Anne Hyland

Clear blue skies and shiny shopping malls, but Mao’s corpulent corpse still presides I went to visit Mao Tse-tung the other day. The embalmed body of the Father of communist China lies in a mausoleum in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. There he rests in his trademark grey suit — the same grey as Beijing’s toxic 21st-century skies. I expected to find a long queue of people waiting to see the still corpulent but very pasty-faced Mao, who lies mostly hidden under a red flag, but there were only a few. Mao is no longer Tiananmen Square’s star attraction. Instead, a giant digital clock counting down the days to the Beijing Olympics Games now draws more attention.

Anyone who claims to understand Thailand’s politics should be sectioned. The country is preparing for a national election in December and the leader of last year’s bloodless military coup, General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, is retreating on his promise to drive his tank back to barracks. Anyone who claims to understand Thailand’s politics should be sectioned. The country is preparing for a national election in December and the leader of last year’s bloodless military coup, General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, is retreating on his promise to drive his tank back to barracks. Instead, he’s flirting with the idea of clinging to power by running for prime minister.