China

By Teymoor Nabili in Middle East on April 13th, 2012
Dan Meridor, Israel's deputy prime minister [EPA]

Was it a momentary lapse of concentration or an honest admission?

Last week, in an interview with Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor in Jerusalem, I heard something I have not heard before.

Let's start with the background.

By Gabriel Elizondo in Americas on March 29th, 2012
Photo by Reuters

Oliver Stuenkel was part of Brazil’s delegation to the Track II academic forum in preparation for the New Delhi Summit for the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) which was held on Thursday.

Stuenkel specialises in Brazil's relations with India, but also more broadly focuses his research on the BRICS. He is currently a professor of international relations at Getulio Vargas Foundation in Sao Paulo. He also runs a blog called Post Western World, which looks at how emerging powers are changing the world.

Below is part of my interview with Stuenkel, where he sheds light on Brazil and the prospects and challenges the BRICS face.

By Melissa Chan in Asia on March 13th, 2012

The phone call came on Friday afternoon.  My colleague took the call.  I could hear his end of the conversation.

"Your daughter has been what?!  Taken... by whom?"

"Please calm down, I can't help you unless you speak slowly.  I don't quite understand you..."

"You say your daughter violated the one-child policy...  And local officials had her sterilised.  She had some sort of forced procedure in the hospital?"

"Wait, okay... I see.  This was many years ago.  She wants to present evidence to the central government.  Okay... and then she disappeared."

Before the conversation was over, I was already starting to gather my things together.

By Al Jazeera Staff in Americas on February 16th, 2012
Xi Jinping jokes in the home of Roger and Sarah Lande in Muscatine on Thursday [AFP]

What was the man assumed to be the next leader of China doing in a living room in Muscatine, Iowa, and what does his visit have to do with the future of Sino-US ties? Al Jazeera's John Hendren explains.

It was probably the first protest ever to break out on the corner of 2nd and Spruce streets in Muscatine, Iowa.

On one side were students from as far away as Minnesota, chanting "Shame on China" and waving Tibetan flags.

Across the narrow residential street on Wednesday, the chanters were countered by Chinese young people, waving their own flag and singing nationalist songs.

The groups were divided by polite Iowa state troopers who occasionally urged them to remain on the sidewalk. Curious Muscatine residents took in the spectacle.

By Melissa Chan in Asia on January 23rd, 2012

It's the first day of the lunar new year in China. And what better way to celebrate than to kick off a four-part series on China's Communist Party?

This is the Year of the Dragon. The dragon is a great symbol of China, but its arrival actually portends bad luck and a challenging year ahead. 

By Gabriel Elizondo in Americas on January 2nd, 2012
Hi, old friend! Obama and Rousseff in Brasilia in March. [Roberto Stuckert Filho/PR]

In one of her last official appearances of 2011, on December 22, Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s president, arrived in a sweltering gymnasium in downtown Sao Paulo to give a speech to a few hundred working-class social activists.

In her speech, she mentioned “Lula” more than 10 times.

At one point the audience briefly broke into chants of “Lula, Lula, Lula!”

Lula wasn’t even present.

“Lula” is Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the wildly popular and charismatic former president of this country.

This is the man who in 2009 told a ballroom of CEOs at a regional World Economic Forum meeting in Rio de Janeiro he was going to scrap the speech his advisors had prepared and instead gave a blistering and empassioned critique of how the rich, developed nations were resonsible for the global economic mess and it was poor all over the world paying the price.

By Marga Ortigas in Asia on December 22nd, 2011


I wanted to write something for the blogs from the devastation in the southern Philippines this week ... But I can't seem to find the words... 
 
Looking through old journals though, I found an entry written in China while on assignment there right after the earthquake in 2008.  

I find it's exactly what I'd like to share now - something I first learned in Gaza ... and Baghdad ... and it was reiterated years later in China, and more recently in Japan.
 
It echoes again here in the flood-ravaged areas of northern Mindanao.
 
23, May 2008
Chengdu, China 
By Abid Ali in Business on November 1st, 2011
European stocks open sharply down as proposed referendum on Greek bailout casts doubt on eurozone recovery prospects. [Reuters]

We had a deal of sorts from the eurozone leaders - but it was a terrible deal for Greece. Now it seems the Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou has flown back to Athens, and in the cold light of the day, realised he and his people had been sold down the river. Hence a referendum. 

You see German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to keep kicking the can down the road. There is no legal framework to stop eurozone nations spending beyond their means. And the German nation doesn’t want to bailout anyone - by coming forward with an incomplete deal the pressure is on Italy, Spain and France to find more austerity measures. It’s the German way of keeping the house it built in check, let the markets (bond investors) demand more interest of new bonds sold.  

Merkel and French President Nicholas Sarkozy may not want to read this: but can you believe the world’s biggest and richest trading block is begging China for money?

By Melissa Chan in Asia on September 9th, 2011



In 2009, the year of our first visit to Ordos, China's gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 9.1 per cent, and it was easy to see why.

We had seen the factories producing for the rest of the world, the Louis Vuitton stores popping up across the country, and even witnessed farmers in the cave dwellings of Gansu with their mobile phones.

However, with Ordos, we witnessed the other side of the coin: local officials in the provinces were hell-bent on boosting their regional GDP - often a criteria for their promotion.

If building a road pumped up GDP, then building a whole city would really propel GDP growth to unknown heights.

By Melissa Chan in Asia on July 16th, 2011
Former Nepalese King Gyanendra walks on the red carpet in Lumbini along with Queen Komal Raiya Laxmi Devi Shah [Getty]

The town of Lumbini in Nepal is where the Buddha was born as Prince Gautama Siddhartha, before achieving enlightenment more than 2,500 years ago.

Now China is leading a project worth $3bn to transform the small town into the premier place of pilgrimage for Buddhists from around the world.  Little Lumbini will have an airport, highway, hotels, convention centre, temples and a Buddhist university. That's in addition to the installation of water, electricity and communication lines it currently lacks.

That's a lot of money anywhere - but especially for a country like Nepal whose GDP was $35bn last year. That means the project is worth almost 10 per cent of the country's GDP. So what does China want back?

The organization behind the project is called the Asia Pacific Exchange and Cooperation Foundation (APECF), a quasi-governmental non-governmental organisation.

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