Latest posts
Chinese hard-line security policies will lead to social unrest
I’ve just come across a speech by Yu Jianrong on 26 December 2009. Professor Yu is director of social issues research at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and advises top leaders – clearly an insider. What he said is disturbing – and s...
Heavy-handed propaganda alienates Europeans from China
The following interview appeared in Global Times on 15 March 2010: Editor’s Note: China constantly complains of being misperceived by the West, but how much of that is China’s own fault? Do Europeans still see China through an ideologica...
Copenhagen: a tale of ‘undiplomacy’ (continued)
Yesterday’s post reported on the non-attendance of Premier Wen Jiabao at the small leaders’ meeting on 17 December. Wen’s explanation of what happened was the same as previously reported in the Chinese media, except that the latter said that...
Chinese yuan: currency manipulation?
Writing in BusinessWeek on 12 March, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said global economic growth would be about 1.5% higher if China stopped restraining the value of its currency and running trade surpluses. “We should not be afraid...
Copenhagen: a tale of ‘undiplomacy’
This morning in Beijing, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao explained at his press conference what actually happened in Copenhagen on 17 December 2009 on the eve of the UN Climate Change Conference, which gave rise to criticism of Chinese behaviour and even...
Fighting corruption in China
My blog post of 12 March reported Premier Wen Jiabao, in his annual address to the National People’s Congress, stating that corruption threatened the rule of the CCP. China’s former state auditor, Li Jinhua has, in the official ‘People’s Da...
Will US declare China a “currency manipulator”?
The US Treasury, in its semi-annual report delivered every April and October, can formally label China as a “currency manipulator” on account of the yuan’s substantial undervalue. This would allow the Department of Commerce to impose counterv...
Corruption threatens Chinese Communist Party rule
Corruption has always been addressed by Premier Wen Jiabao in his annual address to the National People’s Congress, but this year he went much further than before by stating that corruption threatened the rule of the CCP. In his speech on 5 March...
American exceptionalism is alive and well!
The decision of Northrop Grumman and EADS not to bid on the tender to supply the US Air Force with $50 billion worth of air refuelling tankers is very disturbing. They won the contract in 2008 but, after Boeing’s protest, a new tender was issued,...
A European Monetary Fund
An objective of the Maastricht Treaty was EMU - Economic & Monetary Union. 16 countries have achieved monetary, but not economic, union. Indeed, even economic policy cooperation still leaves a lot to be desired. The original criticisms of the eur...
Van Rompuy at Bruges
The College of Europe has been addressed by many leading political figures and heard many important speeches. The speech of Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council (EurC), on 25 February 2010 is well worth reading. His theme was ̶...
Triangularity: China, EU and US go head to head
There has been much talk in the past about China and the European Union having more in common in a number of policy areas than either has with the United States. Thus Beijing saw the EU as a potential factor moderating US influence; Washington coul...
A common value
There is much talk about values and frequently comparisons between Western and Eastern values. There is at least universal agreement on one value, as spelt out below: Buddhism “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.” (Uda...
Afghanistan in Sixteen Characters
“By May 1928 the basic principles of guerilla warfare…had already been evolved; that is, the sixteen-character formula: The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.”...
The Chinese Confucian Party?
Daniel Bell, in the Globe and Mail of 19 February 2010 wrote an interesting article about the revival of Confucianism. Only recently, the Chinese Communist Party approved a film about Confucius, starring the handsome leading man Chow Yun-Fat. Bell
European destructuring
Two items struck me in tonight’s newscasts. Lufthansa pilots are striking for four days, costing the company €100 million. They are demanding a 6% pay increase and that pilots in Lufthansa’s foreign subsidiaries be paid at their rates...
Appointment of EU ambassador to the US under fire
Carl Bildt, the Swedish foreign minister, wrote on 19 February to foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton complaining about the manner in which way Joao Vale de Almeida was recently appointed ambassador in Washington (see post dated 19 February). Bil...
China and India: Prospects for Peace
Reproduced below is the review in The Economist of 4 February 2010 of my BICCS colleague’s new book: China and India: Prospects for Peace. (Columbia University Press; 234 pages; $37.50 and £26. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk) FOR a bo...
Appointment of EU Ambassador to US: a bad practice continued
I have in previous blog posts, strongly disagreed with criticism of Baroness Ashton. The nomination of Joao Vale de Almeida to succeed John Bruton as EU ambassador in Washington is, however, worrying. I believed that Hermann Van Rompuy and Cather...
Ashton under attack
Further to the post of 25 January, Baroness Ashton is still under attack for not going to Haiti, notwithstanding that the UN had requested that dignataries do not visit the island, so as not to disrupt the emergency aid activities. She stated t...
