china

Our Genetic Future is Coming… Faster Than We Think

Our Genetic Future is Coming… Faster Than We Think 150 150 Jamie Metzl
Our species is on the cusp of a revolution that will change every aspect of our lives but we’re hardly talking about it. After three and a half billion years of evolution, two hundred and fifty thousand years of them as the ass-kicking bipedal hominins we call homo sapiens, we are on the verge of taking control of our evolutionary process unlike never before. This revolution will take hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years to play out but it has already begun. read more

We’ll Know Xi Jinping is Serious About Cracking Down on Corruption Wen…

We’ll Know Xi Jinping is Serious About Cracking Down on Corruption Wen… Jamie Metzl
In my CNN.com blog post, I argue that if Xi Jinping’s top down approach is not matched by a bottom-up empowerment of the people being most harmed by China’s corruption pandemic it will have little chance of success. When Chinese media reports critically on the vast wealth accrued by the families of former Chongqing leader Bo Xilai, Zhou Yongkang, and others, it’s easy to remember the Bloomberg and New York Times reports on the millions of dollars held by Xi’s and former Premier Wen Jiabao‘s families. And no one believes that China’s government leaders, among the wealthiest in the world, are getting rich from their salaries alone. read more

China Missing an Historic Opportunity with Tibet

China Missing an Historic Opportunity with Tibet 150 150 Jamie Metzl
I’m just back from spending four days in the Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, India visiting my Tibetan friends exiled there. As is well known, the Chinese army marched into Tibet in October 1949 and routed the Tibetan army a year later. In 1951 China and a Tibetan delegation signed the “seventeen point agreement” codifying the new status of Tibet as a national regional autonomy within the People’s Republic of China. As conditions worsened, a Tibetan national uprising broke out in 1959, which was crushed by the Chinese, resulting in an estimated eighty-seven thousand Tibetan deaths read more