In the Middle Ages, spices were valued commodities, but not, as most people assume, for their ability to preserve meat. Rather, it was because medieval cuisine placed a premium on a variety of flavors. Spices were also thought to have medicinal properties, adding to their allure. These are only...
Harvesting pepper near Quilon, south India in the 14th Century: Desire for flavor fueled building of empires. Image from Marco Polo's Livre des merveilles.
The control over gold, silver, precious metals and recently oil has been a source of...
India is poised to overtake China as the world’s most populous country by 2024. Poverty is linked to fertility rates, and individual and government attention to population trends contributes to sustainable development. Both China and India have reduced fertility rates and poverty since 1950, when...
Demographic rise: India’s rising population will need sustenance from expanded IT and other skilled workers; the country must contend with a preponderance of male children
NEW YORK: By 2024, India will slip past China to become the most populous...
The coronavirus and economic challenges notwithstanding, China’s leaders are ambitious, determined to be second to none. For now, the Chinese Communist Party is intent to avoid the fate of the Soviet Union, which rose in December 1922 and fell in December 1991. Modern China, impoverished in 1949,...
Watchful leadership: Party Secretary General Xi Jinping reviews troops in Tiananmen Square and a multitude of CCTV cameras keep a watchful eye
STOCKHOLM: China has entered a “third era” with President Xi Jinping placing himself in the same firmament...
The 1989 Tiananmen Square protests led to iconic images, like the lone man, his identity unknown, confronting a line of Chinese People’s Liberation Army tanks. The ongoing protests in Hong Kong, which began in 2019, have already lasted more than twice as long as the Umbrella Movement and more than...
Struggle continues: Hong Kong’s lengthy protests since June 2019 provoke police shooting, and Tiananmen Square’s tank man from 1989 still inspires (Source: South China Morning Post)
IRVINE: In 1989, residents of cities across the People’s Republic...
Trust is in the eye the beholder, and the friend who speaks the truth is better than the one who tells others what they want to hear. China is developing a Social Credit System to evaluate citizens and assign trust scores, explains Rachel Botsam. An excerpt from her book was published by Wired. Of...
The shopping boulevards in London, Paris, Dubai and other cosmopolitan cities, once crowded with enthusiastic Chinese shoppers, are near empty due to the outbreak of novel coronavirus. The coronavirus has placed more than 50 million people under quarantine in China, and 70 other countries imposed...
The Six-Party agreement may require North Korea to shut and seal its nuclear facilities, but does not immediately require the nation to hand over nuclear weapons already made. “There is ample evidence that this agreement is yet another demonstration of North Korea's uniquely successful brand...
The six-party agreement reached in Beijing to cap North Korea's nuclear program was a triumph for diplomacy. But contrary to much of the conventional wisdom in recent days, the fruits of the victory fall mostly to the...
Women have made great strides in education, employment, politics and equality in general worldwide, but participation in the labor force remains stubbornly below those of men. “By and large, a substantial proportion of mothers withdraw from employment after childbirth,” explains demography expert...
Homebound: Women’s participation in the workplace is growing around the world, but in both advanced and developing nations, some mothers feel pressure to stay at home
NEW YORK: Despite noteworthy progress achieved in gender equality, especially in...
