RACHEL OAKES WRITES: What do jaywalking, Facebook, and the cure for cancer all have in common? This may sound like the beginning of a bad joke, but in reality these things share a paramount common ground: they could cost (or win) China the modern tech race, and all their national…
Pix shows author and Harvard Fellow William H. Overholt at an LMU reception for his book at the Del Rey Yacht Club in Los Angeles. TOM PLATE WRITES — The American general and statesman Colin Powell, at his secretary of state confirmation hearing years ago, bluntly told Congress: “China is…
TIARA SALVABILLA WRITES – Not much of a surprise, the popular LGBT movie “Call Me by Your name” was banned in China. Although the Oscar-winning movie with a cult-following has top ratings on IMDB, RottenTomatoes, and other movie review websites, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has chosen not to…
KATRINA CROSBY WRITES – Can’t China just let Taiwan be Taiwan? In recent news, the issue of China and the island of Taiwan surfaced again, this time in the form of an acclaimed author’s nationality. Professor and author, Wu Ming-yi, is a Taiwanese writer whose novel, “The Stolen Bicycle,” was…
MICHAELA MERTZ WRITES — The highly followed social media account, Feminist Voices, was suspended on International Women’s Day after initiating a discussion on issues of sexual harassment. The campaign began on March 6, when the account asked users to post their own photos about sexual harassment with the hashtag #March8againstharassment.…
ASIA MEDIA WRITES — President Xi’s two-term limit has been abolished, meaning he might be President of China indefinitely. As the news sets in, Chinese citizens take to social media to express their mixed emotions. Following these reactions, the Chinese government were quick to crack down on Chinese netizens, banning…
FORMER AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER KEVIN RUDD — Over the span of history, this nation has grown from thirteen fissiparous colonies to become the most powerful nation on earth. And while the challenges have been many, you have preserved the flame of liberal democracy throughout the nation’s rise. When this nation…
RACHEL OAKES WRITES – When one company that is “too big to fail” can’t pay off its debts, that is no more than a data point. When two of these companies can’t pay off their debts, it’s a coincidence. When three companies from the Fortune Global 500 face pressing insolvency,…
TOM PLATE WRITES — America is now more confused than ever about North Korea. And it’s not all Mr Trump’s fault. Neither can America fairly say it’s all China’s fault. For as long as I have been writing about Asia, North Korea has been the black hole of American foreign…
KEVIN CHEN WRITES – According to Xinhua News Agency, a man went into the Terra-Cotta Warriors exhibition at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and stole a thumb from one of the precious statues. It took more than two weeks for the museum to notice the stolen thumb and after five…
MICHAELA MERTZ WRITES – Tensions rose earlier this month between luxury car maker Mercedes Benz and the Chinese government, over a social media post quoting the Dalai Lama. The quote appeared on an Instagram post, but after complaints from China and Chinese Instagram users, the carmaker pulled the post and…
EMILY CARMAN WRITES – On January 9, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis IEEFA published a report naming China the global leader in building and financing of clean energy technology. Meanwhile, the U.S. persists in clinging to coal. On his campaign trail, President Donald Trump promised to…
RACHEL OAKES WRITES – 2017 marked an important year for Starbucks in China–-but but not in the way the newspapers think. The Seattle based company has been plotting their move into China since before the start of the 21st century, and since 2012 has over quadrupled their number of store…
KATRINA CROSBY WRITES – The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) has been under fire for the past few days and China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has only worsened the problem. To begin with, the FCCC released the results of its annual survey, and members were not impressed. 117 out…
WRITES TOM PLATE – In the pantheon of American movies, the 1985 flick ‘Back to the Future’ does not rank at the top of temple Hollywood, as do canonical masterpieces such as ‘Casablanca’, ‘Gone With the Wind,’ ‘Lawrence of Arabia” and others. Yet the movie title alone enriched American argot,…
PROFESSOR TOM PLATE WRITES – Years ago, Singapore’s founder Lee Kuan Yew would needle me, in all seriousness, about the time and effort we silly journalists invest in seeking to lay out a leader’s personal traits. This dynamic man dubbed our penchant for such detail “the Western journalist’s exaggeration of…
