In The News

Chinese Girls’ Toil Brings Pain, Not Riches

Joseph Kahn October 2, 2003
China’s shift to capitalism has brought huge rewards to many Chinese, but for 150 million unemployed peasants, poverty is still a harsh reality. Job prospects are limited, and a lucky few find jobs with multinational corporations, which offer good pay and high labor standards. In China’s export sector, however, sweatshops and low pay are much more common. Lured by promises of good pay, two...

North Korea Says It Is Using Plutonium to Make A-Bombs

James Brooke October 2, 2003
While claiming to be producing plutonium for nuclear weapons, Pyongyang's vice foreign minister also emphasized that "We have no intention of transferring any means of that nuclear deterrence to other countries." Apparently, the communist regime wants to avoid pushing Washington so far that the Bush administration would declare the need for a pre-emptive strike. But analysts...

Roh Says Iraq Troops Hinge on NK Nukes

Sim Sung-tae October 2, 2003
Though the US has made an effort to keep the security issues of North Korea and Iraq separate, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun views them as connected. President Roh hesitates to deploy any troops to the Middle East, thus sending an "indirect message" to the US to consider the non-aggression pact that North Korea has been demanding. According to the author, as the US continues to...

China Bids for the High Ground

Joan Johnson-Freese October 1, 2003
The world may seem a little smaller to China soon - especially as viewed from outer space. The Chinese government plans to launch a manned space capsule in the next few weeks, closing a technological gap with Russia and the US that no other country has crossed. Joan Johnson-Freese, an expert in Chinese space technology at the US Naval War College, believes that to understand the implications of...

US Sees Bias in South Korea Textbooks

September 30, 2003
Last year, when two Korean girls were run over by an American armored vehicle, anti-American sentiment reached a new height in South Korea. Although this sentiment seems to be slowly declining, US diplomats are still very concerned about the US public image in the Korean population, especially among students. Korean textbooks often tend to detail America's intervention in other parts of the...

China: Controls Tighten as Internet Activism Grows

September 28, 2003
Human rights watchdog Amnesty International says that the world's most populous country is fighting a shameful battle against its own people. The Chinese government has implemented some of the most restrictive internet regulations in the world, banning Chinese web users from visiting certain foreign websites, and even suppressing speech and dissent on China-based websites. In less than a...

Global Anti-GM Sentiment Slows China's Biotech Agenda

Valerie Karplus September 26, 2003
Genetic modification of agricultural products like cotton, rice, and tomatoes has recently allowed small farmers in China to avoid spraying toxic pesticides on their crops. Pesticides – laborious to apply and proven to be harmful to your health – are now becoming obsolete because genetically modified (GM) crops are automatically resistant to the most common agricultural threats. But despite early...