[Adam Minter] China reinvents literature (profitably)

Smartphones may be killing print in China, but they’re revolutionizing literature. Last year, 333 million Chinese read fiction written for their phones and other devices, according to government data. Some is written by hobbyists and some by professionals. Increasingly, though, it’s hard to tell the difference, as China’s “online literature” morphs into a $1.3 billion industry.　Investors have taken note. On Wednesday, China Literature Ltd., the country’s biggest online publisher, will go public

Nov. 9, 2017

[Chicago Tribune] How to help prevent the next gun massacre

Mass killings like the one at a South Texas church are acts of extreme violence that defy rational explanation and simple solution. They raise demands for specific steps to be taken to ban horrors that are as indiscriminate as they are depraved.That doesn’t make this a time to mourn and shrug. America needs to deal with its propensity for gun violence. Here was another reminder.Tens of thousands of churches across America held worship services Sunday, but it was the First Baptist Church in tiny

Nov. 9, 2017

[Pankaj Mishra] What Tories can learn from Communists

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s assumption of supreme leadership seems to suggest that the Chinese Communist Party has finally reached the impasse long predicted by its critics. It may no longer be able, as Minxin Pei wrote in “China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy,” to “build broad-based social coalitions to pursue its policies and defend itself.”Rule by autocratic decree invariably strangles the possibility of new ideas and innovations -- what advances the process of

Nov. 9, 2017

[Mark Davis] Those of us who pray are not doing nothing

In the wake of another mass shooting, the sides are assuming their familiar postures on cue. Conservatives are circling the wagons to guard their 2nd Amendment rights; liberals are calling for legislative remedies.Equally familiar is the ramping up of rhetoric. The right accuses the left of “gun grabbing,” as if any change in law is a sure path to confiscation, while the left accuses the right of “doing nothing” when restrictive laws are rejected.But this time, as Texas prepares to lay its own v

Nov. 8, 2017

[Michael Schuman] Not all 'bad' deals are bad for US

President Donald Trump visits Asia this week focused on the supposedly bad deals his predecessors struck with America’s partners in the region -- whether job-killing trade pacts or costly defense pledges. In Tokyo, he raised his hosts’ “not fair” trade advantages. 　Contrary to Trump’s narrative, however, previous US presidents didn’t enter these deals blindly. In a very real sense, America’s relationships in Asia were designed to be “bad” -- to sacrifice some US interests in the service of other

Nov. 8, 2017

[Eli Lake] John Kerry’s delusional advice on North Korea

John Kerry has some advice for Donald Trump this week on his presidential visit to Asia: Calm down the rhetoric.　In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, the former secretary of state said the president should stop “feeding into North Korea’s fear of regime change, or of you know -- a unilateral attack.”　“I think the rhetoric to date has frankly stepped over the line with respect to the messages that are being sent,” Kerry said. “It’s given North Korea a reason to say ‘Hey we need a bomb

Nov. 8, 2017

[Leonid Bershidsky] Europe is tiring of ‘Anglocondescension’

Just a few years ago, fatigue from “Anglo-Saxon lecturing” was a hallmark of authoritarian regimes like Vladimir Putin’s in Russia or Xi Jinping’s in China. Now it’s surfacing in mainstream European media -- a sign that, after Brexit and Donald Trump’s victory, the English-speaking world is losing intellectual legitimacy.　On Thursday, El Pais, Spain’s newspaper of record, published an article in English by its Editorial Director Jose Ignacio Torreblanca, entitled “Anglocondescension.” Dripping w

Nov. 7, 2017

[Jean Tirole] France’s labor laws should protect people, not jobs

French President Emmanuel Macron’s efforts to loosen the country’s labor code are innovative and welcome. They might help attract more investment. But if France truly wants to reconcile the interests of companies and workers, it also needs a different kind of reform -- one focused on protecting people, not jobs.　Macron’s plan increases legal penalties for “wrongful” dismissals, while curbing the ability of courts to grant workers even greater compensation. This is the right approach; the problem

Nov. 7, 2017

[David Rothkopf] Will Trump get what he wants in China?

Donald Trump is reinventing the kowtow for the Twitter age. Last week, in fawning tweets, he celebrated Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “extraordinary elevation” at the 19th Chinese Communist Party Congress, and in a TV interview he bragged that he and Xi had the best “president-president” relationship ever. It was over the top -- especially in light of the fact that Xi is an authoritarian leader.Clearly, Trump, a man not known for his humility, wants something. China is the most important stop o

Nov. 7, 2017

[Cass R. Sunstein] What if a tyrant can’t be booted out of office?

With the indictments of two campaign associates of then candidate Donald Trump, and the guilty plea of one of his foreign policy advisers, some people are starting to talk again about the possibility of impeachment. Let’s put contemporary issues to one side and instead ask an enduring question: Did the framers get impeachment right? In other words, does the Constitution strike the right balance?　To answer, we need to separate two decisions made during the founding era. The first involves the sta

Nov. 6, 2017

[Chicago Tribune ] Trump should speak up for the Rohingya people

The Rohingya people of Myanmar have long been despised and persecuted as a Muslim minority in a majority-Buddhist country. Now, they are being slaughtered.A brutal campaign of terror has driven more than 600,000 of the Rohingya to flee the country to neighboring Bangladesh, and a political and humanitarian crisis is rapidly unfolding. The United Nations calls it “a textbook case of ethnic cleansing.”The exodus was sparked by a disturbing escalation of long-simmering tensions between Myanmar’s ma

Nov. 6, 2017

[Tatiana Schlossberg] Europe needs to be frank about biomass

Great Britain, the country that, during the Industrial Revolution, got the rest of the world hooked on burning coal, is planning to end its own dependence on the dirtiest of fossil fuels. Drax, the operator of Britain’s largest coal-fired power plant, plans to stop using coal by 2020, in line with the country’s effort to phase out coal entirely by 2025.　How will Britain make this happen? In part, by switching to biomass, largely in the form of wood pellets. Biomass already accounts for about 8 p

Nov. 6, 2017