From China’s Weiwei to the Egyptian blogger Aliaa Magda al-Mahdi, people are again busy using their naked bodies as a way to challenge authority and demand rights. Even in today’s much more sexualized world, public nudity continues to be a powerful form of protest. When nearly 100 supporters of dissident Chinese artist Ai…
What’s at stake in Syria goes well beyond the mere fate of a local dictatorship – however deadly it may be. What is at stake, and is on the brink of collapse, is a major strategic alliance in the Middle East. The Syrians who have been challenging Bashar al-Assad’s regime since March – many paying…
Near Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica, the Country Brand Index’s highest ranked Latin American country Conducting business meetings isn’t easy when people don’t even know you exist. Just ask Eduardo Clari, an investments specialist. Paraguay’s state export and investment promotion agency. “They confuse us with Uruguay. Or else they think we’re part of Brazil,” says…
How the West became China’s willing servant Eurozone leaders have brought their begging bowl to China, looking for help in boosting their bailout fund. So what does this say about the shift in the global balance of power? In October 1911, China rose up in revolution. Four months later the last emperor had fallen and…
Public officials have been caught repeatedly in usury-related scandals in the wealthy southeastern city of Wenzhou. Not only is it a betrayal of public trust, it exposes an economic system that too often relies on illegal money lending. Recently, a couple of moneylenders from Wenzhou China ran off with 1.3 billion…
Those coining the blood of war should have to sacrifice too, even if it is only their profits from war. Immediately after World War One but still during the United States’ military occupations of Russia and China, Hiram Johnson, the former reform governor of California who served in the Senate, spoke…
Knowledge clusters” are being built in France to kick start hi-tech industries In the United States, Europe and in rising powers such as China, there is a growth-hungry drive to invest in hi-tech research and innovation. They are looking for the ingredients that, like Google, will turn a university project into a corporation. They are…
BEIJING – I had dinner with a few senior European financiers and professors in Beijing last week. When we talked about the euro crisis looming over Europe, we couldn’t but agree unanimously: across today’s small globe, all the major countries on the planet simply lack a strong leader. This is the very…
All the world comes to Chungking (Cheung Fun) HONG KONG– Whoever has been to perennially pricey Hong Kong on a low budget has spent at least one night there: Chungking Mansions, “the world’s most globalized building,” offers rooms at unbeatable prices at 36-44 Nathan Road, right on the point of Tsim Sha Tsui,…
TWEETER AGAIN AI WEI, a prominent Chinese artist and critic of the government, has begun to probe the limits of the strict conditions that set by the authorities upon his release from custody seven weeks ago. First it was a toe dipped back into online social-networking, a medium he had…