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Op-Ed Commentary: Chris Devonshire-Ellis
May 9 – On May 2nd, St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky opened its plush new concert hall, bringing the total number of venues in this esteemed international cultural center for the musical arts to three. Valery Gergiev, the Mariinsky’s artistic director and principal conductor (he also conducts the London Symphony Orchestra and the World Peace Orchestra under the United Nations), has laid on a three-day extravaganza, including the commissioning of a new piece by the highly regarded contemporary Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin. All of this in Russia, just a few months after the reopening of Moscow’s Bolshoi. The arts, in what many regard in the West as a de facto totalitarian regime, remain buoyant. While much has been said to condemn President Putin as an autocrat, in Russian, artistic innovation – and indeed new music – is encouraged. Russia’s president presided over the opening ceremony and the State funded much of the cost. Continue reading
Dec. 31 – Over the last week, China Briefing has published several specially-commissioned pieces written by well-known China writers to summarize the key events of 2012 and points to look forward to in 2013. The complete series is summarized and hyper-linked below for your convenience.
Dec. 27 – A few months ago, I got an email from a Chinese acquaintance asking me for help. Doctors had diagnosed his friend’s elderly mother with lung cancer; the prescribed medication was known to be reliable, and cheaper if obtained from India.
Dec. 26 – When Sina Weibo was first established in 2009, its founder had to persuade celebrities to join the network in order to attract attention. In just three years, its popularity has exploded, with more than 300 million registered users in a nation with 540 million connected to the Internet. Often referred to as China’s Twitter, Sina Weibo, along with similar services offered by other Chinese web portals, has transformed Chinese social interactions in ways few had anticipated, and there is no better example of this than the eventful year of 2012. 
Dec. 25 – The November accession of new figures to the very top political posts in the People’s Republic of China, and the re-election of U.S. President Barack Obama, have naturally given rise to a deluge of pregnant speculation over the future of U.S.-China relations and the future roles each country will play on the global front.
Dec. 24 – The year of the dragon, according to Chinese belief, is often unpredictable and bewildering. And so it has proved. We saw extraordinary escapes, unexplained disappearances, the downfall of a prominent politician, and riot-causing regional spats.
