Category: Asia

Hun Sen tightens hold on power as Cambodia pivots to Beijing

     

  Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia has been in power for more than 30 years. He recently vowed to stay in power and resist foreign interference. Authorities in the country arrested… Read more »

Beijing is exporting Great Firewall in effort to ‘tame’ Internet

     

Chinese authorities have detained a software developer for selling computer services that allow internet users to evade China’s “Great Firewall,” which blocks access to thousands of websites, from Facebook to… Read more »

Asian democracy: glass half-full or half-empty?

     

  Many observers been assuming that China’s rise is loading the dice against democracy in Asia and is part of a global authoritarian resurgence, notes Maiko Ichihara, an associate professor at… Read more »

Has the West lost it? Is democracy endangered?

     

……..Serge Schmemann asks in The New York Times: Countries rarely embrace democracy as their first choice; they have often tried monarchies, oligarchies or other forms of coercive government first. They… Read more »

China exploits vulnerability of open democracies

     

Openness, diversity and tolerance are the greatest strengths of the world’s liberal democracies. But to autocratic regimes like China, these same attributes are vulnerabilities ripe for exploitation. As reported by… Read more »

Malaysia, soccer highlight corruption’s corrosive impact on democracy

     

  The timing of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak’s White House visit seems especially questionable, considering that it will come just a month after the Justice Department announced that it was proceeding… Read more »

Liu Xiaobo’s legacy will shape China’s future, forum told

     

China’s government should ensure that the law grants access to independent legal counsel and family members, as well as addressing the ill-treatment in detention and deaths in custody, the United… Read more »

Fear spreading through Cambodia’s civil society

     

The opposition leader is in jail charged with treason, senior party officials have fled abroad and fear is spreading through Cambodia’s civil society as a government crackdown [openly endorsed by… Read more »

Hun Sen jettisons last shreds of Cambodia’s democracy

     

Hun Sen, Cambodia’s prime minister, has vowed to spend another decade in office, a day after his main opponent was charged with treason amid an escalating crackdown on dissent, The… Read more »