By Willy Lam The standing of the People's Liberation Army (PLA)--and its commander-in-chief, Jiang Zemin--has taken a drubbing in the wake of China's raging pneumonia epidemic and a recent submarine accident off the Bohai Sea. Apart from the leaders of Guangdong Province, where Severe Acute... MORE

By Li Thian-hok Taiwan once enjoyed a growing and prosperous economy. Taiwan's GDP was US$314 billion in 2000, which ranked nineteenth globally. Per capita GDP was US$14,180 that year, and the economy's annual growth rate was 5.9 percent. Taiwan's trade volume was US$288 billion, making... MORE

by William R. Hawkins In March of 1917 the British Empire captured Baghdad from the Ottoman Empire. That military campaign was part of the larger conflict of World War I, from which Great Britain emerged victorious. Indeed, London has not lost a major war in... MORE

Could Taiwan's voters elect a pro-unification candidate in 2004? Can the challenger, Kuomintang chairman Lien Chan, put together an electoral consensus of ethnic mainlanders, Hakkas and ethnic Taiwanese investors in China that will begin the process of moving Taiwan into the embrace of the People's... MORE

By Willy Lam In addition to shaving perhaps 0.5 percent from China's GDP growth this year, the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) will have a lasting socio-political impact on the country. The authority of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been shaken to... MORE

The answer from expert Pan Zhenqiang was hardly what a viewer would normally expect, given the usual ideological tilt of CCTV, the state operated China Central Television. Speculating on the death of Saddam Hussein as U.S. forces entered Baghdad in April, CCTV anchor Li Maoqi... MORE

Beijing insists that Taiwan can participate in the global struggle to contain Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) only as a part of the People's Republic of China. There is nothing surprising about this denial of recognition to Taiwan as an individual entity. Beijing has always... MORE

An epidemic, spread by official deception and indifference, is afflicting the Chinese people. What does this disease mean for the People's Republic of China?Severe acute respiratory syndrome, "SARS" for short, is, according to the World Health Organization, "the first severe new disease of the 21st... MORE

On April 17, twenty-two weeks after the first outbreak of a previously unknown type of atypical pneumonia in Guangdong province, the highest political decision making body in China, the nine member Politburo Standing Committee (PSC), finally took a public stand in favor of handling the... MORE

The vast weight of reporting thus far on the origins of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) points to a mutation of the coronavirus, which causes the common cold. This view holds that the virus most likely jumped from animals to humans somewhere in China's... MORE