On a visit to the U.S. this week, China’s top military commander Chen Bingde suggested that the international coalition patrolling the Gulf of Aden and the waters off the coast of Somalia ought to take decisive action against pirate dens on land. So far, the counter-piracy strategy has focused on the pirate “mother-ships,” usually …
Asia
Fukushima: Can Japan’s Largest Power Company Survive Its Disaster?
The people running the show at Tokyo Electric Power Company, the embattled utility that is struggling to shut down its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, were probably not out enjoying the sunny, late spring Friday in Tokyo. It’s been a bad week for the Japan’s largest utility, even given the astoundingly bad couple of months …
Protester Pelts Father of China’s Online Censorship Regime
China’s “Great Firewall,” the system of online controls that keep Internet users from seeing information the Beijing government deems sensitive, was built and is maintained by unknown thousands of programmers and engineers. So it is perhaps unfair to give one man credit for creating the censorship regime. Fang Binxing, a computer …
Global Briefing: Hollow Rhetoric and Bad Ideas
Obama’s Cairo II: At 11:45am EST, President Obama will deliver his latest speech on the Mideast from the State Department. TIME and Global Spin’s Tony Karon writes that the Washington venue is important: “Obama’s Mideast ‘reset’ speech is not aimed primarily at the newly empowered Arab public; its primary audience is Washington, where the …
Could the Chinese Profit from the Strauss-Kahn Scandal?
As jailed Frenchman Dominique Strauss-Kahn submitted his resignation as managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), China quickly positioned itself as a possible beneficiary. On Thursday, Chinese state media wondered aloud whether the next IMF leader should be Chinese. One candidate bandied about by the official Chinese …
In Kazakhstan, The World’s First Ever “Mafia” Suicide Bombing?
Vast, resource-rich Kazakhstan prides itself on being the most stable and tranquil of the Central Asian states — which are to varying degrees all burdened by corrupt elites, ethnic hatreds and the specter of Islamist militancy. But at 9:30 am local time Tuesday a suicide bomber detonated explosives outside the offices of the country’s …
Amid U.S. Doubts, Pakistan Finds Old Friends in China
The visit to China by Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has been widely described as an effort to seek support from an old friend at a time when Pakistan’s government and military are facing difficult questions over the degree of official complicity in sheltering Osama bin Laden. But even as China has defended Pakistan’s …
Al-Qaeda’s Alleged New Leader: Who Is Saif al-Adel?
Terrorism expert Peter Bergen reports on CNN International that the Egyptian Saif al-Adel has been appointed as a “caretaker” leader of al-Qaeda, following the death of its emir Osama bin Laden. A Pakistani newspaper article datelined from Rawalpindi, the bustling city near Islamabad that’s home to Pakistan’s army headquarters, …
To Be Young, Rich, Chinese — and Hated
Deng Xiaoping, the architect of China’s economic reforms, is reported to have exclaimed: “To get rich is glorious.” But an annual report naming China’s richest people has in recent years been noteworthy more for the strenuous effort tycoons and property magnates seem to make to ensure their names don’t appear on the list. As …
The Saudi-Iranian Cold War: Is This the Future of the Middle East?
It’s easy to overlook the killing of a single person in violence-plagued Pakistan, not least in Karachi, a seaside metropolis ever in danger of boiling over into sectarian bloodshed. But the murder of a Saudi diplomat by unknown assailants ought to raise eyebrows. Saudi Arabia’s tangled, pervasive influence in Pakistan has been well …
A Month of Scandals for Beijing’s Forbidden City
Beijing’s Forbidden City gets its name from the fact that it was once off limits to anyone who did not have the permission to enter from the Chinese emperor. It’s also known as the gu gong, or former palace, a firm reminder that such elitism is a thing of the past, never mind that the Communist Party’s leadership compound of …
Why West Bengal Isn’t East Berlin
It is an almost irresistible comparison. When Mamata Banerjee triumphed over the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in recent state elections in West Bengal, she ended the rule of the world’s longest continuous democratically elected Communist government. Here’s how Swapan Dasgupta described it to the Financial Times:
“For many
…
Global Briefing: Crimes and Misdemeanors
L’affaire DSK: The arrest of International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on sexual-assault charges in New York has plunged France into a bout of “soul searching” and probably removes the greatest threat to unpopular French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s rule in upcoming elections. TIME’s global business correspondent Michael …