November 17, 2019
Despite nearly a decade of ‘flourishing’ ties between Taiwan and China under the presidency of Ma Jing-yeou, relations have taken a turn for the worse since the 2016 election. This is due to the pro-independence stance of the new Taiwanese president, Tsai Ing-wen, and her apparent rejection of the 1992 Consensus. This Consensus reached between Kuomintang (KMT) representatives and Beijing was fundamental in the development of t...
September 10, 2019
One can be spotted wearing a dupatta styled on her head in a manner reminiscent of Benazir Bhutto’s original, iconic look, accessorised with a casual Chanel brooch while the other can be seen emulating the Western runway with outfits fit for a modern, aristocratic, boss lady who might also happen to be a spoilt princess and heiress to a grand fortune. One is a self-appointed, uncertified cover girl for Habib Jalib’s “Nihati La...
August 18, 2019
Well, it looks like Amazon is back in the hot seat - that’s if it has ever got off of it. Their latest scandal involves their supplier, Foxconn, exploiting more than 1,000 school children in their Hengyang factory, in the Hunan province of China. Disguised as 'interns', the 16-18-year-old students have been made to work overtime, as well as night-shifts to meet production targets for the Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, and Kindle devic...
July 4, 2019
Vladimir Putin has fired his latest broadside against Western political ideas, by claiming that liberalism has become ‘obsolete’. The Russian President singled out LGBT issues, immigration, and multiculturalism as key liberal ideas that are now opposed by ‘the overwhelming majority of the population’. Naturally, this has led to consternation and widespread debate amongst academics and politicians, some agreeing with Putin, and...
June 23, 2019
“One country, two systems”- The modus operandi formulated by Deng Xiaoping in the early 1980s has ever since served as the blueprint for China’s reunification. The one country, two systems entails that there would be one China, whilst the distinct separate Chinese regions such as Hong Kong, formerly a British colony, and Macau, a Portuguese one, could maintain a certain amount of autonomy. This autonomy extended to areas such...
June 13, 2019
Going into the new year, there was a near-consensus among political punditry that, while not suffering an overall loss, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi would emerge from the country’s unusually long general election a diminished figure. Fast forward to the present, however, and such forecasts could not have been further from the truth; confounding all expectations, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – along with the r...