CIAO DATE: 03/2013

• Cover Stories

  • Chinese Silk Railroad ambitions (PDF)

    Michael Binyon

    Centuries ago the Orient supplied Europe with the wondrous luxuries it craved – jewels, silk, jade, spices – sending its produce along the dusty caravan route known as the Silk Road. Today, China has become the world’s workshop and Europe has an insatiable appetite for its exports. Most now arrive on giant container ships. But as ports become clogged and delivery times critical, China is once again looking to the old land routes across Asia. But the new Silk Road China is planning will be made of steel.

  • Keeping the dream on track (PDF)

    Malcolm Moore

    At 9am on Boxing Day, a silver and white CRH380A Bullet train rolled out of Beijing on its maiden journey. It was a proud moment for China, the inauguration of the world’s longest high-speed rail line, running from the north to south of China, from Beijing to Guangzhou.

  • Catching the train bug (PDF)

    Christian Wolmar

    There is a paradox in the British attitude towards the railways. On the one hand, trains are the great Aunt Sally, a repository of complaints ranging from ageing carriages to overcrowding. Indeed, no boss would question an employee who gives train delay as an excuse for turning up late.

  • Top 10 train journeys (PDF)

    Agnes Frimston

• Columns

  • India's middle-class dilemma (PDF)

    Gareth Price

    India has undergone remarkable change in the past few decades. Dramatic economic and population growth has seen millions of people move from rural to urban centres. Villages have expanded into towns and towns into cities. A middle class has emerged, several hundred million Indians have seen lifestyles improve immeasurably and wealth is displayed more conspicuously than ever before.

  • Covert sexism in espionage (PDF)

    Susan Hasler

    In the fictional world, assassins wield lethal weapons to threaten glamorous lady spies. In the real world, bad things happen to good female intelligence officers, and the ‘enemy within’ is generally not a mole.

• Interview

  • Angelica Cheung, editor of Vogue China, on how the West has got Chinese fashion wrong

    Libby Powell

    The founding editor of Vogue China, launched eight years ago to instant acclaim and catering to an increasingly sophisticated market of affluent, stylish women, talks to Libby Powell.

• South Africa

  • The challenges facing Zuma

    Fiona Forde

    Even the sternest critic of Jacob Zuma cannot deny that the man has staying power. Despite his colourful past and repeated brushes with the law, a poor performance in his first term and a general sense that at the age of 70 he is unfit for leadership, he won a second term as president of the African National Congress in December with 75 per cent of the vote. Yet his decisive victory notwithstanding, very few are of the view that the best is yet to come for South Africa.

• Iraq

  • Three costly lessons from the invasion

    Charles Tripp

    Ten years on from the US-led invasion what are the prospects for this fractured country and can oil wealth end its misery?

  • One day the world will thank Bush for shaking up the Arab region

    Nadim Shehadi

    Has the high price of the Iraq invasion has kept the US out of Syria?

  • Problems in the pipeline

    Landon Shroder

    How instability puts an Iraq oil bonanza at risk

  • Washington looks away

    Omar Sirri

    America’s goals in Iraq appear contradictory

     

  • Iraq in figures

• Bean counting

  • The cost of feeding soya to all the pigs in China

    Jaakko Kooroshy

    The soya bean trade shows how politics distorts markets and harms the environment

     

     

• Drones

  • Is the US shadow war helping Yemen?

    Leonie Northedge

    The repercussions of drone strikes

  • My country faces Talibanization

    Ibrahim Mothana

    Ibrahim Mothana spoke to Alan Philps by Skype on January 22

  • Putin's catch-up plan

    Mary Buckley

    Russia looks to the skies

• Tobacco

  • Smoking curb that cost a packet

    Jane Halton

    Why cigarettes are now sold in Australia in plain brown packages with disturbing pictures

     

     

  • The world's struggle to kick the habit

    Kelley Lee

• Asia

  • New faces, old tensions

    John Swenson-Wright

    The leaders who could mean a fresh beginning for East Asia

     

     

  • Misogyny in Bollywood

    Burhan Wazir

    The rape and killing of a student had led to criticism of the portrayal of women in Indian films. Burhan Wazir asks if this is justified

• Regulars

  • From the Editor

    Alan Philps

  • Letters

    EMU's antecedence

  • Notebook: Nabila Ramdani

    Nabila Ramdani

    Return of the Arab strongman

  • Date with history: The Peace Palace opens in The Hague

    Charles Emmerson

    Hope on the eve of the Great War, August 28, 1913

     

     

  • Postcard from... Ascension Island

    Caroline Yon

    The silence of the cats: a successful conservation cull to protect seabird colonies

  • Jargonbuster gets 'pragmatic'

    Send your jargon suggestions to letters@theworldtoday.org

     

     

  • Books: Lessons from William Dalrymple's 'Return of a King'

    Michael Keating

    The lessons to be learnt from a British debacle that cost an Afghan king his reputation and his life

    William Dalrymple Return of a King:

    The Battle for Afghanistan

    (Bloomsbury, £25)

     

     

  • Books: Haiti's man-made hell

    Ian Birrell

    A shocking account of how the world failed Haiti

    Jonathan M. Katz The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster (Palgrave Macmillan, £16.99)

     

     

  • Books: Jonathan Wright's Iraq reading list

    Jonathan Wright

  • Ten minutes with... John Riordan, illustrator

    Agnes Frimston

    The illustrator's new book Capital City is a critique of the financial world inspired by William Blake's Prophetic Books. He explains his vision to Agnes Frimston