Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
As recently as early March Bo Xilai was arguably the most popular politician in China – destined for a seat on the country’s all-powerful, nine-member Politburo Standing Committee later this year. Today he is under investigation for “serious discipline violations” – having been fired from his high-profile job as Communist Party boss of the thriving… Read more.
China reached an earth-shifting milestone last year when, for the first time in history, more than half of its 1.3 billion people were reported living in cities than in the countryside. Clearly this is not as dramatic a movement as the Long March (1934-35), but it could prove equally significant in the epic annals of Chinese… Read more.
China was uncharacteristically bold in demanding “a greater voice” on the world stage at last week’s summit on Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in Honolulu. But I see no cause for the alarm this caused in some regions. After all, given the transformative mendicancy involved in the EU now competing with the U.S. to have China fund… Read more.
Leave it to the hypocrisy and double standards that govern international relations to make even Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi seem sympathetic. For, given the way Western leaders are lining up to condemn and sanction him for his crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, you’d think he had committed the worst human rights abuses since the Holocaust. Hell,… Read more.
The Bahamas is having a precedent-setting dispute with China over a development agreement, which calls for Chinese men to compose the vast majority of workers on a $2.5 billion project (Baha Mar) that China is funding. (FYI: Baha Mar is to comprise six hotels with approximately 3,500 rooms and condominiums, a 100,000-Sq-Ft casino, 200,000-Sq-Ft of… Read more.
Western leaders have made a mockery of their condemnation of the brutal crackdown on Tibetan monks by heeding China’s warning against meeting with the Dalai Lama in any official capacity. In fact, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown appeased the Chinese by refusing to meet with him at No. 10, choosing instead to meet only at the residence of the… Read more.
Google won international praise last week for merely announcing that it intends “to review our business operations in China” after Chinese agents hacked into the Google email accounts of human-rights activists – who are deemed to be enemies of the state. Meanwhile, far too few pundits are bothering to note that these hackers just did to… Read more.
Never before in the history of mankind has a country done so much for so many in so little time as China has done to lift hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty over the past 60 years. Indeed, what can one say about China; except to marvel at the speed and ease… Read more.
No doubt you’ve heard the indignant whining by Western reporters covering the Olympics about the number of Internet sites (related to Tibet and other embarrassing political matters) that have been blocked by the Chinese government. But I find most of their complaints in this respect impudent and patently disingenuous. After all, these Western reporters accepted their coveted assignments knowing full… Read more.
The new Cold War: China’s economic invasion In 1962, the Soviet Union threatened America’s sphere of influence by basing missiles in Cuba. President John F. Kennedy threatened nuclear confrontation if it did not retreat. The Soviet Union blinked, and the Cold War stayed cold. Fast-forward to today, and China is posing a similar threat. Except that instead of missiles, China is deploying… Read more.
