Thomas Pauken is often introduced to new audiences as a Trump supporting American who has worked in China for over a decade and admires Xi Jinping and his government. Seeing as China and the US are supposedly on a neo-Cold War collision course, many find such a description beguiling. That […]
To say that the division of Korea has caused disagreements and outright hatred on both sides is an understatement. But ever since the inauguration of Korean detente in 2018, Pyongyang and Seoul have been engaging in increased cooperation. For months on end, Moon Jae-in’s Blue House has been publicly agreeing […]
In 1965, Lee Kuan Yew wept as Singapore was kicked out of the relatively newly formed Malaysia, a state which after 1959 united Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak. From the beginning, Singapore was the proverbial ‘odd man out’ when contrasted with the rest of Malaysia. Whilst ethnic Han Chinese […]
China is just abolished foreign investment quotas for Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors (QFII) and Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors (RQFII). This is an important step in China’s continued drive for further economic reform and opening up in the pursuit of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. China courts […]
Many harbour the false premise that it is possible to instantly transform a society from one that is poor, tribal and chaotic to one that is prosperous, modern and free without going through an interim stage of national development. History however has shown time and again that one cannot simply […]
It is a common misnomer to confuse wealth with elitism, even though in reality, the two concepts are very different. Wealth simply denotes an objective state of having an above average amount of money in one’s long term possession. Elitism is a far more manifold concept involving social indicators designed […]
It is a common misnomer to confuse wealth with elitism, even though in reality, the two concepts are very different. Wealth simply denotes an objective state of having an above average amount of money in one’s long term possession. Elitism is a far more manifold concept involving social indicators designed […]
Over the weekend, London was home to demonstrations whose participants sought to thwart the democratic will of the people as expressed in the Brexit referendum. Among the protesters were individuals burning the flag of the United Kingdom (the Union flag) as well as (at least) one protester who held a […]
When discussing whether amendments should be made to the 1987 Constitution of The Philippines in order to eliminate rules which severely retard the amount of foreign direct investment (FDI) coming into the country, many people phrase such debates in terms of “nationalism” versus “globalism”. The fact of the matter is […]
