Word: rule
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...shown only a rudimentary understanding of what we might call Real China - the harsh, smashmouth China familiar to anyone who works in its streets and corridors of power. This is the China that has grown for 30 years at an average rate of some 10% a year with no rule of law. It is a very different place from the polite, harmony-seeking Middle Kingdom many Westerners expect. Real China can baffle Westerners and confound them as easily in political negotiations as in the sort of commercial nightmares that are only too commonplace. This is part of the reason...
...great deal of maturation still awaits China. We can't forget that it has only been really open to the world for 30 years under Communist rule. The country's basic tools of international affairs - like a robust national-security apparatus - are still under construction. And they have not yet been tested by crisis. China is ambitious, to be sure, but it is too insecure to be audacious yet. In the next 10 years, this will change. China will build a global-size foreign policy apparatus just as it has built stadiums and airports. But will this framework be crafted...
Aleksei Levshin, a 19th-century Russian traveler, wrote sneeringly that the "Kirghiz manner of life is a living picture of the age of the Patriarchs... they live almost solely for their herds." Heavy-handed Tsarist and eventually Soviet rule saw the migration of a significant population of Russians as well as the dilution of Kyrgyz culture. New tree-lined urban centers like Bishkek as well as spas along the land's salt lakes became popular destinations for Russians escaping the industrial grimness further north. As in elsewhere in Central Asia, Cyrillic is the adopted script and vodka shops abound...
Initially, Kyrgyzstan stood out among the newly independent Central Asian republics for its sound, multi-party democratic system. While its neighbors returned to authoritarian rule, built on networks of patronage run by Soviet apparatchiks of old, Kyrgyzstan became relatively open, buoyed in particular by an outspoken civil society. However, by the mid-1990s, Askar Akayev, president since the republic's inception, took an autocratic turn. He shielded business monopolies owned by friends and family and cracked down on journalists who pried into allegations of corruption - all the while, Kyrgyzstan's economy floundered, its Soviet-era industry and agriculture withering away...
...giving it full democratic expression," said Maros Sefcovic, the E.U. commissioner in charge of putting the proposal into place. "The E.U. often stands accused of complexity and detachment from its citizens. Fostering a lively cross-border debate about what we are doing in Brussels will lead to better rule-making, inspired by the grass roots." (See pictures of immigration in Europe...