Stand Up and Be Counted

IF business reputations arebuilt on the marketplace's per-ceptions, China is becoming alot more sophisticated a placeto do business. Eighty percentof respondents in a study of 140 Chi-nese opinion leaders feel that foreignmultinational corporations (MNCs)operating in China are now being heldto a higher standard of performancecompared to Chinese firms. Fifty-sixpercent of respondents feel that stan-dards demanded of foreign-owneddmultinationals have increased duringthe past year, and 95 perc…     

Getting a Lift

THE balding man on the bike was in for Viagra. The visiting foreign couple wanted skimpy underwear. A young Jiangsu-native accoun- tant wanted fruity condoms. The orders were all in a day's work at the G Spot, a cramped but colorful shop on busy Dongdaqiao Road in Beijing's Chao- yang District. Run by the affable Emily Meng, the shop sells lingerie and some relatively tame bondage items as well as a range of potions and Viagra tablets. Many of her wares are imported, says Meng, some of …     

Sound Sellers

China is ditching MP3 players for music mobile phone handsets. But is anyone paying for the music?IT’S no coincidence that the record shops closing down around New York and London are being replaced by Internet cafes.     

Dive Bar D-22

Corporate types and rock good guys Charles Saliba and Michael Pettis give Chinese rock a stage.     

The East Is Red Necks

American hillbilly banjo playing songstress Abigail Washburn started out singing in Chinese. Now an established star in the US, she's playing Tibet in November.     

High Voltage

AC/DC cover band Dirty Deeds shows Beijingers the highway to hard rock. IT wasn't your average rock n' roll epiphany. But sound engineer, guitarist and singer Jamie Welton found China "wide open" for rock n' roll when he flew in from Hawaii for a week in     

Politics and public service reform in small states: Malta

Administrative reform is inseparable from political reform, just as administration and politics share overlapping boundaries. This article reviews the goals for reform established in 1989 for the Maltese public service, against the political culture and administrative history of Malta. It argues that a small state's size encourages certain dysfunctional characteristics of the political culture, and aggravates the difficulties inherent in administrative reform. (© 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)