By Mary Hennock

China's parliament is frequently dismissed as a rubber stamp body whose delegates agree with every government measure and avoid controversy. This year's session has seen a new trend at work. The two-week gathering of the National People's Congress has seen protesters lobbying hard against a key government policy. No, not Tibet independence activists, angry farmers, or unemployed workers, but company bosses. Many delegates are entrepreneurs, and they're objecting to China's new labor contract law, introduced just over two months ago. "The law is overly-protective of workers' rights," delegate Zong Qinghou told Reuters, adding, "It isn't reasonable." Zong is the chairman of Wahaha Group, China's biggest private soft drinks company.

Beijing isn't alone in its "edifice complex," the massive urban makeover that has transformed the Chinese capital in the run-up to the Summer Olympics. In Shanghai the remodeling of the city's famous Bund waterfront has led to some raised eyebrows. My colleague Duncan Hewitt writes from Shanghai:

When Shanghai does something, it doesn't do it by halves. For years, local urban planners have admitted that the city made a mistake in the 1990s, when it routed one of its major highways right along the famous Bund waterfront. Since then conservationists have dreamt of the day when the traffic would be rerouted, or even put underground in a tunnel, to spare the historic structures from pollution and improve the view of the famous old stretch of colonial-era buildings.

How an exploration of Buddhists' forays into politics led to some surprising discoveries

The idea for the piece that became this week's cover story on Buddhist political activism came to me last fall, when I traveled to Southeast Asia to report on the monk-led "Saffron Revolution" in Burma (also known as Myanmar). The fact that Buddhist monks had decided to put themselves at the head of a Burmese opposition movement against the military junta in their country was intriguing. Because the government was refusing visas to journalists, I ended up doing much of the
reporting out of Bangkok, and along the way I also found myself fascinated by the situation in Thailand, where Buddhism has become an increasingly assertive political force in recent years.

Most people outside of the region probably don't tend to think of Buddhism as a political religion. When westerners think of Buddhists, the image that probably comes to mind most readily involves people sitting in the lotus position, calmly meditating in some blissful spot far-removed from the daily tumult of ordinary life. As one leading scholar, Ian Harris at the UK's University of Cumbria, put it to me, "This idea of the monk withdrawn in contemplation is to some extent an Orientalist construction," a cliché indulged by naïve Westerners. Buddhists, he pointed out, have always been deeply involved in the societies in which they live. In medieval times some served as close advisers to kings, while others fought injustice as warriors. In Southeast Asia monks played a major role in decolonization movements after World War II. Nor are Buddhists always noble oppositionists. In Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam Buddhist clergies are tightly subordinate to local governments, and few among the faithful seem visibly disturbed by the idea. "Monks are people, too," notes Thomas Borchert of the University of Vermont. "They're religion specialists but they're citizens. They may not be able to perform politics in quite the same way as other people, but they're still citizens."

And Buddhism, as a faith struggling to contend with the vagaries of twenty-first century life, is finding itself subject to many of the same pressures as other religions: globalization, and the rapid spread of values, information, and money that goes along with it, is challenging traditional beliefs in Buddhist cultures just as elsewhere. "Buddhist monks have to somehow come to terms with rapid changes," says Thitinan Pongsudhirak, one of Thailand's leading political analysts. "Some monks carry mobile phones; lots of monks sleep now in air-conditioned monasteries. This is not just Buddhism. You have a lot of religions that have fundamental beliefs challenged by modernity." Last November a Thai bank proposed an "e-merit-making service," offering users convenient, Internet-assisted ways to make donations to their favorite Buddhist cause and thereby reap a bit of positive karma. Thailand now has thousands of Buddhist websites.

The U.S. is ratcheting up its opposition to an obscure Taiwan referendum. That's especially odd since the vote -- whatever its outcome -- will have no practical effect on Taiwan's standing or on the cross-strait status quo. The referendum, if it goes ahead as planned together with the presidential vote on March 22, will ask Taiwan voters if the island should seek to join the United Nations with the name "Taiwan."

Last Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called the referendum a "provocative policy", adding, "It unnecessarily raises tensions in the Taiwan Strait, and it promises no real benefits for the people of Taiwan on the international stage." Certainly, the vote won't change Taiwan's status. With China on the UN Security Council and only 24 small countries recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign state, any Taiwanese bid for UN membership -- no matter which name it uses -- is doomed.

The War on Terror has burned through America’s human and financial resources and empowered radical Islam. But for China, it’s been a lucrative reprieve.

However weakened are Sino-US ties – and they’ve taken a beating this year – the most important trans-Pacific relationship would be a lot worse if not for the Bush administration’s pre-occupation with the Middle East. His predecessor will likely declare a victory of sorts in Iraq and Afghanistan and slowly draw down the US military presence there. The White House will focus on domestic concerns like health care, immigration, and trade. Media interest in the terrorist threat will wane. (If there is a clash of civilizations and no one around to videotape it, does it get posted on YouTube?)

There are a lot of other stories that have been in the forefront of the news in Japan this week. But there's another one that hasn't gotten the airtime it deserves – even though it might be the most important of all.

It's about Yuriko Koike, Japan's first female Defense Minister, who abruptly quit in August just weeks after her appointment to the job. At the time she was harshly criticized for the seemingly arbitrary actions that precipitated her departure. Yet now events have dramatically vindicated her move, in ways that suggest that her 55-day tenure may end up being remembered as a remarkable achievement. What did she do? Simple - she fired her deputy, the top-ranking civil servant Takemasa Moriya. The problem was that she didn't really explain it very well. All she said was that he'd been in his job for much too long (twice the regular two-year term). He was so entrenched, as a matter of fact, that people gave him the nickname "the Emperor." As soon as Koike made her announcement, the 62-year old veteran bureaucratic infighter immediately started a campaign of resistance, going so far as to petition Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. But Koike stuck to her guns. Moriya headed off into retirement, but soon his boss was also forced to leave office under circumstances that have never really been clear. On the surface of things her motives seemed flimsy. Though acknowledging that she had the legal power to decide his removal, critics muttered that she had somehow violated unwritten rules of political decorum. Some of the commentaries hinted that flighty females couldn't be trusted with matters of real importance. In any case, Japan's political classes soon moved on.