Crisis often helps to lift the fog of bureaucratic process and shows institutions in their true light. That has been the case with the World Health Organization, the leading arm of the United Nations to fight a global pandemic. The Covid-19 crisis has exposed the weakness not just of the WHO but other institutions. At […]
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China could display global leadership by being pragmatic, confident and relaxed and allow Hong Kong its democracy
The ongoing protests in Hong Kong offer insights into China’s flexibility of governance and its patient ability to challenge the current world order. Much has and will be written on this issue. But for an answer on how governance may unfold, consider Taiwan, which for 70 years has stood in the storm’s eye of a […]
Read MoreNationalism endangers global security
Recent elections in India and Europe, societies with a range of cultures and levels of wealth, have provided further proof that the concept of a global society, with shared values, is retreating into one dominated by sovereignty and the nation state. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on his Hindu nationalist ticket, won an even bigger […]
Read MoreAsian Values
A quarter of a century ago, an 18-year-old American student living in Singapore was sentenced to six strokes of the cane for writing graffiti on cars and stealing road signs. The United States protested the sentence’s severity, arguing Michael Fay’s punishment was too harsh for a teenage prank with no violent crime committed. Fay’s case […]
Read MoreThe West’s failure to reform threatens world order
Two years ago, China and Russia issued a joint declaration with the aim of throwing out an open challenge to the current US-led world order. Coming after Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and a court ruling against Beijing’s claim to the South China Sea, the two governments announced bluntly in June 2016 that they would enhance […]
Read MoreRussia and China test Arctic boundaries
OSLO: In 2016, two seemingly unrelated incidents unfolded in remote and vulnerable parts of Europe. One view might suggest the events, efficiently swept away with quiet diplomacy, counted for little. Another considers the incidents as demonstrating Russia’s and China’s determination to test the outer boundaries of European and American resolve. There may be nothing new […]
Read MoreDemocracy in Kurdistan and Catalonia
In the early 1990s, as remnants of the Berlin Wall were transformed into a tourist attraction, there was a near-unchallenged presumption that governance, through the democratic will of the people, would underpin our future. Germany, once divided by two opposing ideologies, united under the democratic banner and countries that had mostly lived under Soviet control […]
Read MoreFast, Furious or Fake News
LONDON: Disasters dominate the news agenda, with recent dystopian images of hurricanes raging in the Atlantic, earthquake-fractured streets in Mexico, apocalyptic flooding in South Asia and burning villages of Rohingya Muslims in scenes reminiscent of Cambodia’s killing fields. Advancing technology has changed how disasters are reported, but what attracts attention and how we react remain […]
Read MoreTaiwan-China
How China handles it’s renegade province of Taiwan will not only determine its own ambition of reunification but will also be watched closely by the rest of the Asia-Pacific region. Humphrey Hawksley reports from the once heavily militarised Taiwanese island of Kinmen. China Has Chance to Undercut US by Wooing Taiwan
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