Beijing Cleans Up its Bar Scene Ahead of the Games | Newsweek Scope

Why India Fears China
Jeremy Kahn 10/10/2009 12:00:00 AM
On June 21, two Chinese military helicopters swooped low over Demchok, a tiny Indian hamlet high in the Hima-layas along the northwestern border with China. The helicopters dropped canned food over a barren expanse and then returned to bases in China. India's military scrambled helicopters to the scene but did not seem unduly alarmed. This sort of Cold War cat-and-mouse game has played out on the 4,057-kilometer India-China border for decades. But the incident fed a media frenzy about "the Chinese dragon." Beginning in August, stories about new Chinese incursions into India have dominated the 24-hour TV news networks and the newspaper headlines.
Show Float
Melinda Liu 9/30/2009 12:00:00 AM
China watchers worldwide have been studying the preparations for China's 60th-anniversary celebration this week, and they have come to something like a consensus analysis: the massive military parade Thursday is meant to showcase a robust military deterrence while simultaneously calming fears about China's rise. And that's the take Chinese authorities themselves are pushing. "A country's military ability is not a threat to anyone, what's important is its military policy," says Gen. Gao Jianguo, executive deputy director of the office of the Orwellian-sounding National Day Military Parade Joint Command. Fifty-six military formations, with 8,000 participants, are slated to be followed by a kinder, gentler civilians' parade of another 180,000 people traveling on floats and by foot.
Can China’s Good Fortune Last?
9/24/2009 12:00:00 AM
For all the debates over what the Great Recession means for the global political economy, there does appear to be consensus on one point: China has had a very good year.
Power Up
Melinda Liu 9/17/2009 12:00:00 AM
For some countries, trade policy is the stuff of arcane rules and wonky bureaucracy. But for centuries in China, trade has been the biggest bugaboo of foreign affairs. Every Chinese knows about the moment their country was forcibly "opened" to the West: British merchants compelled Beijing to allow imports of opium—a baleful product that many Chinese nonetheless desired—in the 19th century. More recently, though, the tables have turned. China has come to possess a raft of things coveted by those same foreign powers: cheap labor, abundant capital, and, as it turns out, the world's greatest supply of so-called rare earths—metals essential for everything from hybrid cars to iPods to precision-guided weaponry.
Home Movies
Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop 9/11/2009 12:00:00 AM
A revolutionary runs through the busy streets of Hong Kong, pulling a rickshaw carrying Sun Yat-sen. He keeps glancing anxiously over his shoulder, on the lookout for assassins who plan to kill the future leader of the 1911 revolution. The 15-second scene, for the upcoming film Bodyguards and Assassins, is being shot not on location but on an elaborate set built on the outskirts of Shanghai. As big as 10 football fields, this full-scale replica of a section of the former British colony took a year to build, cost $5 million—a fifth of the film's budget—and includes the façades of about 200 shops and a near-exact copy of Pottinger (Stone Slab) Street.
China’s Stock is Sky-High
Ruchir Sharma 9/5/2009 12:00:00 AM
Chinese stocks are still a long way off their October 2007 record highs, but if sentiment on the streets of Beijing or Chongqing is anything to go by, the one stock at a new all-time high is that of the Chinese government. The country's middle class now has incredible faith in its government's ability to pull off any plan it sets out to achieve.