Tensions between Japan and China over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) islands are continuing, as indicated by continued obstacles to Japanese businesses in China, a drastic decline in tourism, and Chinese patrols near the islands. This is both a Sino-Japanese issue and a part of a broader confrontation between China on one side and the United […]
The mother of China’s prime minister was a schoolteacher in northern China. His father was ordered to tend pigs in one of Mao’s political campaigns. And during childhood, “my family was extremely poor,” the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, said in a speech last year. But now 90, the prime minister’s mother, Yang Zhiyun, not only left poverty […]
JUST after the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, which starts in Beijing on November 8th, a short line of dark-suited men, and perhaps one woman, will step onto a red carpet in a room in the Great Hall of the People and meet the world’s press. At their head will be Xi […]
Since the 1950s, China has effectively used the doctrine of non-interference to guide its foreign policy agenda in the developing world. In its recent economic and diplomatic engagements in Africa, the policy has come under intense scrutiny and censure as Beijing attempts to strategically navigate the contours of resource acquisition alongside south-south solidarity with its […]
Fifty years ago, on the morning of October 20, 1962, China’s People’s Liberation Army assaulted Indian military positions along their disputed frontier. The Chinese attack, justified domestically and abroad as self-defense, resulted in the only major armed conflict in modern times between the world’s two most populous countries. The Indian military, poorly prepared and naively […]
As China’s ruling Communist Party prepares for a once-in-a-decade leadership transition next month, it is planning a daunting step – breaking up the monopolies enjoyed by its gargantuan state-owned enterprises. The monopolists have other ideas. One of the most powerful of all Chinese state-owned giants is the power-grid operator, State Grid Corp, led by the politically […]
It was an important day for Angola, June 20th, 2006. Amid the diplomatic pomp and handshakes of an official visit, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao opened the Luanda General Hospital and had his picture taken peering into a microscope surrounded by officials in suits and medics in white smocks. The capital’s General Hospital, a sprawling eighty-thousand […]
Just 40 years ago, as my family and I were completing a very pleasant and productive academic year in Japan, we had our first opportunity to visit China. We had been waiting to do so for more than a decade. For me, the highlight of the visit was a four-hour dinner conversation with Prime Minister […]
It’s a rare afternoon in the Chinese capital when smog hasn’t blocked the skies, and one of China‘s most famous economists is in a sanguine mood. The economy is in trouble as the Communist Party heads for a once-in-a-decade transfer of power while prosecuting its former golden boy, Bo Xilai, on criminal charges. Worried investors […]
A hard landing in China could expose a large number of countries to unforeseen consequences and dash hopes of a global recovery. China’s plight also drives the final nail into the coffin of the once fashionable theory of “decoupling”, which argued for an autonomous economic sphere around China that could soar even as the US […]
looking beyond borders 