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Adam Minter
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 11, 2014
China flouts efforts to protect world's wildlife
It would be nice to believe China's rhetoric that it cooperates with other countries in protecting wildlife. Yet, for two decades at least, Chinese consumer demand has been directly linked to the precipitous decline of wildlife populations around the globe.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 1, 2014
Commercial rockets go boom like NASA's
There's no risk-free way to launch 5,000 pounds of food, science experiments and equipment to the International Space Station. As Orbital Sciences found out last week, some ways are far more dangerous than others.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 29, 2014
A hobbit won't help with your emergency oxygen
Placing a priority on entertainment in preflight safety videos may not be the best way to teach first-time fliers emergency procedures.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 24, 2014
Kenny G runs afoul of Xi's artist crackdown
Chinese President Xi Jinping has launched a Maoist campaign against art and artists whom he judges as having 'negative social impact.' Saxman Kenny G, who is super popular in China, ran afoul of the authorities this week when he tweeted images of himself visiting protesters in Hong Kong.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 21, 2014
Uneaten food threatens China's environment
Despite the fact that 11.5 percent of the China mainland's population was undernourished between 2010 and 2012, Chinese still manage to waste more food grains than Americans on an annual basis.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 12, 2014
Asteroid-mining race starts with few laws in place
Nobody is expected to start mining asteroids this decade, but the U.S. Congress is to hold hearings on the Asteroids Act, legislation that takes a simple line: If you extract a resource from an asteroid, it's yours.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 30, 2014
California ban on plastic bags is full of hot air
California legislators' efforts to impose America's first statewide ban on single-use plastic bags smack of an easy way to demonstrate concern for the environment without requiring too much of their constituents or local businesses.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 28, 2014
Xi using drug campaign as new political tool
The highly publicized arrests and confessions in President Xi JInping anti-drug use campaign play an important propaganda role, contrasting Xi's administration against the supposedly more permissive governments that preceded it.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 24, 2014
Topping the pops not as hard as it used to be
Disney's almighty Marvel Entertainment Group musters its superpowers to transform a motley collection of AM radio hits from the 1970s into the No. 1 pop music album in the U.S.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 22, 2014
Can the Chinese help save Africa's elephants?
Over the last two years, restaurants in Shanghai have dropped shark fin from their menus amid an awareness campaign against the shark-fin trade. Could a similar campaign curb the Chinese public's demand for ivory and help to save Africa's elephants?
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 15, 2014
China outsourcing its dirty work to U.S. military
There's little that the Chinese government likes less than the projection of U.S. military power, yet Beijing offers grudging support for U.S. efforts to safeguard Iraqi sovereignty with airstrikes against Islamic State jihadists.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 1, 2014
Communist roots of China's capitalist corruption
Official voices and microbloggers are becoming more comfortable discussing the broad and entrenched nature of corruption in China. Meanwhile, personalities remain at the heart of President Xi Jinping's current anti-corruption purge.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 29, 2014
Why I'll be flying again on Malaysia Airlines
Despite losing its second airliner in four months, Malaysia Airlines says its generous refund policy for 2014 has not resulted in a surge in requests for refunds. There is good reason for that.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 21, 2014
Coca-Cola pays expats to breathe China's air
It's hard to believe that the 15 percent bonus Coca-Cola is said to be offering will do much to help it attract or retain expatriate employees to breathe China's polluted air.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 12, 2014
Is China really set on another Olympics?
One would have expected some civic joy at Monday's news that Beijing is listed as one of three candidate finalists to host the 2022 Winter Olympics. Curiously, though, that news has been hard to find in China.
COMMENTARY
Jun 18, 2014
China's mixed messages to Taiwan, Hong Kong
China has released a document that fundamentally alters the meaning of its promise of 'one country, two systems' to both Hong Kong and Taiwan.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 14, 2014
Chinese World Cup woes provoke self-doubt
China's long-suffering soccer fans keep looking for proxies at World Cup time, all the while grumbling under their breaths about the government's control-freak approach to choosing athletes for the national team and a lack of youth developmental leagues outside of the official system.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 4, 2014
China wields history as weapon, except on June 4
For China, history is a weapon to use against other countries, but it keeps a curtain of silence drawn around the events that transpired in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.
COMMENTARY / World
May 19, 2014
Trash troubles pile up in China's Garbage Era
Chinese consumers, as much if not more than industry or the government, are at the root of the country's solid-waste problem. Yet protests over garbage incinerators, as an alternative to landfills, are turning violent.
COMMENTARY / World
May 3, 2014
China starts, loses unprovoked Twitter war
China loses an unprovoked war on Twitter after a semi-retired Twitter account of mostly Sinophiles suggests that a solemnly worded Twitter message fron the People's Daily, the Chinese Communist Party's official mouthpiece, is a parody.

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?