13 February 2025

The real estate mogul

President Donald Trump is not quite the fool or the subjective (or subliminal) genius that pundits make him out to be. However, if there is one trait that his recent pronouncements point to it is that of a quintessential real estate mogul.

25 November 2024

The North Atlantic allies are killing democracy

Historically, many of its members have waged and/or supported wars in the name of democracy.

22 October 2024

We need PM Ishiba's NATO like we need a hole in the head...

It is difficult to reconcile new Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's expressions of concern for the security of his country with his advocation of an Asian version of NATO.

9 September 2024

The democracy metanarrative

In its strategic competition with Russia and China, the United States has constructed a metanarrative based on democracy versus authoritarianism (i.e. good versus evil). Such a narrative harks back to the political thinking of the first half of the 20th century which saw the fighting of two world wars.

11 June 2024

When Confucius meets Machiavelli

The title of “Empire” is not ascribed to the United States by observers but revealed by astute journalists as indeed what the powers that be in the US think of itself.

7 April 2024

Chinese imperialism?

I read Professor Percy Allens interesting article (P&I, 28/03/24) and was astounded by the claim based on a list of invasion he was given that China was historically an imperial nation and thus dangerous.

19 March 2024

The sordid geopolitical saga of TikTok

The US considers TikTok a national security threat. It wants to ban TikTok or transfer its ownership to an American company. In doing so, it is displaying the very behaviour that that it ascribes to China and of which it does not approve.

26 February 2024

Curing Australias dependent personality disorder

I arrived in Australia with my family at the time when Malcolm Fraser was the Prime Minister of Australia. He was preceded by Gough Whitlam and succeeded by Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. They were all intellectual, individualistic and humane leaders. I had never felt more secure and proud to be Australian.

19 February 2024

Why the West sees China as a threat

China is threatening to the West because it provides an example of how a poor and technologically backward country can effectively defy Western domination of the mind and body.

11 January 2024

"Don't worry, we have your back" - think again...

If the countries in the East Asian region allied to the United States think that the US has their back and therefore they are safe, think again.

18 December 2023

Saving Australia from China?

Talks in public forums of saving Australia from China are disappointingly unrealistic.

23 November 2023

The Di Sahn Duong case

As a member of the Chinese Australian community, the Di Sahn Duong trial is yet another one of those Here we go again! cases that disconcerts and exacerbates the subliminal anxiety we bear whenever Australias relationship with China sours.

14 November 2023

Anti-Sinoism in Australian media

The article titled 'Golden visas' are known to attract dirty money around the world. Why does Australia still offer them? by Linton Besser was published on ABC News (31/10/2023). Taken at face value, it appears as another piece of usual media reporting. However, read with an awareness of the scourge of recent mainstream media proclivity for racial profiling of the Chinese, it can be disquieting.

8 October 2023

The brave man

There was a time not so long ago, especially after the Vietnam War, when leaders in the advanced countries such as the United States, Britain, France and Germany gave us hope that the mistakes of the past had been learnt and that we were heading for a fairer and more ethical system: when Nelson Mandela led negotiations to end apartheid ended in South Africa; when the Soviet Union ended in 1991; and when Angela Merkel led Germany as Chancellor (2005 - 2021); and when China opened up its economy (1978) to the world.

23 September 2023

Strategic ambiguity: a weapon of mass destruction

Strategic ambiguity is the greatest oral weapon of mass destruction that the Western world has ever invented.

14 September 2023

Filling the ricebowl: The mainstream media's anti-China obsession

I chanced upon an article written by Peter Hartcher in The Age today (12/09/2023) and was astounded by how puerile the present mainstream media can be.

2 September 2023

Do we need an arms industry?

Australia needs an arms industry like it needs a hole in the head. It will only contribute to flooding the world with more weapons of destruction when we are already being killed by floods, fires and irresponsible politicians through human induced global warming.

