Asia

Here’s our take.

And the babies are out taking the air…..

One of the recurring themes from last year’s earthquake in Sichuan is official corruption and the extent it contributed to the collapse of substandard schools, killing a still unknown number of children. Another, less discussed issue, is the degree to which many local officials in the disaster zone were victims themselves.

In Beichuan, …

It’s only fitting that at a serious-minded event like this weekend’s Boao Forum, which China envisions as a tropical equivalent to Davos, the biggest news would be some ill-considered comments by film star Jackie Chan. Chan told an audience that, “I’m not sure if it’s good to have freedom or not. If you’re too free, you’re like the way …

So God –or at least mother nature–appears to have decided that China’s maritime trade is important enough to merit personal intervention. According to this story from Xinhua, thousands of dolpins spontaneously decided to intevene and stop Somali pirates from attacking Chinese merchant vessels. Money sentence: “The pirates could only …

Here’s the story I mentioned below, which did indeed come out fairly gloomy.  They don’t call economics the dismal science for nothing.

Here’s a link to the latest paper on China’s economy by Nouriel Roubini of Columbia University, aka Dr. Doom. As I wrote a while back, some of his analysis of the Chinese economy seemed to be done from so far away that he missed some of the factors that genuinely do make it different fromits fully capitalist brethren. This time he wrote …

In a recent report, the Ministry of Health said that the HIV virus has become the deadliest infectious disease in China. Here‘s our take on how the official report compares to research conducted by the UN and other organizations.

Earlier this year we mentioned a naval encounter between China and India that turned out to be fictitious. But a rivalry over the Indian Ocean between the two countries is still very real, as our colleague Howard Chua-Eoan reports:

…the presence of the Chinese and Indian warships underlines Beijing’s and New Delhi’s intense economic

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Spend a little time traveling around China and you’ll recognize temple fatigue syndrome. A relative of the New York/London/Paris sensation of being overwhelmed by museums, TFS hits when you’ve visited far too many temples. Your surroundings should be inspiring, but instead your mind wanders. You think about what’s for lunch or why …

A slightly belated heads up for a couple of recent stories. One here on the Chinese online literature phenomenon in part spawned by a desire to avoid the censor. And one here on one of the world’s great unknown fossil museums. Or is it?