The International Olympic Committee is certainly not bashful about proclaiming its lofty ideals. The Olympics, it says, is about placing sport – silver platter style – at the “service of humanity and to thereby promote peace”. The iconic Olympic rings themselves signify a kind of brotherhood or “union between men”. […]

All  articles you read, videos you watch, posts you tweet and things you like can now automatically be reposted to all your online profiles, creating a social pipeline. In China, activists use this method of mass propagation to fight against the amnesia that strikes their posts when deleted by censorship. But at the […]

It’s not everyday that you can listen to a dialogue that flits from geopolitics and tourism to dynasties and culture; from refugees and handicrafts to a World Bank-funded road that leaves you in the middle of a wildlife sanctuary. It was precisely such a discussion, however, CultureSPEAK – Window Bhutan – that […]

“China’s economic success over the last 20-30 years has been accompanied by rapid urbanisation based mainly on rural-to-urban migration flows. Many observers expect highspeed urbanisation and massive population redistribution to continue for another one or two decades. Nevertheless, China seeks and claims to be pursuing a process of urbanisation that […]

Students in China have their fate determined at a really early age. At the end of their high school, the National Higher Education Entrance Examination – also called GaoKao – decides the universities students can apply to. Their scores determine whether or not they will be able to enter into higher education. The course […]