2 August 2023

China's "security through prosperity" undermines Western colonial hegemony

It was in 1982 in Calcutta, India, on my way to a conference in Bhubaneswar in Orissa state when I was confronted by the sight of homeless people sleeping on the pavement right in the heart of the city in the early nightfall. This morning (01/08/2023), I was confronted again by the sight of homelessness on BBC TV news. This time it was in the streets of London. It was not just a sporadic affair but rows of people shrouded in sheets (the only difference being that in Calcutta they were under cheesecloth while in London they had blankets and...

17 July 2023

Is NATO suffering political psychopathology?

Even as the war in Ukraine is raging, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg is now turning to Asia in an attempt to fan the flames of dissension in the region.

20 June 2023

The discourse of dominance

I was rather amused, or to use the American expression tickled pink, when I read the article titled Coexistance: the only realist path to peace by Stephen M. Walt in Pearls & Irritations. The articles claim to the realist path to peace would make sense only to those who have dominated others for so long (albeit only a blip in the history of the people whom the author is giving a talking to) that they have forgotten the language and discourse of equality.

6 June 2023

How serious is the Australian propaganda infection?

Propaganda is a potent weapon used by politicians and rival nations to wage a war of words, especially those abetted by a biased media.

30 May 2023

Democracy versus socialism in the US-China relationship

There are two major dimensions to the US/China strategic competition. One is ideology; the other is economics. Who will eventually win depends on who has a better combination of the two; discounting a war in which all will lose.

24 May 2023

The contracting echo chambers of the Transatlantic powers

Speak softly and carry a big stick. The pithy words spoken by US President Theodore Roosevelt in 1901 has been said to be his ideal policy for the US.But in recent years, the big stick diplomacy has proven to be too simplistic for the world they used to dominate.

10 May 2023

A mind held captive

Edward Saids Orientalism encapsulates the essence of why the West resists the rise of China as a major economic and militarypower.

29 April 2023

The American way: exporting US dysfunction to the world

The United States of America is not well, a fact that even as an acolyte the Australian government does not seem to be aware or care about, on account of our unconditional love for the Americans.

14 April 2023

Chinese voters in Australian democracy

The last Federal election in 2022 saw a massive swing of voters of Chinese heritage away from the Coalition to Labor and Independents. The pattern was the same in the recent NSW state election and the Aston by-election in Victoria. All these indicate is that a long suffering marginalised victim of Australias geopolitics has finally awakened from their political slumber.

2 April 2023

The US wants TikTok banned or sold

The United States issue with TikTok is uncannily reflective of its ongoing problem with China. It grew too fast for their comfort, is too economically and technologically successful and so deeply enmeshed in their lives that they felt the impulse to disengage.

14 March 2023

The Australian media cries wolf

The major Australian media, SMH and The Age, are crying wolf again. Whether they will lose their credibility depends on whether Australians rationale prevails over their prejudices.

24 February 2023

Sanitising the unforgettable

I hope this article will turn out to be a short communication because my hand trembles with indignation as I write.I refer to the article Why history does not disqualify Japan as an ally: a reply to Richard Cullen by Robert Cribb Feb 21, 2023.

26 January 2023

Democracy and the winning formula

The rallying call of the Western democracies to form a united front against those who dare to challenge their supremacy has always been common values. Our hearts burst with pride and gratitude to think that we have the freedom of speech, of assembly, of dissent and other such privileges that those in other systems do not enjoy. They set us apart from the others, be they communists, theocracies or autocracies.

4 January 2023

Does the Taiwan issue have to be a mnage trois?

The rising tension over Taiwan is not the making of either of the two Chinese parties to the dispute. After all, the fundamental problem has been the same since its inception. It was an unfinished civil war between two political factions, the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China, over control of the country after World War II. Matters became more complicated when the United States decided to involve itself in the conflict.

6 December 2022

East is east, West is west: China and the West are not 'competitors'

When the US and its like-minded allies express the desire to compete with China, what they seem to overlook, or wilfully ignore, is the fact that China is really only competing with itself.

13 November 2022

The scourge of hegemony

While it is obvious to most people that geopolitical tension in the Asia-Pacific region is rising, and that there is a real threat of a conflict between the power blocks in the world, much less credence is given to the idea that the problem is inflicted on us by the hitherto dominant economies of the world losing their grip on hegemony.

