Jun
9
2013
China’s new first lady, Peng Liyuan, is leading a fashion renaissance in China, defiantly wearing Chinese designer outfits on the world stage. “National Mother” copycat handbags and scarves are now for sale on China’s online shopping site Taobao; a glut of eager customers has crashed one Chinese label’s website and the Chinese internet is buzzing …read more
Jun
8
2013
The “Made in China” label used to conjure up images of cheap and tacky mass-production; container-loads of plastic toys, plastic shoes, plastic kitchen utensils, plastic clutter. But the inexorable pace of Chinese growth has brought with it increasing manufacturing standards and ability, as well as a massive market of consumers increasingly clamorous for better design …read more
May
16
2013
Australia’s Chinese-language Sing Tao newspaper may routinely steal articles from the internet and from Australian newspapers and magazines, yet it has been congratulated by the NSW Parliament and this year it won an industry award. Sing Tao Editor Vincent Ho recently admitted to the theft of a 2,500 word feature article I wrote for the …read more
May
4
2013
Enthusiasm vibrating in his voice, the poet and activist A. Samad Said tells the Courier-Mail he is pretty sure the government in Malaysia will be booted out after tomorrow’s national election. “I feel very confident,” he said. “It’s been great, every day of the campaign has been great.”
Apr
13
2013
Horror years of slaughter and depravity linger in the minds of hundreds of Queenslanders. Refugees from the mindless brutality of Cambodia’s killing fields, they breathe the free air of Australia and remember a time of starvation and blood-soaked despair. And they watch as the leaders of the ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge regime escape justice one by …read more
Mar
24
2013
John Graham Harper crouches in his gym in southern China, bending his muscled legs and concentrating. Then he leaps up, using the power in his thighs and calves to shoot him up in a tremendous bounce. He lands neatly on a waist-high structure, an impressive feat. “It’s all in the explosive force,” he says with …read more
Mar
16
2013
Seeing the rows of small masked faces on the school bus made it all very clear for Sharon Carr. She had lived in Beijing for five years, and she loved the city and loved the people. It was home. She had a good job; her husband enjoyed his work. Her five-year-old son Matthew and her …read more
Feb
20
2013
The mayor from impoverished Gansu province, in China’s remote north, should have kept his hands in his pockets. In late November Yuan Zhanting, mayor of Lanzhou, became the latest senior official accused of corruption by ever-vigilant Chinese microbloggers. Photos of Yuan wearing a succession of luxury watches were posted on China’s Twitter equivalent, the popular …read more
Feb
14
2013
Always anxious to boost Myanmar’s struggling economy, Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has been taking advice from one economist in particular – the Australian academic Dr Sean Turnell. The effective leader of the opposition in the long benighted country, Ms Suu Kyi recently told CNN that Dr Turnell was her “favourite economist”.
Jan
19
2013
High up on a balcony of the ornately pillared Sofaer’s building in downtown Yangon, a woman is pegging out the washing. She ignores the spreading mildew that stains the building’s crumbling façade and the weeds that sprout from cracks in the masonry. Silhouetted against a century of history, she steps neatly round a jerry-rigged television …read more