3 February 2025

Will Taiwan spark World War III?

Mao Zedong once said: “A single spark can start a prairie fire!”

13 January 2025

A US-China war is just around the corner. True or false?

Before asking whether we are on the precipice of a calamitous war between the United States and China, we need to query who wants such a conflict and who will benefit from it.

23 December 2024

Asian Americans also shifted to Trump this November: Afterthoughts

On November 5, Donald J. Trump was widely reported to have won a big U.S. presidential election victory. A key factor was his success in attracting more of American minority voters than usual: Latinos and Blacks. Indeed, this made a difference.

14 October 2024

Taiwan: Is reunification with China a dead issue?

On January 13 this year, Taiwan, amid high hopes in the ruling party, held its quadrennial presidential/vice presidential/legislative election. It was expected to be a very consequential election. Taiwan’s future was said to be at stake.

27 September 2024

How threatening is AI? Opinions differ in the United States and China

Three years ago, in 2021, Henry Kissinger and two other noted gurus, Eric Schmidt, owning a technical background and who later became CEO of Google, and Daniel Huttenlocher, who founded Cornell Tech and was dean of MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, penned the book The Age of AI and Our Human Future. The book was published by Little Brown in New York.

9 September 2024

Next year’s US Taiwan policy: Trump versus Harris

Very much on the minds of the government as well as residents in Taiwan is the November election in the United States. The question is which candidate, Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, will oversee a more friendly policy toward Taiwan?

29 July 2024

China: the global trading giant

An extraordinary chart from The Pioneer below compares nations whose largest trading partner was either the USA or China in the year 2000 and the year 2020. Over one short decade, it is a powerful visualisation of how the world’s economic centre shifted.

4 July 2024

Socialist America, state capitalist China

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. So is a graph or chart.

22 March 2024

Democracy in decline in the West, not in Asia

Recently, Freedom House, a non-profit organisation that assesses democracy freedom, and human rights, reported that globally democracy has been in decline for the past 18 years. Moreover, this has been most evident in the West. According to a study published by Rand Corporation, a U.S. government supported think tank, Asia is the only place in the world where democracy scores have improved.

19 February 2024

The odds of China using nuclear war to resolve the Taiwan issue

Recently the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a thinktank in Washington, DC, did a survey asking U.S. and Taiwan Experts if China might use nuclear weapons in a conflict with or over Taiwan. The results were astonishing to most who read the study. Almost half of U.S. experts reported they thought China would. Only one quarter that number of Taiwan experts, 11 percent, so opined.

28 January 2024

Are Asian Americans moving to the Republican Party?

For some years Asian Americans have strongly favoured the Democratic Party with their votes. The main reasons for this were that when they came to America, they settled mostly in large cities run by the Democratic Party in Democrat states. The Democratic Party claimed them as minority people that were part of the Democratic coalition of voters, or the Rainbow Coalition. The Party organised to help newcomers and get them to vote. Finally, Asian Americans followed models including Asians that won elective office in the United States that were predominantly Democrats.

15 January 2024

Taiwans January 13, 2024 election: The whole story

When Election Day ended in Taiwan the local and foreign media, pundits, and others almost in unison reported Vice President Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party won handily, democracy had prevailed, and China (which opposed Lai and interfered in the campaign) lost, and the scene might escalate into conflict and even war.

9 January 2024

What will Beijing do if Lai Ching-teh wins Taiwans Presidential Election?

Taiwan will hold its national presidential and legislative election on January 13. Vice President Lai Ching-teh, the pro independence candidate of the Democratic Progressive Party, leads in the polls and will likely be the next president.

8 December 2023

Why isnt China a Democracy?

U.S. President Joe Biden, the Western media, and American academics seek to rally Western democracies against China, allegedly the leader of the worlds authoritarian countries. They charged that China is not democratic. Is this charge true? How so?

21 April 2023

Taiwan looking more like a pawn as US struggle against China loses steam

US coverage of Tsai Ing-wens visit has been muted as China continues to make advances in peacemaking, hi-tech, de-dollarisation and economic growth. Whether the Biden administration has had a change of heart about China is still uncertain but it appears Taiwan has merely been a pawn.

12 March 2023

Why China has passed the United States in science and technology

In recent weeks there have been a multitude of news items and reports emanating from various quarters indicting China has passed the United States in science and technology and this is likely an irreversible trend.

22 January 2023

Chinas social credit system and Americas counterpart

In recent months, Sinophobia in the mainstream media in the West, in particular in the United States, has resulted in widespread condemnation of China for its undemocratic and repressive social credit system. Never mind America has something similar.

28 November 2022

Taiwan voters consider President Tsais hostile relationship with China to be fool hardy

Those vested in the 'the coming war with China' may need to rethink.

25 November 2022

Interpreting and misinterpreting Americas mid-term election

No red wave, but some Democrats mused that they lost the election. Actually, they were serious. Had the Republicans attained their red wave, Democrats would not have had to worry about Joe Biden running again and the likelihood he will lose the next presidential election.

25 October 2022

Why the US is provoking war with China in Taiwan

US intelligence agencies do not say China is preparing for an invasion of Taiwan. Why? Taiwans role as the reverse great wall in US containment policy and Xis 2049 reunification deadline are missing from Western narratives. They explain why the US is provoking war with China in Taiwan, and why China refuses to be provoked.

16 October 2022

US promoting nuclear war anxiety to extend scope of government

In the late 1960s I was a student at the University of California, Berkeley. It was a time of strong anti-war sentiment among students opposed the war in Vietnam.

23 September 2022

Americas muddled Taiwan policy

In early August, U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, announced she planned to make a trip to Taiwan to give it moral encouragement at a time of tense relations with China. She would be the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Taiwan since 1997, when Speaker Newt Gingrich made the trip.