China Reboot: From Textiles and Tea to High Tech
The tea leaves have not yet settled in China after the ousting of Bo Xilai, a leading figure in the Chinese Communist Party and (until last week) a shoe-in candidate for a seat on the Politburo’s powerful standing committee. But…
The ‘Arab Spring’ Can Help Cut Defense Spending
If we want to bring our unconscionably wasteful defense spending under control, the place to start is with a fundamentally re-imagined foreign policy that does not require a trillion-dollar military. President Obama’s recent pledge of $2 billion in response to…
Chinese Democracy-Catching a Moving Target
Few Americans notice these kinds of things, but this week the Chinese marked—we cannot say celebrated—the 92nd anniversary of the May 4th Movement, the groundswell of democratic agitation that began on that date in 1919. May 4 was also a…
Remembering Japan: A bilateral history
“But the essence of a nation is that all the individuals share a great many things in common, and also that they have forgotten some things.” —Ernest Renan, What is a Nation?, 1881 A little more than a year ago,…
The Closed Shop
The article comments on legal procedures of Japan. In 1997 Japan’s Supreme Court handed down a startling decision after more than three decades of legal warfare over the Education Ministry’s censors. Japan has an independent judiciary in name only– one…
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