During nearly four weeks of voting, more than 500,000 people came to ForeignPolicy.com to cast ballots. Such an outpouring reveals something unique about the power of the men and women we chose to rank. They were included on our initial list of 100 in large part because of the influence of their ideas. But part of being a “public intellectual” is also having a talent for communicating with a wide and diverse public. This skill is certainly an asset for some who find themselves in the list’s top ranks. For example, a number of intellectuals—including Aitzaz Ahsan, Noam Chomsky, Michael Ignatieff, and Amr Khaled—mounted voting drives by promoting the list on their Web sites.

No one spread the word as effectively as the man who tops the list. In early May, the Top 100 list was mentioned on the front page of Zaman, a Turkish daily newspaper closely aligned with Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen. Within hours, votes in his favor began to pour in. His supporters—typically educated, upwardly mobile Muslims—were eager to cast ballots not only for their champion but for other Muslims in the Top 100. Thanks to this groundswell, the top 10 public intellectuals in this year’s reader poll are all Muslim. The ideas for which they are known, particularly concerning Islam, differ significantly. It’s clear that, in this case, identity politics carried the day.

When even the most secretive sovereign wealth fund makes an investment, it must comply with the disclosure obligations of the countries in which it is investing. So, when the newly formed China Investment Corporation bought into Blackstone last summer, it was compelled to disclose the terms of the deal and other material information as part of Blackstone's regulatory filings in the U.S. That turned out to have some very real consequences back home. Soon after CIC invested in Blackstone, the holding lost nearly $1 billion in less than a month. Chinese citizens immediately let their political leaders know how they felt about their country's savings being squandered by flooding the Internet and other media outlets with angry criticism. When it emerged that China Development Bank, having already lost another cool billion in its investment in Britain's Barclays Bank, was considering pouring $2 billion into Citigroup as part of the American lender's January rescue package, Chinese politicians quietly killed the deal. While no official explanation was given, China experts believe that the State Council's rejection of the CDB-Citi investment was driven by fear of taking another highly visible loss and the desire to avoid the resulting political backlash at home. It is not just the public grumbling that was noteworthy, but that Chinese political leaders heard it and apparently reacted. And it is not just China. Following the flurry of sovereign investment in Western banks over the last several months, people world-wide expressed real concerns, alarmed about foreign government shareholdings in the fragile international banking system.... As was the case with China, Singapore and Kuwait, investing globally in our markets has already piqued the interest of those who stand to benefit from those investment decisions. It is likely that increased disclosure of a sovereign wealth fund's attempt to invest for the "wrong" reasons would engender criticism not just from the West, but from those with the most to lose. This could begin to break down the distinctions between "the state" and "the people." The idea that undemocratic governments might consider the voices of their own citizens regarding how their money will be invested may be one of the most underappreciated benefits of sovereign funds' disclosure. It may also be one of the most effective.

Last Thursday morning, five law-enforcement agents marched into Zhai Minglei's Shanghai apartment, seized his computer hard disk and copies of the small magazine he used to publish, and ordered him to report for questioning the next day. It was the latest blow in what one leader of a nongovernmental organization here calls a "systematic crackdown on the voices of civil society" in China, as the government manufactures the unruffled image it hopes to project to the world during the 2008 Olympic Games. Civil society groups formed by activists in fields such as environment, social welfare, health, and education "have really suffered setbacks and tougher controls since earlier this year," adds Wen Bo, China program director for the US NGO Pacific Environment. Mr. Zhai published an open letter online late last month revealing that his magazine, Minjian, an apparently innocuous publication chronicling NGOs' development projects, had been forcibly closed by the authorities in July. His quiet efforts to win a reprieve had failed, he says.... Other groups have also been closed, while organizers of some have been placed under house arrest. Police surveillance has been stepped up, a number of activists report. "Visits by the police are quite normal," says one environmentalist who asked not to be identified. "It is a difficult period. It has affected all the organizations we work with and anyone else they work with," says one representative of a foreign agency that is funding Chinese NGOs. Such moves appear to run counter to President Hu Jintao's pledge at the recent 17th Communist Party Congress to "step up education about citizenship" and the hope he expressed that "social organizations [will] help expand participation by the public" in "self-governance." They also cast doubt on International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge's claim after Beijing was awarded the 2008 Olympics that "the Olympic Games will improve the human rights record in China." Many NGO activists attribute the current crackdown specifically to government preparations for the games.... The government ensures control over the sector by a restrictive registration process. An NGO needs an official sponsor agency that will take legal responsibility for it. Such agencies are hard to find, most NGOs discover. At the same time, the government allows only one NGO to work in a particular sector in each region. Independent groups often find a GONGO [government-owned NGO--DD] has registered before them..... NGOs, which as conduits for people's participation in civic affairs often act as the building blocks of civil society, have proved most effective elsewhere when they have created networks among themselves. That is a lesson Chinese officials appear to have learned: China Development Brief, Minjian, and Gandan Xiangzhao all acted as hubs, encouraging the exchange of information and the creation of networks. "They initiated activity, made citizens more active," says Professor Jia. "I suppose the government may think it is better for citizens to be quieter." The imminence of the Olympics, and the world attention they will focus on China, is one reason, say some activists. "Ordinary people's voices disturb the unilateral pursuit of a stable and united political environment and a happy and peaceful atmosphere before the Olympics," says Lu Jun, head of Gandan Xiangzhao. At the same time, Chinese national-security officials appear afraid that NGOs could develop into a political threat, having seen how NGO leaders played prominent roles in the "color revolutions" that swept former Soviet republics. "For them, NGOs are new, color revolutions are new; they know NGOs through color revolutions and they fear what might happen next," says Jia.

