By Michael H. Armacost

Napoleon was uncommonly prescient more than 200 years ago when he described China as “a sleeping giant.” He added, “When it awakens, it will astonish the world.” As we all know, the Chinese, after a couple of bad centuries, are again wide awake.

China, which recently surpassed Japan as the world’s second largest economy, has increased its GDP at a rate of roughly 10 percent per year.

The tale of China’s recent “rise” is laced with dazzling statistics. In more than 30 years China has increased its GDP at a rate of roughly 10 percent per year, recently surpassing Japan as the world’s second largest economy.

As a global manufacturing hub, China is an exceptionally efficient producer of steel, ships, chemicals, and an amazing array of consumer goods. Its share of global trade has increased ten fold since 1978, and this year it supplanted Germany as the world’s largest exporter of goods.
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By Josh Friedman

Under a blazing sun and temperatures rising to nearly 90 degrees, Mongolia’s Prime Minister Batbold Sukhbaatar and all 12 of his cabinet members held their August 27 cabinet meeting seated at tables and chairs set up in the sand in the middle of the Gobi Desert, 415 miles south of the capital Ulaanbaatar.

The Gobi Desert stretches across 30 percent of Mongolia's land. Last week, cabinet members gathered here for a cabinet meeting to draw attention to global climate change. Photo by Flickr user Munkho Gehrke, used under a Creative Commons license.

Wearing green “Save Our Planet!” baseball hats, the ministers met for one hour to discuss Mongolia’s national response to climate change and issue a statement pledging to fight against global warming.
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By Scott Snyder

I spent last week at several meetings in Tokyo, Seoul, and Jeju that revolved around the Cheonan incident and its implications for regional security. The Lee Myung-Bak administration got high marks for its handling of the immediate aftermath of the incident. It is important to remember that in the hours following the Cheonan’s sinking on March 26th, there was no rush to judgment, but rather a deliberate decision to mount an international investigation of the incident. The day after the sinking, Yonhap quoted a South Korean senior official as saying that chances are “slim” that North Korea was involved.
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By Maria Belen Bonoan

The 1991 Local Government Code, which initiated the decentralization process in the Philippines by empowering local governments to more effectively respond to their community needs, has always been referred to as radical and revolutionary. It now serves as an example for other countries on how local governments have accepted, adjusted, and adapted to this development panacea.

However, after nearly two decades of local autonomy, it has become imperative to know and describe the progress, initiatives, and innovations of local governments 19 years after the Local Government Code was passed.

The 11th Rapid Field Appraisal (RFA) – the first since 2001 – was conducted from February to May 2010 in 15 regions of the country, covering a total of 177 local governments.
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