The global financial crisis is threatening the delicate bargain that the Chinese, Russian, and Venezuelan regimes have struck with their citizens.
Joshua Kurlantzick
Joshua Kurlantzick is a senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a former senior correspondent for The American Prospect. He’s written five previous books on China and Southeast Asia, including one on China’s soft power. His latest book is titled Beijing’s Global Media Offensive.
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Tomorrow, the World
Flush with cash and ancient hatreds, American evangelicals are incubating a Christian right in secular Europe.
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The China Syndrome
On a trip to Cambodia last winter, I sat down for breakfast with Loh Swee Ping, a Malaysian-Chinese journalist based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. Between large bites of spare ribs, a Chinese breakfast, Loh told me that she moved to Phnom Penh nearly a decade ago, after the factions in Cambodia’s civil war signed […]
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Continental Shift
This past weekend, Beijing, normally a hectic and polluted city, shut down. Streets were closed, traffic rerouted or banned, all to make way for an unusual event: A two-day summit of African heads of state and Chinese leaders, highlighted by billboards around the city depicting giraffes, African sunsets, and warriors. The event attracted the leaders […]
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What Lies Beneath
Joern Skov Nielsen surely qualifies as one of the more obscure government ministers in the world. Head of Greenland’s Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum, he operates out of an office in Nuuk, capital of Greenland, a semiautonomous region of Denmark with fewer than 60,000 people living on a landmass that covers more than 800,000 square […]
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Trade Off
On a recent visit to China, U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab hit all the familiar themes. China’s massive trade surplus. Its currency, which many U.S. officials believe is purposely undervalued. But then she made an unusual request. China, Schwab declared, “can and should have a role in getting these [global] trade talks back on track.” […]
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Patron State
As Havana and Miami wait for further news about the health of Fidel Castro, his long-serving deputy, younger brother Raul Castro, has emerged from the shadows. The Bush administration may believe that Raul, lacking his brother’s charisma, will be only a placeholder as Cuba transitions to democracy; the administration has boosted its financial outlay on […]
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Indian Summer
Dharamsala, India — The path to the Friday night Shabbat services passes some unusual landmarks. First, my Israeli acquaintance and I take a left at a horde of beggars who seem to be suffering from leprosy and are crawling on the ground on stumps of limbs. Then, we follow a rocky path past sari-clad women […]
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The Philippines: Power Outage
Manila, The Philippines — For a man who might be jailed at any moment, Harry Roque Jr., appeared very relaxed when I met him in Manila in early March. Dressed in a white barong tagalog — the long, delicately embroidered shirt worn untucked by Philippine men — he welcomed me into his law office, crowded […]
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Fear of Flying
On December 7, Rigoberto Alpizar, a 44-year-old man with a history of mental disorder, was killed, in a hail of bullets, by two air marshals at Miami International Airport. After the shooting, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman said that Alpizar had run forward in the cabin while the plane was on the runway, yelling […]