In The News

Nationalism in Sports

Cho Se-Hyon April 6, 2004
In the US, spectators applaud excellent athletes regardless of national origin or race, according to the author. However, he says, this is not the case in South Korea, where national pride compels spectators to call foreign players "mercenaries" and domestic athletes to hinder their foreign teammates from excelling on the playing field. Not only are such reactions unsportsmanlike, they...

Chinese Fuelling Local Growth

Satawasin Staporncharnchai April 5, 2004
A growth in China’s demand for raw materials has affected the Asia-Pacific region, and the global shipping industry at large. The Asian giant’s phenomenal economic growth has fuelled a surge in demand for imports, resulting in higher cargo taxes and freight rates. This demand is expected to increase as China begins to prepare to host the Olympics Games in 2008 by building new facilities. The...

China's Net watchdogs: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Liyuan Lu April 3, 2004
Political dissidence in China has long searched for an appropriate outlet. With the advent of the internet, anger at politicians, foreigners, upper classes, and others has moved online. Sometimes, internet news forums have served as forces for progressive change – political prisoners have been released after online petitions and editorials became widespread. But at other times, the internet has...

Buying Outside the Microsoft Box

Alvin Pang April 1, 2004
Last week's landmark European Union ruling and US$613 million fine are nothing but a drop in the Microsoft ocean. The maker of the Windows operating system has already appealed, and, by the time the case is finally settled, the ruling's proscriptions will most likely be obsolete given the rate of IT development. But these developments still leave open the question of whether...

While the US Looked for Iraqi WMD, North Korea Built Theirs

Jack Pritchard March 31, 2004
As Washington pressed on with its effort to rid Iraq of its suspected weapons of mass destruction - read nuclear weapons - early last year, North Korea's nuclear program shifted into high gear. Or so Pyongyang would have the US believe. In this first-hand account of the recent unofficial American inspections of North Korea's nuclear program, Jack Pritchard, a North Korea specialist at...

Foreign Ministers Meet on North Korea Nukes

Choi Soung-ah March 29, 2004
The third round of the six-party negotiations on the North Korean nuclear “standoff” is scheduled for June 2004 in Beijing. In preparation for the negotiations, South Korean foreign minister Ban Ki-moon paid an official visit to Beijing to meet with his Chinese counterpart Li Zhaoxing. With Ban addressing the issue of North Korean defectors detained in China and Li relaying the outcome of his...

Clearing Clouds Over the Karakoram Pass

Ziad Haider March 29, 2004
Over the latter half of the 20th century, relations between China and Pakistan were anchored in large part on both countries' strategic interest in balancing India as a regional power. The Karakoram Highway, which runs for 500 miles between the two nations, is representative of those collective interests. However, says Ziad Haider of the Henry L. Stimson Center, since the Highway was...