Around The World [11.06.14]

UK

• David Cameron says he hopes to see an Asian PM in his lifetime (BBC)
• I want to see a British Asian Prime Minister, says David Cameron (Telegraph)

"Mr Cameron told the GG2 Leadership Awards: "Let us think big about what Britons of all backgrounds can achieve." 

One day I want to hear that title 'Prime Minister' followed by a British Asian name." 

Mr Cameron said: "In Britain today there are still too few people from ethnic minorities in top positions. 

"Britain will only be the best it can be when all its people are able to be all that they can be."

Euro Zone

• ECB promises more action to boost economy if needed (BBC)

China

• The rise and rise of Xi Jinping : Xi who must be obeyed (Economist) 

The most powerful and popular leader China has had for decades must use these assets wisely

"Xi Jinping, China’s current leader has become the most powerful Chinese ruler certainly since Deng, and possibly since Mao. Mao pushed China to the brink of social and economic collapse, and Deng steered it on the right economic path but squandered a chance to reform it politically. If Mr Xi used his power to reform the way power works in China, he could do his country great good."

• Chinese politics : The power of Xi Jinping (Economist) 

"HE PETS calves, cups babies’ cheeks and kicks footballs. He laughs and smiles in public. He holds his own umbrella, shuns a limousine, carries his own bowl of dumplings to a restaurant table and sits crossed-legged in a farmer’s hut. His glamorous wife accompanies him on international tours; he stands tall and confident alongside world leaders.

Since Deng Xiaoping came to power in the late 1970s, the party has been extolling the virtues of “collective leadership” in which responsibilities are shared rather than concentrated in the hands of a capricious tyrant like Deng’s predecessor, Mao Zedong. 

Since becoming military chief and general secretary of the Communist Party in November 2012 and president in March 2013, Mr Xi has been sending a clear message that the country is not just ruled by a faceless party—it is ruled by a man."

[Personal Note: President Xi Jinping loves me!] 

• Religion in China : Cracks in the atheist edifice (Economist) 

"The rapid spread of Christianity is forcing an official rethink on religion

Christians in China have long suffered persecution. Under Mao Zedong, freedom of belief was enshrined in the new Communist constitution (largely to accommodate Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists in the west of the country). Yet perhaps as many as half a million Christians were harried to death, and tens of thousands more were sent to labour camps.

In 2010 the Pew Research Center, an American polling organization, estimated there were 58m Protestants and 9m Catholics. Many experts, foreign and Chinese, now accept that there are probably more Christians than there are members of the 87m-strong Communist Party.

the Christian church in China has grown by an average of 10% a year since 1980.

many Chinese are attracted to Christianity because, now that belief in Marxism is declining, it offers a complete moral system with a transcendental source. People find such certainties appealing, she adds, in an age of convulsive change.
Some Chinese also discern in Christianity the roots of Western strength. They see it as the force behind the development of social justice, civil society and rule of law, all things they hope to see in China.

There is even talk that the party, the world’s largest explicitly atheist organization, might follow its sister parties in Vietnam and Cuba and allow members to embrace a dogma other than—even higher than—that of Marx.

Any shift in official thinking on religion could have big ramifications for the way China handles a host of domestic challenges, from separatist unrest among Tibetan Buddhists and Muslim Uighurs in the country’s west to the growth of NGOs and “civil society”—grassroots organizations, often with a religious coloring"