Two sets of figures published this week concerning Taiwan’s employment indeed show some of the country’s problems. The lesson, though, is less about the labor market itself and more about its educational, social and economic development.The government’s monthly report on employment showed that the December jobless rate dropped to 4.18 percent, improving by 0.09 percentage points compared to November. Despite the improvement, unemployment among the young and educated is on the rise.Meanwhile, a p

Let’s get over this honeymoon for Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and do a reality check on his idea that the economy is about to boom now that voters have returned him to office. At first, I wondered if I had lost my bearings. Was I just hopelessly cynical after 11 years in Tokyo, watching a numbing parade of inept leaders come and go as the Liberal Democratic Party pledged change that never arrived? The steps Abe has taken in the first few weeks of his latest premiership restored my fa

Could “vaccine diplomacy” work on the Korean peninsula? The short answer is yes.North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, in a New Year’s Day speech, called for reductions in international tension and an end to confrontation with South Korea, while raising the prospect of reunification between the North and South. Ultimately, science diplomacy could play an essential role in helping catalyze improved North-South relations in 2013, with joint programs for elimination of neglected diseases as a cornerstone

We all understand the way the Internet has changed everything in the United States, from the way goods are sold to how news is distributed and political campaigns are run.But in China, the growth in number of users, size of e-commerce markets, and profitability of the Internet has already exceeded, or will soon surpass, what has happened here. Some 564 million of the nation’s 1.3 billion people were accessing the Internet in 2012, up 10 percent in a year. And the changes that behavior will bring

Out beyond the swank poolside bar at Hanoi’s Metropole hotel, which I visited last month, a gated entrance opens onto a dark set of stairs. At the bottom is a dank and musty bomb shelter, and, for those who can read Vietnamese, a sign in golden lettering explaining that Joan Baez and Jane Fonda once took refuge there.I did too, though not at the same time they did.I was a 25-year-old antiwar activist when I traveled to Hanoi in December 1965. I was working as a community organizer in Newark, New

With her old friend Senator John McCain attacking her and Senator Rand Paul asserting that she should have been fired, Hillary Clinton’s last appearances before Congress last Tuesday seemingly made for an ugly stage exit. We see it differently. In the hearings, Clinton displayed some of her best attributes. She was in command of the facts. She focused on what could be done better. She rose above ideology. And with flashes of both anger and sorrow, particularly at the memory of meeting the famili

Distracted by the deadly violence in Mali and Algeria, no one seems to be paying adequate attention to the tragicomedy under way in Pakistan.This matters because events of the last week demonstrate without equivocation that Pakistan is an utterly failed state ― but one that possesses nuclear weapons. The country is tumbling down the abyss. Where else could a fundamentalist Muslim cleric who lives in Canada draw tens of thousands of fans to a rally calling for dissolution of the government ― spea

PARIS ― The realities highlighted by the Oscar-nominated film “Zero Dark Thirty,” which detailed the operation that ended with the killing of Osama bin Laden, don’t begin and end with the debate over what some call “torture” as a means of obtaining intelligence. That’s just the only issue from the film that politicians and the media have glommed onto. More than anything else, “Zero Dark Thirty” is one of the rare films that accurately portrays the realities and frustrations of working in espiona

An alarming new report estimates that between 30 and 50 percent of all the food produced in the world is lost and wasted. This is a shocking finding given the scale of malnourishment and hunger on our planet.While it is tempting to blame governments for this appalling state of affairs, the truth is that almost all of us contribute to this problem. While governments must do the lion’s share of the work, individual citizens can also help to reduce loss, waste and hunger.The new report is by the In