JAPAN: WILL A NEW BOJ GOVERNOR LAUNCH A NEW PLAN?
SAM BECK WRITES – Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has named a new potential Governor of the world-renowned Bank of Japan, MIT Ph.D and former BOJ board member Kazuo Ueda. Dilemmas that faced incumbent Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, whose decade-long term ends in April, led to the announcement on February 14.…
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CHINA: DOES BEIJING OWE CHINESE WOMEN ONE COLOSSAL APOLOGY?
KYLIE CLIFTON WRITES – It’s not easy to change the course of history. China has been struggling to reverse its long-held one-child policy since 2015, when it announced that families could have two children. Then, in response to falling birth rates, policy was further loosened; in 2021 a Chinese state…
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MALAYSIA: TRACKING CHINESE VESSELS BEYOND A SHADOW OF A DOUBT
NASER ALMESHARI WRITES – The Royal Malaysian Navy (RMN) has enhanced the effectiveness of its potentially potent ‘shadowing’ approach, thanks to absorbing the clever procedures of the Indonesian coast guard. What is shadowing? It’s a technique to repel foreign intruders entering the waters of the South China Sea by using…
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JAPAN: IS IT WASTING ITS INTERNATIONAL IMAGE?
MICHELLE CHANG WRITES – March 11 will mark the twelfth anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, which occurred after Japan was hit with a magnitude 9.1 earthquake and tsunami. This also marks the year that Japan plans to release treated wastewater from the nuclear plant—which has Japanese citizens, not to…
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NEW ZEALAND: IS ITS NEW PRIME MINISTER UP TO IT?
JACOB VILLEGAS WRITES – New Zealand has a new Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, but who exactly is he? Following the unfortunate resignation of the former Prime Minster, Jacinda Ardern in mid-January, Hipkins was sworn in as New Zealand’s 41st Prime Minister on January 25th. Although Hipkins is newly installed, he…
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SOUTH KOREA: DOWN AND OUT WITH THE OLD?
IREH KIM WRITES – While South Korea has gained great popularity internationally through K-pop, media, and technology, the country faces a severe problem domestically: it has the highest suicide rate of any developed nation. Statista reports that 13 thousand people took their own lives in 2021, averaging 26 deaths for…
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CHINA: ‘HELLO HONG KONG’ – WE SO LOVE TOURISTS
ANYA CHINAPPI WRITES – On Thursday, February 2, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-Chiu announced a new tourism campaign called “Hello Hong Kong,” designed to encourage visitors and overseas residents back to the island following the Covid-19 shutdown. The campaign features over 500,000 free plane tickets, special events, and…
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SOUTH KOREA: WHAT’S TAKING SO LONG?
MADELINE MICHEL WRITES- Since the signing of both the 2002 Land Partnership Plan and the 2004 Yongsan Relocation Plan, the process of returning the land of the U.S. Army Garrison Yongsan-Casey, located in Seoul, to the Republic of Korea has been in motion. Yet the transition has been slow and…
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CHINA-US POLICY: IS THE ‘MOON A BALLOON’?
This column originally appeared on February 8, 2023, in the South China Morning Post. DISTINGUISHED SCHOLAR TOM PLATE WRITES – Hot air propels not just balloons. Embattled President Joseph Biden and his battle-prone Washington – the American capital more divided, presumably, than that of Chairman Xi Jinping’s Beijing – clashed…
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BOOK REVIEW: PORTRAIT OF A THIEF (2022) BY GRACE D. LI – A HEIST OF THE HEART
BOOK REVIEW EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ELLA KELLEHER WRITES – A Harvard senior obsessed with the beautiful, Will Chen is the perfect Chinese son: hardworking, handsome, and respectful. Except when he is offered an illegal job by a mysterious wealthy Chinese benefactor to steal back art pieces from heavily guarded Western museums that…
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RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR: UNDERSTANDING DOOMSDAY
RYAN BYRNE WRITES – For the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of 2021, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has adjusted “The Doomsday Clock.” The clock, which is reassessed annually, is meant to symbolically show how close the world is to man-made destruction, with midnight representing…
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NEW ZEALAND: A NOT SO SUNNY SUMMER
FARRAH PADILLA WRITES – New Zealand, a country located in the Southern Hemisphere, is a wonderful place to visit in January and February—the summer months— with its sunny beaches, luscious greenery and “hobbit style,” Lord of the Rings appeal (where the blockbuster series was filmed). No doubt travelers around the…
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BOOK REVIEW: LIKE A SOLID TO A SHADOW (2022) BY JANICE LOBO SAPIGAO — GETTING TO KNOW THE DEAD
ANGELINE KEK WRITES — One of the scariest moments of a child’s life takes shape with the realization that our parents are mortal beings no further from death than a wilting flower or a gray-whiskered cat. They have no friendly contract with the grim reaper. With the fleeting time, we…
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BOOK REVIEW: THE INTERPRETER’S DAUGHTER (2022) — A FAMILY’S STORY OF FILIAL DUTY, FEMINIST PRINCIPLES, AND ENDLESS ENDURANCE
GABY RUSLI WRITES — In our unremarkable and mundane daily routines, we often forget that we are all the living instigators of history. Singaporean-born Fanny Law has always been aware of this profound and undeniable truth. Though she was dutiful in upholding the Confucian cultural practices carried across international waters from…
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JAPAN AND ELSEWHERE: OH BABY! THAT’S SUCH A CUTE AND UNUSUAL NAME!
THU-HUONG HA OF THE JAPAN TIMES WRITES – Japanese social media loves to hate on kira-kira names. These unusual or unpronounceable names, so called for their flashiness, like 心人 (Haato, Heart), or 今鹿, (Naushika), as in the heroine of Ghibli film “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind,” are fun…
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JAPAN: AMID US-CHINA TENSIONS, JAPAN MUST CHOOSE DEFT DIPLOMACY, NOT TOP GUN TOMFOOLERY, TO ENSURE PEACE
This column originally appeared in the South China Morning Post on January 4, 2023. CLINICAL PROFESSOR TOM PLATE WRITES – Is it conceivable that the risk-taking pilot of the Chinese Navy J-11 fighter that flew within metres of a US Air Force RC-135 over the South China Sea two weeks ago…
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