BEIJING ― With the likelihood of a contagious sovereign-debt implosion and European bank failures greatly reduced by the Greek debt deal and the European Central Bank’s lending program, it is time to look ahead. Where do the European Union, the eurozone, and the EU’s highly indebted countries go from here? Will Europe be able to roll back its welfare states’ biggest excesses without economic distress and social unrest toppling governments and, in the peripheral countries, undermining already-ten

In the year since Japan’s devastating earthquake and tsunami, the nation’s many deficits have been cast in stark relief. The budget deficit is widening as the cost of rebuilding the northeast mounts. The growth shortfall is worrying politicians more than ever and making it hard for Yoshihiko Noda, the sixth prime minister in five years, to keep his job. Deflation is a chronic downer. News that the trade gap disappeared last month was, for now at least, a rare hint that better days may lie ahead.

The election of Hong Kong’s third chief executive under Chinese sovereignty followed a well-worn pattern. The candidate favored by Beijing won. Earlier, however, there were some twists to the script. Just when the race appeared to be on auto-pilot, there surfaced revelations one would associate with boisterous democratic contests elsewhere. This will boost the expectations of Hong Kongers to directly elect their leader one day. But the overriding concern now is for administrative certainty so th

The second Nuclear Security Summit, which is being held in Seoul, is aimed at preventing nuclear terrorism.Top leaders and Cabinet members from 53 countries are participating in the summit, along with representatives from the United Nations and three other international organizations.The summit is considering what specific measures must be taken to prevent potential nuclear menaces from threatening world security.The leaders taking part in the summit must press North Korea, a country with a nucl

Election fever is gripping the nation, as official campaigning for the April 11 parliamentary election has started. Some 920 candidates will campaign boisterously in 246 electoral districts across the nation for 13 days from Thursday to the eve of polling.The temperature of the election fever is unusually high. One indication is the expected high voter turnout. According to a recent survey conducted by the National Election Commission, 56.9 percent of the respondents said they would “definitely”

Korea is one step closer to participating in Vietnam’s nuclear power construction project. According to the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, Korea has concluded an agreement with Vietnam to conduct a preliminary feasibility study on building a Korean-developed nuclear power plant in the Southeast Asian country. The deal was agreed between President Lee Myung-bak and Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on Wednesday following the Nuclear Security Summit held in Seoul. According to the ministry

The election of Hong Kong’s third chief executive under Chinese sovereignty followed a well-worn pattern. The candidate favored by Beijing won. Earlier, however, there were some twists to the script. Just when the race appeared to be on auto-pilot, there surfaced revelations one would associate with boisterous democratic contests elsewhere. This will boost the expectations of Hong Kongers to directly elect their leader one day. But the overriding concern now is for administrative certainty so th

The two-day Seoul Nuclear Security Summit ended on Tuesday, with the leaders of 53 nations signing a document translating the political pledges on combating nuclear terrorism into concrete action plans. The leaders adopted the Seoul Communique at the end of the final session, which emphasized that participating countries have made “substantive progress” on the political commitments made at the first summit, but that sustained efforts are required to “address the issues of nuclear safety and nucl

The second Nuclear Security Summit, which is being held in Seoul, is aimed at preventing nuclear terrorism.Top leaders and Cabinet members from 53 countries are participating in the summit, along with representatives from the United Nations and three other international organizations.The summit is considering what specific measures must be taken to prevent potential nuclear menaces from threatening world security.The leaders taking part in the summit must press North Korea, a country with a nucl

In the year since Japan’s devastating earthquake and tsunami, the nation’s many deficits have been cast in stark relief. The budget deficit is widening as the cost of rebuilding the northeast mounts. The growth shortfall is worrying politicians more than ever and making it hard for Yoshihiko Noda, the sixth prime minister in five years, to keep his job. Deflation is a chronic downer. News that the trade gap disappeared last month was, for now at least, a rare hint that better days may lie ahead.

