Word: serious
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...While China has made much progress, it still has many blemishes. Treatment of ethnic minorities - particularly Tibetans and Uighurs - is the Achilles' heel of the regime, as violent riots last year and in recent months have clearly demonstrated. Crime and corruption remain serious problems, while cities struggle to provide basic services to the huge "floating population" of 100 million or so migrants. Income disparities (as measured by the Gini coefficient) are now approaching the highest in the world. China has again become a stratified society - just what Mao sought to eliminate. Still, given the unprecedented scale and nature of China...
...field of arms control, China used to be a serious proliferator of missiles and missile components, and a significant seller of conventional arms. But, over time, China has signed or ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Biological and Conventional Weapons Convention, has joined the Nuclear Suppliers Group and has essentially adhered to the Missile Technology Control Regime (although it is not a member). This is not the China that the world used to know: a "revisionist" destabilizing power that sought to overturn the international order. Today, the People's Republic of China...
...While the system and country have weaknesses and challenges, the Sinological landscape is littered with its naysayers and critics. The People's Republic of China has endured for six decades and has overcome a wide variety of serious domestic crises, border wars and international isolation. Its strengths and adaptability have repeatedly been underestimated by outside observers. One thing is certain: China will remain a country of complexity and contradictions - which will keep China watchers and Chinese alike guessing about its future indefinitely...
...does the Federal Reserve have in our current economic downturn? -Brad Thomas, Kalamazoo, Mich. The Federal Reserve is the key element in the formation and collapse of financial bubbles. They're a government unto themselves. They print their own money. So if people have any concern whatsoever about the serious financial problems that we have, they have to know about what the Federal Reserve is doing...
...third time a developing country will host the Commonwealth Games. Last week, Delhi got pulled up for its tardy preparations by Commonwealth Games Federation chief Michael Fennel. In a letter to the local organizing committee, Fennel wrote that it was "reasonable to conclude that the current situation poses a serious risk to the Commonwealth Games in 2010." (See TIME's photo-essay "The Tempestuous Nehru Dynasty of India...