August 2017

After Nuclear Testing By North Korea, Uncharted Territory For The International Community Lies Ahead

With recent nuclear testing by North Korea, following claims by the rogue nation that it has manufactured a hydrogen bomb, times are highly dangerous not only for the Asia Pacific, but the world at large. North Korea was rocked by strong tremors on Sunday, with North Korea claiming that this was hydrogen bomb testing. This was North Korea’s sixth nuclear weapons test and was ten times more powerful than its fifth weapons test, making the test on Sunday North Korea’s most powerful weapons test yet...

Recent Debates About Teaching Of Classical Chinese In Taiwan

A recent statement by the Association for Taiwan Literature calling on the Ministry of Education to change the education curriculum in Taiwan to focus less on traditional Chinese classics and instead to draw on materials more suitable to contemporary Taiwan is the end result of a series of debates in past months about differences between Taiwanese and Chinese literature, as well as language learning in Taiwan...

The Taipei Dome Controversy And Issues Of Entrenched Political Corruption In Taiwan?

Controversy over the Taipei Dome continues, having dragged out at this point for years, with all members of the Taipei Dome safety review committee listed as defendants in the ongoing criminal investigation into the Taipei Dome’s construction process. The controversy is revealing of the endemic problem of political corruption in infrastructure development projects in Taiwan...

McKenzie Wark’s Take On Wang Hui And Leftist Orientalism

A recent essay by McKenzie Wark on Chinese New Left intellectual Wang Hui published on Verso Books’ blog proves an exercise in western academic leftists’ lack of knowledge of Asia and their inadvertent support of individuals with politics that they would likely find repulsive, if not for lack of sufficient knowledge about Asia and wishful desire to find analogues to themselves in non-western countries. It is instructive to examine this essay more closely in order to understand what we might term a form of leftist orientalism...