In 2005, there were 191 million international migrants, or people living outside their native countries, according to data from the United Nations. Compare this to as many as 210 million Chinese migrant workers moving from their rural homes to cities, and it's easy to see why some immigration experts call it the largest mass migration in human history.

As the death toll continues to climb in Sichuan and surrounding provinces, it is hard not to think back to the Tangshan earthquake of 1976. That quake, which unexpectedly struck the heavily populated city in China's northeast, left an estimated 250,000 dead. Just a month before the Tangshan quake the FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW published a tragically prescientarticle, recounting China's chronic seismic troubles in the wake of a 1975 quake in Liaoning and a 1976 quake in Yunnan. It is easy to forget that China, in spite of its large population, covers a geographically inhospitable region, straddling deserts, mountain chains and several fault lines.

Seen from an airplane at 35,000 feet, Mongolia is a vast and predominantly empty landscape. It’s hard to believe that it has become the scene of one of Asia’s most spectacular real-estate booms. In the last 12 months, housing sales and prices in the capital, Ulan Bator have grown exponentially. Similarly, rental yields in the subarctic city of one million people have doubled, eclipsing growth rates of Beijing and Hong Kong. According to Tsenduren Bordukh of Mongolian Properties, the country’s largest real-estate agency and developer of the luxury Olympic Residence, real-estate price levels will grow “well into the next decade.”

As a non-expert in urban theory, I can hardly presume to marshal a surefooted command of postmodern and postcolonial analysis in critiquing Michael Dutton’s elaborate theoretical edifice. One thing, however, is certain: Beijing Time is a terrible read. Since misery loves company, perhaps I should inflict a bit of the prose upon our readers.

Tokyo—Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and Chinese President Hu Jintao were all smiles this week as Mr. Hu toured Japan and the two men did their best to improve strained relations between their two nations. But political conditions within Japan make it unlikely that the two leaders will make significant progress in solving the contentious issues in the relationship.

Considering the number and frequency of the suicide attacks taking place, there was little doubt that the Pakistan government had no option but to open negotiations with the insurgents in Waziristan and even the established terrorists. I do not subscribe to the theory that “one does not negotiate with terrorists." One might as well say, “one does not negotiate with the enemy.” Who else will one negotiate with, if not those that pose a threat? Having stated as much, there is also little doubt that negotiations, particularly with active terrorists is a highly complicated and delicate process.

While the cyclone that killed possibly 100,000 people in Burma is on everyone’s mind, it must not be forgotten that on May 10, the Burmese people will go to the polls for the first time in almost 20 years, to vote “yes” or “no” on the adoption of the military junta’s proposed constitution. Apparently, it doesn’t matter much to the junta that perhaps up to 50,000 of Burma’s people were killed by Cyclone Nargis, and millions made homeless. They have put off polling in cyclone-affected areas, but are proceeding with the national referendum.

When tropical Cyclone Nargis ripped into southern Burma on May 3, it wrought untold havoc throughout much of the country. Early indications are that more than 22,000 lives were lost in five of Burma’s 14 divisions and states—Irrawaddy, Rangoon, Pegu, Mon and Karen. In Bogalay, in the heart of the Irrawaddy delta, 10,000 people died when a tidal surge 3.5 meters high destroyed 95% of the town’s houses. Across the many affected areas, 41,000 people are still missing. Moreover, it is abundantly clear that the toll on human life could soon escalate. In towns and villages devastated by the storm, electricity supplies have been cut, water is contaminated, food is scarce, and up to one million people are living without shelter.

The world experienced a surreal moment in the five-year, multilateral effort to denuclearize North Korea last week. Just as American diplomats were finalizing a deal in Pyongyang on April 24 to implement the dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear programs, U.S. intelligence agencies were privately briefing members of Congress and showing a video they say is proof of North Korean involvement with the secret Syrian construction site that Israel not-so-secretly bombed last September. The video images, according to the U.S., are clear evidence that North Korea has been helping Syria for years to build a carbon copy of its own plutonium-producing reactor at Yongbyon.

Burma’s military dictators now say Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest or in prison for 12 of the past 18 years, can cast her vote in the May 10 constitutional referendum—a bitter irony if ever there was one. Ms. Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy are calling on voters to reject the military-backed constitution, calling it “undemocratic.” Meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council perpetuates the charade that the referendum is legitimate by asking the ruling junta to respect “fundamental political freedoms” at the polls.

Want to win votes in a Muslim country in Asia? Keep your Islamic agenda hidden. This is the lesson taught by recent elections in Malaysia and Pakistan, among other Islamic nations. In the Malaysian parliamentary election last month, the group known as PAS (Parti Islam se-Malaysia) increased the number of its seats from six to 23 while the governing National Front, led by Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi suffered its heaviest defeat since 1969.

The news that North Korea was assisting Syria with a nuclear power plant on the Euphrates—indeed that the Syrian plant, before Israel bombed it into nonexistence last September, appeared to be a near replica of North Korea’s Yongbyon reactor—is bad news not only for efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, but for being able to keep planned “peaceful” nuclear projects in the Middle East from becoming the next set of bombing targets.

As the world’s attention turns to Buddhist protests against Chinese rule and cultural domination in Tibet, another neighbor of China is protesting in a less peaceful manner. In Mongolia, anti-Chinese sentiment has taken a nasty turn. The ultra-nationalist group Blue Mongolia, for example, shaves the heads of women caught sleeping with Chinese men. “It is for their own good,” says Gansuren Damdinsuren, a Blue Mongolia board member. “A small nation can only survive by keeping its blood pure.”

Human rights organizations and others have, rightly, used the Beijing Olympics as an opportunity to shine a bright light on China’s abuses in Tibet, as well as China’s human rights violations against its own citizens. Protests have taken place in London, Paris, Delhi, Katmandu, San Francisco—indeed all over the world the suffering of Tibetans under Chinese rule has never been more public.

Taipei — A rumor that recently made the rounds here was that China may withdraw half of its missiles aimed at Taiwan before Ma Ying-jeou’s May 20 inauguration, as a goodwill gesture to the incoming administration. President-elect Ma himself has mentioned the missiles repeatedly, saying that a condition for cross-Strait peace talks is that Beijing must first withdraw them.

On April 10, the people of Nepal voted to elect representatives to a constituent assembly which will write a new constitution and decide what future role—if any—the monarchy will have. Preliminary results show that the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (CPN-M) is leading in almost half of the seats where counting has begun. Leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal, adorned in marigold garlands, vermilion smeared on forehead, has already made a victory speech, promising to “lead the country towards lasting peace based on a new ideology.” This is a promise that Nepalis most desperately hope he will keep.

Tokyo — Japan’s stock markets are caught in a vicious cycle, a downward spiral of take-over fears and flagging stock values that politicians and regulators seem incapable of bringing to an end. Sadly, the biggest losers here are not those who play the market, but those Japanese households that are unable to rely on the markets to provide an adequate return on the pension-fund assets invested there.

In November 2007, Yahoo! Inc. did what it could have done two years ago when it became known that the company had aided the 2005 conviction of Chinese journalist Shi Tao, now serving 10 years in prison for “revealing state secrets.” In a legal settlement, Yahoo pledged to provide an undisclosed amount of “financial, humanitarian and legal support” to the families of Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning, another dissident jailed in 2003 for 10 years with the help of email data supplied by Yahoo. This came immediately after Yahoo cofounder and chief executive officer, Jerry Yang, made a dramatic public apology to Shi Tao’s mother, Gao Qinsheng, at a United States Congressional hearing. He bowed solemnly to her three times as tears rolled down her cheeks.