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According to an internal survey by China's Communist Party, corrupt officials and their spouses are second on the list of citizens' grievances, after abusive police officers. The relatives of top leaders--frequently referred to as 'princelings'--can accumulate vast wealth from the privatization of state assets and poorly regulated financial markets.

BY THE TIME THE flight to Hong Kong had reached 30,000 feet, Jerry Stuchiner's right eye bad stopped its nervous twitching. The 45-year-old officer for the Immigration and Naturalization Service [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu And Isaac Stone Fish Artist Ai WeiWei is freed. But China continues its harshest crackdown on political dissidents in decades. It was his most closely watched performance, [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu The confrontation last week between a U.S. ship and five Chinese naval craft was just the latest of many low-grade military clashes in the South China Sea, [...]

Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein asserts his rights before an Iraqi Special Tribunal judge as the tribunals' biggest responsibility is to make sure this defendant gets an impeccably fair trial. The tribunal is looking at Saddam in connection with 14 separate alleged crimes against humanity, including gas attacks and mass executions of thousands of Kurdish and Shiite civilians and the killings of religious and political figures over three decades.

Byline: Melinda Liu He's as shameless as ever. The Arab news channel Al Arabiya aired a video clip of Saddam Hussein last week confidently asserting his rights before an Iraqi [...]

The U.S forces in action against the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the earlier days of occupation and the trouble they are in to because of this is discussed. The American occupiers can take heart that the ruthless al-Sadr's rebellion has not broken in to a full fledged Shiite revolution, al -Sadr's reputation is growing everyday and the frustration of the American commandants who were pleading for action against the cleric when he was only a minor nuisance then is detailed.

Tian Fengshan never seemed like ministerial material. The eldest son of a peasant family in Heilongjiang province, he spoke with a thick rural accent that still makes him the butt [...]

Al Qaeda: New Terrorism Tactics One unpublicized reason the Bush administration issued last week's warning about new Qaeda hijacking threats is that U.S. intelligence acquired evidence from terrorist hideouts showing [...]

Staring at the rubble of his neighbors' row houses, Chen Guo-fang says he won't budge. Like more than a hundred residents who protested outside Shanghai's city hall last week, Chen [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu, Rod Nordland and Evan Thomas After 9-11, as talk of war against Iraq picked up in Washington, the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) became jittery. On Oct. 29, [...]

The looting that followed after Baghdad was captured is elaborated. The fact that Shiite majority that was oppressed by Saddam may rise is reported and the peopleEs want for an Islamic rule is highlighted.

AFGHANISTAN How Best To Help? With the Loya Jirga a success and a new government in place, the situation in Afghanistan was looking up. The Bush administration was set to [...]

The riot in Liushugouzi unfolded all too typically. Last May a band of local officials descended upon the village in Shandong province to collect overdue taxes and fees--the bane of [...]

Byline: Daniel Klaidman and Melinda Liu The Gaeda fighter was ragged and underfed, just another prisoner dragged off the battlefield by the Northern Alliance. Searched by his captors, he turned [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu and Peter Janssen Frail, thin and dressed in flowing white robes, Abu Bakar Bashir doesn't look like a terrorist mastermind. And he's certainly not being treated like [...]

On the low-quality videotape, Li Ping glides into the Macau casino as if she owns the joint. The brassy, bejeweled 45-year-old and her lover, Chinese Parliament Vice Chairman Cheng Kejie, [...]

Standing trial in Hong Kong is a disorienting experience for 48-year- old Cheng Sui-wa. He cannot understand English, so he leans forward awkwardly to catch the whispers of his Mandarin [...]

Taking the law into one's own hands can be a dangerous business in China. Last spring, 38-year-old Sichuan native Huang Qi was a minor celebrity. The Web site he had [...]

Indonesia's president Abdurrahman Wahid, who is nearly blind, moves among shadows. But in his mind, Wahid likes to think of high noon, when the sun shines white-hot, and it's easier [...]

Bei Ling was fascinated with China's dissidents and the literary underground. The Boston-based poet and critic, 40, who left Beijing in 1988, cultivated controversial figures such as writer Liu Xiaobo [...]

Inside the customs office in Dover, England, a fax machine chirruped. Out came a message from the European Pathway, a P & O Stena Line ferry that was churning across [...]

What could be so threatening about an 80-year-old Roman Catholic archbishop that Beijing would need 150 police to arrest him? Two weeks ago, according to the U.S.-based Cardinal Kung Foundation, [...]

In the wake of Donorgate, Clinton is cracking down on 'dual use' exporters IF SOARING EXPORTS WERE THE HOLY grail of Bill Clinton's first-term trade strategy, then Ed McCracken fit [...]

Forget about cloaks and daggers. In the nuclear age, China's playing a whole new espionage game. By Daniel Klaidman and Melinda Liu It looked like a classic spy operation. Burrowed [...]

Nuclear-theft charges threaten computer exports It was like darkness at noon on Capitol Hill, suggested one executive. He was taken to a windowless basement office. It was stuffy. There was [...]

IDG sees a Chinese partner get the ultimate sentence If there's one company that has successfully cracked the China market, it's International Data Group of Massachusetts. For nearly 20 years, [...]

Inside Johnny Chung's mad scramble to the top JOHNNY CHUNG LIKED TO TELL FRIENDS HOW HE WON HILLARY CLINTON'S HEART. It was March 1998, and the nearly penniless fax-software salesman [...]

John Huang, the elusive Democratic fund raiser, faces questions about access and foreign cash UNASSUMING, ENERGETIC AND A tireless networker, John Huang, 51, spent much of the past five years [...]

THE BIG TANK TRUCK WAS clearly out of place. Creeping along a sandy track, it drew near the western perimeter of the Khobar Towers housing complex, home to 2,200 U.S. [...]

BILL CLINTON WOULD LIKE A BIG VICtory in the war on crime, preferably before the November elections. What could be better than a secret operation right out of 'Mission: Impossible'--a [...]

THE STING WENT LIKE CLOCKWORK, according to the federal complaint: trying out a new accomplice, a Taiwanese importer was able to have a suitcase full of embargoed Chinese rifle accessories [...]

SISTER DIANNA ORTIZ, AN American nun, remembers her ordeal with such harrowing clarity that she still cannot bear the smell of cigarette smoke. In late 1989, three uniformed Guatemalan men [...]