The depth of anti-globalisation feeling in the FT/Harris poll, which surveyed more than 1,000 people online in each of the six countries, will dismay policy-makers and corporate executives. Their view that opening economies to freer trade is beneficial to poor and rich countries alike is not shared by the citizens of rich countries, regardless of how liberal their economic traditions.

We consider how much of the top end of the income distribution can be attributed to four sectors -- top executives of non-financial firms (Main Street); financial service sector employees from investment banks, hedge funds, private equity funds, and mutual funds (Wall Street); corporate lawyers; and professional athletes and celebrities. Non-financial public company CEOs and top executives do not represent more than 6.5% of any of the top AGI brackets (the top 0.1%, 0.01%, 0.001%, and 0.0001%).... ...we do not find that the top brackets are dominated by CEOs and top executives who arguably have the greatest influence over their own pay. In fact, on an ex ante basis, we find that the representation of CEOs and top executives in the top brackets has remained constant since 1994. Our evidence, therefore, suggests that poor corporate governance or managerial power over shareholders cannot be more than a small part of the picture of increasing income inequality, even at the very upper end of the distribution. We also discuss the claim that CEOs and top executives are not paid for performance relative to other groups. Contrary to this claim, we find that realized CEO pay is highly related to firm industry-adjusted stock performance. Our evidence also is hard to reconcile with the arguments in Piketty and Saez (2006a) and Levy and Temin (2007) that the increase in pay at the top is driven by the recent removal of social norms regarding pay inequality. Levy and Temin (2007) emphasize the importance of Federal government policies towards unions, income taxation and the minimum wage. While top executive pay has increased, so has the pay of other groups, particularly Wall Street groups, who are and have been less subject to disclosure and social norms over a long period of time. In addition, the compensation arrangements at hedge funds, VC funds, and PE funds have not changed much, if at all, in the last twenty-five or thirty years (see Sahlman (1990) and Metrick and Yasuda (2007)). Furthermore, it is not clear how greater unionization would have suppressed the pay of those on Wall Street. In other words, there is no evidence of a change in social norms on Wall Street. What has changed is the amount of money managed and the concomitant amount of pay.

China said on Wednesday that nearly a fifth of the food and consumer products that it checked in a nationwide survey this year were found to be substandard or tainted, underscoring the risk faced by its own consumers even as the country?s exports come under greater scrutiny overseas. Regulators said the broad survey of foods, agricultural tools, clothing, women and children?s products and other types of goods turned up sizable quality and safety failure rates for products that are sold domestically. The government said, for instance, that canned and preserved fruit and dried fish contained excessive bacteria; that 20 percent of the fruit and vegetable juice surveyed was deemed substandard, and that some children?s products were defective or laced with harmful chemicals. The announcement came in the midst of a growing scandal over the quality and safety of Chinese-made exports and follows a series of international recalls involving everything from contaminated pet food ingredients and counterfeit toothpaste to toxic toys, defective tires and contaminated seafood. The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said the survey, conducted in the first half of this year, showed quality and safety improvements compared with conditions in the period a year earlier. But the announcement also suggested that Chinese consumers are at serious risk of being harmed by purchasing tainted foods, substandard goods and suspect or defective equipment. Regulators said, in effect, that goods sold in China were far more hazardous than the exports that were driving the country?s economic growth and now partly the subject of safety and quality debates.

