Fresh off a three-day tour of India, Hillary Clinton arrived on Bali Thursday to attend a regional forum hosted by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean). Since her first visit in 2009, the United States has taken an increasingly active role in regional politics, signing treaties, strengthening ties and speaking out on …
China
China’s Religious War: Cardinal Zen Talks Beijing and the Vatican
For the third time in a year, China has declared war on the Vatican, according to one preeminent Cardinal. The Chinese government-sanctioned Catholic Church ordained Joseph Huang Bingzhang as a Catholic bishop July 14 in the city of Shantou, in southern Guangdong province. The move was made despite the express opposition of the Pope. …
A Powerhouse Province Wants to Relax China’s One-Child Policy—But Don’t Bet on a Baby Boom
China’s richest and most populous province, Guangdong, has reportedly asked Beijing for permission to relax the one-child policy. Yesterday, Zhang Feng, the head of its population commission, revealed that the province is pitching a pilot project that would allow some families to have two children, reports the BBC. Under the …
Couch Potato Briefing: Rambo’s Afghan Warning, Women-Sex-and-Cars, and More
Global Spin’s weekly selection of five rental movies to bring you up to speed on world events, presented by Tony Karon and Ishaan Tharoor
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0qeJqC5dFA&feature=related]
Rambo III
Anyone wanting to understand why the U.S. continues to struggle in its efforts to subdue Afghanistan a decade …
How Will China’s Food Supply Weather the Year of Drought?
In China food supplies and food prices are deeply sensitive topics. So by the time the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization issued a special alert warning in February that a prolonged drought in the North China Plain was a “potentially serious problem” for the country’s winter wheat crop, China’s leaders had already …
Global Briefing, June 1, 2011: The Thrill is Gone
Nuclear Fallout — In an essay for Dawn.com Rafia Zakaria mulls the meaning of ‘the bomb’ in Pakistan’s collective consciousness. “The bomb that was supposed to deter and defeat has been unable to frighten anyone into leaving us alone,” she writes. “It has revealed, instead, the flimsy remains of our national pride and a confused, …
Chinese Authorities Try to Limit Protests in Inner Mongolia
Parts of Inner Mongolia, the region that forms much of China’s northern border, have been put under tight control following protests touched off by the hit-and-run death of a herder who was run over by a coal truck. The killing of Mergen, who like some ethnic Mongolians goes by a single name, has raised concerns about development and …
‘The Hornet, the Bird and the Tortoise’: Detained Chinese Rights Lawyer Pens Fable
Li Tiantian, a Chinese human rights lawyer who went missing in February, re-emerged this week. She announced her release in this evocative (if entirely allegorical) post:
It’s been a while since I’ve been in touch. First, let me tell you a story.
One day, a hornet worried unreasonably that a little bird would stir up its nest. (As
…
Chinese City Shaken by Multiple Bomb Blasts
Three coordinated explosions rocked a southern Chinese city Thursday morning, injuring at least five people, according to state media reports. The bombs exploded near municipal buildings in Fuzhou, a city of 3.9 million in Jiangxi province, injuring at least five people. (Update: State media now say two people have died and seven are …
U.S., Chinese Interests on Display in Karachi Raid
As news emerged Monday about the attack on a naval base in Karachi, it appeared that Pakistan’s ally China might also be caught up in the mayhem. Some initial reports suggested that Chinese military personnel were being held hostage. That news was later denied by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. My colleague Omar Waraich’s story …
Facing the Threat of Piracy, China Starts to Talk Like a Superpower
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 …
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 …
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 …