Search

Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town BY BARBARA DEMICK. Random House, 2020, 352 pp. In the early twentieth century, during a period when Tibet was effectively [...]

China's Age of Abundance: Origins, Ascendance, and Aftermath by Wang Feng challenges the notion that China's economic rise is not significant. The book argues that China's economic growth since Mao Zedong's death in 1976 is comparable to major historical events like the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution. Wang provides evidence of China's economic impact, such as increased food supply and improved average height. The article discusses China's economic rise, highlighting the underestimation of its leaders and the role of grassroots initiatives and public desires. It also explores the impact of historical events and the importance of openness to new ideas. However, the article cautions that China may face challenges in the future, including a declining population and difficult political decisions. [Extracted from the article]

B&A B&A BOOKS & the ARTS Worldwide Devastation The history of the British Empire's violence BY HOWARD W. FRENCH IN 2005, BRITAIN'S THEN - LABOUR PRIME minister, Gordon Brown, chose the backdrop of Tanzania to make a dramatic statement about his nation's unmatched record of imperial conquest and rule. As Elkins makes clear throughout Legacy of Violence, the racialized aspect of empire - meaning clear notions of Britain's Anglo-Saxon superiority over its Black, brown, and so-called yellow subjects - has been present from the beginning. This resettlement campaign became what Elkins calls "the British Empire's largest forced migration since the era of the trade in enslaved people", with "573,000 people, nearly 90 percent of whom were Chinese…relocated into 480 resettlements." The book marks a return to the scene of a previous battle for Elkins, whose Pulitzer Prize - winning Imperial Reckoning (2005) documented Britain's colonial atrocities in Kenya by mining the long-buried official archives with such thoroughness that the British government was obliged to issue an official statement of regret for its actions in the 1950s and '60s. [Extracted from the article]

DO NOT DISTURBThe Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone BadBy Michela Wrong In 1996, when I was a Times reporter in Africa, an insurrection broke out [...]

In recent months, China has pressed its claims to the seas beside it with unusual aggression, resulting in a long series of tense maritime standoffs. Its neighbors fear miscalculation and [...]

ON OPPOSITE SIDES of the globe, two debates that will profoundly affect the future of the United States, and indeed the world, are raging. One of them has become shrilly [...]

AT 82, THE FAMED BIOLOGIST E. O. Wilson arrived in Mozambique last summer with a modest agenda-save a ravaged park; identify its many undiscovered species; create a virtual textbook that [...]

ALL ACROSS AFRICA, new tracks are being laid, highways built, ports deepened, commercial contracts signed--all on an unprecedented scale, and led by China, whose appetite for commodities seems insatiable. Do [...]

As an 18-year-old student, Zhu Nan had been itching to say something about China's extensive online censorship system, known as the Great Firewall. So when China's censors began blocking access […]

Most importantly, few in Washington seem to have dwelled on the purpose of building U.S. influence in Africa, a continent that has always been at or near the bottom of Washington's list of global priorities. At the conclusion of the 1884-85 Berlin Conference, which notoriously carved up the African continent and apportioned its territories to Europe's imperial powers, signatories to the act highlighted education and the "material well-being of the native populations" to justify their historic power grabs. [Extracted from the article]

China's Internet censors are hard at work these days, shutting down blogs the government doesn't like and filtering Web sites and e-mail messages for banned words and phrases like "democracy" […]

Tourist attractions and leisure activities offered in China, are described. High economic growth in recent years has made China to become one of the major tourist places.

When Tomoaki Isogai graduated from Akirudai High School last March, he didn't have much to look forward to. "I looked for jobs, but I stopped after a month because I […]

When I began writing a weekly global affairs column for World Politics Review nearly three years ago, thingssettledinto an almost organic rhythm surprisingly quickly. Editor's note: This will be Howard French's final weekly column forWorld Politics Review. For all of this, I didn't get my start writing columns at WPR. [Extracted from the article]

At first blush, this seems paradoxical for China, which is famously the world's most populous nation, but the country's working-age population is already in decline, and the total population of China will itself shrink rapidly in the decades ahead. While North Korea is the most obvious cause, both Japan and South Korea have increasingly come to view China as a power determined to change the status quo in their region, and to do so violently if it has to. [Extracted from the article]

PYONGYANG, North Korea--When our plane landed here in North Korea's capital, there were no other jets in sight. A huge portrait of the nation's founder, Kim Il Sung, stared out […]

In my column last week, I discussed how some of the earlyto middle Cold War-era rivalry played out in Africa. Anyone with even a sketchy understanding of the Cold Warknows that it was a time not only of intense directcompetition between the reigning superpowers, but also ofgrand schemes by both the U.S. and USSR for integratingtheir allies and clients into adversarial blocs, as wellas for poaching the partners of the rivalpower--especially in the developing world--into their owncamp. [Extracted from the article]

Kazakhstan's long-time leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev, attempted a historically familiar ploy to avoid this kind of messiness when he stepped down in 2019, by naming a successor while he was still in good health and his authority was completely unchallenged. More even than most crises, the events unfolding in Kazakhstan in recent days (https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/30240/russiakazakhstan-relations-enter-the-post-nazarbayev-era) can be read in myriad ways. [Extracted from the article]

