INDIA: NEW BOOK BY BRILLIANT SHASHI THARO0R ON COLONIAL BRITAIN’S DEEP RACISM AND AMORAL CYNICISM

TOM PLATE WRITES – Indian MP and former high UN official Shashi Tharoor is easily one of the most graceful, intelligent and accessible writers well known to the public-policy world. For my rupees, his 2012 book ‘Nehru: The Invention of India’ might well be the best short political biography in…

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HONG KONG: KEEP THE PEACE

TOM PLATE WRITES – Not far down the freeway from my own university is the University of California Irvine, for years the faculty home of one of the West Coast’s better-known China-watchers/worriers. He is the controversy-prone professor Peter Navarro, of the Paul Merage School of Business. For the foreseeable future,…

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AUSTRALIA: THE WAY TO DEAL WITH CHINA

Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating (1991-1996, pictured right) offers a crystal-clear vision of China’s rise in Asia in a deeply thought-provoking interview with Kerry O’Brien, one of Australia’s most respected journalists. The hour-long radio session  with the highly informed, forward-thinking Keating, now 72, covers a valuable range of topics,…

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UC BERKELEY: IS CHINA’S PRESIDENT XI SINCERE IN HIS ANTI-CORRUPTION CAMPAIGN?

The following summary (or ‘Abstract’) of an invaluable study titled “…China’s Anti-Corruption Campaign” arises from exemplary research by Xi Lu and Peter L. Lorentzen of the University of California, Berkeley. Their study comes at an especially helpful time: Scholars (not to mention journalists and Western government officials) have been endlessly…

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TOKYO: TIME OUT FOR CATS!

I don’t know about you, but when I travel to Asia and lodge in one of its great cities, such as Tokyo, probably the first print item I reach for after the magnificent Japan Times newspaper is TIME OUT TOKYO. This worldwide chain of urban guides offers the traveler unbelievably…

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