In The News

Feasible Exit Strategy Needed for IMF Parting

Ari A. Perdana March 10, 2003
Has the IMF helped or hurt Indonesia? At the end of its five year stint, mixed evaluations raise more questions than answers. Some argue that with economic growth as low as 3 percent per year during the IMF’s presence, and with questionable policy prescriptions such as the closure of 16 banks in 1997, Indonesia should not bother extending its contract. Others look back more positively at the “...

Central Asia: Conference Asks What Lessons Can Region Learn from EU

Breffni O’Rourke March 5, 2003
Can the kind of economic integration that the European Union (EU) now enjoys be applied to Central Asia? The development of a single European market has raised standards of living across Europe, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is looking for ways to develop a similar system for Central Asian states. But with a markedly different history, and given the current...

Time for Jaw-Jaw with North Korea

James Goodby March 5, 2003
Diplomat-in-residence at Stanford University James Goodby and Councilor of the Atlantic Council of the United States Kenneth Weisbrode outline the many reasons why bilateral talks should be preferred over a pre-emptive attack on North Korea. They argue in the Financial Times that the US is too occupied over the Middle East and Saddam Hussein, and will be for a long time, that its navy is spread...

Magazines Take China Plunge in Search of Growth

February 7, 2003
With global advertising sales down and China’s economy up, several big US magazines have entered the Chinese market. Undaunted by the prospects of government censorship, Newsweek, Harvard Business Review, and Forbes are following in the footsteps of Time and Fortune, which currently publish or have published Chinese-language editions. In a nod to government censors' concerns, however,...

A Better Life on the Production Line

Dan Roberts February 5, 2003
Since the mid-1990s, China’s leaders have thrown open their borders to virtually any multinational corporation that could inject millions of dollars into the nation’s economy. More importantly, these companies bring the information technology China so desperately craves. The cost of this foreign investment, however, is the establishment of a sweatshop industry that provides wealthy countries...

Patent Your Heritage

Tina Rosenberg December 15, 2002
Online libraries in the making will soon document and patent the traditional and biological heritage that is being exploited by pharmaceutical companies in the industrialized world. India is leading the crusade against the misappropriation of their medicinal patrimony by shielding it instead of trying to take it back from foreigners who patented it. This online library will provide a translation...

Activity at Korean Enclave Grinds to a Halt

December 6, 2002
In the past decade, as China opened its markets to foreign investment, the northeastern city of Dandong developed into a bustling center of economic activity. But its North Korean counterpart city across the border, Sinuiju, is still languishing in bleak poverty. North Korea has made plans to imitate China’s efforts in Dandong, however, by turning Sinuiju into an administrative center. The...