March 18 marks the 10-year anniversary of a movement that changed Taiwanese politics for a generation. The Sunflower Movement saw hundreds of students occupy Taiwan’s Legislature — demanding that lawmakers reconsider a trade deal they were about to ratify with China.
A group of Tibetan Buddhist monks, living in exile in India, are doing a “sacred arts tour” this month in the US. They’re demonstrating an ancient artistic and spiritual practice, creating big, colorful sand mandalas. They say Buddhist traditions like this are under threat because of Chinese government policies in their historic homeland of Tibet.
In a nationwide address in the 1970s, President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse to be “public enemy No. 1” and stepped up efforts to shut down the global trade. Much of the initial efforts of the DEA were focused on Southeast Asia where US troops in Vietnam were using heroin.
Critical State, a foreign policy newsletter by Inkstick Media, takes a deep dive this week into how geography guides state formation, with a focus on the "fractured-land hypothesis."
Over the last week, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva courted controversy with his remarks on the conflict in Ukraine, causing tensions between Brazil and the US.
Chinese authorities have sentenced two of the country’s most prominent human rights lawyers to more than a decade in prison, each on subversion charges. Sophie Luo Shengchun, the wife of jailed dissident Ding Jiaxi, speaks with The World’s Marco Werman.
The Anthropocene Working Group is voting on a so-called Golden Spike, a sedimentary layer somewhere on Earth that best exemplifies the global impact of humans on planet Earth. It's the last, big task in formally defining the Anthropocene, which is being proposed as a new age in geologic time.
As the former president heads to China, Taiwan's current president, Tsai Ing-Wen, is heading to the Americas this week. The diplomatic trips come as voters prepare for this year’s presidential campaigns.
Ji produces paintings using traditional Chinese methods, such as calligraphy and ink painting, to address serious contemporary topics such as migration, the environment and social issues.
On Feb. 28, 1947, the Chinese Nationalist Party began killing thousands of people across the island of Taiwan, in a massacre that lasted for months. Today, Taiwan continues to debates the circumstances of that tragedy — and the legacy of Chiang Kai-Shek.
The latest demonstrations across China ended when the central government unleashed a digital arsenal that was less deadly than the tanks used to quell the 1989 protests, but just as effective. China managed to use the internet to defuse national outrage over President Xi Jinping’s strict COVID-19 policies without firing a single shot.