Rolling the dice: The Chinese Communist Party bets it can beat the odds

Rolling the dice: The Chinese Communist Party bets it can beat the odds

Sol W. Sanders   Perhaps more than Westerners, Chinese have a gambling streak. Even during the darkest hours of Maoist oppression and pretended Puritanism, Beijing tolerated gambling on its southern flank in the Portuguese colony of Macau. Now reincorporated into China, in 2012 the world’s largest casino, holding the country’s only legal gambling monopoly, raked […]

World unhinged: A bumper crop of bizarre

World unhinged: A bumper crop of bizarre

Sol W. Sanders   Settling in with a drink and interesting talk a few years ago — it would be the last session we had, unhappily — with Ed Seidenstecker, the best of the WWII American Japan scholars, the conversation took a serious turn. As we dissolved in that witlessness that overtakes one in Hawaii, […]

Frenchman turns states evidence in murder mystery involving wife of once-powerful Bo Xilai

Frenchman turns states evidence in murder mystery involving wife of once-powerful Bo Xilai

Special to WorldTribune.com East-Asia-Intel.com A former intimate of Gu Kailai, the wife of ousted Chinese strongman Bo Xilai, flew to Beijing only days before prosecutors announced she was being charged with murder. Patrick Henri Devillers, the Frenchman who shared an apartment in Britain with Gu, surrendered to Chinese authorities on July 17. Gu’s indictment for […]