Echoes of Mao: China Communist Party fawns over ‘Xi thought’
As the Chinese Communist Party gathers for its most defining congress in decades, a new catchphrase is echoing through Beijing's cavernous Great Hall of the People: Xi Jinping's "new era…
Saving Pakistan
PAKISTAN is imploding. The president and prime minister are at war. The judiciary is divided and the military is considering its options. The Election Commission of Pakistan challenges the Constitution…
The challenge of governance
Governance and politics in Pakistan are bound in a dialectic of principal contradiction wherein the demands of politics and governance come into direct conflict due to the nature of politics.…
Xi’s corruption crackdown targets embattled finance sector
Xi Jinping’s crackdown on official corruption has ripped through a secretive missile force, the Communist Party elite, the national football team, and now risks hammering a finance industry already grappling…
Facts, questions & solutions
‘Asbahna wa asbaha-lmulku lillahi rabb-il’alameen’ (We awake and the country awakes to Allah the Lord of the Universe) — Hadith Sharif PAKISTAN’S population is around 240 million, 90 per cent…
Chinese whispers
TO paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to lose one recently appointed senior cabinet minister could be construed as a misfortune; losing two seems like carelessness. China’s defence minister, Li Shangfu, was late…
Common ground
Two hundred and thirty-five million Pakistanis share three key characteristics: a common history, common values, and common aspirations. Beginning in the 8th century, Muhammad bin Qasim led the Umayyad army…
As China ages, investors bet they can beat retirement home stigma
Investors are betting big on a major attitude shift among elderly Chinese - that they will warm up to retirement homes as the world’s most populous country ages and smaller…
Leadership crisis
Pakistan, my (our) beloved country is older than me. It is only with great reluctance that I placed ‘our’ within brackets in the opening line, the hesitation in using “our”…
Divided hells
INTERNATIONAL borders emphasise insularity: Litfests are the corrective reminders of our inherent universality. The Khushwant Singh Litfest draws, as Khushwant Singh’s mind did, from skeins of history, literature, poetry, politics…
