Although this blog was launched two years ago with Russia and Europe as the main focus, in coming weeks and months I’m planning to expand coverage to other regions where I work; emerging areas which are similarly stifled by the issues of rule of law, polemics of state-owned business, and civil society development. Case in point, I have been closely following events in China since the devastating Sichuan earthquake, which already claimed more than 68,000 lives and is testing the limits of the governing party’s ability to control the public outrage.

Photo: Parents hold portraits of their dead children during a memorial service at the ruins of Juyuan Middle School in the earthquake-hit Dujiangyan, Sichuan province, May 27, 2008. REUTERS/Stringer