What do Chinese artist-activist Ai Weiwei and the iconic sage Confucius have in common? They've both recently disappeared from public sight without explanation.
Ai went missing on April 3. Only on April 7 did government officials acknowledge that he had been detained as he was preparing to board a flight...
Posted March 24, 2011 | 20:56:02 (EST)
When you bought your last Apple iPod, you may have been aware that it had been manufactured at a factory in China, perhaps the Foxconn plant in Shenzhen in the province of Guangzhou. (Let's put aside for the moment the working conditions there.) You may have been aware too that...
Posted March 9, 2011 | 14:26:11 (EST)
This past Saturday, Premier Wen Jiabao delivered his 2011 "Report on the Work of the Government" to the 3,000 delegates gathered in Beijing for the National People's Congress. The report, delivered annually, is comparable to U.S. President's State of the Union Address, laying out the successes of the...
Posted February 15, 2011 | 13:30:43 (EST)
China's drought is bad, the worst in at least 60 years. Roughly 12.5 million acres of winter wheat crop have been damaged. And a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) alert reported last week that 2.57 million people and 2.79 million livestock are suffering from shortage of...
Posted February 1, 2011 | 18:03:15 (EST)
In 2004, there were 38 golf courses in the Beijing area. Worried about land grabs by developers, the Chinese government that year issued a moratorium on the development of new courses. Just two weeks ago, however, the Southern Weekend (Nanfang zhoumo) reported that China's Department of Homeland, after...
Posted January 18, 2011 | 12:02:23 (EST)
It's an epidemic. Everyday you wake up and read about someone else who's had a "Sputnik moment." Thomas Friedman may have been the first (September 2009); an incubatory year later and the number of its victims mounts. In December of 2010 alone, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Senator...
Posted May 13, 2011 | 12:20:17 (EST)