Austin Ramzy (’03) follows up an earlier post on TIME’s China Blog about the British Olympic Association’s declaration that, in sports, the rest of the world is “at war against China”:

Now the BOA has some numbers to go along with that statement. In a report released last week the group that said if the Summer Olympics had been held last year, China would have topped the medal count. (Here’s an AP story, and a press release with links to the report.) That’s a jump from 2005, when according to finishes in top-level international competitions, the U.S. would have led an Olympic medal haul, and China would have finished third behind Russia.

Much of China’s gains came from sports where the mainland doesn’t have a long tradition of achievement, like fencing, rowing and tennis. That’s part of the country’s overall medal strategy, which my colleague Hannah Beech wrote a fascinating story about ahead of the 2004 Summer Games.

Read the full post here.

Aryn Baker (’01) writes for TIME Asia on a series of murders in the New Delhi suburb of Noida that have added fuel to a debate over police reform in India.

It’s not just the gruesomeness of the Noida murders that has captured India’s attention, but the fact that they spotlight glaring inequalities in Indian society—and raise questions about whom public officials truly serve. Police have detained Moninder Singh Pandher, a businessman who lives in Noida, and his servant Surender Kohli, and charged them with kidnapping, rape and murder. While Kohli has confessed to the killings, Pandher’s lawyer denies the charges against his client. But it’s what the police did not do that has sparked outrage. Thirty-eight women and children had been reported missing from the slum over the past two years, with little response from the authorities. “The most important aspect of these murders is not why the victims were killed or by whom, but the failure of the police to protect the powerless,” says Swati Mehta, a consultant for the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, an NGO in New Delhi. “This case is indicative of how the police function in India, and how the system needs to be changed.”

Read the full article here.

Jacky Jin, Visiting Scholar ‘07

The prevailing belief that males provide the backbone of society and the family in China has long caused suffering for both men and women. The patriarchal system weighs down on men, who feel obligated to assume much more responsibility than women, and places them in a difficult position that isolates them from the opposite sex.

Studies conducted by the National Population and Family Planning Commission of China over the past 20 years show that during the period of China’s economic transition men’s physical and psychological condition has seriously deteriorated. According to a survey made by the Chinese edition of Men’s Health, men in China today suffer from 160 types of illness compared to a smaller number for women, yet average 25% fewer visits to doctors’ offices. And an increasing number of men holding high social positions die of sudden heart attacks. A national survey conducted in 2005 by China’s Ministry of Health attributes the increasing incidence of heart disease to an unhealthy psychological state, primarily due to stressful work and family burdens.

[Photo: Images from the 2004 Men's Day celebration in Beijing.]
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Journalism school visiting scholar (’07) Lin Gu continues his writing on China’s HIV/AIDS problem (see his January Covering Asia “Viewpoints” piece on the topic here) with a guest column for the UNDP’s YouAndAids website on two Chinese women who recently discovered they were HIV-positive:

The young women grew up on the same street facing Pingxiang People’s Hospital, and were inseparable friends. Later in life, they shared needles with mutual drug buddies, and were sent together in early 1998 to a re-education labour camp in Nanning, the capital city of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. They were given a term of 5 years by the local public security bureau, but were suddenly sent back home on August 2, 1998, without explanation.

“I guess the only possible reason is that we had tested positive for HIV, for we both had three blood tests in Nanning before being sent back,” says Lu, adding she wasn’t surprised when the Pingxiang health centre confirmed her suspicions.

Read the rest of the piece here