Court Rules Hospital Violated Gay Man’s Liberty

on July 7, 2017

A gay man in Henan province has been awarded 5,000 yuan (U.S.$735) in compensation from a local psychiatric hospital where he was locked up for 19 days and forced to take pills and injections as therapy for his homosexuality. In its decision on June 26, the Yicheng District People’s Court in the city of Zhumadian ruled that the Zhumadian Psychiatric Hospital had violated the personal liberty of the 38-year-old man, surnamed Yu, because it held him against his will without proper justification.

Germany’s Football Diplomacy Delights Beaming Xi Jinping as Chinese President and Angela Merkel Watch Kids’ Match in Berlin

By James Porteous on July 6, 2017

China’s president remains a massive football fan, but it seems clear that youth development and commitment to training, rather than sky-high transfer fees and foreign takeovers, is the way to his heart.

Politics
Sports, Cultural Diplomacy, Angela Merkel, Xi Jinping

China’s Asian Dream

By Tom Miller on July 6, 2017

“China,” Napoleon once remarked, “is a sleeping lion. Let her sleep, for when she wakes she will shake the world.” In 2014, President Xi Jinping triumphantly declared that the lion had awoken. Under his leadership, China is pursuing a dream to restore its historical position as the dominant power in Asia.

From the Mekong River Basin to the Central Asian steppe, China is flexing its economic muscles for strategic ends. By setting up new regional financial institutions, Beijing is challenging the post-World War II order established under the watchful eye of Washington. And by funding and building roads, railways, ports, and power lines—a New Silk Road across Eurasia and through the South China Sea and Indian Ocean—China aims to draw its neighbors ever tighter into its embrace.

Combining a geopolitical overview with on-the-ground reportage from a dozen countries, China’s Asian Dream offers a fresh perspective on one of the most important questions of our time: what does China’s rise mean for the future of Asia. —Zed Books

Book Review: 

Benjamin Shull, The Wall Street Journal (February 27, 2017)

China is Driving a Boom in Brazilian Mining, but at What Cost?

By Milton Leal on July 5, 2017

In the middle of northern Brazil’s Amazon jungle, Chinese-made digging equipment rasps at the bottom of a giant iron ore mine. Here in the municipality of Canaã dos Carajás in the Serra dos Carajás in Brazil’s Pará state, some 1,600 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro, Chinese engineers keep watch over a fleet of stackers, reclaimers, and other large-scale equipment in the adjacent ore processing plant that will eventually produce 90 million tonnes of the metal annually.