In the West, Xi’s assumption of power has largely been covered as an economic and political drama: Can he keep China’s booming markets on track? Will he tame the country’s toxic levels of official corruption before demands for political reform derail him? Is he a reformer at all? What these accounts often miss are Xi’s […]
The stand-up comedian Beppe Grillo, like the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini before him, has a craving to take over the piazza and mesmerise the crowd. Where once young Italians chanted the mantra ‘Du-ce! Du-ce!’ now they chant ‘Bep-pe! Bep-pe!’. But it is not just a shared need to rant and rave at large numbers of […]
For many years top Chinese politicians have lived a bit like rock stars, without the paparazzi. Never mind that few of the political elite have swagger like Jagger, China’s leaders have long enjoyed walking red carpets, waving before enthusiastic (if preorganized) crowds, traveling with large entourages, and speaking from stages adorned with crimson banners and […]
The recent 18th Party Conference has been widely seen as a victory for retired Chinese President Jiang Zemin. Ten years after leaving office his faction remains a force to be reckoned with in the Communist Party — outgoing President Hu Jintao succeeded in placing only one close ally, Prime Minister Li Keqiang, on the Politburo […]
Journalists and political analysts have been speculating about whether the Kremlin‘s anti-corruption campaign will cause a split among Russia’s ruling elite. Even if this is only a PR stunt by the authorities to co-opt the opposition’s main demand, it will not produce any serious or systemic changes. But as some analysts contend, even this “innocuous” battle with corruption might prove too much […]
STATE-RUN television is not usually the place to find news of corruption scandals involving officials close to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. Murky business dealings have never been a bar to government service. When high-level bureaucrats fall, they usually go quietly. But viewers have recently been treated to quite a spectacle on Channel One: evening broadcasts […]
On Thursday Oct 26 The New York Times published a 4,700 word article on corruption among the members of Wen Jiabao’s family, alleging that they amassed a fortune of $2.7 billion through shadowy business dealings. Appearing on the front page of both New York Times’ English and Chinese websites, both sites were completely blocked in China within hours. Prior to the article’s […]
For the last 40 years, Americans have lagged in recognizing the declining fortunes of their foreign rivals. In the 1970s they thought the Soviet Union was 10 feet tall — ascendant even though corruption and inefficiency were destroying the vital organs of a decaying communist regime. In the late 1980s, they feared that Japan was […]
looking beyond borders 