Experts say aggressive and opportunistic entrepreneurs continue to take advantage of the country?s chronically weak enforcement of regulations, choosing to blend fake ingredients into products; to sign contracts agreeing to sell one product only to later switch the raw materials for something cheaper; and to doctor, adulterate or even color foods to make them look fresher or more appetizing, when in fact they might be old and stale.

India and China, countries where the Food and Drug Administration rarely conducts quality-control inspections, have become major suppliers of low-cost drugs and drug ingredients to American consumers. Analysts say their products are becoming pervasive in the generic and over-the-counter marketplace. Over the past seven years, amid explosive growth in imports from India and China, the FDA conducted only about 200 inspections of plants in those countries, and a few were the kind that U.S. firms face regularly to ensure that the drugs they make are of high quality. The agency, which is responsible for ensuring the safety of drugs for Americans wherever they are manufactured, made 1,222 of these quality-assurance inspections in the United States last year. In India, which has more plants making drugs and drug ingredients for American consumers than any other foreign nation, it conducted a handful. Companies based in India were bit players in the American drug market 10 years ago, selling just eight generic drugs here. Today, almost 350 varieties and strengths of antidepressants, heart medicines, antibiotics and other drugs purchased by American consumers are made by Indian manufacturers. Five years ago, Chinese drugmakers exported about $300 million worth of products to the United States. Eager to meet Americans' demand for lower-cost medicines, they, too, have expanded rapidly. Last year, they sold more than $675 million in pharmaceutical ingredients and products in the U.S. market. After the pet food scandal that triggered fears over the safety of human and animal foods imported from China, experts say medicines from that country and from India pose a similar risk of being contaminated, counterfeit or simply understrength and ineffective. "As the manufacturing goes to China and India, the risk to human health is growing exponentially," said Brant Zell, past chairman of the Bulk Pharmaceuticals Task Force. The group represents American drug-ingredient makers that filed a citizen's petition with the FDA last year asking the agency to oversee foreign firms more aggressively. "The low level there" of follow-up inspections, "combined with the huge amount of importing, greatly increases the potential that consumers will get products that have impurities or ineffective ingredients," he said. FDA officials say that they are not aware of any health problems caused by drugs imported from India or China and that the American companies that import them usually do their own quality and safety testing. But the agency acknowledges that it is virtually impossible for it to know whether poor-quality or contaminated drugs from lightly regulated Asian plants have caused patients to get sicker or remain ill, especially because patients and doctors are unlikely to suspect poorly manufactured drugs as a problem.

The Chinese government opposes a proposed U.S. standard limiting the amount of lead allowed in bracelets, necklaces and other jewelry sold for children. All but three of more than 30 Consumer Product Safety Commission recalls for lead in children's jewelry since 2003 were for China-made items. The others were made in India. The Chinese government said in comments to the CPSC that it's not necessary to limit the lead content to the proposed 0.06% by weight because much of the lead wouldn't seep out of jewelry so would "do little harm for children." China's comments are the only ones opposing the CPSC proposal. A final regulation is likely by early 2008. CPSC says 20,000 children were treated in emergency rooms from 2000 to 2005 after swallowing jewelry. The number doesn't include choking incidents. A 4-year-old boy died last year after swallowing a charm that was 99% lead. CPSC is concerned that children can ingest unsafe levels of lead after putting necklaces and other jewelry in their mouths, even briefly. If they are also exposed to lead in their homes or drinking water, there can be a cumulative risk. Lead poisoning can lower the IQ, cause learning disabilities and lead to kidney or liver disease. Along with being the target of nearly all of the lead jewelry recalls, China-made products have made up half of CPSC's overall recalls for at least two years, says acting Chairman Nancy Nord. Recalls of China-made products have been steadily increasing since 2003. "It is absolutely imperative that all manufacturers understand that if they are going to sell products in the U.S., consumer protection has to be one of their main concerns," she says. In the comments, Guo LiSheng, a deputy director general in China's Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, said the agency agrees with the U.S. that children's health and safety need to be protected but believes putting warning labels on the jewelry "may be more efficient than setting the limit of lead content."

