https://www.scmp.com/rss/323153/feed Rana Mitter is Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China at the University of Oxford and author of A Bitter Revolution: China’s Struggle with the Modern World and China’s War with Japan, 1937-45: The Struggle for Survival en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com The word maodun, or contradiction, has a long history in Chinese Marxist thought, but its origins go back long before communism. It refers to the “contradiction” between a spear that penetrates anything, and a shield that can never be pierced: irresistible force meets immovable object. I was reminded of that fable last week during the attempted purchase of a failing chip factory (computer, not potato) in Wales by a Chinese-backed company, Nexperia. The British government initially refused to... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3141125/if-china-weaponises-capital-it-will-shoot-itself-foot?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3141125/if-china-weaponises-capital-it-will-shoot-itself-foot?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 17 Jul 2021 01:30:08 +0000 One of the more reckless gestures of the Donald Trump administration was its decision to restrict visas for Chinese academic visitors to the United States. We’re not talking here about allowing Chinese scholars access to US physics and computing labs that some fear might mean that the latest information about AI or rocket technology might find its way to Beijing by underhand means. Senior specialists on international relations, trade policy and Chinese politics had their multiple-entry visas... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3139396/restricting-academics-makes-it-harder-china-tell-its-own-story?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3139396/restricting-academics-makes-it-harder-china-tell-its-own-story?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 03 Jul 2021 01:30:19 +0000 “There are no faraway countries of which we know little.” On Tuesday this week, in the House of Commons, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson deliberately altered the famous quotation from his unfortunate pre-war predecessor, Neville Chamberlain. He argued that Britain should not be constrained by a “cramped” regional policy and that among other goals, Britain would now see a “tilt” to the Indo-Pacific, that huge slice of Asia from Karachi to Wellington, in its foreign policy. The rhetoric was... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3125818/boris-johnson-testing-china-britains-foreign-policy-ambiguities?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3125818/boris-johnson-testing-china-britains-foreign-policy-ambiguities?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 17 Mar 2021 12:30:16 +0000 The ghosts of empire keep appearing across the globe. This summer, Britain was rocked by the Black Lives Matter movement, members of which pulled down the statue in Bristol of the slave trader Edward Colston and dumped it in the river. Next to fall may well be the statue of arch-imperialist Cecil Rhodes outside Oriel College, Oxford. In Tokyo, this month’s 75th anniversary of the end of World War II was marred by some prominent politicians paying respects at the controversial Yasukuni Shrine,... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3098389/hong-kong-china-should-learn-indias-healthy-attitude-british?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3098389/hong-kong-china-should-learn-indias-healthy-attitude-british?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 22 Aug 2020 01:30:19 +0000 Seventy-five years ago this week, on 15 August 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s unconditional surrender in its war against the Allies. World War II in Asia began with the fighting between China and Japan in July 1937, and over the next eight years, up to 14 million Chinese lost their lives, 100 million became refugees in their own country, and the painful modernisation of the country’s economy, transport and finances was smashed to pieces. Chinese soldiers and civilians made countless... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3097444/after-world-war-ii-china-valued-its-peoples-personal-freedoms-it?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3097444/after-world-war-ii-china-valued-its-peoples-personal-freedoms-it?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 14 Aug 2020 21:00:17 +0000 The British Foreign Policy Group (BFPG), a London-based non-partisan think tank, this week released a report titled “Beyond the Golden Age: Resetting China-UK Engagement”. I co-authored it with BFPG director Sophia Gaston after we both became worried that Britain had moved from complacency about China to a state of paranoia without any intervening period of reflection about the relationship’s significance. The report does not recommend policies but suggests a new mindset for engaging with China... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3095482/britain-thinks-china-new-ussr-or-japan-it-needs-rethink?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3095482/britain-thinks-china-new-ussr-or-japan-it-needs-rethink?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 31 Jul 2020 11:00:10 +0000 Over the months of Hong Kong’s current crisis, one particular statement from the government in Beijing intrigued me: the repeated assertion that the Joint Declaration signed between Britain and China in 1984 was a thing of the past. China had sovereignty over the former colony, in this reading of events. That’s all there was to it. I wondered whether there were any precedents for a country abiding by a treaty relating to its own territory but monitored by outside bodies. I didn’t have to look... