Writer
Richard Cullen
Richard Cullen is an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong. He was previously a Professor in the Department of Business Law and Taxation at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
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Living with the Sino nemesis
China’s economy today is around 50 times larger, in real terms, than it was 50 years ago. A World Bank report in 2022 confirmed that during this period, China lifted at least 800 million people out of extreme poverty, contributing close to 75% of the total reduction in extreme poverty, globally. Continue reading »
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China sees remarkable growth in global soft power
Almost all geopolitical “soft power” explanations draw on the seminal analysis by the Harvard political scientist Joseph Nye, who promoted the term in his 1990 book Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power. At that time, he wrote, “When one country gets other countries to want what it wants (this) might be called co-optive Continue reading »
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Return of the Wild West: America was built on genocide
Gravity-defying Western double-standards are now on worldwide display, as the US and its liegemen line-up to support a vengeful Israel to the hilt. Which prompts this question: what is the difference, today, between the universal human rights gospel of the Global West and a Potemkin Village? Answer: Increasingly little. Continue reading »
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Israel’s latest terrible war
Michael Hirsh has just published a withering review, in Foreign Policy, of the lead-up to horrific war now underway between Israel and Hamas entitled “Netanyahu’s Road to War”. Continue reading »
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American anxiety
Bad-tempered coverage of China continues to flourish across the entire US media. It ranges from fire-breathing to pearl-clutching. Most commentators look daggers at Beijing in a dozen different over-cooked ways – and especially at the Communist Party of China – while reminding readers and viewers of America’s continuing paramount superpower status. Continue reading »
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Fukushima’s nuclear waste: Stigmatising Russia, approving Japan
Twenty years ago, Japan demanded Russia halt disposal of nuclear waste in the Sea of Japan. What changed? Is it the case that there is felonious nuclear waste – and respectable nuclear waste? Japan seems to believe that this is so and the Mainstream Media understands why this narrative may deserve its support. Continue reading »
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Life on a geopolitical fault line
Hong Kong can do nothing right, it seems. But it’s not the community’s fault: it lives on a fault line, trying to balance between two much larger, more powerful entities. Richard Cullen recalls a different occasion when two big powers, the US and the UK, had a difference of opinion. Often, much smaller communities end Continue reading »
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How Pearls and Irritations rectifies distortion
Pearls and Irritations has played a fundamental role in providing an internationally recognised and widely read platform where serious arguments can now challenge the shallow, rancorous Hong Kong denigration agenda advanced by the MWM. Continue reading »
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$1 trillion to replace the Taliban with the Taliban
The United States left Afghanistan in a state of dangerous and monumental disorder in 2021. Soon after, it made matters still worse by confiscating the meagre foreign exchange reserves of one of the world’s most deprived countries — shamelessly claiming that it was advancing certain human rights while doing so. Continue reading »
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Why Australia should never become involved in a Taiwan war
Australia should do all it can to foster a long-term, peaceful resolution of the acute, multi-decade dispute spanning the Taiwan Strait. But Chey and Keating are unmistakeably correct on this issue: Australia should never become involved in any war over Taiwan. Continue reading »
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Harvard China academic takes on the Economist
Even without Chat-bot assistance, it is fun to look up quotations and their origins online and then discover, for example, this quote reportedly from Winston Churchill: “The only statistics you can trust are the ones you have falsified yourself.” Continue reading »
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Intriguing tale of China’s speedy pandemic recovery
No jurisdiction has managed a flawless COVID response, says Richard Cullen. But China, despite its imperfect COVID management experience, did better than any other major jurisdiction and, in fact, displayed many examples of early-best-practice unseen elsewhere. Exasperatingly, the West found, yet again, that it there is much it can learn from China – and then, Continue reading »
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The American version of “one country, two systems”
Over a period of decades, the US has refined and applied its own exceptional version of One Country, Two Systems. What is most curious is that this has materialised within plain sight yet it has largely remained undetected, as such. Continue reading »
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France bets on future by backing best global alternative
Recently, the former senior Singaporean diplomat and respected geopolitical consultant Kishore Mahbubani offered Australia some acute advice: Stop betting on the past. Mahbubani’s article was figuratively bookended with visits to Beijing by President Emmanuel Macron of France (shortly before publication) and President Lula da Silva of Brazil (soon after publication). Continue reading »
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Does the Vatican’s road to Beijing run through Hong Kong?
