Word: central
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...telecommunications and electronics revolution before agricultural mechanization. It is possible to stand in a field in Zouping and watch wheat harvested exactly as it was 2,000 years ago, by sickle, and then to look up and see the giant satellite dish that links the town with Beijing's Central Television -- as incongruous a sight as that of Chinese businessmen furiously pedaling their bikes through the capital as they speak on cellular phones...
...hometown to a new location is still eligible for ration coupons, housing allowances and other subsidies. But even without permission, people have been drawn by the economic reforms to the major cities, and the financial opportunities they have found there more than compensate for their lost stipends. In central Beijing it is estimated that a fifth of the 6 million residents are illegal transients...
Feigned compliance is the term used by Lucian Pye, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to describe such self-protective make-believe and the obedience it spawns. As a trait central to the Chinese character, feigned compliance has distinct Confucian roots, and Confucius is very much in vogue in China today. Not for that part of his philosophy that extols good-heartedness and broad-mindedness, but for his celebration of authority, hierarchy and anti-individualism. For the purposes of China's leaders, what counts is that Confucius presumed the ruler's right to rule...
...central romance, like the political backdrop, is a rescue fantasy. Soldier Chris (Simon Bowman) meets Kim (Lea Salonga), a village girl turned prostitute, and seeks to save her from that servitude, then from the wrath of a cousin to whom she was betrothed in childhood. At last, impulsively, he vows to save her from the coming chaos. His heart is good, but his head is clouded: he has no thought for the practical realities of her future in an alien land, only for the sweet moment of his own chivalry. Even that fails. In this revamping of Madama Butterfly, Chris...
...members of the ruling Politburo, foot draggers all, and promoted to their posts four men he apparently considers more reliable. He won unanimous approval of his compromise plan to bring forward the next party congress to October 1990 so he can purge still more recalcitrants on the 251-member Central Committee. With Gorbachev flexing his muscles, talk of a coup -- at least the Kremlin-corridor variety that ousted Nikita Khrushchev in 1964 -- appeared misplaced. But at the same time his virtuoso display of political control highlighted a central question: If he can hire and fire the country's most powerful...