Lying in a Beijing military hospital in 1990, General Wang Zhen told a visitor he felt betrayed. Decades after he risked his life fighting for an egalitarian utopia, the ideals he held as one of Communist China’s founding fathers were being undermined by the capitalist ways of his children — business leaders in finance, aviation […]
As the report at the 18th Party Congress has stated, China will hold high the banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics. It will free up the mind and implement reform policies. It will open up, pool strengths, overcome difficulties, and strive to complete the building of a moderately prosperous society. By 2020, when the CPC […]
The passing year was the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) first opportunity to get up close and personal with the United States’ pivot back to Asia, the strategic rebalancing that looks a lot like containment. The PRC spent a lot of 2012 wrestling with contentious neighbors emboldened by the US policy, like Vietnam and the […]
The year 2012 began with festering Chinese sovereignty claims in the South and East China Seas, but also with hope that a code of conduct brokered by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations would enable them to be resolved peacefully. The year is ending, however, with those hopes dashed and ASEAN more divided than it […]
Between 2010 and 2020, Chinese and Indian consumers will spend some $64 trillion on goods and services. Chinese consumers will spend approximately $41.5 trillion, with annual expenditures reaching more than $6 trillion in 2020. Indians will spend $22.5 trillion, with annual spending hitting an estimated $3.6 trillion by 2020. Combined, they will be spending some […]
Khin Yu Waddy Myint is manager at Pyrex Trading and Distribution, a Burmese pharmaceutical company that employs 250 people across the country. Part of her job is to source and import medicines from India and Australia, a task she concedes she doesn’t know enough about. “It is the first time for me to learn many […]
Few people are happier to see 2012 end than Hu Jintao, Yoshihiko Noda or Lee Myung Bak. It was a rocky year for the leaders of China, Japan and South Korea, who leave office with legacies in tatters. Gripes about President Hu doing little about China’s biggest challenges outnumbered the accolades. Noda’s premiership ended as ingloriously as those of the […]
The India–Israel friendship has been flying very well under the radar for years, arguably to the benefit of both sides. But Israel now wants a public acknowledgement of the bond. It would like India to invite President Shimon Peres for a visit to put a seal on the relationship and take it to a higher […]
SOUTH KOREA has elected Park Geun-hye, a 60-year-old conservative, as president for the coming five years. The candidate is from the same party, the Saenuri party, as the incumbent, Lee Myung-bak. She is the daughter of Park Chung-hee, the dictator who set South Korea on the path of break-neck development, seizing power in 1961 and […]
A question about historical precedents for China’s rise landed in my reader mailbag last week. “What,” my correspondent asked, “is the better optic for looking at China today — Bismarckian/Wilhelmine Germany, or post-Meiji Japan? Or both?” Both! Forced to choose, though, I think Imperial Germany supplies more useful indices for plotting China’s trajectory. Someone should really […]
