In The News

Chinese are Taking to the Card

Goh Sui Noi July 31, 2003
The rise of a young, urban middle class and the increasing numbers of credit card shoppers is taking China's financial world by storm. China's fast-emerging middle class is generally composed of young, educated, city dwellers with good jobs and fast paced lifestyles. Ten years ago, when the market economy was still new, paying on credit was unheard of. Today, however, more and more...

IBM Explores Shift of White-Collar Jobs Overseas

Steven Greenhouse July 22, 2003
The conventional wisdom on globalization in the US has held that unskilled jobs will gradually shift overseas, leaving American workers free to perform higher-paid, white-collar jobs. But now that IBM is considering moving millions of white-collar jobs to countries like India and China, politicians and technology workers are crying foul. Corporations like IBM argue that moving service jobs...

Wrong on Rights

Harold Hongju Koh July 18, 2003
A powerful recourse for human rights victims is in danger, says Harold Hongju Koh, Professor of International Law at Yale University and former US Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. In response to a lawsuit brought by Burmese citizens against the US energy company Unocal, the Bush White House has filed a brief in a California Federal Court to overhaul a...

Workers Falling Behind in Mexico

Mary Jordan July 15, 2003
In Mexico, there are too many workers and too few jobs. The country has failed to recover from the financial crisis of the 1990s that sent the peso and the average standard of living plummeting. And, while the number of unskilled laborers remains high – indeed higher than ever before as women increasingly enter the workforce – lower wages in countries like Indonesia and Guatemala have lured...

Critical of U.S. Policies, Africans Are Giving Bush Chilly Reception

Dana Milbank July 10, 2003
African commentators refuse to tip-toe around the tough topics. Though US President Bush and South African President Mbeki carefully avoided contentious issues at their meeting, newspapers refused to muffle criticism of America's foreign policies and continued to express doubt about the sincerity of the superpower's interest in Africa. In general, says this Washington Post article,...

There is More to Transatlantic Relations Than Security

Jeffrey E. Garten July 9, 2003
Residual anger about the Iraq War needn’t impede economic cooperation between the US and Europe, maintains Jeffrey Garten, dean of the Yale School of Management. According to Garten, accusations of continued American unilateralism are largely exaggerated. US President Bush is currently engaged in multilateral global trade negotiations, regional economic discussions, and anti-AIDS efforts that...

A Helping Hand from Bush to Africans?

Abdallah Abu-Younis July 8, 2003
US President Bush’s agenda for his upcoming trip to Africa is packed with high stakes issues. AIDS, poverty, corruption, and state failure run rampant across the continent, threatening US interests by providing the shroud of chaos for terrorist groups. However, as this editorial in The Arab News points out, Bush must be careful not to generalize about Africa’s problems and solutions. African...