China

The final stretch on the road to Yarkand, about 125 miles from China’s border with Pakistan, feels like the middle east. Each village is a collage of single-storey mud-brick homes with turquoise door-gates. People travel by donkey cart or scooter-rickshaw. Men greet each other the Muslim way (palm to the chest and a slight bow); women wear headscarves. In small villages many signs are still in Uighur, the local language. But for how much longer?

The United States and China have more in common than their paramount importance in the global economy. The citizens of both countries share the same basic complaint: bad healthcare. As the White House prepares to roll out its plan to overhaul the United States' woefully inadequate health insurance system, it may be instructive to look across the Pacific, where an even more ambitious effort is underway to give access to healthcare to the millions left behind by China's rapid economic… more

"There are these two countries that the world blames for doing nothing, and they have a better story to tell," said Terry Tamminen, who took part in the talks and is an environmental adviser to the governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. ...

Will China and the Gulf oil states have the U.S. over the proverbial barrel, or will the world's leading capitalist economy get lucky once again? On May 26, 2009, two of the New America Foundation's leading experts on geopolitics and the global economy joined with Foreign Policy magazine to debate which countries will emerge relatively stronger in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

Since the global financial crisis began, one of the major surprises has been the continued resilience of the U.S. dollar - despite attacks on the "American-style capitalist model," financial sector weakness, and record U.S. government deficit spending. The dollar today represents almost two thirds of the world's official currency reserves. Its holders presumably believe that it will remain highly liquid, relatively stable in value, and supported by prudent economic policies by the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve.

As states large and small struggle to cope with and find a way out of the current economic crisis, it is not too early to begin thinking about how the "Great Recession" will alter the world's politics. Countries that have the economic fundamentals and resilience to emerge relatively early from the crisis -- China, some Gulf states, Brazil, and India -- are also likely to emerge stronger politically.

In 10 years books on the financial collapse will lead with facts about China. Eventually, the text will get around to explaining that failed oversight in American markets brought the implosion to its height, but the thesis of the narrative will center on the success of tightly managed macroeconomics, massive internal investment, and revisions made to an already successful system in a time of great turmoil. China, in short, will be the winner among losers when we look back upon these years of unrest.

The diplomatic and military surge into South-Central Asia that will define the Obama administration's early years has already begun. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen and Centcom head Gen. David Petraeus have become regular visitors to Islamabad and Kabul. Vice President Joe Biden recently came through for huddled conversations, and veteran Balkan negotiator Richard Holbrooke has just embarked on his first trip as special envoy to the region. Enough congressional delegations are passing through that the Pakistani media

Even as my plane was landing in Jinan, the capital of China's heavily industrialized Shandong province, I could see cranes. By the time I got to the city center I'd counted 76 more construction cranes along the way. There were probably more, but in the city proper the smog was so thick I couldn't see any farther than the sidewalk. When I visited, just a few weeks before last summer's Olympic extravaganza kicked off, Shandong had just been named to the Chinese EPA's "green blacklist" for its