Author: |Posted: 6:20 pm on 17/11/09
Category: World News Blog
President Obama’s joint press appearance with President Hu of China today seemed to involve the American trying to say very little that might cause offence, and the Chinese leader trying to say almost nothing at all.
Neither took questions from reporters at the end of this stage-managed tour, which has been likened by some to an embarrassed debtor visiting his bank manager: China is the largest foreign holder of US government bonds and enjoys a trade surplus with the US.
Author: |Posted: 12:23 pm on 17/11/09
Category: Snowblog
There’s something eerie in the woodshed – and it’s not the resurrection of Sarah Palin flogging her book on Oprah’s show. “Running for the White House in 2012 is not on my radar.” Phew!
No, forget Ms Palin, and we can probably afford to for now. Let’s concentrate instead on the strengthening pound – last night up against the dollar, up against the euro. This has on a little to do with the UK’s improving prospects and much more to do with the current tussle between America and her largest investor, China.
Author: |Posted: 6:27 pm on 06/10/09
Category: World News Blog
Can you believe it was almost a year ago that “President Elect” Barak Obama told an ecstatic crowd in Chicago that “Change had come to America”?
With less than a month to go before the first anniversary of that speech a lot of people in America are asking themselves whether much of that change has yet been delivered? read more
Author: |Posted: 11:17 am on 01/10/09
Category: World News Blog
It can sometimes feel like quite a sinister experience, this celebration. I’m not sure if it was the teenage soldier grabbing my arm as I tried to enter the compound where our offices are based, or the armoured personnel carrier outside the Nike shop that did it, but Beijing’s not been feeling that relaxed of late.
It’s 60 years today since Mao founded the People’s Republic of China, defeating the nationalist government after world war two. 60 is an important number for the Chinese – it’s five cycles of 12 (the number in which an equivalent of decades are counted in China). So this is one big deal of a party.
Author: |Posted: 11:59 am on 07/07/09
Category: World News Blog
The sign outside Beijing’s famous attraction used to draw a lot of attention from tourists: it read “Racist Park.”
Just before the Olympics last year, the authorities realised that their English translation might be a bit problematic, so they changed it to “Chinese Ethnic Culture Park.” The theme park is supposed to showcase the cultural diversity of the People’s Republic, but some of the Uighurs, Tibetans and 54 other ethnic minorities in China might think the original wording revealed some truth about the attitude of the authorities. read more
Author: |Posted: 12:03 pm on 06/07/09
Category: World News Blog
It’s been brewing for nearly two weeks. The violence in Urumqi, the capital of China’s Xinjiang province, seems to have been provoked by an incident in Guangdong in southern China on 26 June.
A group of Uighurs, Muslims from Xinjiang, were working in a factory alongside Han Chinese. There’s a lot of prejudice against the Uighurs, who are often accused of being thieves.
Author: |Posted: 1:20 pm on 11/05/09
Category: Faisal Islam on Economics
Economic diplomacy is back in a big way. That was the message from last month’s G20 summit, and it continues today with high-level UK-China chinwag.
The system that failed the world plunging trade and global growth to contractions not seen since World War Two was a system that was international. Gaps in regulation existed between nations. Massive imbalances between nations affected borrowing, currency markets, and global credit availability. read more
Author: |Posted: 11:17 pm on 07/05/09
Category: Faisal Islam on Economics
The biggest surprise today was not the extra £50bn of Mervyn’s magic money to be created for the purposes of fertilising the embryonic green shoots spotted by stock market traders.
Forget Barclays’ remarkably strong results, and Lloyds’ further revelation of the devastation wrought upon its balance sheet by the purchase of HBoS.
Author: |Posted: 6:21 pm on 24/04/09
Category: World News Blog
The case of Roxana Saberi, the American/Iranian journalist jailed on a spurious charge of espionage in Tehran, has belatedly received quite a lot of media attention here and in the USA (my previous blog posts on the case are here).
So what about Laura Ling and Euna Lee, American reporters arrested by North Korean guards on the Chinese border on 17 March? read more
Author: |Posted: 11:49 am on 20/03/09
Category: World News Blog
A Chinese artist is poking his head above the parapet of the Forbidden City.
Ai Weiwei helped design Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium. Now he is publishing a list of children killed in last May’s earthquake in Sichuan, in the absence of any proper accounting elsewhere. He’s also not afraid to point out that hundreds died because their school buildings had not been properly constructed. read more
