After much controversy, the Olympic Games will start in Beijing. However, the world’s eyes are not on the athletes but on the Chinese authorities and the way they handle the inevitable protests.

Relations between two of East Asia’s great powers, China and South Korea, have been strengthened after a period of uncertainty with the February inauguration in Seoul of a pro-American politician, Lee Myung-bak, as president.

The Sichuan earthquake disaster has highlighted many changes in China. One is the country’s willingness to accept outside aid, in contrast to the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, when Beijing insisted on self-reliance and refused all offers of assistance.

Despite the seeming sophistication of the country’s current generation of leaders, China’s heavy-handed denunciation of the Dalai Lama since the March 14 Lhasa riots, blaming everything on him and his “clique”, shows that the Communist party has not changed some of its basic characteristics—such as seeking to depict its opponents as evil beyond compare.

The triumph of Ma Ying-jeou, the Nationalist Party (or Kuomintang) candidate in the presidential election in Taiwan, brings to an end eight years of rule by the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party.

No longer content with its place on the world stage, the economic giant seeks a bigger role for itself.

Ever since it won the right to host the 2008 Olympics seven years ago, China has been hoping that the summer Games would substantially raise its international prestige. But there is now a growing danger that the opposite may happen.

The defeat of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan was expected, but the magnitude of its January 12 parliamentary election loss took everyone by surprise, including the DPP itself and the opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT).

China’s decision to allow Hong Kong to elect its own chief executive in 2017 and the entire legislature in 2020 is a momentous step forward, both for Hong Kong and for China, although Hong Kong’s pan-democrats do not seem to realize it.

President Chen’s referendum elevates tension with Washington and Beijing.

Though Beijing seems to be taking note of its political rivals, there's no indication that power-sharing will be next

And so we have the curious situation of both presidential candidates differing from the president on the importance of the economy. But unless incoming candidate Frank Hsieh can take back from the president the right to run his campaign, it will be difficult for him to step out from the president’s shadow, just as it will be difficult for voters to differentiate between him and the president. So far - at a time when he should be asserting himself as a leader and making it clear what his own position is - Hsieh has been busy denying that there are differences between him and the president on either economic or cross-strait policies

It is intriguing to note that at a time characterized as "highly dangerous" by China's president, Hu Jintao, apparently because of Taiwan's stepped-up efforts to achieve independence, the United States is once again saying that the status of Taiwan remains undecided.

Through arrests and passport denials, whistleblowers are kept out of the international spotlight.

China and the United States have closed ranks in opposing the latest antic by Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian: to hold a referendum to see if the people of the island agree that it should apply to join the United Nations using the name Taiwan.

With the approach of the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics, the Chinese government is making all kinds of preparations to host the Games and to welcome foreign visitors and athletes. It knows that the eyes of the world are increasingly turning to China.

A Beijing court, in an unprecedented decision in August, found journalist Zhao Yan not guilty of leaking state secrets to his employer, the New York Times. Then, recently, in another surprise action, a court in Linyi City in Shandong Province quashed a guilty verdict against blind activist Chen Guangcheng.

With Hong Kong having entered its 10th year as a Chinese special administrative region, pressure is building on Beijing to honour its promise of allowing full democratization of this former British colony.