China: America’s New BFF

Yes, We Can Do It! Obama’s town hall in Shanghai pleased me greatly. His silver tongue was on full display in appeasing the Chinese with conciliatory praise and refined humility. Humility, a word I would rarely associate with American politicians, is an extremely important trait in Asian cultures. He was not forceful, he was not arrogant, and he was the first to point out America’s... Read More

Uighurs and Guantanamo

Four Uighur detainees from Guantanamo Bay who were cleared for release will not be moving to America. Although a large Uighur community in Northern Virginia has offered to accept the former detainees, elected officials from Virginia refused to allow the Uighurs to resettle in Northern Virginia. The Premier in Bermuda, a British protectorate, agreed to accept the Uighurs without... Read More

I Know You Aren’t, But What Am I?

On June 3, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a message to the Chinese government, asking them to remember and recant on the 20th anniversary of the events at Tiananmen Square, saying: “A China that has made enormous progress economically, and that is emerging to take its rightful place in global leadership, should examine openly the darker events of its past and provide... Read More

Cover to Cover

The most recent cover of The Economist was quite an interesting one: an homage to Saul Steinberg’s iconic New Yorker cover in which a distorted map of the world showed the streets of New York dominating the environment, with the rest of the United States an afterthought and China (along with Russia and Japan) mere blips on the horizon. The Economist‘s cover does not... Read More

What’s in a Word?

As someone living in Beijing, I am constantly bombarded with propaganda—from red-letter posters telling me that “we are building a harmonious bus station and society,” to ones that proclaim “it is everyone’s job to prevent fires,” and the other innumerable mottos about the Olympics and the importance of social harmony, I’ve seen it all. Because... Read More