Additionally, Thailand, at the basic end of production--it is the world's largest rice exporter, for example--has to watch the emergence of low-wage Vietnam as a "China plus one" world supply source.
The Bush administration agrees on the need to overhaul the Security Council, but Rice believes it is important to make progress in other areas before world leaders gather in New York in September forthe U.N.
As he returned to the China Club for a last cup of rice wine, Chang and his friends seemed like genteel revolutionaries ready to take on the modern world.