china
Dmitry Fedorovich Mezentsev, Secretary-General of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation(SCO), visited New Delhi on a two day visit from February 23 to 25. The visit failed to attract any meaningful media attention. Nonetheless, the visit is significant and highlights the importance of the SCO in India’s larger relations with Central Asia and South Asia.
China, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, and Russia are now known globally for their economic strength. But what about their cultures?
Chinese internet company Sina plans to spin off its Twitter-like microblog service, Weibo, in a US initial public offering to raise US$500 million, a person with knowledge of the deal said on Tuesday. The person, who wasn’t authorised to speak publicly about the deal, said investment banks Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse had been hired to manage the IPO in New York.
Leaving behind their pens and voice recorders, journalists switched roles yesterday to march in defence of press freedom. The "Free Speech, Free Hong Kong" protest was organised by the Hong Kong Journalists Association, which said 6,000 took part. Police put the figure at 1,600. "Such a big number of people illustrates that the public has started to feel that press freedom is at risk," association chairwoman Sham Yee-lan said.
Does Singapore have a problem with xenophobia? It seems that barely a month goes by these days without news reports highlighting friction between Singaporeans and foreign workers in the tiny, multi-ethnic city-state. The population has increased dramatically in recent decades thanks to an influx of foreigners, who now make up around two out of five residents. This has put a growing strain on jobs, housing and infrastructure, and raised fears about the dilution of the Singaporean national identity.
CPD Director Jay Wang’s new book, Shaping China’s Global Imagination: Branding Nations at the World Expo (Palgrave Macmillan), explores the phenomenon of nation branding by looking atthe 2010 World Expo in Shanghai.
Not long ago, China was a soft-power juggernaut. Media accounts highlighted Chinese leaders’ thoughtful forays abroad, depicting policymakers that were respectful of others’ opinions, willing to listen, humble to a fault, and reluctant to dispense unsolicited advice. Here was a country that was content to allow its own example of success to speak for itself.
Romania has announced its doors are wide open to the Chinese after Canada tightened its immigration policy. Chinese looking to migrate to the southeast European country would be warmly welcomed, former Romanian prime minister Petre Roman said on a trip to Beijing.