With worsening inflation, a slowing economy, and growing concerns about possible social unrest, China’s leaders have a lot on their plates these days. And yet when the Communist Party met at its annual plenum earlier this week, the issue given greatest attention was not economic policy but what it described as “cultural reform.”
The United States will host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s (APEC’s) 19th Economic Leaders’ Meeting in Honolulu, HI, on November 12 & 13, 2011. APEC was founded in 1989 to facilitate trade and investment liberalization in the Asia-Pacific region. Although the United States was among APEC’s founding members, some U.S. officials have been frustrated with APEC’s approach to trade and investment liberalization and facilitation. From its inception, APEC has used a consensus-based, non-binding approach in which its members unilaterally adopt non-discriminatory liberalization and facilitation measures. In much of its trade policy, the U.S. government has generally utilized an approach based on negotiated binding agreements applicable only to the parties to the agreement. As such, there has been frequent discussion about APEC’s proper role in U.S. trade policy. This report explains the U.S. agenda for the 2011 APEC meeting and compares APEC with other regional fora that deal with matters similar to those covered by APEC.
One hundred years ago this week, local outrage over plans to nationalize provincial railways triggered the Wuchang Uprising, an act of sedition that marked the start of the Xinhai Revolution and the beginning of the end for China’s long-governing Qing court. Setting in motion forces that would establish a short-lived Republic and throw the country into its warlord period, the movement also created an icon of revolutionary authority in the figure of Sun Yat-sen, a man whose political legacy remains hotly contested even a century later.
Much nonsense has been written about the Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking. We know this much: in December 1937, the Imperial Japanese Army, after taking the Chinese Nationalist capital of Nanjing, went on a six-week rampage, looting, murdering, and raping large numbers of people. Since no records were kept of these atrocities, the exact number of victims is unknown. The official Chinese figure is 300,000 dead, which is probably an exaggeration.
One can almost imagine Bishan in its heyday. On the evening of August 26, 2011 the village’s daytime enthusiasm gushes towards the Yi County Cinema. It’s the kind of movie theater almost every small town has had, but Bishan’s has somehow managed to hang on to a 1980s or 90s feel. Above both the exits, in extremely serious-looking script, are the words “Emergency Exit.” Both the entrances are framed in brown wood, the left entrance for odd-numbered tickets, the right for even.
When the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on December 10, 2010, its recipient, Liu Xiaobo, was in Jinzhou Prison, serving an eleven-year sentence for what Beijing called “incitement to subvert state power.” In Oslo, actress Liv Ullmann read a long statement the activist had prepared for his 2009 trial. It read in part: “I stand by the convictions I expressed in my ‘June Second Hunger Strike Declaration’ twenty years ago—I have no enemies and no hatred. None of the police who monitored, arrested, and interrogated me, none of the prosecutors who indicted me, and none of the judges who judged me are my enemies.”
That statement is one of the pieces in this book, which includes writings spanning two decades, providing insight into all aspects of Chinese life. These works not only chronicle a leading dissident’s struggle against tyranny but enrich the record of universal longing for freedom and dignity. Liu speaks pragmatically, yet with deep-seated passion, about peasant land disputes, the Han Chinese in Tibet, child slavery, the CCP’s Olympic strategy, the Internet in China, the contemporary craze for Confucius, and the Tiananmen massacre. Also presented are poems written for his wife, Liu Xia, public documents, and a foreword by Václav Havel. This collection is an aid to reflection for Western readers who might take for granted the values Liu has dedicated his life to achieving for his homeland. —Harvard University Press
Didi Kirsten Tatlow, The New York Times (November 30, 2011)
Jerome A. Cohen, Foreign Affairs (January/February 2012)
Mike Rezvin, The Christian Science Monitor (January 3, 2012)
Ellen Bork, The Wall Street Journal (December 30, 2011)
