Politics and polemic Archive

The mystic and the dictator: the National Palace Museum’s debt to Russian painter Nicholas Roerich

An edited version of the following piece appeared in today’s Taipei Times. Aside from some low-key events in Europe and Latin America, yesterday’s Universal Day of Culture passed in the same way as previous installments: unremarked. Despite the lack of fanfare, the mind behind this occasion played a role in protecting of some of the […]
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Jammeh revelations are a reminder about need for transparency in Taiwan’s aid

The following op-ed appeared in today’s Taipei Times. Months after assuming the presidency of the Gambia in 1996, Yahya Jammeh made a bold foreign policy maneuver, cutting ties with China in favor of Taiwan. No observer of Taiwan’s diplomacy under then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) would have been laboring under any misapprehension as to the motives […]
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Playing the name game is never a joke

A shortened version of the following piece appeared in today’s Taipei Times: In the summer of 1992, Sir Mixalot was in heavy rotation at parties in northwest London. Rather than his big hit Baby’s Got Back, though, the jam that got most airplay was the Seattle rapper’s scathing takedown of racial profiling, One Time’s Got […]
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China’s new ‘softy power’ could spell trouble for Taiwan

A series of ridiculous incidents picked out by Taipei-based Swedish journalist Jojje Olsson highlight a disturbing trend that has emerged over the last few weeks. With a couple of Hong Kong security guards becoming the latest to put Neymar to shame with their theatrics, Olsson observed on Facebook that falling to the ground and/or (literally) […]
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The cog that slipped: Chiang Ching-kuo’s Russian odyssey

This is the original text of a piece that The Diplomat ran as the lead article in the October issue of their magazine. Although the editor was nice enough to give me this slot as it gave me more space, I still had to hack away mercilessly to the get things down to just under […]
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Ghosts of Volkhonka: Chiang, Deng and the Sunovka Years

The following is the original text of a piece that appeared in the travel section of the South China Morning Post’s Post Magazine. Props to the editor there for doing a sterling job with the butchery: though it gets somewhat easier as times goes on, seeing one’s offspring de-limbed continues to be a chastening experience. […]
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Time for Taiwan to make the personal touch count in its foreign aid

The following piece appeared in today’s Taipei Times: (NB: The original headline was not mine and is quite misleading. I’ve reverted to my original here. The text is exactly as it appeared in the paper.) Few publications have documented Taiwan’s official development assistance (ODA) efforts in such a personal way as the booklet Greening the […]
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End of the Road: Will Taiwan Pick Up Britain’s Tab in Guatemala?

“Officially, the British are unpopular in Guatemala,” wrote Nicholas Wollaston, while traveling in the Central American country in 1961. “For Britain occupies the whole of Belice Province by force, and calls it British Honduras. There are three empty seats in the Guatemala assembly with blue and white ribbons and marked ‘Belice’ [sic], and every map […]
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Tone deaf: Taiwan’s mobile phone providers continue to confound

There’s nothing like a good old fashioned whinge to see in the New Year, and this New Year has provided me with one nice and early. This week, No. 2 son’s time came. He’s been incredibly helpful around the flat – doing chores when he hasn’t even been asked, trying his best in a school […]
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Huang’s uneasy time in the spotlight

My op-ed from Taipei Times, Sunday 26 November: Foreign policy was always going to be tricky for President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration. It was one of the few areas that her predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), could hail as a success when he left power on single-digit approval ratings. Granted, Ma’s can be regarded as something […]
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