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David Wall
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 1, 2005
Bound by a common cause
LONDON -- When Chinese President Hu Jintao was in Moscow in early July, he sought to strengthen the "strategic partnership" between China and Russia that his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed in Moscow four years ago.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 20, 2005
America's flexible notion of sovereignty
LONDON -- On May 9, in an interview in Moscow on CNN U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said "the United States, of course, recognizes that North Korea is a sovereign state."
COMMENTARY / World
May 22, 2005
Betting on World War III
LONDON -- U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick has a way with words. On a recent trip to Europe he tried to persuade European Union politicians not to lift the arms embargo that they had imposed on China after the Tiananmen massacre in 1989. If the EU lifted the ban, he said, the Europeans...
COMMENTARY / World
May 11, 2005
Japan's new foreign policy
LONDON -- As Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has traveled about and made his speeches in recent months, it is possible to trace his perception of a new foreign policy for Japan.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 22, 2005
CCP smacks of hypocrisy
LONDON -- At the end of his visit to India last week, China's Premier Wen Jiabao made a strong political attack on Japan. With respect to Japan's bid for a seat on an expanded U.N. Security Council (UNSC) Wen opined that "Only a country that respects history, takes responsibility for history and wins...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 5, 2005
A dicey hypocritical streak
LONDON -- I am glad that March is over. The problem with the month is that it begins with the release of the U.S. State Department's annual reports on human rights violations worldwide (except in the United States, of course). Just as you come to terms with that, in the middle of the month, the six-week...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 13, 2005
A laggard plan to end African poverty
LONDON — Last weekend the finance ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized countries met in London. British Finance Minister Gordon Brown tried to bounce his colleagues into setting up the largest aid program the world has ever seen: an International Finance Facility (IFF). He called it a new...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 2, 2005
Putin raises stakes in Asia
LONDON -- In October, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Hu Jintao stood together in the State Guest House in Beijing while their respective foreign secretaries signed an historic agreement defining the two countries' common 4,374-km border for the first time. The border was an issue...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 10, 2005
Why does CCP still fret over the news?
LONDON -- A short while ago, when I was in Beijing, I wanted to keep up with some political development in Hong Kong. I turned on my computer and went to the Asia-Pacific page of the BBC's Web site. Or at least I tried to; I had forgotten that the BBC site is blocked in China.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 6, 2004
No witch hunt for North Koreans in China
BEIJING -- North Korean "refugees," economic migrants or defectors -- take your pick -- in China have been in the news again. Staged video film of dozens of them storming embassies in Beijing has been circulated globally by South Korean and Western political activists who arrange for these incidents....
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 14, 2004
Crisis that hangs on hearsay
LONDON -- I am rapidly approaching the age of retirement. I am already cutting back on my activities, slimming down my portfolio of work and deciding what activities are wastes of time.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 11, 2004
Pariah regime doesn't deserve ADB aid
SUSSEX, England -- Bombers have been out again in Tashkent, Uzbekistan's capital. The bombs that went off at the U.S. and Israeli embassies and the prosecutor general's office on July 30 marked the opening of the trial of 15 men charged with setting off bombs that rocked Tashkent a year ago. The government...
COMMENTARY / World
May 5, 2004
China can't stop counterfeit DVD sales
LONDON -- Some months ago I was coming out of a classroom at Fudan University in Shanghai when a man sprinted past me with a suitcase under his arm. He was closely followed by a policeman, who suddenly leaped at him in a rugby tackle and brought him down. The suitcase went up in the air and came crashing...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 6, 2004
Let China decide yuan's fate
CAMBRIDGE, England -- The Americans are at it again. Unable to get their own economic house in order, they have sent a team to Beijing to try to force China to revalue the yuan.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 26, 2004
Trade, tourism thrive on DPRK border
LONDON -- I spent the first two weeks of this year on a whistle-stop tour of Northeast China -- an area once known as Manchuria. The term Northeast China usually means the three provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 5, 2004
Contrived problem resists quick solution on Peninsula
LONDON -- In late autumn I attended a conference on the slopes of Mount Fuji. The focus of the conference was security issues in Northeast Asia, addressing the so-called nuclear threat from North Korea. It was a high-level conference with participants, including a minister of defense, from many countries...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 23, 2003
EBRD must rethink its role
LONDON -- When people hear the word "globalization" they differ in how they react. Some think about how globalization has spread around the world raising incomes and the quality of life wherever it goes. Others think about how the capitalist forces of the West extend their exploitative tentacles to grab...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 7, 2003
Fear rules Uzbek majority opposition
LONDON -- Uzbekistan President Islam Abduganievich Karimov will have been watching recent events in Georgia very closely. Could a "revolution" like the one that ousted President Eduard Shevardnadze happen in Uzbekistan?
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 20, 2003
Worlds apart: a tale of two Asian cities
LONDON -- I have spent most of the last two months traveling in the poor areas of western China (the mountain areas in south Ningxia, Qinghai and Gansu) and in Uzbekistan. What a contrast! You could describe the development process in western China as two steps forward and one step back, while in Uzbekistan...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 29, 2003
Washington lays siege to WTO system
LONDON -- In the last few weeks the U.S. Congress has approved free-trade agreements with Chile and Singapore and has approved the opening of talks on FTAs with Bahrain and the Dominican Republic.

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