Asia

Well, amazing as it may seem to some, I may have made a misjudgment: the Dalai Lama’s representatives are here in Beijing meeting with Chinese officials for the next couple of days and there are some signs that they may actually achieve something. In a earlier, rather gloomy post, I opined that there was little chance of success for what …

It is becoming clear that the tightening on entry visas by the Chinese authorities has been much wider than previously suspected. Austin is writing a story on the issue that will be out soon on the time.com website, but the point was forcefully brought home to me a couple of days ago when I was chatting with a senior person in the …

In response to my post about the Weng’an riots below, commenter Zhangshan made this observation:

…I will not be so quick to agree that there is ‘no way’ for the central government to reassert control. If we look at the past few years, that is exactly what the central government has slowly been doing. The sacking of (former mayor) Chen

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Every day of the year, according to Chinese government figures, “mass incidents” occur all over the country, usually involving some sort of confrontation between the authorities and ordinary citizens. Although there is considerable debate about what exactly constitutes a “mass incident,” even senior government officials concede that …

Uber-chef/restauranteur Daniel Boulud is in town to oversee the soft-ish opening of his Maison Boulud restaurant in the restored former U.S. Legation (see here for a previous post about this pretty amazing project). While interviewing the amiable (particularly for a chef: no Gordon Ramsay he, though I haven’t worked in his kitchen) Chef …






 Tell me again what it was holding the Olympics in Beijing was supposed to accomplish? A bit of political reform in China? A touch of liberalization? With the whole world watching during the run up, China would show its best face, not its nastier side? Wasn’t that the riff from both Beijing and the IOC?
Never …

I am just back from a trip to the United States. I usually try to do all I can to avoid getting inside the domestic airline system there and more or less succeeded this time, taking trains up and down the east coast. I have spent a great deal of time flying within two large nations in the last decade, China and Indonesia and, in terms of …

Are you a John Woo fan? Now’s your chance to ask him anything you want. Legendary film director Woo is known for Hong Kong action classics such as The Killer and A Better Tomorrow, as well as Hollywood blockbusters Face/Off and Mission: Impossible II. His latest film, Red Cliff, is the most expensive movie ever made in Asia. Click here …

The theme of TIME’s Summer Journey issue this year is sports and games, and there are some China-related stories worth checking out. Hannah Beech writes about China’s sports schools, Bill Powell looks at street basketball and Hugh Porter examines the country’s fascination with snooker.

In last week’s issue of TIME Asia guest writer Jiajia Liu, who was born in China and now lives in London, wrote about her feelings of pride for her homeland.

I left China in 1989, just after Tiananmen, when I was 7. My mother and I traveled to London to join my father, a Ph.D. student sponsored by the Chinese government. I grew up in

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One of the big questions emerging out of Beijing’s decision to hike fuel prices last week is what effect it will have on inflation in China. Inflation has been a consistent headache for Chinese authorities over the last year. The rising price of food, particularly pork, has been the biggest contributor to rises in the consumer price …