The New Republic

A few posts down, I went through the pros and cons of the "carbon tariff" idea that's been floated by, among others, Steven Chu yesterday. The basic premise would be that if the United States passes a cap-and-trade bill on carbon, but other countries like China don't do anything about their emissions, then we could slap a border tax on select imports from those countries so as not to disadvantage our own domestic manufacturers. READ MORE >>

On March 5, 87 men and women sent President Barack Obama a letter. There are some American signatories, mostly China scholars and other academics. The rest are Chinese living in the vast diaspora far from their homeland; a few live in Honk Kong, some in Australia, most in the United States. Many of them are veterans of the struggle for freedom in China and spent time either on the run or in jail. They are all, in a way, veterans of the struggle that stretches from Lexington and Concord to Tiananmen Square and beyond. A few of them faced READ MORE >>

At some point last year, China became the largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world. Here's part of the explanation for the stunning increase: A soon-to-be-published study in Geophysical Research Letters finds that fully one-third of China's emissions come from making goods for other countries, with the United States (9 percent) and Europe (6 percent) topping the list. By itself, that fact won't shock anyone, but it makes global climate politics surprisingly tricky. READ MORE >>

(Credit: Andrew McConell/WpN)  READ MORE >>

Perry Link is a China specialist and Chancellorial Chair for Teaching Across Disciplines at the University of California at Riverside. READ MORE >>

A Free Life, which appeared last year, is an epic work, with a panoramic vision whose narrative form resembles a hefty, plot-driven nineteenth-century English novel. Nan Wu, a student who is pursuing graduate work in political science at Brandeis University, and his wife Pingping become disillusioned with the prospect of returning to their homeland in the wake of Tiananmen Square. Nan decides to abandon his studies and instead to nurture his love of poetry, and to this end he takes a series of menial jobs while his wife remains a housekeeper and cook to a wealthy American widow. READ MORE >>

READ MORE >>

On November 15, President Bush will host a "Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy" at the National Building Museum in Washington, D. C. Great Britain's Gordon Brown, China's Hu Jintao, and Russia's Dmitri Medvedev are among the 20 heads of state who will attend what's being billed as "Bretton Woods II." But there's one world leader, a soon-to-be head of state, who will be sitting out the proceedings: Barack Obama plans to spend the weekend in Chicago. READ MORE >>

Fitzgerald, eager to draw the shy, Yale-educated prep-school French teacher into his dashing retinue, arranged to have Wilder and Wilson picked up at the train station, but it was Marcel Proust who helped to smooth the way between them. "I had just read the final installment of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, which had reached New York not long before, and was about to describe it to Wilder," Wilson recalled. READ MORE >>

For those Americans who are not daily readers of the Financial Times, the past few months have been a crash course in the abstract and obscure instruments and arrangements that have derailed the nation's economy. From mortgage-backed securities to credit default swaps, the financial health of the country has undergone a gory public dissection. READ MORE >>