Category: Asia

Liu Xiaobo ‘will be proven right in the end’: death exposes Western kowtowing to China

     

It came as little surprise when, after the death of the dissident Liu Xiaobo last week, China’s vast army of censors kicked into overdrive as they scrubbed away the outpouring of… Read more »

Remembering Liu Xiaobo: China’s strategy ‘born of weakness’

     

China is caught in a set of interlocking problems, notes STRATFOR analyst George Friedman: Its economic miracle has matured into more normal growth rates. It has a vast population that… Read more »

Dissident Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo dies – his legacy lives

     

Chinese Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, a prominent dissident since the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, has died after being denied permission to leave the country for treatment for… Read more »

China losing soft power edge ahead of G20 summit

     

  Until late last month Xi Jinping was looking forward to easy “soft power” victories at this week’s meetings with Angela Merkel in Berlin and the G20 summit in Hamburg… Read more »

Is Indonesia’s ‘pious democracy’ safe from Islamist extremism?

     

  Indonesia remains a model of moderate Islam, the country’s president said on Monday, countering critics who point to mass rallies by radical Muslims and the jailing of a Christian… Read more »

Labor rights deteriorate, democracy diminished

     

Democratic institutions deteriorate when labor rights diminish, research suggests. Similarly, unions serve as what Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam calls “schools for democracy” and also tend to enhance democratization. In which… Read more »

Internet the ‘de facto forum’ for Vietnam’s dissenting voices

     

A prominent blogger and environmental activist in Vietnam was sentenced last week to 10 years in prison on charges of national security offenses, including sharing anti-state propaganda on social media, The New… Read more »

Hong Kong – world’s only case of ‘freedom without democracy’

     

When Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule two decades ago, the city was seen as a model of what China might one day become: prosperous, modern, international, with the broad protections of the rule… Read more »

China’s treatment of Liu Xiaobo condemned as ‘a moral and political outrage’

     

The Chinese authorities have refused permission for Liu Xiaobo, a Nobel Peace laureate paroled from prison for cancer treatment, to go abroad for care, one of his lawyers said on Thursday,… Read more »

Liu Xiaobo’s condition ‘a blow to China’s democracy movement’

     

China’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo was granted his request to seek treatment for advanced liver cancer outside prison. Liu, who was sentenced to prison in 2009 for advocating… Read more »