Torbjørn Færøvik's Blog, page 1538

Hvem kan redde kommunistpartiet i Kina?

Det kinesiske kommunistpartiet preges av forfall og korrupsjon. Medlemmene later til å være mest opptatt av å mele sin egen kake. Hvem kan redde partiet fra undergangen? spør den kjente dissidenten Wei Jingsheng. Les mer

Challenges of being a woman in India

One-month-old baby girl Khushi, which means "happiness" in Hindi, would not have
been alive had her mother, Sumanjeet, given in to pressure from some relatives
and neighbors. Read more

Why Beijing Needs to Show Restraint

Beijing’s more aggressive stance on maritime disputes in the South China Sea
in recent years may signal the first stages of China’s effort to wrest hegemony
of the Asia-Pacific region from the US. For the disputes to be resolved
peacefully and for the US and China to avoid conflict, ASEAN must remain united,
while the US must remain committed, writes Nguyen Manh Hung. Read more

Kina mistenkes for å jukse med statistikk

Internasjonale eksperter på kinesisk økonomi får ikke tallene til å stemme. Kina har en lang tradisjon i å manipulere statistikk og forvandle svart til hvitt. Les mer

The 'genocide' of India's daughters

Supreme Court judges in India have summoned the health secretaries in seven states over a worrying fall in the number of young girls in India. They are demanding details about clinics flouting the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act – to determine the sex of unborn babies – with potentially fatal consequences. Read more

Overbalancing: The Folly of Trying to Contain China

As the US reorients its foreign policy toward Asia, with the attendant
redeployment of military assets to the region, fears are spreading that the
American pivot is really aimed at containing the rise of China. Former
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser warns that countries such as Australia,
where US Marines are now deployed, should strongly resist being drawn into a
potential

Under the Smog: The Rules for Beijing Living

When you live in Beijing for a while, you gain a finely tuned understanding of air. After seven years here, I feel a bit like those apocryphal Eskimos, with their thirty words for snow, writes Evan Osnos. Read more

Er Kina en "myk stormakt"?

De kinesiske lederne forsøker å profilere landet som en "myk makt". Men virkeligheten forteller noe ganske annet, skriver artikkelforfatteren. Les mer

Old China: Bound Feet and Bad Smell

We don't know when Chinese women began binding their feet. It was most likely around 800-900 A.D. The curious custom had to do with marriage, with sex, with beauty - and duty. This is a chapter from my recent book "Midtens rike" (The Middle Kingdom, Oslo 2009).






By Torbjørn Færøvik
writer and historian

“Women carry half of the heavens”, says an old Chinese proverb.


Reality certainly

Hvorfor begår japanerne selvmord?

I de siste fjorten år har 30 000 japanere begått selvmord hvert år. Hvorfor? Les mer

Annual suicide rates in Japan are considerably higher than in most other industrial countries.