FEER December 2005

Weijian Shan, economist and avid private equity investor, exposes the shortcomings of China’s stock markets and examines the failed attempts by the government to introduce meaningful stock-market reform. Omkar Goswami, economist and founder-chairman of CERG Advisory, argues that behind all the hype, there are clear reasons India’s growth prospects lag China’s. Greg Rushford, editor and publisher of the Rushford Report, reveals the dirty secret of the WTO—U.S. antidumping duties—and explains why they have been sidelined at the Hong Kong ministerial meeting. Barun S. Mitra, director of the Liberty Institute, looks at Hong Kong and India, and describes how different attitudes to free trade can make or break countries’ economies. Vaclav Smil, professor at the University of Manitoba, chronicles China’s water woes and predicts a bleak and thirsty future for the Middle Kingdom. Shelley Rigger, professor of international relations at Rhodes College, and John F. Copper, professor of international studies at Davidson College, assess how Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party might arrest—and blame itself for— its downward momentum. Kim Wan-soon, former investment ombudsman, and Lee You-il, international business lecturer, say the re-emergence of xenophobia in South Korea is making the task of attracting FDI more difficult. (read more...) Brahma Chellaney, of the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, says a devastating earthquake in northern Pakistan allows the region to clear away conditions that spawned terrorism. Kiichi Fujiwara, professor of law at the University of Tokyo, finds that Japan’s recent provocative gestures have their roots in imagined memories of World War II. Jared Genser, an attorney with the global law firm DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary, explains the significance of the U.N. turning its attention to the plight of Burma.