After months of tension over their rival claims in the South China Sea, the Philippines and China are trying to smooth over some of their differences this week, and the chief salve appears to be money. Philippine President Benigno Aquino III arrived in Beijing Tuesday for his first visit to China since taking office last year. He …
Hu Jintao
Is China’s Ex-Leader Jiang Zemin Dead? Local Censors Don’t Want Any Speculation
Is he or isn’t he? Around 11 pm on July 5, China’s blogosphere began trading in rumors that Jiang Zemin, the former leader of the People’s Republic, had died. By midnight local searches on this topic had become very popular. But within half an hour, the heavy hand of China’s censors descended. Chinese language searches for …
Can China Help Avert a Looming War in Sudan?
When you’re wanted by the International Criminal Court and subject to possible arrest when abroad, travel can be a problem. So perhaps it’s not surprising that Omar Hassan al-Bashir trip to Beijing this week ran into problems from the start. Sudan’s president arrived a day late after his flight from Tehran was forced to turn back …
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 …
The Dear Leader Does Beijing. But Why Is He in China Again?
What leader of a hungry, isolated regime wouldn’t want to enjoy a little vacation in China? On Wednesday, an armored train carrying North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and his 70-person entourage is believed to have arrived in Beijing, where the man known as the Dear Leader is presumably in town to meet with Chinese President Hu …
In Talks With China on Human Rights, ‘Stability’ Becomes U.S. Buzzword
U.S. officials seem to have found a new buzzword when talking about human rights in China—stability. As the two countries’ Strategic and Economic Dialogue opened Monday in Washington, both Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised the prospect of greater domestic stability in China through improved human …
In Human Rights Talks, U.S. Raises Concerns About China’s Crackdown
After two days of talks in Beijing on human rights, a U.S. representative expressed concern about the recent crackdown in China and the lack of information about several activists being held incommunicado by police. “In recent months we’ve seen a serious backsliding on human rights and a discussion of these negative trends dominated the …
Why the BRICS Summit Won’t Accomplish Anything
Yep, just what the world needs—another international summit. On Thursday, leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa convened under the palm trees of China’s Hainan Island for the third BRICS summit. The acronym was coined back in 2001 by an economist at Goldman Sachs to describe the bright emerging economies of Brazil, …