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3092731/hong-kongs-national-security-law-era-echoes-northern-irelands?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3092731/hong-kongs-national-security-law-era-echoes-northern-irelands?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 11 Jul 2020 08:00:08 +0000 “I can’t breathe,” tweeted Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying in response to an American tweet on 4 June, the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square killings of 1989, repeating the last phrase uttered by George Floyd as he died under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. But pushing back against American criticism by pointing out the sorry record of the United States on racism is nothing new for the People’s Republic. In 1971, then prime minister Zhou Enlai clasped the hand of... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3087782/george-floyd-death-china-right-criticise-us-race-next-step-uygur?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3087782/george-floyd-death-china-right-criticise-us-race-next-step-uygur?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 05 Jun 2020 15:00:11 +0000 Late in March, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang warned local officials not to hide new cases of the novel coronavirus. His warning sounded more like a plea: officials in China today are aware that the Communist Party has declared “victory” over the virus, and bearing news that the war is not actually won could be a sure path to demotion. Meanwhile, last weekend the British newspaper The Mail on Sunday featured a “senior [UK] government source” claiming that after the coronavirus crisis was over, China... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3077978/chinas-coronavirus-victory-and-britains-threat-reckoning-show-two?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3077978/chinas-coronavirus-victory-and-britains-threat-reckoning-show-two?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 03 Apr 2020 08:00:14 +0000 Here in Britain , the latest appearance of the coronavirus is the top headline on the lunchtime BBC news. Around the world, people feel deep empathy for an unexpected calamity that has hit China, but could have appeared first in many places around the globe, and may yet spread further. One startling image from the crisis was the building of a brand-new hospital in Wuhan in the space of a week. Yet in one sense, that rapid response is not new, as disease control and modernity have always gone... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3049594/coronavirus-why-hygiene-fears-strike-heart-modern-china?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3049594/coronavirus-why-hygiene-fears-strike-heart-modern-china?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 09 Feb 2020 00:15:11 +0000 The US president is not that keen on the government of Taiwan. In fact, he is about to cut the island loose and leave it to the Chinese Communist Party to do what they will with it. Beijing looks certain to be the deciding power on the island. Then, it scores an own goal, making a move that alienates much of the rest of the world and, perversely, saves Taiwan’s autonomous government. Not the story of the past year, culminating in Tsai Ing-wen’s decisive victory over Han Kuo-yu in last week’s... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3046576/beijing-should-tell-taiwan-and-hong-kong-what-it-has-gain-them?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3046576/beijing-should-tell-taiwan-and-hong-kong-what-it-has-gain-them?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 18 Jan 2020 03:30:14 +0000 Sometimes it seems the most dangerous word in Chinese politics isn’t democracy or liberalism. It’s Maoism. Not that liberals get much airtime in today’s China; just last month, the Unirule Institute of Economics, a noted liberal think tank, was shut down by the authorities. Equally striking, however, were arrests in the past year of idealistic, young activists on some of China’s top campuses – including Peking University – who were advocating Chinese workers’ rights, not in the name of liberty... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3029727/pro-democracy-activists-dont-worry-china-rather-beijing-more?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3029727/pro-democracy-activists-dont-worry-china-rather-beijing-more?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 22 Sep 2019 22:00:09 +0000 China’s only female emperor, Wu Zetian of the Tang dynasty (618-907), was regarded as a monstrous anomaly by the Confucian elites of her era. Women were supposed to lurk behind the throne, not sit on it. Her tombstone was left blank, unlike those of all the other (male) emperors of the era. But she got the last laugh. One of the hit television series of 2014 in China was the 96-part The Empress of China, about Wu’s life, starring Fan Bingbing, now under a cloud but at that time the country’s... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2184797/story-yanxi-palace-how-china-finds-fresh-political-drama-lavish?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2184797/story-yanxi-palace-how-china-finds-fresh-political-drama-lavish?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 03 Feb 2019 07:00:00 +0000 An essay by Tsinghua University professor Xu Zhangrun, a veiled criticism of Chinese President Xi Jinping, has resonated across the internet since its appearance late last month. The essay, which has been repeatedly wiped off the Chinese internet, voices a profound unease about the direction of Chinese politics. Talking to Chinese writers and academics in the past year, I’ve also been struck by their sense of uncertainty. Historical topics that were fine to write about just a few years ago can’t... