest diplomatic jamborees of this year, India will be hosting the third India-Africa Summit next week. True to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s style, it is likely to be a highly visible event with much fanfare. With more than 1,000 delegates from all 54 countries of the continent in attendance, India is signalling its readiness to step up its engagement with Africa. More than 40 African countries will be represented at the level of president, vice president, prime minister, and king. This will be the largest ever gathering of African nations in India, with even some controversial figures like Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi also making their presence felt.

On the same day that U.S. President Barack Obama broke his promise to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work was on the line with America’s longtime allies there. Georgia’s Minister of Defense Tina Khidasheli was eager to answer the call. Immediately after, she announced that Georgia would remain a “devoted partner” to NATO and the U.S. Despite its relatively small size, and the fact that it is not a member of the alliance, Georgia has nonetheless become the second largest troop contributor to the NATO-led Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan -with more than 850 soldiers rotated in and out on a continuous basis.