East Asia

By Neil Thompson | (Informed Comment) – The era of Western neo-colonial dominance in the Middle East may finally be drawing to a bloody close. The Western monopoly ended almost unnoticed in 2013 when China replaced the European Union as the region’s foremost trading partner, pushing the US into third place, with India breathing at America’s heels […]

Central Asia

China’s Pivot toward Europe may Cut USA out of Deal

contributors

By Pepe Escobar | (Tomdispatch.com) — November 18, 2014: it’s a day that should live forever in history. On that day, in the city of Yiwu in China’s Zhejiang province, 300 kilometers south of Shanghai, the first train carrying 82 containers of export goods weighing more than 1,000 tons left a massive warehouse complex heading […]

Afghanistan

Enter the Dragon: China offers Iraq Aerial Strikes on ISIL/ Daesh

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | — The list of powers eager to see Daesh (what Arabs call ISIS or ISIL) defeated grew larger this weekend with a report in the Financial Times that Iraqi foreign minister Ibrahim Jaafari received a pledge from his counterpart Wang Yi that China would intervene against Daesh from the air. It […]

Central Asia

Does Bear + Dragon Trump Eagle? How Russia & China may block the US in Asia

contributors

By Pepe Escobar via Tomdispatch.com A specter haunts the fast-aging “New American Century”: the possibility of a future Beijing-Moscow-Berlin strategic trade and commercial alliance. Let’s call it the BMB. Its likelihood is being seriously discussed at the highest levels in Beijing and Moscow, and viewed with interest in Berlin, New Delhi, and Tehran. But don’t […]

Asia

The Yasukuni Shuffle: China and Japan duke it out via T.V. Serials on the Wrongs of WW II

contributors

By Philip J Cunningham Everyday hundreds, if not thousands of Chinese and Japanese kill one another on Chinese television. Hundreds of Anti-Japan war dramas were churned out last year and the genre dominates China’s airwaves round the clock like never before, even though eight decades have gone by since Japan’s war of invasion. What’s more, […]

Asia

Tiananmen still Under Lockdown after all These Years

contributors

By Philip Cunningham I approached the Square from Qianmen which back in the old days of the Qing Dynasty was the traditional gate into the Forbidden City; nowadays it’s the gate to a quasi-forbidden public square. In better times, one used to just walk onto the Square, from almost any direction, at almost any time. […]

Barack Obama

Another Pivot: Can Obama’s New CO2 Rules Break Our Stalemate With China?

contributors

There’s going to be a long fight over the Obama administration’s new carbon emissions caps, and it’s just getting started. But today brings encouraging news from beyond our borders: As if on cue, the world’s biggest polluter, China, announced…

China

The NSA Effect: China tells its banks to remove IBM servers as Spyware

contributors

THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT has urged its banks to stop using servers built by IBM because it believes that they might be used for espionage. According to unnamed sources cited by Bloomberg, the People’s Bank of China and the Chinese Ministry of Finance…

Central Asia

The Eurasian Pivot: Is it China’s and Russia’s Century?

contributors

(By Pepe Escobar via Tomdispatch) HONG KONG — A specter is haunting Washington, an unnerving vision of a Sino-Russian alliance wedded to an expansive symbiosis of trade and commerce across much of the Eurasian land mass — at the expense of the United States. And no wonder Washington is anxious. That alliance is already a […]