A World Bank report prepared with lots of input from Chinese researchers and blessed with high level Chinese government support is calling for fundamental changes in the country’s growth model, reports the AP.In particular the report calls for a shift away from large state owned enterprises to private firms if the economy is to continue […]

The BBC ran a somewhat rambling and anecdotal article which nevertheless illustrates that linguistically at least, China’s hegemony in East Asia is not a done deal. Though many of the people interviewed in the article acknowledge that speaking Mandarin proficiently is crucial for taking advantage of the ever-expanding opportunities to do business in China, parents […]

Turkish reporting on foreign affairs this week centered on the heavily anticipated visit of Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping. A guest of President Abdullah Gül, Xi received head-of-state honors to recognize his coming ascension to the presidency of China, with the press uniformly reveling in the significance of his choice to include Turkey in his […]

Everybody thinks it; now somebody has said it.Hans-Peter Friedrich is the interior minister of Germany, and he has publicly stated that it would be better for all concerned if Greece just left the eurozone. It would certainly have been better if the Greeks (and the Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians and Irish) had never joined, and it […]

This week, we looked for the key to what comes after the Blue social model: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. As a society, we’re likely to return to our roots as entrepreneurs in the future, in contrast to the employee role Americans have settled into since the decline of the family-owned farm.On the home front, the Dodd-Frank […]

The U.S. has an unlikely new ally in its call for regime change in Syria: Hamas. The Times reports on this important turn of events: Hamas’s prime minister in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, said during Friday Prayer, “I salute all people of the Arab Spring, or Islamic winter, and I salute the Syrian people who seek […]

Edward Luttwak, the iconoclastic military historian and strategist of “Give War a Chance” fame, is now making the case for a strike against Iran. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Luttwak argues that the conventional wisdom poses a false binary choice between an all-out assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities and a policy of containment: [T]his […]

Education is where the rubber meets the road: it is the system which does the most, good or bad, to produce a generation of Americans who will be able to operate effectively in the more entrepreneurial workplace that is coming — and it is one of America’s most dysfunctional and change-resistant sectors.One important step to […]

Syria is looking uglier every day. Assad can’t crush the protesters, and the protesters can’t overthrow the government: a stalemate could be emerging. As the FT reports, the rebels are hunting for weapons and are getting increasingly organized. They are enjoying the growing backing from one of the oddest coalitions in years: American and West […]

Anne-Marie Slaughter, formerly the director of policy planning at the State Department, argued forcefully for international forces to intervene in Libya. Now she is suggestion a coalition be formed to bring peace to Syria. In an article titled “How to Halt the Butchery in Syria,” Slaughter has a few suggestions: The Friends of Syria, some […]