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2161272/global-china-must-ask-itself-awkward-questions-it-ready?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2161272/global-china-must-ask-itself-awkward-questions-it-ready?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 26 Aug 2018 02:00:30 +0000 When Taiwan proudly displayed its second tranche of US-made Apache attack helicopters, its leader Tsai Ing-wen sent a clear a message to Beijing when she called the assertive display “an important milestone” in the island’s defences. The message struck a tone in stark contrast to the atmospherics around a high-profile meeting in Beijing just days before between the representatives of two organisations which spent much of the last century at each other’s throats: the Communist Party and the... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2156235/strait-talk-are-china-and-taiwan-brink-conflict?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2156235/strait-talk-are-china-and-taiwan-brink-conflict?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 21 Jul 2018 01:30:30 +0000 Donald Trump’s tariff war against China (and other parts of the globe) is not the first time the terms of trade have shaped China’s relationship with the West. In 1894, a cartoon appeared in the English magazine Vanity Fair, showing a bearded Briton dressed in green silk robes with a caption reading “Chinese customs”. It was a caricature of one of the most powerful figures of late 19th century China: the Inspector-General of the Maritime Customs Service, Sir Robert Hart. While Hart is a... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2152071/see-why-trumps-tariffs-have-hit-chinese-nerve-read-history?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2152071/see-why-trumps-tariffs-have-hit-chinese-nerve-read-history?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 24 Jun 2018 03:30:15 +0000 Annoyed with a US president who simply seems to change policy at whim, the Japanese prime minister plans to see China’s leader for a one-on-one discussion. This isn’t a description of the sudden warming of relations between Shinzo Abe and Xi Jinping over the past few days. It happened in July 1971, when president Richard Nixon announced that he would visit China without having first warned his closest Asian ally, Japan, an event that became known as the Nixon “shock”. Wasting little time, prime... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2146408/china-and-japan-trumps-nixon-shock?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2146408/china-and-japan-trumps-nixon-shock?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 19 May 2018 02:30:15 +0000 At dinner in Washington last month with a small group of intense types concerned with Asia policy matters, I asked whether they were worried about the situation on the Korean peninsula. “We’re worried,” was the reply. In January, when a direct strike on North Korean nuclear facilities was on the table, one explained: “That’s the only thing people were talking about.” Now the talk is about a summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump – equally unthinkable just a... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2141490/kim-jong-un-has-america-and-china-just-where-he-wants-them?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2141490/kim-jong-un-has-america-and-china-just-where-he-wants-them?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 14 Apr 2018 03:33:40 +0000 The decision to end presidential term limits in China, opening the way for a third and perhaps fourth term for Xi Jinping, has been the talk of the political world this week (except in China itself, where discussion is curiously absent). But is there a precedent for this sort of decision by a Chinese leader? Whatever Xi’s political model, it’s not Mao Zedong’s, despite the new concentration in China’s public culture on the glory days of the high communist past. During the Cultural Revolution,... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2135162/xis-no-mao-or-deng-or-chiang-so-who-he?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2135162/xis-no-mao-or-deng-or-chiang-so-who-he?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 04 Mar 2018 01:30:15 +0000 I’m writing this from the central lounge at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday. There’s a feeling of fast turnover here – the leaders of Canada, Germany and Brazil have all appeared and headed off in quick succession. But there are certain themes emerging. In particular, ideas about Asia are shaping people’s conversations. That’s not the headline about Davos this year, of course. The anticipated arrival of Donald Trump on Friday is stoking up excitement and controversy. But the US... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2130560/davos-asia-steps-spotlight-us-influence-dims?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2130560/davos-asia-steps-spotlight-us-influence-dims?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 25 Jan 2018 11:00:43 +0000 Taiwan’s politics, even today, is shaped by the memory of the years when Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists ruled the island during the cold war. The battle between the “mainlanders” who poured in at the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 and the indigenous Taiwanese still resonates in today’s politics. In contrast, one other relatively recent historical experience seems much less relevant: the period of Japanese colonial rule over Taiwan from 1895 to 1945. The younger generation hardly talk about... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2128067/judging-empires-was-japanese-rule-taiwan-benevolent?