Daily News Channel
When we requested an interview with members of the Communist Youth League, I expected an army of suits with well-rehearsed answers. Instead, we met three students casually dressed in jeans, just 18 to 23 years old
An international rocker is creating a rare opportunity to sing about change on the Communist island of Cuba.
The route to my ancestral home is etched into my heart. Unfortunately, not knowing the address is a problem in the ever-changing urban geography of Chenghai, an industrial town 30-minutes from Shantou in China’s Guangdong province
A new photo of ailing Communist leader Fidel Castro surfaced on Sunday — the second in 10 days — revealing a more healthy-looking man than in prior photos. Published in Cuba’s state-run youth newspaper, Juventud Rebelde, the photo shows Castro, 83, meeting with Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa
Havana is ready and willing to start a dialogue with Washington, Cuban President Raul Castro said in a speech to parliament Saturday, but warned that political and regime change are not up for negotiation. “They didn’t elect me president to restore capitalism in Cuba, nor to surrender the revolution,” Castro said to loud applause. “I was elected to defend, maintain and continue perfecting socialism, not to destroy it.” He added that those expecting political change after the death of former President Fidel Castro and his generation were “condemned to fail.” Castro ceded the presidency to his younger brother, Raul, last year but has retained leadership of the Communist Party, the only legal political party in Cuba.
The world’s most populous nation is about to get more crowded — in one city at least. In an effort to slow the rapid graying of the workforce, China’s state press reported July 24, the national government will encourage couples in Shanghai — the country’s most populous city — to have two kids if the parents are themselves only children.
Sunday was a day of commemoration in Cuba — the 56th anniversary of the start of the Cuban Revolution — but the message from President Raul Castro was not all celebratory. The island nation will face a second round of belt-tightening as a result of the global financial crunch, Castro said in a speech marking Revolution Day. He said that on Tuesday he would hold a meeting of the Council of Ministries “dedicated to the analysis of the second cost adjustment in this year’s plan, due to the effects of the global economic crisis, especially on the reduction of revenues from exports and the additional restrictions on accessing external financing.” The global economic downturn has hit Cuba hard.
Xiong Yan was at the forefront of the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. As a student leader, he rallied other youths to attend a memorial for a reform-minded leader that snowballed into the political movement, he joined an ensuing hunger strike, participated in student negotiations with the Chinese leadership and spent 19 months in prison after being named by authorities as one of the government’s “most wanted” for his activities. Because of his student activism in 1989, Xiong has never been allowed to return to mainland China, where technically he is still a wanted man.
Soon after the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989, China became a world pariah. Bill Clinton, while campaigning for the U.S.
They’re known as the "post 1980s" kids or the "Tiananmen-plus-20" generation: 200 million-strong, Web-savvy, pop-culture-conscious and decidedly apolitical. As the world observes the 20th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on Wednesday, pro-democracy advocates abroad lament how little Chinese youth today know or care about the student-led movement that ended with the deaths of hundreds when tanks rumbled through the capital’s streets and troops opened fire. But what is lost in the generalization is whether today’s political apathy is a fact or a front