I have a sense this may be Gerry Adams’ last Christmas as leader of Sinn Féin, but only because he chooses it to be, writes Gerard Howlin.

The leaders of Russia, Turkey, and China have cast off quasi democratic checks and balances, but the more autocratic their rule, the more they have to lose, writes Nina L Khrushcheva

As Barack Obama prepares to become the first American president to visit Hiroshima, Yuriko Koike heralds statesmen who have promoted peace and put their countries’ needs first 

The record of high-ranking officials ‘purged’ by the eccentric megalomaniac leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, is continuing to grow as he tightens his grip on power, writes Paul French.

Hank Paulson is the ultimate insider. He worked with Nixon, was US treasury secretary, but hit the jackpot working for Goldman Sachs in China. Gerard Howlin discusses a career built on, among other things, charm.

With a grandfather who became the world's first billionaire, David Rockefeller has seen it all and has more ahead of him, writes Kyran Fitzgerald.

The key to a successful growth strategy is to ensure that policies reinforce and enhance one another, writes Michael Spence

The redistribution of global power has produced a situation in which the US is no longer the sole hegemon, writes Zbigniew Brzezinski

Is This the End of China’s Economic Miracle?

Taiwan, an island that China's ruling Communist Party has long sought to bring into its fold under the same "one country, two systems" arrangement it has for Hong Kong, has thrown its support behind Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement.

KIM Jong-un did the world a small favour by appointing an economic reformer to the country’s premiership on Apr 1, right in the middle of the Great Sabre Rattle.

The country Richard Nixon visited in 1972 is a distant memory, but China has work to do to challenge the West, writes Minxin Pei

WHEN US vice president Joe Biden visited China last August, he spent many hours bonding with his Beijing counterpart, Xi Jinping.

WHEN Professor Fan Hong returned to China after studying abroad, she stopped in the neighbourhood where she thought she had lived and wondered where her home had gone.

The visit to Ireland of China’s pro-business vice-president Xi Jinping could mark the start of a significant increase in trade between the countries, but we must be ready to grab this golden opportunity with two hands, writes Dan Buckley

As North Korea enters political transition, its new leaders must face the reality that it cannot depend on the same policies of oppression and military provocation forever, writes Rosemary Righter

Jack Lynch believed China needed and wanted friends in the West but was not willing to make allies.

Construction workers put down their tools, drivers stopped suddenly in the street, and rescuers briefly paused in their increasingly vain search for survivors amid the rubble of China’s earthquake devastation.

More than 200 relief workers have been buried by a mudslide in earthquake-hit Sichuan province, a Chinese state news agency said today.

Two weeks ago China basketball star Yao Ming broke his left foot while playing for the Houston Rockets of the NBA, provoking hysteria among Chinese fans fearful the 7’ 6” centre will miss September’s World Championships. Michael Moynihan found out Yao was bred to carry the hopes of the nation from communism through to the free market.

While US president George Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao hoped their discussions inside the White House would cool tensions over a yawning US-China trade gap, demonstrators massed outside today to protest Beijing’s human rights policies.

ZHAO Ziyang, the former Communist Party leader who helped launch China's economic boom but was ousted after sympathising with the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protesters, died earlier yesterday in a Beijing hospital. He was 85.

Police kept China’s symbolic heart of Tiananmen Square free of demonstrators today, detaining at least 13 people while activists abroad marked the 15th anniversary of the attack on pro-democracy protesters.

CHINA is changing its constitution to protect private property rights for the first time since the 1949 communist revolution — a key step in making capitalism its economy’s driving force.

Vice President Hu Jintao was appointed as leader of China’s Communist Party today, handing him the country’s most powerful position and making him a certain bet to replace Jiang Zemin as president next year.

The man expected to be China’s next leader became the only top politician re-elected to the Communist Party’s inner sanctum today, the most solid sign yet of Hu Jintao’s ascent to the acme of Asia’s largest, fastest-growing country.

They were never guerrillas, hiding in caves until they could make their move and build the China of their dreams.

A Hong Kong author has written a joke book with comic strips about the Tiananmen Square massacre.