This year’s meeting of China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress, was one of the most important in recent times. China is facing its most hostile external environment in decades, with a growing number of countries pushing back against its political repression and coercive diplomacy. And the imperative of reshaping its economic-development model is more urgent than ever. To meet the challenges ahead, China is banking on its 14th Five-Year Plan, which was officially a

For the past year, an assumption -- sometimes explicit, often tacit -- has informed almost all our thinking about the pandemic: At some point, it will be over, and then we‘ll go “back to normal.” This premise is almost certainly wrong. SARS-CoV-2, protean and elusive as it is, may become our permanent enemy, like the flu but worse. And even if it peters out eventually, our lives and routines will by then have changed irreversibly. Going “back” won’t be an opt

The United States and the world entered recession a year ago. Normally, economists can’t predict the onset of a downturn. But because this recession stemmed from the COVID-19 pandemic, they could reliably discern its beginnings without waiting for the standard economic indicators. By the end of the second quarter of 2020, US gross domestic product had plunged by a record 11 percent, taking the economy from an estimated 1 percent above potential output at the end of 2019 to a level 10 perc

On March 18, the US and China met in Anchorage, Alaska, for the first time since Joe Biden took office in January. The two days of talks between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Communist Party foreign affairs chief Yang Jiechi were contentious, suggesting a long and tense competition between the two nations. Like previous great power competitions, the one between the US and China is about the acquisition and maintenance of power. In the competition, the US plays the role of domi

Han Myong-suk was the indisputable symbol of the feminist movement on the left side of politics in this country. A daughter of a war refugee family from North Korea, she started as a student activist at Ewha Womans University, joined a Christian pro-democracy movement and then turned to leftist politics under the influence of the man she married. Her political career that took her to the titles of the inaugural minister of what is now the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, the minister of

When President Joe Biden took office, he inherited a foreign policy disaster in Afghanistan. A year ago, his predecessor‘s envoys negotiated an agreement with the Taliban that said the last US troops would leave the country by May 1. That’s just six weeks away, and leaving then would mean the collapse of the elected government the US helped create. And yet a decision to stay past May would put remaining US forces at risk of renewed Taliban attacks. The wise course for Biden would h

Comparisons of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus bill to the New Deal are flourishing. They obscure the fact that Biden’s achievement -- passing reform legislation against an intransigent opposition -- is very fragile. Republicans are already waging an extensive culture war on issues cherished by progressive Democrats, starting with freer immigration. And though Biden and his colleagues are taking to the road this week to sell the administration’s plan, victory in w

A week ago the world was horrified to learn that a 21-year-old American opened fire in three massage parlors in Atlanta and killed eight people, four of whom were Korean women. Many Koreans and Korean Americans were appalled at this apparent hate crime stemming from a xenophobic reaction to COVID-19, despite the shooter’s claim that a sex addiction motivated the shootings. Yet, according to a witness, the suspect shouted, “I am going to kill all Asians!” It was especially absur

The most significant thing that President Joe Biden said in his first prime-time address, on March 11, was that in recent years, “We lost faith in whether our government and our democracy can deliver on really hard things for the American people.” It was now up to the slim, seemingly unassuming Biden, after decades of seeking the Oval Office, to show that America is governable. Biden not only has to restore faith in federal programs, but rescue the country from the deadly virus tha

Ask on the street in Hong Kong if passers-by will get the COVID-19 vaccine, and you may hear what I did: “Sometime.” “Maybe.” “No.” Combating this hesitancy here and elsewhere will take more than opprobrium and exhortation. It requires tuning in. A combination of deep-seated distrust in government, ignorance and lack of urgency -- in a territory that has kept coronavirus cases low -- means Hong Kong is now struggling to get enough residents inoculated. This

Among the best remembered summits of the 20th century are those of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. Reagan’s commitment to dialogue with America’s primary adversary and what then-Secretary of State George P. Shultz called his “personal chemistry” with his Soviet counterpart were hallmarks of his presidency. But even more important was the fact that Reagan had a clear strategy for victory in the global contest with the Soviet Union. Reagan’s approach -- applying

If anyone was still “uneducated” about the insidious and brutal nature of racism in this country, the recent contemptible slaughter of eight people, including six Asian women, in the Atlanta area, along with the early police statements and media coverage of the crime, should clear everything right up. On Tuesday, eight people were killed and others wounded at three day spas in the Atlanta area. Police apprehended Robert Aaron Long, who officers said later admitted that he was respon

A linchpin holds the various elements of a structure together. The Korea-US alliance is often referred to as the linchpin of peace, security and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula and the Indo-Pacific. Simply put, the Korea-US alliance is indispensable to this region. On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III touched down in Seoul ahead of a series of meetings with their Korean counterparts. It was the first time in memory that the top US

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic. By then, the novel coronavirus first reported by China on Dec. 31, 2019, had spread to 114 countries and been given the official name of SARS-CoV-2. A year later, COVID-19 has left virtually no corner of the world unscathed and continues to rage on in many countries. In Korea, where the third wave of the spread has continued unabated since mid-November with daily totals of new cases reported in the 400s in rece

As more Americans get vaccinated, there is increasing talk of “vaccine passports.” There are strong emotional reactions to this idea, positive and negative, but my attempt at a more analytical view leads me to a conclusion that is not entirely satisfying (even to me): America should work to develop vaccine passports but never actually require them. First, I am not impressed by the criticisms that vaccine passports will create an unfair two-tier society. COVID-19 already has done tha