Melinda Liu

They're called the Sixth Generation. (Everything starts with Mao, of course.) When their day comes, they may well be the country's best hope for change.

World leaders may be condemning the junta's crackdown, but foreign businesses don't want to lose their pieces of Burma's energy pie. Why the latest sanctions are unlikely to work.

Beijing's rising-star mayor clamps down on public displays of excess ahead of the 2008 Olympics.

The junta is so illogical that it used numerology to schedule its last crackdown. That makes the outcome of the current violence impossible to predict and raises doubts about whether even China can influence the country's military rulers.

Earlier this year, students would show up for class each day at the Jalpaiguri Engineering College in West Bengal—and find no teachers. The Department of Electronics, Computer Science and Information Technology had just one full-time teacher (it's supposed to have 20).

The transformation of Beijing for the 2008 Olympics is emerging as perhaps the most ambitious remake of any major world capital in history, short of the postwar reconstructions.

Beijing hopes to use the 2008 Olympics to showcase its political and economic gains. But one year before the Olympics, journalists are far from free--and China and its critics are locked in a competition of ideas.

Tu Mingde first became involved in China's Olympic efforts in 1972. Now Tu is assistant to the president of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG), which is responsible for the city's preparations for next summer's Games.

It was a harsh penalty even by the standards of China, which executes more criminals every year than any place else in the world. The former head of the State Food and Drug Administration was put to death last week.

Wang Hai's mobile phone keeps buzzing with calls from clients. He's China's most famous crusader against fraudulent, shoddy and dangerous goods. The business consultant targets counterfeiters, helps duped consumers and protects whistle-blowers, many of whom face harassment or worse. "A good system for guaranteeing quality control simply doesn't exist in China," says Wang, who's been on the consumer-rights warpath for more than a decade. "Even confidential informants who report to authorities...

Baghdad was already feeling the heat of an increase in suicide blasts and roadside bombs, mortar attacks on the Green Zone, and U.S. pressure to meet its "benchmarks" of progress by September.

As if Nouri al-Maliki didn't have enough to worry about. Aside from rising violence and his government's laggardly progress on a slew of political and legislative benchmarks set by the U.S., the Iraqi prime minister also seems increasingly consumed by fears of coups and conspiracies.

Two months into his most recent Baghdad posting (his third in nearly 30 years), Ryan Crocker still hasn't opened all his airfreight crates. "I've been a little pressed," he dryly explains to NEWSWEEK.

U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker says he wants the Iraqis to solve their own problems

Pungent smoke floats through the chandeliers of the tribal chief's reception room. At his home in Ramadi, capital of Anbar province and a onetime Iraqi insurgent stronghold, Sheik Shakir Saoud Aasi is enjoying after-dinner cigars with his guest of honor, battalion commander Lt.

Two high-profile abduction incidents in Iraq recently--three soldiers near Mahmoudiya last month and five British civilians in Baghdad this week--have focused attention on the U.S.-led Coalition's search and rescue operations.

 A familiar blast of hot air hit me as I stepped off the plane in Baghdad. It seemed for a moment as if I'd never left Iraq. The arid, dusty wind that sucks your lungs dry.

Late in march, the actress Mia Farrow wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal calling for a boycott of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Denouncing China for its support of the murderous Sudanese government (which happens to be China's sixth largest oil supplier), she dubbed the upcoming Games the "Genocide Olympics."Beijing, which has been wary of Hollywood's PR power ever since Richard Gere and others began campaigning for Tibet's independence years ago, quickly kicked into damage-control...

Spring has sprung. The hills north of Beijing are alive with ... the sound of noisy restaurant attendants, some waving red banners, standing at the side of the road shouting, "Stop here for a delicious meal!" at the throngs of city dwellers zooming by in their cars.Chinese are hitting the road in record numbers.

In the highly charged run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, even the traditional torch relay is turning into a political football.

The U.S. pet-food scandal didn't make waves here, but Chinese animal lovers have their own problems to worry about.

What a difference a mere $1.41 can make. To most residents of affluent countries, the figure is minuscule, small change. The same goes for most middle-class residents of China's booming cities.

Preparing for the 2008 Games, Beijing horticulturists are breeding and pruning up a storm—and even shooting flower seeds into space.

Hot tips for understanding the tumble and rise of Chinese stocks.

Hong Kong has an election coming up for its next Chief Executive on March 25. The choice won't go to the people, however; the only voters will be 800 bureaucrats and functionaries vetted by Beijing.

For those of us living in China, the North Korea nuke deal has special significance.

Sometimes in China you read about the funeral before you much know about the violence that led up to it.  Last week's media reports of the emotional memorial ceremony for 21-year-old Chinese policeman Huang Qiang was, for some of us, the first clue that something unusual had erupted in Xinjiang, China's "Wild West," where 8.5 million Muslims—most of them Turkic-speaking Uighurs—comprise three-fifths of the population.  Newspaper photos showed dozens of Chinese police—some bowing deeply,...

In imperial times, visiting foreign plenipotentiaries were compelled to kowtow--touch their foreheads to the ground--in front of the Chinese emperor. The weaker the Chinese government, the more it insisted on such groveling.

Once every decade or two, in the life of a great nation, celestial bodies align just right and set the stage for change. For the People's Republic of China, which has already achieved a stunning rags-to-riches transformation, 2007 promises to be such a year.The biggest catalyst for the country's extreme makeover, of course, is the looming 2008 Summer Olympics.

International media will soon feel the "Olympic effect." Almost as soon as Beijing won its bid to host the 2008 Summer Games, it was clear the Olympic phenomenon would be felt in China far beyond the realm of sports.