In The News

Excessive Profits Erode Security

November 15, 2005
President Bush’s current tour of East Asia, specifically mainland China, challenges the scruples of his Administration’s prevailing foreign policy. Intensely critical of undemocratic regimes from Iran to North Korea, the US, in the case of China, has let political concerns wither on the wayside in the wake of its more pressing economic needs. An editorial in the Taipei Times warns of “the...

Students Shun Native Tongue

Liu Qing November 11, 2005
As China becomes a market economy and an increasingly influential world power, Chinese students are showing a great interest in acquiring proficiency in the global lingua franca, English. University graduates are honing their skill in English in order to make themselves more attractive to prospective employers. But as Shanghai writer Liu Qing points out, this emphasis on English has emerged at...

Wholesalers’ Hub to Overhaul Image

Kwanchai Rungfapaisarn November 9, 2005
When Chinese corporations made moves earlier this year to buy up American companies, critics in the U.S. prophesized the imminent end of Western dominance under the weight of a rising China. While such descriptions of China as a global superpower seem premature, the Asian giant already reigns supreme in its own backyard. The revamping of Pratunam Centre, Thailand’s largest wholesale center, is a...

European Luxury Brands Challenge Chinese Pirates

Jonathan Watts November 4, 2005
Centuries ago, China exported its luxurious silks out to the world on camel caravans over the meandering Silk Road. Now, Chinese venues like the Silk Market in Beijing offer counterfeit luxury goods to tourists at a fraction of their legal cost. In the past decade, the Asian giant has become the source of seventy percent of the world’s counterfeit products, frustrating foreign businesses and...

Asian Countries Gear Up to Tackle Bird-Flu Threat

Nicholas Zamiska November 4, 2005
Asian governments are gradually beginning to confront the possibility of widespread bird-flu infection among humans, and it is their state of readiness, still to be determined, that may prove the most crucial in preventing a global pandemic. Western countries have been preparing themselves for months by stockpiling antiviral drugs, but despite many experts’ warning that a pandemic will most...

Prepare Now for Sino-Indian Trade Boom

Niraj Dawar October 31, 2005
China and India are natural trading partners, but years of political hostility have prevented the two from taking full advantage of their complementary relationship. That is changing: Sino-Indian trade may skyrocket from $14 billion annual in 2004 to as much as $450 billion in 2010. Multinational corporations now need to change their business models if they hope to profit from this new surge...

China’s Next Big Boom Could be the Foul Air

Jim Yardley October 31, 2005
China’s rise has both staggered and threatened the rest of the world. Sometimes the portrayal of China's military power as a threat has been exaggerated. An announcement by a top Chinese environmental official last week, however, introduced a statistic that is true cause for anxiety. Pollution levels in China could more than quadruple in the next 15 years if China does not slow its energy...