Increasingly used to elbowing its maritime neighbours aside with the swagger of a local bully, China calls an international tribunal's impending ruling on the South China Sea dispute a "piece of trash paper."

Times have changed since China's Cultural Revolution began five decades ago this week, but many scars it left are still unhealed and the political system that created Mao Zedong is still in place, Patrick Brown writes.

Once again the party of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi has defeated Burma's ruling military at the ballot box, and this time it looks like they may actually get a chance to rule, Patrick Brown writes. Now will come the hard part.

For the first time in 66 years, the leaders of China and Taiwan are going to sit down together on Saturday, in Singapore, and have a formal meeting about what the future may bring. As Patrick Brown writes, this could be historic on any number of fronts.

The trappings of Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to the U.S. are evidence China is getting the respect its leader thinks it deserves, Patrick Brown writes.

The collapse of China's rollicking stock market bubble has erased trillions in corporate valuations and scarred a generation of first-time plungers. But the biggest damage in a year of living dangerously is probably to China's own leadership, Patrick Brown writes.