“One candidate is giving away four thousand for each vote” she said, “and in the other race, the candidate is offering five thousand. Not bad.”

I’ve heard of vote-buying in local Chinese elections, but this is an impressive new standard: nine thousand yuan—that’s more than fourteen hundred dollars—is several months’ salary for many Chinese workers. “Last fall,” Yang went on, “when we elected the Party secretary, I got enough out of it to buy an iPad.”

The Cultural Revolution was a time when pupil turned on teacher, when friend turned on friend… Now artist Xu Weixin has painted both victim and perpetrator. Tania Branigan asks him why and hears the personal stories behind the portraits

The report identifies four necessary, but insufficient factors for capital account liberalization to be successful: macroeconomic stability, competent financial regulation, adequate foreign exchange reserves, and stable financial institutions. The report argues that these factors are beneficial to capital account liberalization, but do not explain the entirety of why liberalization has been a success for some countries and a failure for others.

Instead, it’s important to look at the risks that come from capital account liberalization and where China stacks up.

Last week’s threat assessment is probably no different but it is interesting because it shows, when compared with previous assessments, that China’s nuclear modernization has been slower than anticipated a decade ago. And there is no indication that China has embarked upon a nuclear build-up intended to “sprint to parity” with the United States or Russia.

That at least ought to be taken into account by those who use China’s nuclear modernization to argue against deeper U.S. (and, by implication, Russian) nuclear reductions.

“They charge a lot for due diligence,” says the man who uncovered the fraud, Dan David, a 43-year-old money manager from Skippack, Pa. “But they don’t do it.”

Mr Kagan makes a point of limiting his focus to foreign policy and explicitly excluding economics. But from his very different vantage point, he arrives at a version of Mr. Acemoglu’s paradox — China owes its rise to Western democratic capitalism, but that very success may put it at odds with the social order that created it. Call it Apple authoritarianism — what happens when the ideas from the freest valley in the world end up underwriting the planet’s most powerful dictatorship.

Move over, English. In Hong Kong, Mandarin is fast emerging as a new lingua franca.

Fresh on the heels of a fracas between Hong Kongers and mainland Chinese ignited in part by controversies over language, Hong Kong’s latest official census report reveals Mandarin has eclipsed English as the language second most commonly spoken by residents of the special administrative region.

据海外消息人士称，维基解密创办人阿桑奇几天前收到数千份文件，包含文字，图片，录音，视频等。经过紧张整理工作，已经按时间顺序录入了服务器。情报提供人自称重庆市公安局长王立军，声明如果失踪超过一个月无联系，授权维基解密分期分批公开这批文件。

The latest price war has been triggered by China Merchants Property, which has cut prices by as much as 20 per cent or more on 22 developments in 14 cities, including first-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, as well as second and third tier cities like Chongqing, Nanjing, Suzhou and Tianjin.

Civil servants and their spouses, relatives within three generations or relatives-in-law can not hold two posts which report to the same director, nor should they have the director-subordinate work relationship, according to the regulations.

In terms of geographical limitations, the regulations say that civil servants may not serve as heads of prefecture-level Communist Party of China (CPC) committees or governments in their hometowns.

The Brothers' Circle is a multiethnic network that includes the leaders of criminal groups in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. The Yakuza comprises the major Japanese organized crime syndicates.

How many meetings does a single company need on one specific issue? How many would you get?

For example, Americans for Financial Reform, an organization that describes itself as “fighting for a banking and financial system based on accountability, fairness and security,” met with senior Federal Reserve officials only three times on the Volcker Rule.