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July 17, 2024
 

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David Wall
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 15, 2001
Can China's private sector be co-opted?
CAMBRIDGE, England -- President Jiang Zemin of China, who is also general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, made a remarkable speech last week to a handpicked audience of party faithful. The audience had been called to the Great Hall of the People to celebrate the 80th birthday party of the CCP....
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 16, 2001
Time for the suits to make way for dresses
CAMBRIDGE, England -- Japan is going through an interesting period of political change. Or is it? A Japanese colleague in Cambridge who was in Tokyo a couple of weeks ago came back to say that it was only an interlude and that the government of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi would only last a few months,...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 2, 2001
End World Bank charity for bureaucrats
CAMBRIDGE, England -- Freedom of speech died a little death last week. The World Bank Group announced (on a Saturday, so that it did not get much attention) that it was canceling its annual European conference on development economics. The meeting was canceled because the global protest movement that...
COMMENTARY / World
May 18, 2001
Beijing masters tit-for-tat trade policy
CAMBRIDGE, England -- China is on a steep learning curve. There is a tendency to forget that only 20 years ago, China had none of the institutions of a market economy -- nor the trained personnel to operate them.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 27, 2001
Is Asia's little dragon awakening at last?
CAMBRIDGE, England -- When Vietnam set out on the path of economic liberalization in the early 1990s, everyone expected another Asian miracle, Chinese-style. The liberalization program adopted by the country, known as Doi Moi, was expected to bring about the same radical reforms of economic policy that...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 21, 2001
An Asian financial crisis, Chinese-style
CAMBRIDGE, England -- The Chinese government has announced that death sentences have been imposed on seven people for tax fraud, in this case fraudulent claims for value-added-tax refunds on export sales. More death sentences, followed quickly by executions, are expected during what Premier Zhu Rongji...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 18, 2001
Confucius rescues China's communists
CAMBRIDGE, England -- Sometimes it takes a while for the significance of statements made by Chinese leaders to sink in. At a propaganda conference organized by the Communist Party Central Committee on Jan. 10, President Jiang Zemin said that the rule of law alone is not enough; there must also be rule...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 1, 2001
Don't bet against China's industrial policy
Cambridge, ENGLAND -- At a recent conference in Berlin organized by the Institute of Asian Affairs of Hamburg, Ireland's leading China specialist said quite unequivocally that China's industrial policy has failed. As the speaker has long been known as one of the most vocal supporters of China's state-owned...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 10, 2001
Who's afraid of the WTO? Not China
CAMBRIDGE, England -- Among U.S. President Bill Clinton's wilder statements on China were those he came up with when recommending that Congress pass the Permanent Normal Trade Relations Bill. The bill, which Congress passed last September, was a necessary precondition for the United States' support of...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 27, 2001
Corruption in China: business as usual?
Hardly a week goes by in China now without some leader being executed or arraigned for corruption. And the level of the officials being charged and convicted (much the same thing in China) is rising.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 14, 2001
China tightens grip on the Net
CAMBRIDGE, England -- The Chinese government has been issuing more regulations to control the use of the Internet. As with the earlier ones, there are no surprises. They simply tidy up what was already accepted practice and add nothing new. It is still the slow bureaucratic machine catching up with reality....
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 24, 2000
How fast is China's economy growing?
CAMBRIDGE, England -- It is that time of year again when statisticians in Beijing have to decide how fast the Chinese economy grew in the last year. Or rather, not so much how much it grew but how much they are going to claim it grew. More so than anywhere else the figures for growth in gross domestic...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 5, 2000
A Taiwanese lesson in statesmanship
CAMBRIDGE, England -- So our great leaders were unable to reach agreement in The Hague last month on how to save the planet from environmental pollution. So we can continue pumping out ozone-destroying fumes to our hearts' content, especially gas-guzzling drivers in the good old United States. Forests...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 22, 2000
