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…
Full Article BOOK REVIEW: PORTRAIT OF A THIEF (2022) BY GRACE D. LI – A HEIST OF THE HEART
TOM PLATE WRITES — Given the relentless Western media verdict about “China’s increasing assertiveness,” it might seem surprising that across Asia doubts about America’s own continental conduct proceed apace. Yet this goes little reported back in the U.S. Nonetheless, within some government and policy circles in Indonesia, Japan and Singapore –…
Full Article AMERICA’S KNEE-JERK REACTION TO CHINA: JUST SHOOT THE BAD GUY
TOM PLATE WRITES — The truth about the swelling importance of the People’s Republic of China in the Asia-Pacific is that without America’s corresponding help, unintended as it was of course, the reversal of position would not have happened as quickly. Perhaps it all began in 1997, with the collapse…
Full Article US-CHINA RELATIONS: BEIJING CAN BE A CONTRIBUTOR TO PEACE AND PROSPERITY
TOM PLATE WRITES (courtesy of the South China Morning Post): China, it seems, cannot win for losing. Exports-predator China is always ‘beating us’, bombastic billionaire businessman Donald Trump declaimed yet again on the campaign trail. But his timing on this point could have been better as last week was not…
Full Article HONG KONG: ‘We Are Now in the Soup Together’
ALESSANDRA DALY JOHNSON WRITES – A new social media war has begun. On July 8, the United States and United Arab Emirates announced the launch of an information warfare center to combat the ‘slick’ social media presence of the Islamic State (known also as IS or Daesh). In a press…
Full Article UAE: Bringing the Fight to Social Media
NICK ARMER WRITES – Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post correspondent, was charged with serious crimes by Iranian authorities on April 20 after being detained and held by the government for over nine months. The White House and the Washington Post have denounced the charges against Rezaian, who is an American…
Full Article IRAN: Of Politics and Prison
KELCEY LORENZO WRITES – The Korean Wave, or Hallyu, will be crashing over mainstream American television through Nickelodeon’s new TV musical comedy, “Make It Pop.” The television network and co-producers Nick Canon and Thomas W. Lynch describe the show as “a comedic, music-infused daily strip about three unique girls who…
Full Article K-POP KORNER: “Make It Pop” or Make it Stop?LEXIE TUCKER WRITES- Cyber security has always been a hot concern with Americans, but what we fail to realize is that it is also a global problem. According to the director of the security research team at a web security company Beijing Rising Information Technology Co Ltd , Liu Siyu,…
Full Article CHINA: The Creation of an Internet Security PowerhouseYVONNE EPPS WRITES – The United States prides itself on being “number one” in most areas, but it seems that social culture is its main point of interest to outsiders nowadays. A quick search on the Vietnamese language version of ThanhNien News Network reveals that American social reporting seems to…
Full Article VIETNAM: American Reporting Trivial to Vietnamese Readers