Twenty years ago, American perceptions of Asian food could be summed up in one word: ?Chinese.? Since then, we have developed appetites for Korean, Japanese, Thai and Vietnamese fare. Yet while the quality of the restaurants that serve these cuisines, particularly Japanese, has soared in America, Chinese restaurants have stalled. For American diners, the Chinese restaurant experience is the same tired routine ? unimaginative dishes served amid dated, pseudo-imperial d?cor ? that we?ve known for years.... There is a historic explanation for the abysmal state of Chinese cuisine in the United States. Without access to key ingredients from their homeland, Chinese immigrants working on the Central Pacific Railroad in the 1860s improvised dishes like chow mein and chop suey that nobody back in their native land would have recognized. To please the na?ve palates of 19th-century Americans, immigrant chefs used sweet, rich sauces to coat the food ? a radical departure from the spicy, chili-based dishes served back home. But today, getting ingredients is no longer an issue. Instead, the principal obstacle to improving Chinese fare here is the difficulty of getting visas for skilled workers since 9/11. Michael Tong, head of the Shun Lee restaurant group in New York, has said that opening a major Chinese restaurant in America is next to impossible because it can take years to get a team of chefs from China. Chinese restaurateur Alan Yau planned to open his first New York City restaurant last year but was derailed because he was unable to get visas for his chefs. If Henry Kissinger could practice ?Ping-Pong diplomacy,? perhaps Condoleezza Rice could try her hand at ?dumpling diplomacy?? China and the United States should work together on a culinary visa program that makes it easier for Chinese chefs to come here.

1) Because China has a larger internal market, there is more innovation and competition at home, leading to more frequent innovations. Without a reliable transmission mechanism (i.e., migrating chefs), Chinese cuisine in China will improve at a faster rate than in the U.S.A. 2) Law of averages. There are 41,000 Chinese restaurants in the U.S., but only 9,000 Japanese restaurants. If quality is a function of quantity, then the average Chinese restaurant will simply be of poorer quality than other cuisines. 3) Innovation in a different direction. As this Washington Post story from last year suggests, American restaurants tend to innovate by using new cooking styles to present more traditional foods. Indeed, as the Zagats observe, this tendency is strongest in cuisines that have been here for a while -- like Chinese. This roils devotees of "pure" national cuisine, but deights everyone else.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has rejected a controversial proposal to create a new .xxx domain suffix for adult Web sites. ICANN on Friday voted 9-5 to deny an application from ICM Registry, which for the past several years has sought to be the registry for adult-content Web sites. ICANN, which oversees domain names and Internet addresses, decided that ICM's proposal raised too many public-policy concerns and ultimately could change the role of the nonprofit organization. "ICM's response does not address (the ICANN Government Advisory Committee's) concern for offensive content and similarly avoids the GAC's concern for the protection of vulnerable members of the community," ICANN stated in the meeting. "The board does not believe these public-policy concerns can be credibly resolved with the mechanisms proposed by the applicant."

ICM had argued that creation of the domain would enhance safety for young users by clearly defining .xxx sites as a no-go zone. Described last week by Paul Twomey, Icann?s chief executive, as ?clearly controversial, clearly polarizing,? the issue had been discussed among Internet enthusiasts and on blogs. Some who objected to the proposal included companies in the sex-related entertainment industry as well as religious groups. The entertainment executives raised fears that use of the domain, although voluntary, could open the way for governments to isolate sex-oriented Web sites into a single part of the Internet. Religious groups expressed concern that creation of the .xxx domain would serve only to encourage creation of more sex-related content. Others warned that the move would create a bonanza for ICM Registry, since companies with existing Web sites would be compelled to buy .xxx domain names to prevent someone else from creating sites using their company names.

The Zimbabwe government will not sit back and watch the opposition perpetrating "terrorist attacks" on innocent citizens while authorities are also geared to stamp out domestic violence, which accounted for 60 percent of Zimbabwe's murder cases, President Robert Mugabe has said. Speaking at a ceremony to commemorate the International Women's Day in Harare on Saturday, Mugabe said authorities would not tolerate lawlessness and violence must stop, The Sunday Mail reported. Mugabe was quoted by the newspaper as saying: "We have given too much room to mischief makers and shameless stooges of the West. Let them and their masters know that we shall brook none of their lawless behavior." Mugabe made the remarks in the wake of acts of violence, which the opposition MDC unleashed, in different centers across the country last week.

