Several years ago I participated in a public “debate” about the exigent matter of whether Los Angeles was better than New York or vice versa. I put “debate” in quotes because it was more like a reading followed by 20 minutes of lethargic sparring. The event was called something like “New York vs. L.A.: Which Is Better,” and people had actually shown up to watch as if they might learn something. ...

PARIS ― The political scholar Walter Russell Mead recently alluded to more than a half-century of American “world-order-building tasks,” a formulation that I think most Americans would accept as describing the international obligations Washington assumed in 1945-46, and the policy the United States has undertaken since 1941, when it entered the Second World War against Nazi Germany and the Japane...

The world abhors China’s one-child policy. Officials in Beijing must be quietly toasting its very existence as the Middle East burns. A common thread linking events in Egypt, Bahrain, Tunisia, Libya and elsewhere is big populations of disaffected youth. They’re angry about greed, corruption, the rich-poor divide and unaccountable leaders. Many Chinese harbor similar gripes, yet demographics work...

AMMAN, Jordan ― Jordanians are clamoring for reform these days, like everyone else in the Arab world, but what they mean depends partly on which side of the Jordan River their ancestors hail from. Yet both sides look to the Hashemite monarchy for protection, which is one reason it’s still standing amid the hurricane that’s blowing through the neighborhood. When Jordanians of Palestinian descent ...

Labor shortage, previously felt in some of China’s economically developed regions, is becoming a reality in the rest of the country now. This became evident again when some inland provinces entered into a fierce battle with eastern and coastal areas for laborers shortly after lunar New Year. The supply of abundant and cheap labor, called “demographic dividend” by many, is considered one of the m...