Let’s just make one thing clear: Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou did not endorse the “One China, two governments” idea revisited by the Chinese scholar Chu Shulong in an Apple Daily interview.Before we go any further, let’s look at some of the talking points in the Tsinghua University professor’s proposal. Published by the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, Chu’s article

The Korean National Assembly has long been notorious for violence. In one of the worst cases that took place in December 2008, opposition lawmakers even brought hammers and electric saws to smash their way into an Assembly room where ruling party lawmakers gathered to table a bill on the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement. They were stopped by security officials who blasted water cannons and fire ext

The financial regulator has come up with a packages aimed at defusing the ticking household debt bomb. The measures, unveiled Wednesday, appeared more focused on slowing the rapid growth of household credit and gradually changing the debt profile than on offering incentives for indebted households to pay down their loans.Korea’s household credit, including loans and credit purchasing, stood at 801

Here is something I’ve learned you shouldn’t say to candidates for next year’s Republican presidential nomination: “So, I guess you represent the John McCain-Lindsey Graham foreign-policy wing in this race.” I made this observation the other day to Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, and he winced. It wasn’t a run of the mill wince; it was, as they say, an audible wince. McCain and Gra

My older brother, Bashir, 26, is one of the thousands of people who have been detained by Bashar Assad’s regime in recent weeks.At first, we didn’t know what had happened to him. He and two friends had been missing since they went to the northern city of Jisr al-Shoughur on June 10 to film secretly the protests and the army crackdown there. Then, last week, I was watching Syrian state television w

For two years, polls have shown that the American people have two strongly held beliefs. First, they think the president should do more to create jobs. Second, they believe federal spending should be cut, and the government should shrink. To the progressive economists who form the cadre of President Barack Obama’s advisers ― and indeed, to most mainstream economists ― these two views are mutually

LONDON ― The Chinese financial system’s evolution in recent years has been extraordinary. I have observed its transformation as a member of the International Advisory Council of the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC).Back in 2002, all of China’s major banks were awash in nonperforming loans (NPLs), which in some cases amounted to more than 10 percent of the total balance sheet. None of the

There rarely are second acts, to borrow a phrase from F. Scott Fitzgerald, in American politics. Larry Summers, lauded as President Bill Clinton’s Treasury secretary, made a comeback to government two and half years ago as President Barack Obama’s chief economic adviser with expectations he would become the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. Instead, he returned to Harvard University, his reput

Last year I met a group of young girls in Cambodia living in a shelter for survivors of human trafficking. They wanted the same things we all desire for our children: the opportunity to live and learn in safety, to grow up free to fulfill their God-given potential. But for these girls, those basics seemed nearly insurmountable. They had already endured traumas that defy description and shock the c

Nearly every day for three years, Josue Melquisedec Diaz reported to work by going to a New Orleans street corner where contractors, subcontractors and people fixing up their places went to hire day laborers. It was there, one day in 2008, that a contractor picked him up and took him to Beaumont, Texas, just across the Louisiana line, to work on the cleanup, demolition and reconstruction projects

The surge in Afghanistan was supposed to change the incentives of the Taliban so that they would choose to join the government rather than fight it. That was how the Iraq surge of 2007 worked to end the civil war there, and that was the main objective in Afghanistan. But it didn’t succeed. The great bulk of the Taliban are still in fighting mode, and negotiations with the insurgents are nascent at

TOKYO ― July will mark two milestones in America’s sometimes-tortured relations with Asia. One is the beginning of the end of the nearly decade-long struggle in Afghanistan ― the longest war in United States history ― with President Barack Obama announcing the withdrawal of 30,000 U.S. troops from the country by next summer. The other is the 40th anniversary of Henry Kissinger’s secret mission to

Watching Greece slide into chaos from 6,000 miles away is painful. Asia, after all, was the last region to experience what Europe may be about to endure. Asia’s implosion in 1997 toppled leaders, touched off riots, set back living standards a decade or more and tarnished the International Monetary Fund’s reputation. Expect similar developments as Europe’s grand monetary experiment cracks. Asia and

The Communist Party of China has coined and promoted many slogans from Mao Zedong’s time to the present day. A slogan-driven regime treats its people simultaneously as morons and a dangerous rabble. Mao said that China’s people were “poor and blank” and one could write beautiful things on a blank sheet of paper.In other words, Mao wanted to write his own script on this blank sheet of paper after h

President Barack Obama will want Americans to see his announcement of upcoming U.S. troop withdrawals from Afghanistan as proof that we are defeating the Taliban. But for many, his decision will only confirm that 10 years of war, more than 1,600 American lives and $444 billion of taxpayer money have been wasted. The verdict need not be so dire. It is possible to get to an acceptable outcome, but o

The past five years must have been good times for Korea’s chaebol groups. During this period, the nation’s 30 largest business groups saw their number of affiliates more than double. According to data compiled by the Financial Supervisory Service, the figure surged from 500 in January 2006 to 1,087 in April this year. This means the conglomerates added a new member to their fleet of subsidiaries e

Controversy is raging over the government’s plan to make general household medicines available at supermarkets and convenience stores. The Health and Welfare Ministry recently announced a list of 44 over-the-counter pharmaceutical products that would be sold at retail outlets starting August. If the plan goes as scheduled, it will be the first time in Korea that OTC products are sold at places oth

Suddenly finance god John Paulson isn’t looking so omniscient. The New York-based hedge-fund manager was the star of the 2008 subprime crisis, capitalizing on Wall Street’s misrepresentations to the tune of $15 billion betting against U.S. mortgages. Now, fraudsters may have taken him in. That is, if a June 2 report by Muddy Waters LLC is correct and Sino-Forest Corp. lied about its finances. I do

Whether 2 million bacteria in 1 milliliter of fresh milk qualifies for the label “the globally worst,” as some have called it, is probably debatable. But we do know that the new national dairy safety standards are substantially lower than before. The previous bottom-line for protein content in every 100 grams of fresh milk was 2.95 grams. Now it is 2.8 grams. The number of bacteria permitted in ea

China’s surprisingly aggressive assertion of “indisputable sovereignty” over the South China Sea has startled governments around the region, and puts the emerging superpower on a collision course with its partners in the region as well as the interests of the other, long-established superpower, the United States.Misconceptions about the issue clutter the public discourse in the Philippines, howeve