In The News

Lula: Support globalization

Alan Clendenning June 16, 2004
While hundreds of demonstrators chanted against globalization, inside a conference hall in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s leftwing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had a different message. Addressing a gathering of 180-nation United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, he said the developing world should learn how to use globalization instead of denouncing it. Lula’s speech offered yet another...

China is Just Catching Up

Yasheng Huang June 8, 2004
China’s so-called 'rise' in the last two decades must be put into perspective, says Yasheng Huang, associate professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and author of "Selling China". In recent times, Huang notes, blaming China’s buoyant economy for financial uncertainties in other parts of the world has come into vogue. But the hysteria and exaggeration expressed by...

China: The Missing Member at the G-8 Table

Jeffrey E. Garten June 3, 2004
China's key position in the world economy is increasingly obvious. A slew of indicators, from car usage and steel output to population size, shows that China cannot be ignored. Yet, writes Jeffrey E. Garten, Dean of the Yale School of Management, China will not be attending the upcoming Group of Eight summit in Georgia. Americans and others should wake up to China's importance for even...

Beijing's Social Contract is Starting to Fray

Minxin Pei June 3, 2004
Marking the anniversary of Beijing's crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protest movement 15 years ago, China scholar Minxin Pei writes that the Chinese Communist Party's hold on power is not sustainable. The regime has been fortunate, he says, to have achieved such unprecedented economic growth and prosperity since 1989. But the party's 'neo-authoritarian' development...

Trade Theory vs. Used Clothes in Africa

Carter Dougherty June 3, 2004
In Uganda the seemingly ubiquitous struggle between free traders and protectionists is played out in the debate over used clothes. Like so many other cities in Africa, Uganda's capital, Kampala, is the destination for millions of dollars worth of second-hand garments from the developed world. But while myriad jobs have sprung up in Uganda's used clothes trade, those involved in the...

US Nation-Building Abroad – Part II

Fawaz A. Gerges May 28, 2004
The Abu Ghraib prison, once the stage for atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein, has been turned into a symbol of brutal occupation by a foreign force. The story of abuse by American soldiers broke at the worst possible time for the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, writes Middle East specialist Fawaz A. Gerges, in the second installment of a multi-authored, three-part series on US...

Looking After Number One

Abbas Ali May 28, 2004
The American occupation in Iraq has the Iranian government torn in two different directions: their obvious interest in guiding the shape of the neighboring government is at odds with not wanting to cooperate with the United States. Iran’s ties to Iraq are ancient and critical. Holy sites and burial grounds that are among the most sacred to Iranian Muslims are located in Iraq, and studies of the...