Harsh punishment not likely for Bo Xilai and ‘red aristocracy’ members targeted by anti-graft campaign

Harsh punishment not likely for Bo Xilai and ‘red aristocracy’ members targeted by anti-graft campaign

Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com While the official Chinese media have claimed that the trial of former Politburo member Bo Xilai testifies to the Xi Jinping leadership’s commitment to fighting graft, it is unlikely that “tigers” among venal cadres will be nabbed any time soon. There is a well-known “mutual protection clause” within […]

Reports: Cash-strapped N. Korea ‘stepped up’ chemical weapons shipments to Syria

Reports: Cash-strapped N. Korea ‘stepped up’ chemical weapons shipments to Syria

Special to WorldTribune.com WASHINGTON — North Korea was believed to have sent chemical weapons technology to Syria. A United Nations panel and Western analysts agreed that Pyongyang was shipping CW technology to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. They said the CW assets could have facilitated non-conventional weapons attacks against the Sunni revolt over […]

Memo to Seoul on the great Pacific Ocean aircraft carrier race

Memo to Seoul on the great Pacific Ocean aircraft carrier race

Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com Could aircraft carriers be the next big thing for Korea’s enormous shipbuilding industry, the world’s best and biggest? With orders down during the global economic slowdown, it would seem logical that Hyundai Heavy Industries and some of its rivals bring up the topic of aircraft carrier production with […]

Dictators’ Club: Xi Jinping blocks predecessors on choice of his successor

Dictators’ Club: Xi Jinping blocks predecessors on choice of his successor

Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com While General Secretary and President Xi Jinping has not yet been in office for one year, different factions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are already jockeying for position regarding the identity of Xi’s successor. It was late patriarch Deng Xiaoping who started the tradition called the “cross-generation […]

India in race with China to launch first indigenous aircraft carrier

India in race with China to launch first indigenous aircraft carrier

Special to WorldTribune.com By Miles Yu, Geostrategy-Direct.com An Indian Navy source has confirmed that the Indian government will launch its first ever indigenously designed and built aircraft carrier on Aug. 12. If so, India would be the fifth country able to build its own carrier, after the United States, Russia, Great Britain and France. The […]

A U.S. president honors the myth of Ho Chi Minh

A U.S. president honors the myth of Ho Chi Minh

Jeffrey T. Kuhner President Obama has insulted the memory of the nearly 60,000 Americans who died in Vietnam. Last week, Mr. Obama met with Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang. Mr. Sang peddled the lie that the communist nation’s founder, Ho Chi Minh, was inspired by the Declaration of Independence and Thomas Jefferson. Mr. Obama agreed, […]

Kim Jong-Un’s powerful aunt disappears from public view

Kim Jong-Un’s powerful aunt disappears from public view

Special to WorldTribune.com By Lee Jong-Heon, East-Asia-Intel.com SEOUL — North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Un’s powerful aunt has not been seen in public for nearly three months and is believed to be critically ill. If so, the development could significantly impact the young leaders’ underlying power base among family members, sources and analysts here say. Kim Kyong-Hui has […]

Reacting to Hayden interview, Huawei tells U.S. to ‘just shut up’

Reacting to Hayden interview, Huawei tells U.S. to ‘just shut up’

Special to WorldTribune.com By Miles Yu, Geostrategy-Direct.com The Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei issued a statement hours after a former U.S. senior intelligence official confirmed that Huawei had indeed spied for the Chinese government. Gen. Michael Hayden [Ret], former director of the CIA and NSA, a highly respected professional intelligence official in the West, told the […]

Major election victory may give Abe mandate to make Japan’s defense forces ‘normal’

Major election victory may give Abe mandate to make Japan’s defense forces ‘normal’

Special to WorldTribune.com East-Asia-Intel.com The sweeping parliamentary victory last weekend has made Shinzo Abe one of the most powerful post-war Japanese prime ministers. Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) controls both chambers of the Japanese parliament known as the Diet. The resounding win has also given him a clear mandate to review the nation’s defense […]

Xi Jinping spares top party leaders whose scale of corruption qualified them for execution

Xi Jinping spares top party leaders whose scale of corruption qualified them for execution

Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com It’s a case of plus ça change with President ’s nine-month old campaign to rectify the “work style” of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) through means including cracking down on big-time corruption. Earlier this week the protagonist of the one of worst scandals in PRC history – former minister […]