Foreign Policy Starts The China Brief and You Should Read it

I have been a fan of Foreign Policy Magazine (now usually called just Foreign Policy or FP) since I was a kid — not kidding. I can remember always going to Michigan News in Kalamazoo, Michigan (that store has been there since 1947!) to spend my hard-earned newspaper delivery money on the latest issue of the Sporting News and Foreign Policy Magazine, and whatever else sports-related that looked interesting.

FP pieces are nearly always well-written and thoughtful and not pretentious.

Wikipedia describes the founding of FP as follows:

Foreign Policy was founded in the late 1970s by Samuel P. Huntington, professor of Harvard University, and his friend, Warren Demian Manshel, to give a voice to alternative views about American foreign policy at the time of the Vietnam War. Huntington hoped it would be “serious but not scholarly, lively but not glib”.

FP describes its readers as “well-informed, intelligent individuals with a wide range of interests. They are not necessarily specialists in international affairs (though many are).” I describe it as a consistently great read on what is going on in the world, and all without much political slanting.

I mention FP today because it just “introduced” a China newsletter it will be calling China Brief. FP’s introduction describes its newsletter thusly:

Welcome to the first edition of Foreign Policy’s China Brief, where every week we’ll bring you news and analysis from the most populous country in the world: the one with the angriest crowds, the hottest tech, and the smelliest dofu. I’m James Palmer, a senior editor at FP previously based in Beijing for 15 years. Every week, I’ll break down the news and explain it here.

Palmer is one of the most highly regarded and widely respected writers on China and so I urge everyone with an interest in China to bookmark this page and check it weekly. I sure will.

We will be discussing the practical aspects of Chinese law and how it impacts business there. We will be telling you what works and what does not and what you as a businessperson can do to use the law to your advantage. Our aim is to assist businesses already in China or planning to go into China, not to break new ground in legal theory or policy.