China’s sky-rocketing growth and shortage of sufficient resources is forcing China to set its sights outside its borders in a frantic search for oil, but the major oil-producing countries are kept off-limits by the United States, forcing China to do business with the rogue states – African dictatorships, Iran and former Russian states - to get the oil they desperately need. Featuring field encounters, archival footage, news reports and maps to outline the latest threat in world geopolitics. "

In China's Looming Crisis--Inflation Returns, Keidel argues that political disputes between competing interests groups could hold up adjustments to China�s government-administered interest rates. A delayed response could be dangerous, however, as both public and corporate bank deposits are already losing purchasing power. Value-losing deposit rates in the late 1980s and mid 1990s sparked heavy bank withdrawals and accelerated consumer spending--pushing inflationary pressures to the crisis point. Albert Keidel is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment, where he specializes in Chinese economic issues and related U.S. policy.

This paper examines the effects of China’s rapid integration into the global economy on export performance of its East Asian neighbors against the backdrop of ongoing changes in patterns of international production. Following a stage-setting overview of trends and patterns of China’s export performance since the early 1990s, it probes two key themes central to the current policy debate, namely China competition in third country markets and emerging patterns of East Asian exports to China. The statistical analysis places particular emphasis on the supply-side complementarities between China and its East Asian neighbors resulting from China’s rapid integration into regional production networks. The findings suggest that the fear of export crowding-out has been vastly exaggerated in the contemporary policy debate on the implications of China’s rise.

This is an interesting expose/translation of a magazine article on the water shortage issue in China. It examines a village in Hubei as a case study for the strategic obstacles involved in alleviating water problems in the rural countryside. It also takes a look at the World Bank-DFID joint project in Shaanxi.

It was a case that galvanized protests in Chinese-American communities around the United States last year and drew international attention: the pregnant Chinese woman who miscarried twins soon after she was taken by federal immigration officers from Philadelphia to New York to be deported.

The challenge to determining the true impact of HIV within the general population in China has been the lack of a reliable, comprehensive surveillance and reporting system, coupled with the lack of an effective referral chain within the Chinese healthcare system. However, over the past few years, more information has become available about specific, at-risk populations.

.S. Critics Blast Selection; Artist Is Bewildered at Outrage. Atlanta resident Lea Winfrey Young says the "outsourcing" by U.S. companies and organizations to China has gone too far this time. She and her husband, Gilbert Young, a painter, are leading a group of critics who argue that an African American -- or any American -- should have been picked for such an important project.

Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign dramatically severed all ties to disgraced fundraiser Norman Hsu, announcing Monday night it will return more than $850,000 he raised from some 260 donors.

Talk about déjà vu. Pressed by questions about a scandal-tarred fundraiser, a candidate named Clinton decides to return hundreds of thousands of dollars. The politician's operation promises to conduct criminal background checks on big fundraisers in the future. And it leaks its decisions at night after a busy day in hopes of burying the news and minimizing the damage.

As the dawn breaks on the 21st Century, already the social and political tides that shaped the world of the 20th Century move across the globe, repositioning political alignments, opening some borders while closing others. If the last one hundred years were the American Century, and, as some believe, the United States now stands at the apex of its political, economic and military power, it can be argued that--as history dictates--a fall is sure to follow.