Two countries, one system?
CAMBRIDGE, England -- Last week, Willy Wo-Lap Lam lost his job as the China correspondent on the South China Morning Post. That technically he resigned rather than be "promoted" to a non-China-related job is irrelevant, as it was clear that he was not going to be allowed to continue writing his weekly...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 9, 2000
Jiang's troubling ambitions
CAMBRIDGE, England -- So the U.S. presidential-election campaign is over and we will soon know who is the next "leader of the free world." This time no one has alleged that any Chinese organization or individual has tried to affect the outcome. But why shouldn't they? Analysts say that Texas Gov. George...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 28, 2000
What price NATO's new philosophy?
CAMBRIDGE, England -- While you were on the beaches of Hawaii or Hainan or wherever else you spent the summer, the secretary general of NATO, or U.S.-led NATO as Beijing calls it, spelled out the new philosophy of that organization, as it was expressed in the Kosovo war. Referring to Kosovo in a speech...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 16, 2000
The Net surviving in China
CAMBRIDGE, England -- China is in the process of establishing the rule of law. Not common law as in England or civil law as in most other countries, but socialist law. The basic difference between socialist law and other forms of law, it seems from recent practice, is that only the Chinese Communist...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 30, 2000
Vietnam proves a reluctant reformer
CAMBRIDGE, England -- Foreign investors have not been showing any confidence in Vietnam's Doi Moi (liberalization) program recently. Socialist market economics, Vietnamese-style, have not proved as attractive as the Chinese version. After the initial euphoria of the early 1990s, when foreign companies...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 18, 2000
North Korea drawing the right lessons
CAMBRIDGE, England -- We may never know if North Korea's Dear Leader Kim Jong Il went to Beijing in May, ahead of his historic meeting with South Korean President Kim Dae Jung in June, on his own initiative or at the insistence of Chinese President Jiang Zemin. What we do know is that, very unusually,...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 17, 2000
Private sector CCP's double-edged sword
BEIJING -- It is not often appreciated that accession to the World Trade Organization is a one-sided process: The applicant country has to make a series of concessions to existing members in return for gaining access to the trade concessions that existing members have extended to each other over a period...
Who needs AI when you have Hatsune Miku?
Over the first six months of 2024, a handful of songs using Vocaloid singer Hatsune Miku’s voice have enjoyed widespread attention, underlining a global interest in the character and the technology she represents.
Yen’s woes seem too big for even a BOJ hike this month to solve
The Bank of Japan headquarters in Tokyo
Japan finds a 'stealth' cure for zombie businesses: Let them fail
A worker at Sakai Seisakusyo prepares to transport metal rods at its factory in Kakamigahara, Gifu Prefecture, on July 8.
Trump makes his grand RNC entrance with a bandaged ear and a VP pick
Former U.S. President Donald Trump during the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Monday
China’s economic growth comes in worse than expected
Pedestrians in the Wangfujing shopping area in Beijing on July 11, 2024. China's economic growth in the second quarter was lower than forecast, adding pressure on Chinese leaders to lift confidence at the Chinese Communist Party's third plenum this week.
The neurological disorder that 'kills culture'
Akiko Trush says her experience with the neurological disorder dystonia left her feeling like she wanted to chop her own hand off.
How to beat Japan’s summer heat in ways better for the planet
Tenugui towels hang up to dry at a dyeing company in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, on May 8. The durable and versatile tenugui, which many people have in their homes, can be used in many ways to cool one’s body.
After Trump shooting, U.S. presidential race might take a violent turn
United States Secret Service Counter Snipers stand guard on a rooftop during a campaign rally for U.S. President Donald Trump in Avoca, Pennsylvania, in 2020.
No AC this summer? No problem (for me).
Think air conditioning is a requirement for a Tokyo summer? Think again.
She’s paying ¥1 million to help behind the scenes at the Paris Olympics
Mai Tarumi, who previously volunteered at the postponed Tokyo Olympics in 2021, has a travel budget of ¥1 million for her trip to volunteer at the Paris Games.

Podcast

You can often see generations of families enjoying performances together at Fuji Rock Festival.
Japan’s summer music festivals are feeling the heat in more ways than one

Longform

Akiko Trush says her experience with the neurological disorder dystonia left her feeling like she wanted to chop her own hand off.
The neurological disorder that 'kills culture'
By Tomoko Otake

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