1 November 2022

A murder with US collusion to reflect upon

On the 17th of January, 1961, the first elected Prime Minister of newly independent Democratic Republic of Congo, was assassinated with the direct involvement of the Belgian government and collusion of the United States (Damian Zane, BBC, 20/06/2022). It is a damning indictment of the European and American claim to human rights and democratic values.

19 October 2022

The Australian electorate is being misled by its media

A well informed electorate is a prerequisite to democracy. Yet, on China, Australians are being misled by our mainstream media.

2 October 2022

A century of humiliation left profound legacies of trauma

Grenville Crosss Britains opium era strategy to deal with China (Pearls and Irritation, 28/09/2022) touched a cord in many Chinese, regardless of where they come from. It explains why many of us described as Overseas Chinese feel the need to explain when we are affronted by unjust comments about China and the Chinese people.

11 September 2022

The Defence Strategic Review: Is China the real enemy?

China is not Australias enemy. If it is an enemy, and Australia continues to trade with China as it does, it reflects a schizophrenic attitude that we have to sort out first before spending vast amounts of money preparing to fight China. In preparing our Defence Force, there is no room for complacency. Neither is there room for wild imaginings of the type constantly being trotted out by hawks and the mainstream media.

7 August 2022

Teow Loon Ti: Nancy Pelosi, the Straw that Taiwan clutched

Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, delivered a resounding slap to the face of Xi Jinping and left, leaving the Taiwanese to pick up the pieces of the damage she did to the Taiwan/China relationship.

8 July 2022

The them and us narrative

The scourge that looms large in the present conflicts between the West and Russia/China is the Them and Us narrative that seems to pervade analysis of geopolitics.

31 May 2022

Good values, bad values and common values

In the wake of Stephen Fitzgeralds thought provoking article Getting the Australia-China Relationship back on track which mentioned our new Prime Minister speaking in a megaphone manner in Tokyo of Australian values, this is perhaps a good time to talk about values.

23 May 2022

Is the Solomon Islands an Australian colony?

By the end of the 19th century, the Western Nations and Japan managed to carve up most of the world into colonies among themselves. While that was no longer possible after World War II, a new strategy for domination, euphemistically called spheres of influence, has replaced colonialism with largely similar but more subtle outcomes.

21 April 2022

Why intemperate views on China will cost Chinese votes

In his recent addresses about China, especially in his National Press Club address in November last year and Nine newspaper in February 2022, Defence Minister Peter Duttons tough talk would not go down well with Chinese voters. It could cost the LNP votes in the marginal seats where Chinese votes make a difference.

9 March 2022

Failed diplomacy led to war in Ukraine. It could happen again over Taiwan as the US goads China

As the war wages on in Ukraine, our hearts go out to the innocent men. women and children who are killed, maimed or displaced by the war

21 February 2022

Playing the Chinese Card: An Unconscionable and Hazardous Enterprise

For a person who hailed from Malaysia, driven to Australia by the push and pull of racial discriminationand liberal democracy respectively, the recent playing of the Chinese card by both major parties in Australia even before the next election campaigns are in full-throttle engenders a feeling of deja vu.

15 February 2022

Are Ukraine and Taiwan mirror images of each other?

These words attributed to King Solomon in the Old Testament: All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eyes never have enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun (as cited by Southwell, 2010) underpin the irony of the Taiwan and Ukraine affairs.

19 January 2022

The Jews of Asia: why Chinese Australians feel threatened

Playing the Chinese card may be politically rewarding for some, but it is the ordinary people in the street who suffer the consequences of this Sinophobia.

27 December 2021

Making an enemy of China: how we got into this mess

Australia's attitude to China has many contradictions. As Australia beats the drums of war, it continues to sell its iron ore to China.

28 November 2021

What is Xi Jinping to the Chinese people?

Many analysts assert that since Xi Jinping became the Secretary General of the CCP, China has become increasingly assertive in its foreign policy.

4 November 2021

A long march: China's unfinished business on Taiwan reunification

Modern-day gunboat diplomacy largely ignores the historical circumstances and emotive aspects of the divide of Taiwan and China.