Word: communists
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...President couldn't have picked a better city to showcase a China changing at almost breakneck speed: The spectacle of a U.S. president chatting with callers on a radio show in Communist-ruled China about ways of getting Japan's stagnant economy restarted seems almost outlandish. Even more so, perhaps -- the Prez was asked about one of his areas of expertise: fast food. A local leader at the morning roundtable bemoaned the passion for McDonald's and KFC among China's children, wondering if it might lead to problems of obesity...
Well, forget that when China, not the Soviet Union, is the other big boy on the planet. The U.S. has always had trouble figuring out what cubbyhole to stick the world's most populous communist nation into: a geostrategic card to play? Someone we can do business with? The next evil empire? Now, by one of those sudden confluences of the political stars, the off-and-on debate over how to handle China is at a high boil just as Clinton sets forth on the first presidential visit to the People's Republic since Beijing's tanks mowed down...
...country today brings out more of the passions--or the hypocrisy--in Washington politicians. Every time they get the chance, those who see profit in it pummel the "butchers in Beijing" about all manner of failings, aiming their blows as much at Clinton as at China's communist die-hards. Antiabortion activists rail at China's forced abortions. Exiled crusader Harry Wu charges China with harvesting human organs from executed prisoners for sale. Human-rights advocates complain that Clinton is ignoring systemic repression; partisans of the Dalai Lama call for a free Tibet; labor advocates bang the drums about unfair...
...water has been muddy, quite muddy, ever since the Communist government fell in November 1989. Governments have changed several times, oscillating between the newly formed Democratic Forces and the Socialists (ex-communists). The much-talked-about restructuring of the economy from a planned to a market one has not yet taken place; the much needed privatization of industry and land reforms has been slow to progress in the face of vast squandering of land and capital. The result has been a quasi-market economy without a solid framework of law (much legislation is still in the making) and without private...
...must be like that for Bill Clinton; it was certainly that way for Steve McQueen in The Sand Pebbles. Enter 1926 China at the start of the Communist-Nationalist civil war with McQueen (whose sailor-suited Jake Holman may or may not have inspired the Village People to record "In the Navy") getting an appreciative look from a missionary's daughter as he boards his Yankee gunboat. Leave it, three hours and and a lot of great scenery later, with the perfect throat-wrenching closer: "What the hell happened...