https://www.scmp.com/rss/324098/feed Professor Keith B. Richburg, a former Washington Post correspondent, is Director of The University of Hong Kong's Journalism and Media Studies Centre. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Sometimes history seems to unspool in a continuous playback loop. That is the feeling from watching Hongkongers donning face masks, dousing hands with sanitiser and once again bracing for the possibility of a deadly new virus outbreak originating in mainland China spreading here. Chinese authorities’ delayed response, the secrecy breeding mistrust, the lack of full transparency and efforts to control the narrative by downplaying the seriousness – it all rings sadly familiar. Public health... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3047434/bird-flu-sars-china-coronavirus-history-repeating-itself?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3047434/bird-flu-sars-china-coronavirus-history-repeating-itself?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 23 Jan 2020 12:57:48 +0000 Some future historian writing a thesis on “The Death of Hong Kong” may stumble across the old 1995 Fortune Magazine cover of the same name. It may seem prescient, but premature. Instead, the late summer and early fall of 2018 will likely be deemed the turning point, when the demise of a once-great open and liberal city really began. That turning point started in July, when local police served notice on the Hong Kong National Party that it was considering a ban, accusing the obscure group of... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/keith-richburg-expelling-foreign-correspondent-marks-beginning-hong-kongs-demise/article/2167594?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/opinion/keith-richburg-expelling-foreign-correspondent-marks-beginning-hong-kongs-demise/article/2167594?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 09 Oct 2018 09:00:15 +0000 Maybe China’s authoritarian leaders were on to something after all. In 2011 and 2012, the Chinese government began imposing a series of tough new restrictions designed to rein in what was then the country’s most popular and freewheeling social media platform, Sina Weibo. It began with new rules making all weibo (microblogging) account users register with their real names and identity numbers, aiming to end one of microblogging’s most popular features – its anonymity. It made internet companies... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2163577/internet-censorship-china-can-tell-us-told-you-so?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2163577/internet-censorship-china-can-tell-us-told-you-so?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 16 Sep 2018 12:30:45 +0000 This month’s centenary celebrations in South Africa, marking the birth of Nelson Mandela, sadly remind us of the death of any other public figure whose unquestionable moral standing similarly eschewed bitterness and division, and promoted unity, democracy and peace through reconciliation. That void extends to Asia, where Mandela was a beloved icon and an inspiration to a generation of human rights activists. And a current lack of similar leaders of stature is very much a testament to the unique... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2156225/mandelas-legacy-lives-strong-asia-can-we-say-same-its-leaders?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2156225/mandelas-legacy-lives-strong-asia-can-we-say-same-its-leaders?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 21 Jul 2018 05:45:30 +0000 Let’s give credit where it’s due. Last Monday’s sit-down in Singapore between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un probably nudged the Doomsday Clock just a few minutes further away from the apocalypse. And as much as Trump-haters may be loath to admit it, anything that staves off the risk of nuclear war, even temporarily, is a really good thing. Consider that less than six months ago, Trump and Kim were trading playground taunts and boasting “mine is bigger” about the... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2150847/admit-it-trumps-singapore-date-kim-made-us-all-safer?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2150847/admit-it-trumps-singapore-date-kim-made-us-all-safer?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 17 Jun 2018 11:45:15 +0000 Dear President Trump, As you prepare for your historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, you are probably now being bombarded by the voices of talking-head pundits on cable television and newspaper columnists all warning what a bad idea this meeting is, and the many ways it can go wrong. As someone who advocated more than a year ago for you to meet Kim – I called it your “Nixon to China” moment – I would like to give a counter view to those many sceptics and naysayers. I think your... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2149734/sleepless-singapore-dear-trump-some-dos-and-donts-your-big-date?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2149734/sleepless-singapore-dear-trump-some-dos-and-donts-your-big-date?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 11 Jun 2018 00:02:55 +0000 Is the guy who wrote The Art of the Deal really a choke artist? It’s a fair question after US President Donald Trump appears to have buckled last week on two high stakes foreign policy initiatives – the threat to impose tariffs on China to force a reduction in the trade deficit, and the summit with Kim Jong-un to negotiate the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. Trump has fashioned himself as a master negotiator who could win the big deals that eluded his predecessors – forcing China to... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2147840/trump-kim-talks-art-no-deal?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2147840/trump-kim-talks-art-no-deal?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 25 May 2018 12:00:30 +0000 An isolated “rogue regime” with a horrendous human rights record destabilises the region, supports terrorism and embarks on a dangerous nuclear programme. The world community bands together to impose crippling economic sanctions. The regime finally relents and agrees to halt its nuclear ambitions in exchange for foreign investment, trade and recognition. If that sounds like the ideal scenario for corralling North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme, it is. And if you are looking for a successful... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2145675/why-would-kim-jong-un-trust-trump-now-hes-ripped-irans-nuclear?