CHINA
CURRENTS
Stories making the news
8 Law and disorder in Rio
Plus: Borderlines
9 Introducing: Sudan’s Forces for the Declaration of
Freedom and Change
Plus: Seriously?
10 Unjustly imprisoned in the Basque Country
Not the Nobel Prize
Precarious gains for Cambodia’s garment workers
Plus: Sign of the Times
Plus: Inequality Watch
12 Western Sahara’s stolen riches
Plus: Open Window
13 Gina Rinehart eyes up the Fitzroy River
Plus: Reasons to be CheerfulREGULARS
6 Letters
Plus: Why I...7 Letter from Dhaka
Spiritual and social concerns mingle when Parsa
Sanjana Sajid visits a popular shrine.38 Country Profile: Tonga40 Cartoon history
Benjamin Dix and Lindsay Pollock tell the story
of Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war and its final days in
2009.44 The debate
Is concern about population growth exaggerated?
Mohan Rao and Sara Parkin do not agree.51 Temperature Check
Danny Chivers outlines six things you can do to
protect the Amazon52 The Interview
Syrian architects and urban planners Hani Fakhani
and Sawsan Abou Zainedin tell Alessio Perrone
how reconstruction is being used for a social
cleansing agenda.55 Southern Exposure
Hoops of closeness by Ghanaian photographer
Derrick Ofosu Boateng.72 Hall of Infamy
The UAE’s Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s iron
fist ungloved.80 The PuzzlerCONTENTS
15 China in charge
The rapid rise to power of this once-marginal nation is
perhaps the most remarkable fact of our age. But what
happens next? Yohann Koshy finds out.
21 How green is China?
China has made progress in reducing its dependency
on dirty coal and investing in renewables. But Ma
Tianjie sees limits in the Communist Party’s top-down
approach to the environment.
24 Belt and Road: THE FACTS
It has been billed as the biggest infrastructure project
in history. Do the facts live up to the hype?
26 Living in a ghost world
Darren Byler talks to Yohann Koshy about the
persecution of the Uyghur people in northwest China.
31 The Beijing connection
Writing from Kenya, Christine Mungai reflects on the
past, present and future of the relationship between
China and Africa.
34 (Don’t) fight the power
How original can China’s culture industry be when
rappers and actors have to toe the party line? Amy
Hawkins writes.
THE BIG STORY
4 NEW INTERNATIONALIST