The following article was published in Global Times on 30 June: Was the Toronto G20 summit from June 26 to 27 an impetus for action or a display of rhetoric? This is a difficult question to answer. The Toronto negotiations began well before the meeting. For instance, US President Barack Obama wrote to the G20 [...]

These terms are frequently used and often appear interchangeable.  But what do they mean?  Is there any common understandable.  Multipolarity is a system of power distribution in which several countries have very substantial influence.  Our deepest challenge,” US national security advisor Henry Kissinger wrote in 1969, will be “to base order on political multipolarity even [...]

How many Europeans know that an ASEM Summit will be held in Brussels on 4-5 October this year, attended by prime ministers or presidents of 45 countries plus the EU/Commission?  Indeed, how many are aware of the existence of ASEM, which is distinct from ASEAN?   ASEM (Asia-Europe Meeting) embraces the 10 ASEAN members (Brunei, [...]

It is now widely accepted that the surge is only a means to an end: the end to establish a stable society in Afghanistan.  This is a mammoth task requiring honest, fair leadership.  The hopes of America and the West are pinned on President Hamid Karzai, the questionable election victor.  Karzai has to find a [...]

Three days ago, 39 commuters were killed by two female suicide bombers in the Moscow metro system.  Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, told Canadian network CTV, “Whether you are in a Moscow subway or a London subway or a train in Madrid or an office building in New York, we face the same [...]

The World Commerce Review of March 2010 contained the following article: China’s Future Role on the World Stage Stanley Crossick The world stage is changing fast and China is changing fast. In order to examine China’s future role on the world stage, we must first address the ways the world and China are changing. It [...]

David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary, today announced the expulsion of an Israeli diplomat for the use of forged UK passports in the killing of a terrorist in Dubai.  Eddie Meyer tried hard, on the Radio Four’s PM programme, to persuade Milliband to confirm that the UK intelligence community never uses forged passports from other [...]

The US Treasury, in its semi-annual report delivered every April and October, can formally label China as a “currency manipulator” on account of the yuan’s substantial undervalue.  This would allow the Department of Commerce to impose countervailing duties on a wide range of Chinese products. US Treasury Secretary-designate Timothy Geithner told the Senate Finance Committee [...]

Criticism of Catherine Ashton not going to Haiti shows why a Commission not directly answerable to the electorate has its advantages.  Most national politicians fly to disaster areas for domestic political reasons.  The last thing Haiti wants is herds of VIPs using valuable airport space and requiring attention, but with nothing to offer solely because [...]

The recent deterioration of the relationship between China and India is deeply disturbing.  Significant was the recent editorial on the People’s Daily  website which attacked “India’s superpower dreams” and  “thought of hegemony”. The fundamental disputes are over the eastern western ends of their long border, unresolved since a war in 1962. In the east, China [...]