10 July 2003 Hong Kong: A Very Instructive Cock-Up By Gwynne Dyer Historians generally divide into two schools: the paranoids, who believe that there is a secret plot behind everything that happens, and the realists, who think that most large events are the result of a cock-up somewhere. The remarkable events in Hong Kong over …
19 June 2003 Orwell Centenary – Part Two Geopolitics: the Drift Towards 1984 By Gwynne Dyer “What ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’) is really meant to do is to discuss the implications of dividing the world up into ‘Zones of Influence’,” George Orwell wrote to his publisher at the end of 1948 — and it certainly does that. …
17 April 2003 SARS and China: Get It Right Next Time By Gwynne Dyer The virus that causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) was identified on 15 April in a ten-country collaboration between 13 laboratories as a corona virus related to those that cause the common cold. “Now we can move away from methods like …
21 February 2003 The Return of the Plagues? By Gwynne Dyer On 28 January an eight-year-old girl from Hong Kong visiting relatives in southern China fell ill with influenza and was admitted to hospital. A week later she died, and since then her father has died of the same flu, while her nine-year-old brother lies …
4 November 2002 Changing the Guard in China By Gwynne Dyer It’s China, of course, so nobody outside the Communist Party’s inner circles knows exactly what’s going to happen when the 16th Party Congress opens on Friday, 8 November. This is supposed to be when the ‘third generation’ of leaders — those who fought for …
8 April 1997 Uighurs’ Independence By Gwynne Dyer “We think Deng’s death will bring a power struggle within the Chinese elite,” said Sargari Tarym, spokesman for the Uighur independence movement, in Moscow in late February. “If that happens, the independence movement in Turkestant will intensify.” In fact, it is already pretty intense. Given the tightness …