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2145675/why-would-kim-jong-un-trust-trump-now-hes-ripped-irans-nuclear?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 12 May 2018 04:00:00 +0000 One year and four months into his presidency, Donald Trump has been called a lot of things – populist, demagogue, disrupter, authoritarian, narcissistic, corrupt, even unhinged, among the printable epithets. But peacemaker? That hardly seems a fitting moniker for the US president who boasted about the size of his “nuclear button”, threatened to unleash “fire and fury” on the Korean peninsula, and warned Russia to “get ready” to face “nice and new and smart” missiles raining down in Syria. But it... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2144560/donald-trump-nobel-worthy-peacemaker-korea-its-not-so-far-fetched?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2144560/donald-trump-nobel-worthy-peacemaker-korea-its-not-so-far-fetched?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 06 May 2018 00:02:49 +0000 Back in 2003, at the start of America’s disastrous invasion of Iraq, then Major General David Petraeus, commanding the US 101st Airborne Division driving toward Baghdad, famously asked my Washington Post colleague Rick Atkinson: “Tell me how this ends.” That phrase – both a question and a plaintive plea – came to capsulate the entire unplanned and ill-fated Iraq misadventure, from which the US is still struggling to extricate itself. But the question is equally applicable today, as America once... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2140661/does-trump-even-have-endgame-trade-war-china?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2140661/does-trump-even-have-endgame-trade-war-china?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Apr 2018 04:00:15 +0000 Nine years ago it was car tyres followed by chicken feet. Now it’s washing machines and solar panels followed by sorghum. Aluminium and steel may soon be tossed in the mix. The familiar trade skirmishes between the United States and China usually end with a whimper. But American presidents have traditionally been like the proverbial cartoon character who gets dropped off a cliff, run over with a steam roller and blown up with dynamite; he gets up, arches an angry eyebrow and declares: “Next... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2135330/someone-tell-trump-trade-war-over-china-won?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2135330/someone-tell-trump-trade-war-over-china-won?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 02 Mar 2018 04:30:45 +0000 A financial contagion from Wall Street spreads across the Pacific to hammer Asian markets. Regional stocks plummet from Shanghai to Singapore. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index takes one brutal daily beating after another, amid talk of an overdue “correction”. That was pretty much the story I wrote for The Washington Post in October of 1997, when the New York Stock Exchange plunged more than 7 per cent and trading was briefly suspended. But the essential elements would read pretty much the same for... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2132766/heres-lesson-1997-stock-crash-dont-panic?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2132766/heres-lesson-1997-stock-crash-dont-panic?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 11 Feb 2018 03:30:15 +0000 The immigration debate now roiling the United States and paralysing Congress is about nothing less than two conflicting views of America itself – what the country is, and what it should be in the future. Asia had better pay close attention, and particularly China, Japan and also Hong Kong. They are not having quite the same immigration debate as in the US. But they may have to soon. The US, as we all know, is a land of immigrants, people bonded together over 2½ centuries not by a common... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2131634/why-china-and-hong-kong-must-heed-americas-immigration-debate?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2131634/why-china-and-hong-kong-must-heed-americas-immigration-debate?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 03 Feb 2018 05:47:34 +0000 The good news about last weekend’s ill-advised US government shutdown, otherwise known as the Great Democratic Climbdown, is that it was so brief – it lasted just two and a half days, mostly over a weekend. You may be forgiven for having missed it entirely. That’s about where the good news ends. For those who have been bemoaning Washington’s political dysfunction, and for those gleefully rooting for it as well, the shutdown was just another data point proving that America’s vaunted political... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2130769/china-may-crow-us-shuts-down-death-west-greatly-exaggerated?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2130769/china-may-crow-us-shuts-down-death-west-greatly-exaggerated?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 27 Jan 2018 07:34:07 +0000 The fiery, furious cascade of leaks and revelations coming out of US President Donald Trump’s White House in the first month of the new year has left us facing three possible conclusions, all equally unsettling: the president of the United States may well be a kook, a crook or an incompetent – perhaps some combination of the three. All prospects are worrisome, certainly for Americans, who are watching their 230-year-old governing institutions stretched to the breaking point. But it is also... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2128063/can-america-do-trump-what-philippines-did-estrada?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2128063/can-america-do-trump-what-philippines-did-estrada?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 14 Jan 2018 11:01:05 +0000 US President Donald Trump’s first year in office has proven to be the chaotic, rambling Twitter-fuelled reality show that his many critics feared when the braggadocious billionaire and one-time television star became the first US president elected without any government or military experience. There has been the head-spinning reshuffle of top White House personnel and a mountain of near-daily misstatements from the press office (“the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration,... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2126177/one-year-asia-has-conquered-trump-not-vice-versa?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2126177/one-year-asia-has-conquered-trump-not-vice-versa?