Published under
EU,
china,
corporate foreign policy,
corruption on Thursday, April 1st, 2010
Claudio Gatti is an investigative reporter based in New York for the Italian newspaper Il Sole-24 Ore and The International Herald Tribune. Below, he references the ongoing tangle of investigations regarding possible bribes paid by the conglomerate to secure contracts around the world, the ramifications from the responses from the respective judicial systems which processed the [...]
In the wake of the latest threat by the Chinese government, Google Inc.’s only choice is to pack up and exit the Chinese market, wholesale. In lieu of this, Chinese authorities on Friday told local news websites that if Google China does close, they will be required to use only official news accounts of situations, [...]
Published under
china,
democracy on Thursday, February 11th, 2010
China’s leading dissident, Liu Xiaobo, yesterday lost his appeal against his conviction and 11-year sentence for inciting subversion.
Outside the court, US and European diplomats called for the immediate release of the 54-year-old Liu, a writer and one-time professor who was first detained in December 2008 after co-authoring a manifesto calling for political reform in China.
US [...]
Published under
china,
corruption on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
Corruption runs rampant in China. Though millions of Chinese citizens have little to no access to the internet, government dealings with the various forms of mafia go without saying. It is in this climate that the beginning of perhaps the most intriguing chapter in China’s most sweeping crackdown on corruption in recent history takes place. [...]
Published under
BRIC,
Brazil,
china,
economy on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
This is quite an interesting little comment buried down in a Financial Times article today, about how the Chinese authorities are raising a lot of international concerns (including inside Brazil, the other titan of the BRIC grouping) by artificially keeping their currency undervalued and failing to allow for the development of what could become one [...]
Published under
Latin America,
Venezuela,
china,
human rights,
russia on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
This article was first published in The Wall Street Journal.
Human rights are under attack, and language is the weapon. The very grammar of justice has fallen into the wrong hands, instrumentalized in the elaborate and sensational theaters of due process. A trial without any rights of defense is still called a “trial,” a conviction ordered [...]
Published under
china,
corporate foreign policy on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
Google’s dramatic threat to close its business in China unless the authorities allow it to provide uncensored search results throws into stark relief the limits to globalization.
The dream of google spearheading the initiative to unify the World Wide Web by flattening the Earth into a single cyberspace has been shattered by that governments’ determination to control [...]
Published under
Africa,
china,
corporate foreign policy on Monday, January 11th, 2010
Chinese Foreign Minister Hon. Yang Jiechi recently sat down with both China Radio International and Kenya Broadcasting Corporation at the Chinese embassy in Nairobi. One of the lesser-discussed initiatives China has undertaken to wear the king’s crown in the realm of geopolitical hegemony was and is their continued strides in Africa. Below, the Foreign Minister [...]
Published under
china,
corporate foreign policy,
human rights on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009
The trial of the internationally renowned dissident Liu Xiaobo is set to start tomorrow in Bejing. Although he was promised an open trial, European and U.S. diplomats have been refused access to the hearing. Chinese reform activists and his wife say they have been warned not to attend the trial.
Chinese court officials called Liu’s attorneys last weekend [...]
Published under
china,
democracy on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009
Since November 4, Feng Zhenghu has been an unusual fixture at the bustling Narita International Airport outside Tokyo. Feng is a Chinese citizen with a valid Japanese visa. He refuses to pass through immigration checkpoints to enter Japan for a simple reason — he wants to go home.
But the Chinese government has blocked his path [...]