World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

Xi Jinping, the President-in-waiting of China, has gone missing.  The leadership of the Chinese Communist Party changes every five years (at least in its most recent history) and Xi was expected to succeed Hu Jintao at the next Party Congress in October.  But the dates for the next Congress have yet to be announced and Xi has missed several important appointments with visiting diplomats.  No one really knows what is going on, but the rumors are swirling in the Chinese (and non-Chinese) blogosphere.  Needless to say, such uncertainty concerning one of the world’s most important countries is highly unsettling.

We have just witnessed the birth of a new nation-state: Kosovo.  Kosovo was part of the former Yugoslavia, and then, after the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991, part of the independent nation-state of Serbia.  The population of Kosovo, however, is mostly Muslim and it was threatened by the non-Muslim majority of Serbia in 1998.  There was a war and Kosovo has been protected by NATO forces which feared a genocide at that time.  Since 2008 Kosovo’s independence has been protected by a coalition of states, and today its full independence was announced.  Needless to say, Serbia is not pleased, and some states, such as Russia and China, have refused to recognize Kosovo as an independent state.  We’ll see if there is a reaction from those quarters.