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 31 Dec 2017 00:19:33 +0000 I happened to be in South Africa when the word came, late last month, that a de facto military coup was underway next door in Zimbabwe, which would eventually lead to Robert Mugabe, the country’s nonagenarian leader, finally resigning after 37 years in power. But my mind immediately flashed back to Asia, because of some striking similarities between Mugabe’s fall and that of other supposedly entrenched autocrats. There are some cautious lessons to take away – and some signs of things to... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2124478/what-do-kim-jong-un-and-duterte-have-learn-mugabes-fall?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2124478/what-do-kim-jong-un-and-duterte-have-learn-mugabes-fall?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 17 Dec 2017 04:32:48 +0000 Unless you follow American football, you may not have been aware of a strange form of protest taking place before the games. Some players have chosen to kneel, link arms or remain in their locker rooms, during the playing of the US national anthem, as a symbolic way to draw attention to the police killings of unarmed African-American men. The protest was given new momentum after remonstrations from President Donald Trump, who apparently is more worked up over black football players kneeling... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2115292/what-would-trump-think-about-hong-kong-football-fans-booing?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2115292/what-would-trump-think-about-hong-kong-football-fans-booing?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 14 Oct 2017 01:00:42 +0000 It’s on. Not a nuclear conflict on the Korean Peninsula, thank goodness. But an old-fashioned, trash-talking smackdown between two nuclear-armed adversaries. In the one corner, we have US President Donald Trump, verbal pugilist and reluctant leader of the free world. In the other corner, there’s North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the 33-year-old heir to the world’s only communist dynasty. The insults have been flying. Trump has derided Kim as “Little Rocket Man” and a “madman” and he threatened to... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2113445/trump-vs-rocket-man-what-if-north-korea-problem-not-kim?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2113445/trump-vs-rocket-man-what-if-north-korea-problem-not-kim?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 30 Sep 2017 02:00:33 +0000 Late on the morning of Hong Kong’s first day under Chinese rule, following an evening of fireworks, pageantry and a torrential downpour, the streets were strangely quiet when I wandered out of my MacDonnnell Road apartment looking for a cab. It was like the entire city was sleeping off a hangover after an all-night bender. I finally found a taxi driven by an elderly, white-haired driver who quickly started up conversation. Where was I from, he wanted to know. “America,” I told him. He smiled... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2100794/why-hong-kong-was-glad-see-back-white-coolies?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2100794/why-hong-kong-was-glad-see-back-white-coolies?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 02 Jul 2017 03:03:17 +0000 Exactly two decades ago, at the beginning of July, 1997, Asia was shaken by a seismic event that upended the established order and sent ripple effects still reverberating across the region even today. No, I am not talking about Hong Kong’s handover to China; by comparison, that was largely a non-event, carefully planned and entirely scripted. I am speaking of the unplanned and unexpected shock that was far more consequential to millions of people – the Asian economic crisis that began on July 2,... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2100790/how-hong-kong-handover-blinded-media-story-decade?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2100790/how-hong-kong-handover-blinded-media-story-decade?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 01 Jul 2017 04:02:47 +0000 The “Nixon-to-China” trope has, over the past four decades, come to mean that only a politician with unquestioned credentials could make a sharp policy U-turn against their own party and past positions. It denotes an unorthodox, out-of-the-box move that would be widely derided if attempted by another politician without the same unimpeachable bona fides. Nixon was an unassailable anti-Communist Cold Warrior and red-baiter. So only Nixon, it was said, could take the bold step of opening diplomatic... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2093018/opinion-if-only-nixon-could-go-china-can-only-trump-go-north-korea?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2093018/opinion-if-only-nixon-could-go-china-can-only-trump-go-north-korea?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 06 May 2017 05:03:12 +0000 The first impression of the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency begins with a question: has it really only been 100 days? There’s been such a frenzy of activity by this preternaturally distractible US president that it seems hard to believe he has only been in office since late January. Trump has been a godsend to journalism. Newspaper subscriptions and online page views are up, and audiences are rushing back to cable news channels, all to see what Trump and his team will do next. It’s a... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2091204/first-100-days-president-trump-drunk-stumbling-down-highway?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2091204/first-100-days-president-trump-drunk-stumbling-down-highway?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 29 Apr 2017 10:00:30 +0000 President Donald Trump, in his first speech to a joint session of Congress last Tuesday night, managed to project a softer, more sober tone after his chaotic first five weeks in office. Gone was the bombast and the insults, and he even managed to look presidential as he asked his opponents to join him in seeking common ground. “The time for trivial fights is behind us,” Trump declared, addressing the Democrats in the chamber. And he can afford to be magnanimous. Their ranks are depleted, and... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2075927/trumps-media-war-straight-playbook-communist-china?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2075927/trumps-media-war-straight-playbook-communist-china?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 04 Mar 2017 04:33:07 +0000