In late October, Taoist masters from all over China gathered near the ancient capital of Nanjing to agree on a seven-year plan for climate change action. Meanwhile, the 11 major religions in the world are all coming up with multi-year plans for climate action. The author wonders if this could tip the scales in favour of decisive climate action in China and beyond.

• Ecological challenges: how to move from declarations to actions
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Due to an understaffed and overworked judiciary, the average length of the litigation of criminal cases in the Philippines is 2 years, 9 months, and 22 days. Moreover, due to rampant corruption, the public has little faith in the righteousness of the government in general, and the judges in particular.

Muslims are the biggest ethnic group in the Philippines, and more than half of the population of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao is poor, and the area is thus a breeding ground for civil unrest. The author wonders whether the government can (and should) negotiate with a decentralized terrorist group like the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and denounces President Arroyo’s brokering of deals in secrecy. He maintains that the lives of the Muslims must be improved, since economic and social development on Mindanao is necessary to achieve peace.

As its neighboring giants India and China continue to make significant inroads into the global economy, the still charter-less ASEAN is mired in integration problems and struggling to forge a single market. The author points to a disparity in the amount of foreign direct investments received by the member states, as well as the weak trade within the association, as possible reasons for the association’s heretofore failure to integrate.

• Southeast Asia reduces poverty, but increases inequality
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While the industrial world is trying to cope with the skyrocketing price of oil, developing countries such as the Philippines are beginning to shift their gazes away from industry and towards the formerly maligned agrarian sector in order to ease their economic woes as the price of food continues to climb.

The diplomacy –especially in relation to economics– that China is implementing in Latin America will alter the region’s foreign economic relations at an accelerated pace, along with the geopolitical axes that had appeared immutable up until today. Meanwhile, the image of the United States and the European Union remains unchanged.

In a country where the basic costs of food and transportation are growing rapidly while employment opportunities remain low, begging is on the rise and remittances sent from abroad often provide a quality of life otherwise unattainable. Is this fostering a culture of mendicancy? What are the human costs of such a phenomenon?

• Obscene Disparities
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Today´s China is less isolated than ever, but its absence from international scene continues to be reinforced by the peculiarity of a process that can only be offset by proponents of opportunity and progress. Although more powerful than ever, China´s sociopolitical model and economic interdependence causes it to remain very vulnerable, says the author.

• A New Opportunity for a Dialogue between Beijing and Taipei?
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• Who would stand up in China?
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Is the relationship between China and Taiwan changing? The last official economic meeting between the respective authorities removed the hypothesis of the conflict. However, even intensifying the economic changes, the unification has not been considered, and not only because of Taipei’s objections: such a geopolitical change in the zone would question the influence of Washington in the region.

• Taiwan opposite Kosovo
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• Post-Tiananmen China: A Case of Selective Amnesia
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