https://www.scmp.com/rss/326701/feed en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Bangladeshi labourers in the country’s vast garment industry demanding a higher minimum wage have in recent months encountered fierce retaliation from factory owners and authorities, with 65 garment industry workers jailed and more than 11,000 sacked. Police brutality was also reported at protests, leaving dozens of workers injured and one man dead. The progress made in the garment industry since the Rana Plaza disaster of 2013 – when 1,134 workers were killed after a building collapsed – has... https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/south-asia/article/3009077/bangladesh-garment-workers-protesting-against-low-wages-face?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/south-asia/article/3009077/bangladesh-garment-workers-protesting-against-low-wages-face?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 07 May 2019 00:30:11 +0000 Flying into Singapore’s Changi Airport, visitors often remark on the hundreds of vessels, from supertankers to freighters, anchored along the coastline. Why are there so many? What are they doing there? A decade ago, the global recession created a maritime car park of apparent ghost ships in the Singapore Strait – vessels sat idle in the world’s busiest shipping lane as companies were going bust or did not have enough business to justify their use. Now there’s a similar stockpiling of ships in... https://www.scmp.com/business/busy-traffic-singapore-strait-middle-class-grows/article/3001085?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/business/busy-traffic-singapore-strait-middle-class-grows/article/3001085?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 07 Mar 2019 10:04:57 +0000 Flying into Singapore’s Changi Airport, visitors often remark on the hundreds of vessels, from supertankers to freighters, anchored along the coastline. Why are there so many? What are they doing there? A decade ago, the global recession created a maritime car park of apparent ghost ships in the Singapore Strait – vessels sat idle in the world’s busiest shipping lane as companies were going bust or did not have enough business to justify their use. Now there’s a similar stockpiling of ships in... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/2188740/what-singapore-strait-traffic-jam-says-about-world-economy?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/2188740/what-singapore-strait-traffic-jam-says-about-world-economy?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 06 Mar 2019 01:03:59 +0000 “I’VE seen two workers get killed and three injured by a piece of iron on a ship,” says Muhammed, who has worked for 10 years at the world’s most dangerous shipyard, Gadani, in the Pakistani province of Balochistan. “The workers weren’t aware of the dangling iron, as they were resting after doing some hard work in the yard, and all of a sudden that piece smashed into them.” The three South Asian beach yards of Gadani, Chittagong in Bangladesh, and Alang in India account for 80 per cent of the... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/2170256/two-years-pakistans-gadani-ship-breaking-disaster-why?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/2170256/two-years-pakistans-gadani-ship-breaking-disaster-why?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 28 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000 We’re waiting for the arrival of “Hawker Chan”, as he’s known in the game, and his operations manager Daniel Wee rattles off the number of food stalls they’ve opened in the past two years. “We’ve now three in Singapore, 11 outlets worldwide including the Philippines, Melbourne, Taiwan, Bangkok, and we’re opening soon in Kazakhstan.” A Chinese veteran hawker in the old Soviet Union? Really? “From the media interest and our investigation, there’s a market for what we do, it’s special,” adds... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/lifestyle-culture/article/2163188/what-makes-street-food-clutter-thailand-heritage?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/lifestyle-culture/article/2163188/what-makes-street-food-clutter-thailand-heritage?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 08 Sep 2018 04:30:00 +0000 America exported hot dogs and burgers, now US-style food trucks are wheeling into Asia with their own modern take on traditional fast food. Learning from the original US mobile food vans, Asian “truckers” are offering gourmet food, at prices far below those of high-end restaurants and just a few dollars more than street vendors. In Japan and South Korea, there’s a food truck offering every kind of cuisine from tacos to tofu. Southeast Asian authorities are slowly cottoning onto the idea that... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/lifestyle-culture/article/2163190/whats-driving-rise-asian-food-truck-industry?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/lifestyle-culture/article/2163190/whats-driving-rise-asian-food-truck-industry?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 08 Sep 2018 01:15:45 +0000 As voters trudge to Cambodia’s polling stations, with the threat of public services being withheld if they don’t tick the ruling party’s box, they’d be forgiven for thinking “what’s the point of all this?” Prime Minister Hun Sen authorised up to 50,000 election observers, but there’s nothing to see other than a political farce. Hun Sen and his Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) have been ruling with an iron fist for 33 years, ever since the embers of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime petered out. The... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2156583/hun-sens-cambodia-election-world-cup-just-one-team?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2156583/hun-sens-cambodia-election-world-cup-just-one-team?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 29 Jul 2018 00:30:00 +0000 NOW in his twilight years, Ted Ngoy takes a moment to reflect on his unconventional life. “I think I’ve made a little difference to the world,” he says humbly with a chuckle. The 77-year-old changed the lives of Cambodian refugees flooding into the United States during the nation’s civil war in the 70s and 80s. He wasn’t handing out money or houses, but did it another way. Making doughnuts. Ngoy was affectionately known as the ‘Donut King’ in America, starting an empire from scratch, and... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2152031/cambodian-donut-king-who-came-full-circle?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2152031/cambodian-donut-king-who-came-full-circle?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 23 Jun 2018 03:45:15 +0000 Will Donald Trump manage to cut a deal with Kim Jong-un? North Korean defectors aren’t holding their breath. According to Casey Lartigue, who with South Korean researcher Eunkoo Lee founded Teach North Korean Refugees (TNKR), one of the most prominent English schools in Seoul, most are unsure Kim can be trusted. “The refugees I spoke to, 70 to 80 per cent are optimistic that there’s going to be good change, but they still don’t believe North Korea has come to its senses. [Pyongyang] won’t give... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2149961/trump-kim-summit-english-school-giving-north-korean-defectors?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2149961/trump-kim-summit-english-school-giving-north-korean-defectors?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 10 Jun 2018 06:30:45 +0000 Asian garment factories are struggling to keep up with the relentless global appetite for cheap clothes, but Tuomo Poutiainen is convinced that sweatshops will soon be a thing of the past. “In 10 years, the time of sweatshops will be over,” says Poutiainen, a United Nations expert on the industry. “There is so much attention and visibility on this subject. Transparency means there’s no space for sweatshops and substandard conditions, there’s plenty of eyes to report them. Twenty years ago it was... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2142639/five-years-after-rana-plaza-disaster-are-asias-sweatshops-thing?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2142639/five-years-after-rana-plaza-disaster-are-asias-sweatshops-thing?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 22 Apr 2018 02:00:58 +0000 LOOKING wistfully around at the surroundings, a strange mix of marshland and random high-rise buildings, Shim Jong-rae shakes his head, echoing the sentiment of many residents: “It’s a ghost town.” For more than a decade, urban planners have been studying the construction of Songdo, South Korea, the world’s first Smart City. Built within 25 miles of Seoul, it was to be the antithesis of the suffocating, overpopulated capital. A new way of thinking for more than 300,000 residents, spread out over... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2137838/south-koreas-smart-city-songdo-not-quite-smart-enough?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2137838/south-koreas-smart-city-songdo-not-quite-smart-enough?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 25 Mar 2018 01:00:45 +0000