Word: asia
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Even more daunting, according to scholar Huang Jing, is the institutional resistance to change. Huang, currently a visiting fellow at the University of Singapore's East Asia Institute, says there is a huge bulwark of entrenched officials (in the United Front Work Department - a bureaucracy dealing with Tibetan matters - the Public Security Bureau, Foreign Affairs, the Religious Affairs department, the Communist Party in Tibet and the Minority Affairs Department) who have spent their lifetimes railing against "spilittism" and not only can't imagine any other approach but would fear losing their jobs under any new arrangement. Thus, Huang says, essentially...
...courts and on the streets, the Alevis offer a third way - a faith-based humanism big enough to incorporate both piety and modernity. Indeed, Alevi Islam is as layered as the ceremonial dress worshipers sometimes wear, originating in pre-Islamic times when the Turks were nomadic horsemen in Central Asia. Their circular prayer rooms, veneration of horses and participation in sports such as javelin throwing, all predate the quasi-Shi'ite form of Islam they later adopted (Alevi means "follower of Ali," the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad venerated in Shi'ism). They say the Koran is open to interpretation...
...probably behind the new measures. In Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong's famous warren of drug dens, second-hand cell phone shops and budget hostels popular with petty traders from overseas, dozens of stranded merchants mill around helplessly. Many hold passports from a list of 33 countries, mostly from South Asia and the Middle East, whose citizens are now barred from applying for any entry permit to China in Hong Kong-a sign, perhaps, of China's concern about a potential Muslim terror threat. Mohammed Salim, a Karachi-based trader who makes his living selling fake watches from China, says consular...
...Most China analysts, though, expect these difficulties to disappear after the Olympics. "They're having a few jitters, but China isn't going to cut off its nose to spite its face," says Kent Kedl, a consultant at Technomic Asia, a Shanghai-based market strategy firm. Plans are already afoot to give Hong Kong permanent residents of any nationality visa-free access to the mainland within the next few years, the kind of privilege that millions of Asians who work in the West can only dream about. "Getting my Chinese staff to the U.S. is an absolute nightmare," says Kedl...
...world's second largest economy is now crying over spilled milk - and its delicious by-product, butter. Japan, insulated from rice shortages that plague other parts of Asia, is experiencing an unprecedented shortage of the household staple - and discovering that it is not as immune from the growing global food crisis as it wants...