SubscribeTwenty years
June 4, 2009 at 7:54 p.m.
The Beijing I knew in my brief visits is a product of the last two decades, the time since Tiananmen Square, when China traded political freedom for economic liberty. It's a city I remember as thriving, diverse, crowded and still growing. It's the only place in China I ever heard anyone acknowledge what happened twenty years ago today.
I wrote about that memory two years ago, when I was an English teacher in Dalian. The day after getting blank stares from a group of college freshmen when I asked about the date, a graduate student dismissed the movement ...
Did Bush get it right on China?
August 28, 2008 at 12:57 a.m.
Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek seems to think so. While he's no fan of the current president, Zakaria gives him credit for engaging the People's Republic in last week's cover story, What Bush Got Right:
The bilateral relationship between China and America will be the most significant one in the 21st century. Bush began his term poorly on the subject. During the campaign, when asked by Larry King for the single most important area where he would depart from Clinton foreign policy, he cited China. "The current president has called the relationship with China a strategic partnership," Bush ...
We'll watch how we want to
August 10, 2008 at 8:02 a.m.
I'm watching the Olympics right now. I've been watching since early Friday morning, on TV and online, with and without the help of NBC.
The network has been the sole broadcaster of the Olympics as long as I've been watching television, but that monopoly is clearly ebbing. Yesterday morning, while I was sitting through an insufferable pre-taped Today show (summary: Isn't China weird?!?), my friends back in China were watching the opening ceremonies in Beijing live and telling me all about it over Twitter. Meanwhile, others were doing whatever they could to get around NBC's ...