In truth, the world is not nearly as connected as these writers would have us believe. Despite talk of a new, wired world where information, ideas, money, and people can move around the planet faster than ever before, just a fraction of what we consider globalization actually exists. The portrait that emerges from a hard look at the way companies, people, and states interact is a world that?s only beginning to realize the potential of true global integration. And what these trend?s backers won?t tell you is that globalization?s future is more fragile than you know.... One favorite mantra from globalization champions is how ?investment knows no boundaries.? But how much of all the capital being invested around the world is conducted by companies outside of their home countries? The fact is, the total amount of the world?s capital formation that is generated from foreign direct investment (FDI) has been less than 10 percent for the last three years for which data are available (2003?05). In other words, more than 90 percent of the fixed investment around the world is still domestic. And though merger waves can push the ratio higher, it has never reached 20 percent. In a thoroughly globalized environment, one would expect this number to be much higher?about 90 percent, by my calculation. And FDI isn?t an odd or unrepresentative example.... [T]he levels of internationalization associated with cross-border migration, telephone calls, management research and education, private charitable giving, patenting, stock investment, and trade, as a fraction of gross domestic product (GDP), all stand much closer to 10 percent than 100 percent. The biggest exception in absolute terms?the trade-to-GDP ratio shown at the bottom of the chart?recedes most of the way back down toward 20 percent if you adjust for certain kinds of double-counting. So if someone asked me to guess the internationalization level of some activity about which I had no particular information, I would guess it to be much closer to 10 percent?the average for the nine categories of data in the chart?than to 100 percent. I call this the ?10 Percent Presumption.? More broadly, these and other data on cross-border integration suggest a semiglobalized world, in which neither the bridges nor the barriers between countries can be ignored. From this perspective, the most astonishing aspect of various writings on globalization is the extent of exaggeration involved. In short, the levels of internationalization in the world today are roughly an order of magnitude lower than those implied by globalization proponents.

According to the U.S. Library of Congress?s catalog, in the 1990s, about 500 books were published on globalization. Between 2000 and 2004, there were more than 4,000. In fact, between the mid-1990s and 2003, the rate of increase in globalization-related titles more than doubled every 18 months.

"I know you don't know that you don't know." Those insulting words, thrown out by a Chinese man to a Westerner, are the punchline of an Internet commercial that ends with a beautiful Chinese bride jilting her confused Western fiance for the Chinese hero. The wildly popular video was created by Baidu, a Chinese search engine, to poke fun at its U.S. competitor, Google. It is but one of the growing signs that China is rethinking its stance on foreign companies and investment within its borders.

Richard Ji of Morgan Stanley Hong Kong said some companies have used China's new rules as an excuse for their own marketing or strategic shortcomings. He said that in the cases of Google and eBay, the companies' challenges have had more to do with failure to tailor the content of their Web sites to Chinese tastes and needs. In the Baidu commercial about Google, the Western man begins by saying "I know" repeatedly as he stands, smirking confidently, next to his bride-to-be. But after the Chinese man bursts on the scene and the two get into a war of words, the Westerner becomes confused. By mistake, he says, "I know I don't know that I don't know" -- at which point the disgusted bride runs away. So the commercial is "not about nationalism and protectionism," Ji said. "It says that it's localization that gives success. If you localize services, it means you understand the people you are selling to."

An overwhelming majority of citizens in the big eurozone countries believe the euro has damaged their national economies, highlighting the popular scepticism that still surrounds Europe?s eight-year-old monetary union. More than two-thirds of the French, Italians and Spanish ? and more than half of Germans ? believe the single currency has had a ?negative impact?, according to an FT-Harris poll. In France, just 5 per cent said the euro has had a positive effect on the French economy.... [M]ore than half of citizens in countries using the euro say they prefer their former national currency, according to the poll of 5,314 adults in Germany, the UK, France, Spain and Italy, which was conducted between January 10 and January 22. Almost two-thirds of Germans say they preferred their former currency, the D-Mark.