STEPHANIE GARCIA WRITES – Singapore values family … but only if your family includes two parents, one mother and one father. On July 30, Minister for Social and Family Development Chan Chun Sing introduced the nation’s first family pledge at a luncheon for those who participated in last month’s National…
Month: July 2013
VIETNAM: 50 Shades of Chains and Apple Lawsuits
YVONNE EPPS WRITES – Trashy fiction is an increasingly popular guilty pleasure, making one writer’s trash a corporation’s treasure. Racy Vietnamese novel Soi xich (The Chain) was sold on the Apple App Store without author and actress-singer Le Kieu Nhu’s permission, violating the copyright laws protecting the work. Although the…
JAPAN: Who Needs Real “Likes” When You Have Cash?
JEREMIAH FAJARDO WRITES – Can you call yourself popular when most of your fans are fake? As more businesses and politicians are seeking attention via social media, services selling Facebook “Likes” and Twitter followers are appearing. The Yomiuri Shimbun, one of Japan’s leading dailies, interviewed one purveyor of Internet fame,…
SINGAPORE: Author Sows Seeds for a Better Future
SHAMINI FLINT WRITES TO US FROM HER HOME IN SINGAPORE – Like many of you, I caught the environmental bug some time back. I belatedly realised that our lifestyles are unsustainable and our children are going to inherit the mess. In a panic, I began to write books (printed on recycled/sustainable…
TAIWAN: Yes, Young Man, You Could Be a Rape Victim, Too
BRIAN CANAVE WRITES – Men are surprisingly alarmed to learn that they too can be victims of sexual assault. Taiwan’s Ministry of Education released a video three years ago entitled, If I Knew Boys Could Be Sexually Assaulted as Well. Uploaded to the internet about a month ago, the video…
CHINA: Watermelon-Man Death Prompts Micro Blog Uproar
LEXIE TUCKER WRITES – It never occurred to Huang Xixi that selling watermelons would be a business endeavor that could cost her the life of her husband. On July 27, police apprehended six urban management officers who reportedly attacked a married couple selling watermelons. The result left the man dead…
PACIFIC PERSPECTIVES: China Without Fear – Inside the Mind of Zhu Rongji
TOM PLATE WRITES: The biggest question about China at the moment is the buoyancy of its economy. Suddenly there are serious worries. In China, people might believe Americans wish for their economic collapse. This is not true. If only because of the intimate interdependence and indeed inter-reliance of our two…
JAPAN: Abe But No Lincoln
JEREMIAH FAJARDO WRITES – After two decades and a plethora of Prime Ministers, has political stability finally come to Japan with its united Diet? With the July 21 Upper House elections, Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) seized the second, upper half of the Diet in an acclaimed landslide victory.…
TAIWAN: Is It Only ‘Transparently’ Corrupt?
BRIAN CANAVE WRITES – Transparency International has released its 2013 findings on official corruption and this year Taiwan took it on the chops. The annual assessments are widely respected, and can influence investment by foreign firms and the evaluations of other international agencies and nonprofits. For 2013, Taiwan’s politicians and…
CHINA: Novelists With Killer Instincts
LEXIE TUCKER WRITES – On July 16, web fiction author Sollong passed away from literally working himself to death. Known only by his Internet pseudonym, which translates to “Snowfall for Ten Years,” Sollong’s real name is a mystery to everyone, except the management at Qidian.com, where he was employed as…
THAILAND: Did I Hear That Right?
ELIZABETH NAAI WRITES – It seems as if George Orwell’s 1984 has become a reality in this technological age — anyone could be listening or doctoring conversations. Two weeks after Yuthasak Sasiprapa was appointed Deputy Defense Minister, a YouTube clip was released on July 6 of two voices: one allegedly…
SRI LANKA: Not Easy to Make a Sympathetic War Movie
STEPHANIE GARCIA WRITES – Ever since the end of its 26-year civil war in 2009, Sri Lanka has been in the hot seat, the constant target of allegations of war crimes from the UN and the international community. So it’s no surprise that the island-state is hyper-sensitive to criticism, particularly…
NORTH KOREA: It’s A Very Hard Sell
RYAN LIPPERT WRITES – It seems that some foreigners are growing tired of the international community’s casting of North Korea as the outcast on the block. Hoping to change its undesirable reputation, a group called the Korean Friendship Association (KFA) has been running a YouTube channel focused on portraying the…
FIGHTING WORDS: How to Complicate an Already-Complicated Relationship
PACIFIC PERSPECTIVES FIGHTING WORDS: HOW TO COMPLICATE AN ALREADY-COMPLICATED RELATIONSHIP 12 July 2013 BY TOM PLATE LOS ANGELES – On the whole, a recent trip to China left me more hopeful than ever about the all-important U.S.-China relationship. Media officials, journalists and journalism students alike (my basic happy audience in…
VIETNAM: Officially Banned, Unofficially a Smash Hit
YVONNE EPPS WRITES – It’s been banned, but can you really keep it under wraps if it’s already been leaked onto the web? Earlier this summer, the National Cinema Department (NCD) instrumented a hasty campaign to ban Bui Doi Cho Lon (Life in Chinatown) directed by Vietnamese-American Charlie Nguyen, but…
NEW ZEALAND: Threat to Net Privacy Appears
E.J. DE LARA WRITES – Imagine any phone conversation, text message or other form of communication people use daily. Now imagine a law that lets Big Brother monitor it all. Throughout June, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key pushed for a new bill that would essential do that — allowing…