The fact that President Xi Jinping is establishing rigorous centralized control over so many different aspects of Chinese life and politics, as per this latest article in the New York Times, is very significant. This is a return to the sort of China that most Americans have never witnessed and can scarcely understand. I caught the tail-end […]…
About: William Holstein
Author Archives: William Holstein
China’s Problems May Be Much Deeper Than Outside World Recognizes
Andrew Browne of the Wall Street Journal is arguably the best China-watcher on the ground and this piece of his today is deeply shocking for an old China hand such as myself. The editors placed it on a back page and may have not understood its significance. The use of forced confessions is a leftover […]…
The Travesty of Steve Rattner Writing For The New York Times
If you ever wonder why Americans are so profoundly uninformed about what needs to be done to fix our economy, thank The New York Times and Steve Rattner for book reviews such as this one today. Rattner was an investment banker until he got caught in a pay-to-play scheme with New York state pension funds […]…
The Deep Struggle in China
Most of the commentary these days on China does not seem to grasp the depth of what is happening there politically. Having spent time on the ground there and speaking to dozens of Chinese about what happened during the Cultural Revolution, I have some sense that truly major things can happen in China and they […]…
Will Japan Inc. Protect Its Own?
I know it is currently fashionable to argue that the Japanese are finished in the global economy. They’ve been blown away by the much more dynamic Chinese economy. Sorry. It hasn’t been true and it still isn’t true. The Japanese have dominant positions in many key technologies, such as the screens that go into Apple’s […]…