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2128067/judging-empires-was-japanese-rule-taiwan-benevolent?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 14 Jan 2018 03:00:45 +0000 RECENTLY I was in Nanjing. I had hoped to visit the massive memorial that commemorates the terrible events of December 1937, when Japanese troops entered the city, what was then the capital of China under the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek. I discovered that the building was closed in preparation for a major visit and speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping next week, marking the 80th anniversary of the atrocity. However, I didn’t need to revisit the memorial to remember the details of... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2123261/80-years-later-can-china-japan-overcome-nanking-massacres-legacy?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2123261/80-years-later-can-china-japan-overcome-nanking-massacres-legacy?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 10 Dec 2017 05:00:00 +0000 The transformation of Xi Jinping is happening before our eyes. With the insertion of Xi Jinping Thought into the Communist Party’s constitution and the possibility that a quarter-century consensus on two-term leaders will be ended, it’s clear that China will be living with Xi for a long time to come. When trying to make comparisons, it’s Mao that comes to mind most naturally (not least as the term Lingxiu, last used for Mao, and before that for Chiang Kai-shek, is being revived for Xi). Vladimir... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2117364/opinion-forget-mao-xi-jinping-more-charles-de-gaulle?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2117364/opinion-forget-mao-xi-jinping-more-charles-de-gaulle?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 28 Oct 2017 05:30:46 +0000 China’s governing party is in a moment of major transition. While domestic politics is tightening up, Beijing has plans far beyond the country’s own borders – aiming for the transformation of Asia and beyond through an infrastructure development programme and political nationalism. No, this is not just about the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China under Xi Jinping, or the Belt and Road Initiative. It is a story that harks back to the Nationalist (Kuomintang) government of... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2115952/chinas-asia-vision-harks-back-1945-one-difference-money?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2115952/chinas-asia-vision-harks-back-1945-one-difference-money?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 21 Oct 2017 04:01:09 +0000 In a couple of weeks’ time, Xi Jinping should have re-established himself as China’s paramount leader. He can then turn to welcoming the leader of the other pole in the global geopolitical axis, US President Donald Trump, who will be visiting a series of Asia’s most sensitive regions to smooth feathers ruffled by his administration in recent months. In November, Trump will give a speech at the Apec conference in Hanoi that has the potential to set the agenda in Asia for a generation to come. Xi... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2114156/unpredictable-trump-means-its-xis-world-if-he-knows-how-take-it?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2114156/unpredictable-trump-means-its-xis-world-if-he-knows-how-take-it?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Oct 2017 02:34:34 +0000 Last week, Cambridge University Press proposed to limit access to The China Quarterly, a major academic journal in the field of Chinese Studies. A Chinese import agency had requested Cambridge University Press (CUP) alter the website to make articles concerning topics such as the 1989 Tiananmen killings and the Cultural Revolution unavailable to readers inside China. The reaction from the academic world was swift and outraged. Dr Tim Pringle, the editor of the journal, made an unequivocal... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2108337/why-china-hurts-itself-more-others-censorship?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2108337/why-china-hurts-itself-more-others-censorship?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 26 Aug 2017 03:32:50 +0000 As I walked through central Beijing this week, I passed endless posters promoting “democracy” (minzhu). One might be forgiven for raising one’s eyebrows at a moment when the 20th anniversary of the Hong Kong handover prompts elegies for the fate of democracy in the SAR. Yet it is no longer just greater China where liberal democracy seems in peril. It may be in retreat all across Asia. If so, that political trend would be a reversal of the past three decades. When the Joint Declaration on Hong... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2102330/mystery-chinas-eagerness-own-term-democracy?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2102330/mystery-chinas-eagerness-own-term-democracy?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 15 Jul 2017 01:17:15 +0000 It doesn’t loo k like the kind of place where the destiny of nations is decided. Around 15km from the centre of Beijing, Lugouqiao is a picturesque spot. Its sculpted bridge attracted praise from no less a figure than the West’s most famous pre-modern traveller to China – hence its English nickname, the “Marco Polo Bridge”. Conflict, not tourism, shaped events at that bridge exactly 80 years ago this weekend. On July 7, 1937, local Chinese troops clashed with Japanese troops stationed there, a... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2101731/after-80-years-china-should-not-forget-its-war-japan-remember-its?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2101731/after-80-years-china-should-not-forget-its-war-japan-remember-its?