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January 24, 2025

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COMMENTARY

Feb 20, 2005

Nightmare choice set to confront China

By Frank Ching

HONG KONG -- North Korea's surprise announcement last week that it possesses nuclear weapons and would indefinitely boycott the six-party talks immensely complicates the Korean nuclear problem and puts additional pressure on China as host of the multilateral talks to get them started again.

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 19, 2005

Diaspora bridges China and ASEAN

By Eric Teo Chu Cheow

SINGAPORE -- On Feb. 9, the start of the Year of the Rooster, ethnic Chinese communities across Southeast Asia took stock of their progress and their future in the shadow of China's peaceful development and its strengthened status within the region of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations....

COMMENTARY

Feb 18, 2005

Blinders on a vital interest

By Robyn Lim

In relation to Iran, Japan needs to get its priorities straight. Currently, Japan is spending only 1 percent of its gross domestic product on defense while living in a dangerous region. It is critical for Japan's economic and strategic security that the United States remain willing to protect Japan's...

COMMENTARY

Feb 17, 2005

Racist banner looks frayed

By Gregory Clark

Understanding Japan and the Japanese was never meant to be easy. This is especially true for the Japanese attitude to foreigners -- at times exclusivist and at other times extremely open. There is an answer to the seeming contradiction, but it requires outsiders to accept that the Japanese might have...

COMMENTARY

Feb 16, 2005

Answering Pyongyang's divisive tack

By Ralph Cossa

HONOLULU -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's initial response to Pyongyang's surprise announcement that it felt compelled to suspend its participation in the six-party talks and that it had manufactured nukes was exactly right.

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 13, 2005

A laggard plan to end African poverty

By David Wall

LONDON — Last weekend the finance ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized countries met in London. British Finance Minister Gordon Brown tried to bounce his colleagues into setting up the largest aid program the world has ever seen: an International Finance Facility (IFF). He called it a new...

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Feb 13, 2005

Iraq election exposed two faces of China

By Harvey Stockwin

HONG KONG -- One unintended consequence of the Jan. 30 election in Iraq was that it exposed the hypocrisy and shortsightedness of China's policy toward Hong Kong and reunification with Taiwan. China not only expressed support for the rushed national election in its controlled press; it also donated $1...

COMMENTARY

Feb 12, 2005

Cross-strait flights unlikely to narrow gap

By Ralph Cossa

New Year! Finally, there's a bit of good news to report in cross-strait relations. During this holiday period, the first direct flights are taking place between mainland China and Taiwan since the 1949 Chinese civil war. But while both sides applaud these charter flights as an important step forward,...

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 12, 2005

Freedom, when it suits U.S.

By Ramesh Thakur

No one who watched the exhilaration and exuberance of Iraqis facing down the threat of bullets in order to cast their ballots can fail to have been moved. And for those who were actually in Iraq to witness this firsthand, battle-hardened and cynical journalists included, it must have been bliss indeed...

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 11, 2005

Easy money set up today's dollar slump

By Christopher Lingle

GUATEMALA CITY -- There is a great deal of misunderstanding about why the dollar is in a slump. But it's no mystery. Recently, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was quoted as blaming America's infamous twin deficits for the fall of the dollar. And many financial talking heads murmured with relief when...

COMMENTARY

Feb 11, 2005

Accept U.N. for what it isn't

By David Howell

LONDON -- At first glance, the slightly dated, 30-story United Nations building in New York's Lower East Side looks like misery mansion. Everything seems to be going wrong these days.

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 9, 2005

Howard Baker will be missed

By Fumio Kitamura

The image of ambassadors has changed greatly over the years. Until the mid-20th century, ambassadors were said to be "dwellers among the clouds" -- a Japanese phrase for the nobility. This metaphor showed what ordinary people thought of nobles. To the commoners busy with their daily work, the privileged...

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Atsuyoshi Koike, the president and CEO of Rapidus, says there is a “sense of urgency” when it comes to Japan’s efforts in manufacturing semiconductors. “We have to make sure we are successful,” he says.

Atsuyoshi Koike’s big game: Fourth down and 2 nanometers to go

By Kazuaki Nagata and Richard Meyer

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