Regular readers of stories from China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency know that relations between China and nearly every country whose leader visits Beijing merit a positive appraisal. “Malawi treasures its friendship with China and is grateful for China’s selfless support for Malawi’s national development,” gushed one …
In a country that claims five millennia of history, what’s a mere century? Oct. 10 marks the 100th anniversary of the start of China’s 1911 Xinhai Revolution, which ended 2,000 years of imperial rule. The fall of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) was precipitated by an uprising in the central Chinese city of Wuchang (now part of …
Less than a decade ago, I was going through airport security in southwestern China. The airport guy took a look at my laptop and began to chuckle. “Pingguo,” he said, pointing to the bitten fruit on the cover, “Apple.” What was my computer doing emblazoned with a healthy snack? What would these crazy foreigners think of …
Kham is on fire. This year, five Tibetan monks have set themselves ablaze in the ethnically Tibetan-dominated region of China’s Sichuan province that is part of an area called Kham in Tibetan. The most recent self-immolation was on Oct. 3 in a market in the town of Aba (in Mandarin) or Ngaba (in Tibetan), according to exile Tibetan …
He has never been to Tibet, never breathed the thin air of the high plateau, nor spun a prayer wheel in the shadow of the great Buddhist monasteries. Yet on Aug. 8, 43-year-old Lobsang Sangay was sworn in as the head of the Tibetan government-in-exile. Born in a refugee camp in India and educated in the U.S., Sangay holds no passport or …
The Irrawaddy River is the lifeblood of Burma. Its waters spring from the Myitsone confluence of two rivers in the country’s northern Kachin state, a largely Christian ethnic minority territory whose rebel militia has over the decades battled the Burmese military. A few years ago when Burma’s ruling junta agreed to a $3.6 …
Four years ago, as columns of burgundy-robed monks marched peacefully through Burma’s commercial capital Rangoon, security forces opened fire, slaughtering at least 31 people, arresting thousands more and extinguishing hopes that the ruling junta was receptive to political reform. On September 26, dozens of Burmese again gathered …
All will be clear when the Dalai Lama is around 90 years old. That was the message from the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader over the weekend, as he convened a conference of various Tibetan Buddhist sects in the Indian hill station of Dharamsala. Although the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, 76, is in good health, the issue of what will …
Because we are not limited, as Western men are, to business suits, women have greater discretion when it comes to semiformal attire. But it was only when I attended a World Economic Forum dinner in northeastern China that I discovered that the dress code for ladies extended to tablecloths. Dotted around the banquet hall in the …
Last year, a day before the imprisoned Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in absentia in Norway, a group of Chinese scholars with ties to the Chinese Culture Ministry announced the victor in the inaugural Confucius Peace Prize. According to the 100,000-yuan (around $16,130 at today’s exchange rate) …
The streets of the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian, which has been hosting the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Annual Meeting of the New Champions, are lined with cheery red banners that read in English: “Cooperation, Harmony and Win For All.” Yet even as business leaders flocked to sessions on topics like “new …
For a country whose language is shaded in infinite shades of gray, Japanese government ministers sure do make a lot of gaffes. Last Saturday, Japan’s new trade minister Yoshio Hachiro quit after visiting the tsunami-devastated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant zone and calling it a “town of death without a soul in sight,” …
China’s bureaucracy has a lot to handle these days: rooting out corruption, facilitating global trade, censoring independent thoughts online that might “endanger state security.” But on Sept. 6 the Chinese Health Ministry issued a 41-page set of guidelines that was two years in the making. The topic? Technical Guidelines on …