We all know what it means to break the law. It is perhaps the most fundamental fact governing our social behavior that we understand the constraints and the pressures to stay within the law and the consequences of not doing so.Kuomintang Honorary Chairman Wu Po-hsiung’s shocking “one country, two areas” remark, believed to be President Ma’s message, is precisely laying the groundwork for cross-strait relations, eliminating surprises and stepping forward from the current “1992 Consensus” toward i

The G20 is at a crossroads and the world is watching. A lack of continuity, legitimacy and credibility are shadowing the G20 in 2012. This year’s Los Cabos Summit takes place only seven months after the Cannes Summit, yet it has a very ambitious agenda: green growth. Last year’s agenda was hijacked by European crisis management. This time, green growth has been criticized as having a lack of clarity in terms of where it is leading to.On the topic of economics and finance, a financial inclusion,

Syria’s crisis is now a year old, with close to 10,000 people, mostly civilians, dead -- and no end in sight. The country is at a stalemate: the opposition is unable to topple President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and Assad’s forces are unable to quash the resistance.Both sides are adamant: the opposition is determined to bring down a regime that it views as illegitimate, sectarian, corrupt, tyrannical, and stained with blood, while the regime’s hard-line core believes that by persevering it will

The G20 is at a crossroads and the world is watching. A lack of continuity, legitimacy and credibility are shadowing the G20 in 2012. This year’s Los Cabos Summit takes place only seven months after the Cannes Summit, yet it has a very ambitious agenda: green growth. Last year’s agenda was hijacked by European crisis management. This time, green growth has been criticized as having a lack of clarity in terms of where it is leading to.On the topic of economics and finance, a financial inclusion,

The Fair Trade Commission has toughened its regulation on related-party transactions among subsidiaries of chaebol groups in a bid to expand business opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises.Under the new rule, which is to apply starting April 1, a company belonging to a business group with aggregate assets exceeding 5 trillion won is required to obtain prior approval from the board of directors when it places an order valued at 5 billion won or more with a sister affiliate. Presentl

BAHRAIN ― China watchers are waiting to see whether the country has engineered a soft landing, cooling down an overheating economy and achieving a more sustainable rate of growth, or whether Asia’s dragon will crash to earth, as others in the neighborhood have before it. But some, particularly American politicians in this presidential election year, focus on only one thing: China’s trade balance.True, not long ago the renminbi was substantially undervalued, and China’s trade surpluses were very

The presidential office must be on edge as it faces two high-profile investigations at the same time. One concerns the cyberattack last October on the website of the National Election Commission while the other is about illegal surveillance of a civilian.On Monday, an independent counsel started a probe into the NEC website attack that took place on Oct. 26, the day Seoul mayoral by-election was held. A massive distributed denial-of-service attack brought the election watchdog’s website down, ma

Call it musical chairs with Chinese characteristics. The number of seats remains the same, but a player gets eliminated instead.Bo Xilai’s ouster as leader of Chongqing two weeks ago, a result of his top aide’s asylum dash to a U.S. consulate, might have snuffed out his chances of a promotion in the Chinese Communist Party. But it has brightened the prospects of almost every single one of his rivals.“The removal of any major player releases pressure on others because there are just so few seats

China watchers are waiting to see whether the country has engineered a soft landing, cooling down an overheating economy and achieving a more sustainable rate of growth, or whether Asia’s dragon will crash to earth, as others in the neighborhood have before it. But some, particularly American politicians in this presidential election year, focus on only one thing: China’s trade balance.True, not long ago the renminbi was substantially undervalued, and China’s trade surpluses were very large. Tha

As it prepares to hold its latest annual summit in New Delhi on March 28-29, the BRICS grouping -- Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa -- remains a concept in search of a common identity and institutionalized cooperation. That is hardly surprising, given that these countries have very different political systems, economies, and national goals, and are located in very different parts of the world. Yet the five emerging economies pride themselves on forming the first important non-Weste