Isabel Hilton
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/ 19 March 2007

Colombia’s dark underbelly leaves Bush with an embarrassing best friend

There is little to cheer a United States president on a visit to Latin America these days. Where it once enforced its will on the region, the US now looks increasingly out of touch. The presidents of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile were not elected as friends of the US, and China has quietly filled the economic gap left by seven years of US distraction and neglect.

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/ 23 February 2007

China’s green lies

Fumin county, a hitherto obscure district in south-west China, became the object of international mockery last week when news reached the outside world that the bare slopes of Laoshou mountain had been painted green, to the bewilderment of the villagers and at a cost of about  000. Reports were divided about who was responsible.

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/ 13 February 2006

Nepalese poll flops

Violence and a dramatically low turnout marred the first elections for seven years in Nepal on Wednesday — polls the king had described as the first step back to democracy for the Himalayan state. Turnout was said to be less than 10%, reflecting dismay with the king’s strategy and a response to Maoist and opposition calls for a boycott.

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/ 23 November 2004

The Chinese enigma

In 1993, after 15 years of rapid growth, China’s exports had barely crept back to where they were in 1928. By 2000 the dollar economy, hailed as the future engine of global growth, was barely bigger than those of Spain and Holland combined. Even now, China’s gross domestic product is less than a quarter of Japan’s. Has China’s the economic miracle been overstated?

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/ 27 October 2003

Justice from the streets of Bolivia

Bolivia’s president of 15 months, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, was protesting to the last when he finally resigned last Friday after months of street protests. His resignation, he remarked sourly, was a blow for democracy in Bolivia and Latin America. The president’s democratic credentials were not impeccable.