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 […]
John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — The global economy risks sliding back into recession. That’s the sober assessment from the UN’s World Economic Situation and Prospects 2013, which cites weak economic growth in 2012, and an anemic expected expansion over the next two years. And while economic woes in the United States, Europe and Japan […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com Less than one month after becoming general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the country’s commander-in-chief,Xi Jinping has displayed a flair for catchy slogans — and superior public-relations skills. The new chairman of the policy-setting Central Military Commission has also demonstrated a readiness to project China’s […]
John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — The impending launch of a North Korean ballistic missile has as much to do with the propaganda goal of putting a satellite into orbit as to serve as a less than subtle bullying to neighboring states all undergoing a period of political transition. Though Pyongyang has forewarned regional governments […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]