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How two best friends rehabilitated the Ultimate Fighting Championship franchise, and what’s coming next as the popularity of mixed martial arts expands globally: “The UFC has border-hopped since 2007, first into Europe and Canada, then Australia, Brazil, Japan, China, and the Middle East. The next step is both simple and excessively difficult. Any international fan […]

A high-speed train crash in China unravels years of corruption in the building of the world’s most expensive public-works project: “Prime Minister Wen Jiabao had no choice but to visit the crash site and vow to investigate. ‘If corruption was found behind this, we must handle it according to law, and we will not be […]

A writer discusses the awful living conditions of China’s booming cities after seven years of living in the country for seven years, and visiting 21 of China’s 22 provinces: A Beijing-based blogger who lived in Harbin in 2003 told me about leaving Blues after several drinks and flagging a taxi driver, whom he recognized. ‘The […]

[Fiction, Aura Estrada short story contest winner] A Chinese American woman meets her neighbor under unfortunate circumstances: ‘So where are you from?’ the woman asked me. ‘We just moved up here from the city.’ ‘No, I mean originally.’ I knew what this question meant. ‘I was born in China but I’ve lived in New York […]

The rise and fall of one of China’s most powerful politicians: “At the opening of the annual Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference on March 2, Bo showed up and put on a brave face for the 3,000 assembled delegates and journalists. But in internal government meetings, Bo was livid, haranguing Chongqing officials and telling them […]

How Hilary Clinton carefully negotiated blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng’s freedom and proved herself to be a tenacious Secretary of State. “By the time the American diplomats acknowledged what had happened and went back to cut a new deal for Chen, the Chinese were in no mood to talk. In the meantime, Clinton herself was […]

A look at the complicated afterlife of James Brown, and the battle over his estate among children he did, and did not, acknowledge: “Yet Mr. Brown was not wholly unprepared to die, either. Several years earlier, in August 2000, he’d drawn up a will in which he bequeathed his ‘personal and household effects’—his linens and […]

Once an enemy of the U.S., Vietnam is growing as a country and has become a key ally “as a counter to China’s rising power”: “Nothing better illustrates the Vietnamese desire to be a major player in the region than the country’s recent purchase of six state-of-the-art Kilo-class submarines from Russia. A Western defense expert […]

[Not single-page] Brigitte Harris was sexually abused by her father for years, before she decided to stop him from ever doing it to anyone again. She’s now in prison for second degree manslaughter, with a parole hearing this week: “The first thing she learned was that it could be done. ‘Everyone always focuses on Lorena […]

Macau’s rise as the new global gambling capital leads to complications for the Las Vegas casinos that have flocked to China for a piece of the action. Its differences are illustrated in the God of Gamblers case, in which a former barber named Siu Yun Ping won $13 million, setting off a chain of events, […]