An invitation to visit Beijing was issued late last year to Stephen Chow, Sau-yan, the Catholic Bishop of Hong Kong. His recently completed visit is the first by a Catholic Bishop of Hong Kong to the Mainland since the recovery of Hong Kong by China in July, 1997. It may help provide a strengthened framework Continue reading »
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The return of the paranoid American foreign policy
When a severe political cancer returns after a period of remission, we have a recurrence. In serious cases, cells from the original cancer regrow and spread virulently. One of America’s best-known commentators, Fareed Zakaria, recently compared the current grave dysfunctionality and panic-driven decision making in Washington to the worst of the McCarthy era in the Continue reading »
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China formulates its own future
Despite countless Western bossy-boots beavering away in the media and beyond, generating worst-case projections as they strain to create a collective storyboard for “China: The Disaster Movie”, China, exasperatingly, keeps successfully pressing on towards its own clearly considered, affirmative future. Continue reading »
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Australia’s Taiwan nightmare
Australia has been persuaded, enticed and strongarmed into taking gravely dangerous decisions. But Australia is a sovereign state and its fingerprints are, ultimately, all over the formation of its terrible abdication of national independence. Continue reading »
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The CIA can’t make make up its mind who to back in Venezuela!
You need to fix your eye on the ball if you want keep up with the frocking and de-frocking of America’s offshore political proteges – especially in Venezuela. Continue reading »
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Why Japan is not an acceptable military ally
There is some terrible double-foolishness afoot, that is certain to be widely noticed beyond the Western bubble. Australia is stepping forward with gusto to secure its position as a best-military-buddy not only with America, the most warlike nation in history, according to Jimmy Carter, but also with Japan, one of the 20th century’s most infamous Continue reading »
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Public transport system is one of Hong Kong’s wonders
Bloomberg recently reported that Hong Kong has just been ranked as having the best metropolitan public transit system in the world, ahead of Zurich, Stockholm, Singapore and Helsinki. The study on which the report was based surveyed 60 major cities worldwide. It was carried out by the Oliver Wyman Forum and the Institute of Transportation Continue reading »
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Canberra and Beijing – The last fifty years of mutual benefits
The fiftieth anniversary, this year, of Canberra’s recognition of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in Beijing as the sole legitimate government of China, has triggered many reflections. Continue reading »
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Sabre rattling in the US department of attack
With America pivoting from a war on terror to provoking China, why not cut to the chase and change the name of the US Department of Defence to the Department of Attack? Continue reading »
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How sound is the Ukraine debate?
Stephen M. Walt understands the deep anger felt over the Russian invasion but believes the Ukraine debate needs to be shifted away from its distorting over-reliance on moral outrage. Walt perceives a profound need for more dispassionate thinking. Continue reading »
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Divisive China-threat politics deliver defeat in Taiwan
In 2019, President Tsai Ing-wen led the DPP to record-setting election victories in Taiwan by megaphoning the China-Threat. This same approach has crashed badly for the DPP in the recent local elections in what can only be read as a rebuke to US China baiting and a win for regional peace. Continue reading »
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America’s Taiwan endgame options
We could hardly expect, nowadays, that the US would ever have China’s best interests at heart (or vice versa). But ultimately, neither does the US have the best interests of Taiwan at heart. It is the perceived hegemonic security interests of a fearful America that unquestionably dominate how America identifies what matters most of all: Continue reading »
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The central importance of China’s common prosperity
Nikkei diplomatic correspondent Ken Moriyasu debunks the notion that Xi Jinping has been set up as some sort of President-for-life, stressing that Xi’s tenure is conspicuously dependent on maintaining overall performance legitimacy at a time when head winds look set to dominate. Continue reading »
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Taiwan endgames
The term endgame was originally applied to the final stages of a multifaceted matching of minds in the likes of chess or bridge. The term has also been widely used in politics to introduce and debate outcome investigations, as in, the Cold War endgame, the globalisation endgame and the Ukraine War endgame. This article considers Continue reading »
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The remarkable resilience of Hong Kong
Vibrancy and efficiency combined with a particularly safe living environment all remain evident in Hong Kong in a way not commonly seen in other large, modern global cities. Still, the series of tests which the HKSAR faces today are acutely demanding. This, though, resonates with the position faced in most jurisdictions worldwide. Hong Kong, meanwhile, Continue reading »
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Western anxiety attacks intensify with the Chinese National Congress
On October 16, President Xi Jinping delivered his report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC). During the weeks prior to this, we witnessed a conspicuous intensification of Sino-phobic censures from across the Mainstream Western Media, triggered by the approaching National Congress. Leading commentators and core Western politicians have been Continue reading »
