When world leaders talk about ‘human rights’ and when they do not

When world leaders talk about ‘human rights’ and when they do not

Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com The spectacle of the ASEAN summit in Phnom Penh did more to lay bare the problems, conflicts and paradoxes of relations among the region’s wildly different and widely scattered nations than to resolve them. The fact that at least three of the leaders at this year’s ASEAN summit […]

As Xi takes the helm, a foreign military ‘adventure’ is an attractive option

As Xi takes the helm, a foreign military ‘adventure’ is an attractive option

Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com One of the biggest foreign and national security questions regarding the new Chinese Communist Party leadership is whether newly anointed General Secretary and Chairman of the Central Military Commission Xi Jinping will sponsor a foreign “adventure” to consolidate his relatively weak power base. Historical parallels are not lacking. […]

Hu Jintao seen prevailing in PLA power struggle with Xi Jinping and Jiang Zemin

Hu Jintao seen prevailing in PLA power struggle with Xi Jinping and Jiang Zemin

Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com President Hu Jintao has clawed back some territory with a reshuffle of the People’s Liberation Army’s top brass that largely tallies with the wishes of the 69-year-old supremo. It seems likely that Hu will remain chairman of the policy-setting Central Military Commission (CMC) for a couple more years […]

Joint U.S.-Japan election-season exercise scrubbed out of sensitivity to China

Joint U.S.-Japan election-season exercise scrubbed out of sensitivity to China

Special to WorldTribune.com East-Asia-Intel.com Washington and Tokyo have decided to cancel a large joint amphibious exercise scheduled for Nov. 5, one day before the U.S. presidential election and three days before China’s 18th Communist Party Congress, in which a major shuffling of government leadership will occur. The exercise was scheduled long before Beijing announced the […]

Parade of billionaire ‘red capitalists’ coming for CCP’s 18th Party Congress

Parade of billionaire ‘red capitalists’ coming for CCP’s 18th Party Congress

Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com Just 11 years after then-President Jiang Zemin took the unorthodox step of admitting private businessmen into the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), an unprecedentedly large number of “red capitalists” are set to be inducted into the Party’s policy-setting Central Committee. According to the official media, at least 24 non-state-sector […]

Blast from past may block rise of Shanghai Party boss to Politburo Standing Committee

Blast from past may block rise of Shanghai Party boss to Politburo Standing Committee

Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com Even history buffs in China have only a hazy recollection of one of the most sensational spy and defection cases in Communist Chinese history. In 1985, Yu Qiangsheng, a senior cadre in Beijing’s Ministry of State Security, defected to the United States. The information he provided led to […]

Big Bird is a tool for the Democrats, yes, but also for the Chinese regime

Big Bird is a tool for the Democrats, yes, but also for the Chinese regime

Special to WorldTribune.com By Cliff Kincaid The George Soros-funded Free Press Action Fund describes itself as “a nonpartisan organization” which “does not support or oppose any candidate for public office.” But last week it announced that the “attack on Big Bird and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting” at the presidential debate had “sparked intense reactions […]

China’s intensifying showdown with Japan is distracting from its growing internal crisis

China’s intensifying showdown with Japan is distracting from its growing internal crisis

Special to WorldTribune.com By Brian M Downing, FreePressers.com The dispute between China and Japan over the Senkakus group of uninhabited islands and barren rocks jutting up from the East China Sea has intensified in recent days. China has sent armed vessels to the island and anti-Japanese demonstrations have broken out in Chinese cities. Japan has […]

‘Playing God’ with birth rates: The soft underbelly of geopolitics

‘Playing God’ with birth rates: The soft underbelly of geopolitics

Sol W. Sanders   Paying a visit to my phlegmatic Punjabi physician in New Delhi in the early 1960s, I found him uncharacteristically upset. Amniocentesis had come to India and some of his patients were asking him to abort fetuses if they were female. Out of moral scruple, he was refusing, losing patients — and […]

From the safety of the West, recalling Stalin’s infinitely dangerous madness

From the safety of the West, recalling Stalin’s infinitely dangerous madness

Lev Navrozov Let me remind my dear readers that I was born in 1928, that is, I was to live in Stalin’s hell on earth. Created in pre-Soviet Russia were works of genius (such as those of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, or Chekhov), which were translated into the languages of all culturally advanced countries. The Russian classical […]