NANNING, China — A huge sign strung across the entrance to a trade exhibition center in the southwest Chinese city of Nanning blandly says “10+1=11.” But behind this uninspiring piece of sloganeering, and in and around this provincial capital, more exciting things have been happening. The Philippines’ President Gloria Arroyo went for a cruise on the Li River, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong popped up to Sichuan and received a bottled gourd for happiness and prosperity, and deals worth $600 million were signed between Chinese companies and several Southeast Asian countries. There have also been some amusing asides in [...]
In a surprising — but typically unexpected — move, North Korea has agreed to return to the Six-Party Talks. Both the United States and North Korea have made concessions, brokered by China, to achieve this long-hoped-for diplomatic reengagement. The United States is not insisting on tangible demonstrations of nuclear rollback as a prerequisite to talks and, to achieve the reengagement, it met in a secret diplomatic forum in Beijing that included only representatives from China and North Korea. North Korea has dropped its insistence that the United States removes its financial restrictions on its overseas monies, being satisfied with U.S. [...]
BANGKOK, Thailand — For army conscript Pramote Wannasuk, 22, and villager Dison Mansu, 36, the military coup in Thailand and all it promises for positive change came too late. Both men, Pramote a Buddhist and Dison a Muslim, were murdered this week in the quiet terrorism that plagues this predominantly Buddhist country’s religiously and culturally divided south. They are among more than 50 people who have been killed or wounded in the past 10 days alone in an escalating conflict that has left about 1,800 dead and many more wounded over the last almost three years. Many hoped that the [...]
