Margaret Thatcher, who died earlier this week, may not have been one “for turning”, as she dubbed her putative inability to not ever alter basic principled direction. But when the first woman ever to become British prime minister first met the maximum leader of China — Deng Xiaoping in 1982,…
The Bangladesh government is unhappy with The Economist, the famed international weekly published out of London. More specifically, Bangladesh’s government seems to believe that The Economist has not practiced accurate or impartial reporting on two recent feature articles on Bangladesh, titled “Banged about” and “Hello, Delhi”. On June 14th, 2012,…
Earlier this month a lunchtime assemblage of committed Asiaphiles (policy wonk division) convened to Tom Plate’s views on what makes leadership special and how Asia has sometimes benefited from exceptional leadership. Plate, who is a syndicated columnist and the Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies at Loyola Marymount University,…
“Conversations with Ban Ki-moon,” the fourth in the ‘Giants of Asia’ series, and the first book on the current UN Secretary General with which he has cooperated, is moving closer to publication, now scheduled for September by Marshall Cavendish International (Singapore, New York, London). Late last month, author Tom Plate…
Last month the United Nation Security Council took up a resolution that called for the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, to step down. As one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, China voted against it, along with Russia. China remains adamant in its decision despite the outcry from…
The news media in South Korea is properly cautious about North Korea’s latest pitch to suspend parts of its nuclear program, to allow international inspectors onto suspected sites, and to halt long-range missile tests. Since 1994, endlessly back and forth across the Korean Peninsula, after all, negotiations of some sort over the nuclear issue have been on-going or going off on tangents — or (most often) going nowhere.