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 07 Jul 2017 09:11:30 +0000 On May 30, 1925, thirteen Chinese workers in British-controlled Shanghai were shot dead. Shortly afterwards, Guangzhou and Hong Kong were paralysed by a 16-month-long strike and boycott of British goods by Chinese workers in both cities, protesting at the deaths of their countrymen. The British authorities had to provide a multimillion-dollar payment to prevent the local economy from collapsing. At a time when China was horribly oppressed by Western powers, the boycott was one of the few... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2083860/opinion-echo-colonial-britain-chinas-boycott-against-south-korea?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2083860/opinion-echo-colonial-britain-chinas-boycott-against-south-korea?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 02 Apr 2017 02:00:30 +0000 Earlier this week, Alexander Downer, the former foreign minister of Australia and now the country’s High Commissioner to Britain, gave a wide-ranging speech at Oxford University’s China Centre. The contents were typically genial but frank. “During the time that I’ve been based here in London,” he observed, “I’ve been surprised how little attention Asia gets in this part of the world.” Downer recently told BBC radio that the price of a free-trade deal for Britain in Canberra might be a more... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2073483/brexit-britain-missing-asia-policy?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2073483/brexit-britain-missing-asia-policy?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 05 Mar 2017 12:01:50 +0000 In Japan this week, a sense of urgency pervades as past and present come together in unexpected ways. The week before Donald Trump becomes leader of Tokyo’s most important military ally is also the week that the continuing issue of the “comfort women” came back to haunt Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. A few days ago, South Korean protestors placed a statue of a teenage girl in front of the Japanese consulate in Busan. It symbolised the tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of Koreans who were... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2062027/can-japan-lay-its-comfort-women-ghosts-rest?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2062027/can-japan-lay-its-comfort-women-ghosts-rest?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 14 Jan 2017 04:00:45 +0000 Seventy-five years ago, on December 7, 1941, Japanese fighter planes attacked American warships at anchor in Pearl Harbour, Hawaii. They attacked Manila, Hong Kong and Guam hours later, but it was the attack on the American naval base that history has preserved, in the memorable phrasing of president Franklin Roosevelt, as a “date which will live in infamy”. There’s not much sign yet that the next president, Donald Trump, has noticed this anniversary. Nor is his rhetoric quite as commanding as... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2053398/lesson-pearl-harbour-donald-trump-needs-learn?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2053398/lesson-pearl-harbour-donald-trump-needs-learn?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 11 Dec 2016 11:01:44 +0000 Nobody could say that 2016 has been a dull year in politics. November alone has seen two major incidents: the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States and the disqualification of two members of the Hong Kong assembly over an oath sworn in a manner that Beijing considers to be insulting to China. The latter might seem, at first glance, a rather smaller affair than the first. But they both speak to wider dilemmas gripping politics across the world. The first is the erosion of... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2044871/trumps-america-and-hong-kongs-oath-taking-crisis-how-they-are?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2044871/trumps-america-and-hong-kongs-oath-taking-crisis-how-they-are?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 13 Nov 2016 01:00:00 +0000 For some time now, it’s been an article of faith for liberals that a freer culture, and a more generous stance on academic freedom in general, is not just worthwhile in itself, but is also of demonstrable practical use. An academic culture that encourages freedom of thought in the humanities and social sciences, the argument goes, can spread ideas and ways of thinking that will then shape the hard sciences too, encouraging a wider community of creativity that leads to scientific breakthroughs.... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2024096/what-chinese-singaporean-universities-can-teach-us-about-academic?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2024096/what-chinese-singaporean-universities-can-teach-us-about-academic?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 02 Oct 2016 01:03:07 +0000 A strange-sounding edict has gone out from China’s authorities to the entertainment division of the nation’s broadcasters: no more South Korean soap stars or K-pop idols to appear onscreen. After a decade in which South Korea’s actors and singers such as Kim Soo-hyun (pictured) and ­G-Dragon achieved huge popularity in China, projects featuring them have been “postponed”. The reason for this near-ban is not hard to fathom. Recently, the South Korean government approved the deployment of the... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2003035/k-pop-korean-soap-stars-and-secret-beijing-wont-learn?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2003035/k-pop-korean-soap-stars-and-secret-beijing-wont-learn?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 15 Aug 2016 03:00:00 +0000