833 Results

Now that the closing ceremonies have ended and the international attention has gone away, the real Olympic challenge begins. China made enormous progress dealing with its environmental issues during the Olympics. Can China maintain and advance these environmental gains after the Olympics, benefiting people throughout China?
Posted August 28, 2008

Permatang Pauh, Malaysia—Anwar Ibrahim’s impressive victory in the Permatang Pauh by-election brings the possibility of a new government for Malaysia closer—if only by a little. "This is the people's victory," Mr. Anwar told a crowd of supporters after winning more than 66% of some 47,000 votes cast. "Permatang Pauh has given a clear signal to the leadership of this country. We demand change. We want freedom. We don't want to live with corruption and oppression."
Posted August 27, 2008

China is a country run by engineers, and the tremendous success of the Beijing Games can, from the Chinese perspective at least, be seen as a triumph of engineering. The Chinese central government established a blueprint years ago for how the Games would play out—from how the Olympics venues would be constructed to how many gold medals the country would win—and stuck to their plan with an uncanny tenacity, even in the face of strong criticism, as the Games approached. The rest of the world, with whatever reservations remain, can be nothing less than enormously impressed by how well this plan was realized.
Posted August 26, 2008

For years, whenever faced with a difficult decision, China’s leaders have used a convenient way out: Let’s wait until after the Olympics. At least two Communist Party Congresses, where national strategy is debated and fixed, have danced around the major issues for the past decade. The full legitimization of private property, the redefinition of the role of the Communist Party, the development of a credible system of social protection, and the much-talked-of decentralization have all been touched upon but left for “after the Olympics.” So, what is going to happen when the Games are over and the Olympics excuse is gone?
Posted August 23, 2008

In 1976, China’s disastrous Cultural Revolution ended. In 1977, the system of college entrance exams, suspended in 1966, resumed. For our generation, that resumption symbolized the ending of a hopeless age. In the fall of 1978, I passed my entrance exams and went to university. I’d just left a collective farm. Like millions of others during the Cultural Revolution, we were sent to the farm to be “re-educated” by the peasant class, which Mao believed had higher moral standards. The day I left the farm was the happiest day of my life.
Posted August 21, 2008.

The Punjab has spoken. The provincial assembly in Lahore was the first assembly to call upon President Pervez Musharraf to resign or endure a no confidence vote in the national parliament by an overwhelming majority of 321 to 25. This was the beginning of the end for Mr. Musharraf, who will likely resign in the next few days, once his safety is guaranteed, either inside Pakistan or in exile abroad.
Posted August 16, 2008.

Media reports say the Chinese people overwhelmingly support the Olympic Games and the government. Yet last week, long-term residents evicted from their homes clashed with neighborhood guards near Tiananmen Square, and two men in western China killed 16 paramilitary troops. In late spring and summer, there were bus bombings, police killings, and large-scale demonstrations across China. One protest attracted an estimated 30,000 citizens. In light of the antigovernment turbulence in the country, should we believe that the Chinese people are truly enthusiastic about the Games?
Posted August 15, 2008

During a recent trip to Asia, President Bush pressed North Korea to dismantle its nuclear armaments, limit its ballistic missile activity and improve its respect for human rights. But as the U.S. government marches toward improved relations with North Korea—including dropping Pyongyang as a sponsor of terrorism as early as this month—the Bush administration ignores one of its most important obligations: requiring North Korea to account for over 8,000 American Prisoners of War and Missing in Action from the Korean War (1950-1953.)
Posted August 14, 2008

For two dollars, the curious can clamber up the Tiananmen rostrum and stand where Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic in 1949. From this vantage, one gets the same view the Great Helmsman had of the legendary square, and some of the hulking buildings that would come to symbolize the People's Republic: the Great Hall, the National Museum, and the Monument to the People's Heroes, a towering monument to class struggle that faces north, piercing the feng shui of the city's ancient central axis. Like a museum itself, none of this imposing arrangement has changed since C save for the addition of Mao's mausoleum in 1977, and a phalanx of video cameras C making the square feel like what it was meant to be: a physical manifestation of state power determined to maintain an old vision of the future.
Posted July 30, 2008

Much of the West’s fascination with China comes not just from the scale of its transformation, but the Maoist basket-case baseline from which the economy and society has made such a spectacular recovery. Chinese contemporary art, in particular, has made several fortunes from Cultural Revolution imagery, and English-language memoirs from that period number in the dozens, from Wild Swans to Son of the Revolution.
Posted August 11, 2008