Late on November 3 (November 4 in Europe) the General Motors (GM) corporation decided to retain ownership of its heavily indebted German subsidiary Opel. The decision reverses GM’s September 10 tentative consent to sell a majority stake in Opel to a Kremlin-dominated consortium.GM’s reversal became... 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

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov appears to have abruptly ended his courtship of Akhmed Zakaev, the exiled prime minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI), calling the London-based separatist leader a “liar” and “hypocrite.”Speaking on October 27 during a meeting of the regional branch of... 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

Authorities in Tiraspol are watching the political deadlock in Chisinau with barely concealed satisfaction. Moldova’s political and constitutional crisis since April has further deepened the freeze on both tracks of negotiations on the Transnistria conflict: the international 5+2 format and the bilateral right bank –... 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

Disinformation, or the planting of false information to deceive or smear an enemy, is now being regularly used by both government and non-governmental players in Russia and Ukraine in the fierce battles for control of power and assets in these countries. During the January 2009... MORE

The biggest piece of news to have come out of the Fourth Plenary Session of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 17th Central Committee is what that did not happen: the induction of Vice-President Xi Jinping into the policy-setting Central Military Commission (CMC). This is despite... MORE

While an anti-corruption campaign has been launched almost annually since the start of the reform era in 1978, there are reasons to believe the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is committing more resources to tackling graft this year. Clean governance and the allied goal of “party... MORE

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill visited Ukraine from July 27 - August 5 in order to suppress the pro-independence mood among the local clergy and more broadly, to assert Russian religious and cultural domination. Kirill made it clear that he would oppose plans, backed by Ukrainian... MORE