While elements of units from all services in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) were preparing for the military parade on October 1st, a much larger slice of the PLA was conducting routine unit training. Following several months of individual skill and small unit training, late... MORE

The ongoing campaign against triads, or Chinese-style mafias, in the west-China metropolis of Chongqing is the largest such operation since 1949. Yet what renders this so-called “anti-triad tornado” (fanhei fengbao) so disturbing is not simply that close to 3,000 big-time criminals have been nabbed by... MORE

Even as the Chinese economy under the Hu-Wen administration is set to wean through the global financial crisis with a remarkable eight percent growth rate this year, senior officials from the Ministry of Civil Affairs under the jurisdiction of the State Council, which is responsible... MORE

Moscow and Beijing claim that their long-awaited gas supply deal is proof of what they describe as their bilateral strategic partnership, but the Russian and Chinese state-controlled energy giants apparently remain divided on the sensitive issue of gas prices. On October 13, the Russian gas... MORE

Now at last we have a good biography of Chiang Kai-shek, one of the most important figures in modern China, but also one of the least understood and most regularly caricatured. Chiang unified his country with the Northern Expedition of 1925-29 and presided over the... MORE

On September 15, a task force co-chaired by Senator Charles Robb (D-VA) and Senator Daniel Coats (R-IN) at the Bipartisan Policy Center released a report [1], calling on President Barack Obama to devise a tougher strategy to prevent a nuclear Iran.  The subtitle of the... MORE

After the extravaganza marking the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership has unleashed what the domestic media heralds as “marathon autumn diplomacy” (malasong qiuji waijiao). Premier Wen Jiabao visited North Korea and Vice-President Xi Jinping is... MORE

Since December 2008, China has signed $95 billion (650 billion RMB) in currency-swap agreements with Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, Hong Kong, Argentina and Belarus, in order to promote greater circulation and convertibility of the renminbi (RMB). Thailand is reportedly studying a possible currency swap agreement... MORE

Since last month, the Kyrgyz public has been able to watch China’s CCTV channel broadcasting in the Russian language. For now, the channel broadcasts only in Bishkek. But the Chinese government is ready to invest in digital receivers for the southern parts of Kyrgyzstan, in... MORE

While the extravaganza that marked the 60th birthday of the People's Republic of China (PRC) seems to have convinced the world of the economic and technological prowess of the fast-emerging quasi-superpower; fissures and institutional malaise within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have also been laid... MORE