FOR A Communist leadership that prides itself on bringing political and economic stability to its 90m subjects, the past few weeks in Vietnam must have seemed like a nightmare. There have been more bank runs, executives on the lam, arrests and credit panics than the country has seen in years. So febrile is the atmosphere […]
“Our generation is not wise enough to find a common language on this question,” Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping said in 1978 about his country’s territorial dispute with Japan. “Our next generation will certainly be wiser. They will certainly find a solution acceptable to all. In the meantime, Deng proposed, the two sides should jointly develop the […]
The situation in East Asia is tense. Japan and China, two of the most powerful countries in the world, are locked in a bitter dispute over eight tiny, uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. The volatility of the issue — compounded by the fact that the waters around the islands are rich in natural resources — is […]
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has been in Beijing this week for a round of meetings with senior Chinese officials, including presumptive paramount leader Xi Jinping. One topic that will most likely not be on the Panetta-Xi agenda is nuclear weapons. Which is weird. Oh sure, every now and again the topic makes it onto the […]
A senior information technology official on Tuesday said China hopes to boost Internet-related cooperation with other emerging countries and contribute to “global Internet prosperity.” Read Here – China Times
When the Muslim Brotherhood took power in Egypt, there was fear that draconian social measures would be pursued, thereby killing the country’s important tourism industry. Instead, the party has attempted to portray a moderate face, and more aggressively, tout itself as an administration willing to cut lucrative deals. While the politics of the Brotherhood remain […]
Russia has ordered the United States to end its financial support for a wide range of pro-democracy, public health and other civil society programs here, in an aggressive step by the Kremlin to halt what it views as American meddling in its internal affairs. The Kremlin’s provocative decision to end two decades of work in post-Soviet Russia […]
Shortly before the fateful US intervention in Iraq that led to the downfall and the eventual execution of the then Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein, Brent Scowcroft, who had been the National Security Advisor to the first President Bush, wrote a perceptive piece of advice that was published in the Wall Street Journal on 15 August 2002. Advising […]
It is the mark of science and perhaps rational thought to operate with a falsifiable understanding of how the world works. So it is fair to ask economists a fundamental question: what could happen that would cause you to revise your views of how the economy operates and acknowledge that the model you had been […]
Now that Xi Jinping, the presumptive next leader of China, has resurfaced after nearly two weeks away from public view, it is time to reflect on how this bizarre episode has served to illustrate the frailties of the regime astride the world’s second-largest economy. Read Here – The National
