Is China Ready for World Leadership?

With the United States adopting a neo-isolationist posture under President Barack Obama, could China fill part of the gap left by America’s declining influence in sensitive regions such as the Middle East? The question has been debated here and elsewhere since the start of Obama’s first term in 2009. This week it was posed with greater urgency as China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) convened in Beijing. The NPC is a peculiar beast. Stripped to its core it is a plenum of th...

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Lessons From a Grand Master

Lee Kuan Yew is 89 years old and his health is failing, but his interviews with two Harvard professors over the years have recently been collated and immortalized in a book, with both authors considering the Singaporean leader to be a “grand master” of the modern day. In the book, Kuan says that he has three heroes: Charles de Gaulle, Winston Churchill, and Deng Xiaoping. The reason behind his selection is that these three men were powerful at times when their countries were weak. De Gaulle...

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