This is a series concerning the relationships between China and her five neighbors produced by National Public Radio. I will offer the transcripts when I am free to transcribe them. Anyway, you can follow the links below to listen to the programs yourself.

Part 1: Japan Feb. 16, 2004

We begin a series on how China is viewed by its neighbors: Japan sees both opportunity and threat in the rapidly growing Chinese economy. It's a huge market for Japanese goods, but it is also taking away Japanese jobs. For most of the Cold War, Japan could concentrate on its own economic development and ignore China, but no more. One analyst says some Japanese feel a kind of jealousy toward China and a desire to see the country fail. NPR's Rob Gifford reports.

Part 2: Vietnam Feb. 17, 2004

Twenty-five years ago this week, China invaded Vietnam. The invasion came after months of tension between the two communist neighbors. The Chinese attack was prompted by Vietnam's decision to invade Cambodia and remove the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge. The 1979 border war between China and Vietnam was over quickly, with the Chinese retreating after heavy losses.

But as NPR's Michael Sullivan reports in the second part of a series examining how China is viewed by its neighbors, relations between the two countries have improved significantly since then. The two countries are bound by culture -- and increasingly by economics. Trade is growing rapidly and Vietnam has become a popular vacation spot for Chinese tourists. And the Vietnamese Communist Party looks to the Chinese Communist Party as a model for opening up its economy while maintaining tight control over politics.

Part 3: India Feb. 18, 2004

In October 1962, Americans were glued to their TVs and radios as the Cuban missile crisis unfolded, worried about the prospect of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. But halfway across the world, high in the Himalayas, India and China were at war over a disputed border region. The war ended with a large swath of the area under China's control, and thousands of Indian troops dead. China's unexpected aggression had a profound psychological effect on the Indian political and military establishment for several decades, but today, the war is all but forgotten by many Indians.

As the 21st century opens, tensions seem to be subsiding between the two Asian giants as both countries devote their energy to economic development. In the third part of a series examining China's relationship with its neighbors, NPR's Michael Sullivan reports on the view from India.

Part 4: South Korea Feb. 19, 2004

South Korea's links with China go back centuries, but in the 1950s the two were on opposite sides in the Korean War. Today, China is starting to have increasingly more in common with South Korea than its communist neighbor in the North. In the fourth part of a series examining China's relationship with its neighbors, NPR's Rob Gifford reports on a China craze that's going on in Seoul. China's economy is one of the fastest growing in the world. And with that prosperity comes power. Some in Asia are calling China the new America. But others worry that South Korea's economic infatuation with China has blinded Koreans to Beijing's longterm strategic aims.

Part 5: Russia Feb. 20, 2004

Russia, the world's biggest country, and China, the world's most populous, frequently clashed during the Cold War. The two giants spent decades engaged in an ideological rivalry and border skirmishes, but have since put much of that open hostility behind them.

Russia and China now officially call their relationship a "strategic partnership." But many Russians retain a mistrust of China, especially in light of its increasing economic and political might. NPR's Lawrence Sheets reports from the Far Eastern Russian city of Khabarovsk.