Uyghur concentration camps in China’s western Xinjiang province (aka East Turkistan) have a shoot-to-kill policy for those who try to escape, according to leaked documents seen by the BBC (above)…. Read more »
What was Taiwan’s secret political formula that empowered its democratic transformation, so that by 2021 the island country was hailed as “beacon of democracy in Asia,” in the “Democracy Index”,… Read more »
Are the authoritarians who grace, or disgrace, our world, from Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Vladimir Putin, more like or unlike their twentieth-century predecessors? Two new books, each with virtues of… Read more »
China’s authoritarian surveillance state crushed Covid-19 when it first appeared in Wuhan in early 2020 and trumpeted that success to the world. Now, more than two years later, the Omicron variant… Read more »
Liberal democracy is back to where it was in 1989, says the most recent report from the Varieties of Democracy Institute (V–Dem) – in other words, the massive gains in… Read more »
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attracted global attention when he rejected a U.S. offer to evacuate, replying defiantly, “The fight is here. I need ammunition, not a ride.” That response “will… Read more »
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is poised to win Sunday’s general election by a comfortable margin, though not by enough to secure another supermajority, reports suggest. In a video speech to European Union leaders… Read more »
The United States plans to sanction approximately 400 Russian individuals and entities, including more than 300 legislators from the Duma, the Russian parliament’s lower house, a senior Biden administration official… Read more »
In his infamous Transylvania speech announcing Hungary in 2014 as an “illiberal state,” Viktor Orban also called Russia—along with China, Singapore, India, and Turkey—a model for Hungarian society. But the… Read more »
Holding a referendum on compromises with Russia in war-torn Ukraine would be next to impossible without a ceasefire, so Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will have to get Russian President Vladimir Putin on… Read more »