France has also ignored requests from successive governments in Mali, as in other Sahelian states, to do more to help relieve poverty in a region with some of the world's lowest per capita incomes. In mid-December, with little forewarning, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that he would soon be visiting Mali, a country in West Africa's Sahel region that, along with several others there, has been afflicted with rising communal violence in recent years. [Extracted from the article]

Omicron Will Test China's "Zero COVID" Pandemic Strategy According to official data, there have been 100,871COVID-19 cases in China, leading to 4,636 deaths, sincethe start of the pandemic--numbers that are vanishinglysmall by the standards of the rich world. Last weekend, the number of new symptomatic COVID-19cases in China hit a peak not seen since the early daysof the coronavirus pandemic. [Extracted from the article]

In order for a Romer-like plan around global vaccination to succeed, national rivalries must be temporarily set aside. As he watched his country flail early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the Nobel laureate economist Paul Romer argued that only by taking a dramatic, concerted step, carried out simultaneously nationwide, would the United States be able to stop the spread of the virus (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/27/economy-coronavirus-romer-reopen) and contain its spiraling costs. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the author's experience in China and reflects on the potential dangers of a war between the United States and China. The author emphasizes the need for Americans and Chinese to understand and humanize each other in order to prevent conflict. They argue that control over Taiwan and geopolitical preeminence are not worth the devastating consequences of war. The author suggests that both countries should prioritize coexistence and engage in more face-to-face dialogue to avoid disaster. [Extracted from the article]

At first glance, a recent item of business news seemed like a clear economic win from Africa: Ghana, which enjoys a reputation as one of the continent's most successful nations, had signed a $3.2 billion contract with an international consortium to rehabilitate a defunct railway line between its western port city of Takoradi and its second-largest city, Kumasi, in the nation's interior. But in recent years, Ghana has added a third commodity pillar to its economy, becoming an oil-producing nation in 2010, when an underwater field off its western coast entered production. [Extracted from the article]

The article offers insight to ongoing cultural wars in China. It mentions that Beijing said that it was committed to combating the grueling common workplace culture known as 996. It also mentions that television attempt to sharply regulate the use of electronic games by minors, and effectively blacklist major stars for apparently not projecting the right image to their followers.

The article reports that Ghana's former President Kwame Nkrumah, who led his country to independence from Britain in 1957, argued on route to Africa's liberation, in the unification of its former colonies in a continental nation that will give it the geographical scale and wealth in resources. Topics include stories of the continent's first generation of post independence leaders; and Samori Toure, the leader of a 19th-century Islamic state whose heroic armed resistance against the French.

The article reports that Africa is urbanizing on a scale experienced lacks urban planners, and megalopolises shape in the densely populated coastal region of West Africa to facilitate east-west travel and commerce. Topics include measure of African underperformance to human development as opposed to physical infrastructure that stands out literacy rates; and progress on eliminating gender disparities in reading ability of measures of educational attainment, from completing primary schooling.

A review of: The Looting Machine: Warlords, Oligarchs, Corporations, Smugglers, and the Theft of Africa's Wealth by tom burgis. PublicAffairs, 2015, 352 pp. Discussions about the fate of Africa have [...]

An interview with George Kankou Denkey, a Togolese American who studies urbanization, is presented. Topics include demographic change in African Urbanization with important challenges facing humankind as United Nations projections predict in Chinas and India. Topics include accepting immigrants to replenish their workforces and reverse population shrinkage; and future of the environment, economics and prosperity to conflict and human migration of the postcolonial African nation state.

A personal narrative is presented in which the author explores his experience of being foreign correspondent and the visit to New York City from West Africa.

The article focuses on American publications eschewed counting medals in ways that emphasized the winning of gold during the 17 days of the Tokyo Olympics. It mentions that the U.S. maintains a narrow lead over China in traditional measures of economic size. It also mentions that the U.S. has been able to remain competitive in international sports with a China.

The article focuses on the Hong Kong, China's new national security law weakens due process protections dramatically broadens police powers of search, and seizure and freezing of assets. It mentions that collection of U.S. government agencies, including the Departments of State, Treasury, and Commerce to warn U.S. companies of the danger of doing business.

In the article, the author discusses the political and social changes in Cuba as of July 2021, particularly the protests by African Cubans to address issues of racism and the need for the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden to ease trade restrictions with Cuba to encourage positive change in the latter. Also cited are the longing of Cubans for the government to improve their lives, and the performance of the leadership of the Communist Party in Cuba.

The article presents the discussion on U.S. and China both failing the Global Leadership Test. Topics include focusing on securing regime allegiance and signaling over human rights, democracy, and transparency; securing access to food, clean water, dependable and affordable electricity, and education; and leadership acting with sufficient energy, dispatch, and selflessness in response to the biggest problems facing humanity.

A personal narrative is presented which explores the authors experience of having a reporting trip to Haiti experiencing no shortage of political violence and social upheaval.

The article explains the role of European colonialism and slavery in the state crisis of large African states. Topics discussed include the effect of the European conquest on the indigenous processes of state formation in Africa, importance of stability in Ethiopia, Congo and Nigeria to the future of the continent, and potential of the use of democratic mechanisms in a federation that devolves power to its regions as a solution to the crisis.