June 2012

(With a blow-by-blow of the Cheng Guangcheng negotiations.) On May 3, the day after an artful deal to end the diplomatic crisis over Chen Guangcheng, China’s now-famous dissident, unraveled spectacularly, Hillary Rodham Clinton followed a scrum of Chinese ministers around an exhibition of clean cookstoves. These are safer, portable alternatives to the crude stoves used by hundreds of millions of women in the developing world — at grave risk to themselves, their children and the planet. Not long after becoming secretary of state in 2009, Clinton took up the cookstove cause, one of what she describes as “smart power” issues — though skeptical veterans of American foreign policy tend to deride them as soft more than smart.

The farther away one stands from the Obamacare cases, the more curious they look against the portrait we usually imagine of ourselves. By now, America’s declining place in rankings of global health is so well known at home that it has lost its rhetorical punch, but it can be striking to notice how much other countries have done in the years that we have debated. Seven years ago, China’s beleaguered health-care system was the Wild West; half the country told pollsters that they couldn’t afford to see a doctor if they fell ill. Today? The problems remain immense—rural conditions are grim, there is one general practitioner for every twenty-two thousand people, and people still go to hospitals with envelopes of cash to “tip” the doctors—but on the basic economic and philosophical questions, such as whether the country is stronger if everyone is insured, the debate ended years ago.

Over the weekend, the China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC) quietly announced that nine new blocks in the South China Sea were now open to foreign oil companies for exploration and development. This move reflects one of the starkest efforts by China to assert its maritime rights in these disputed waters – and constitutes a direct challenge to Vietnam’s own claims.

The New York Times is introducing a Chinese-language Web site, part of a continuing effort to expand its reach to international readers. The site, which is called cn.nytimes.com and will go live Thursday morning, is intended to draw readers from the country’s growing middle class, what The Times in its news release called “educated, affluent, global citizens.’’