China’s Heavy 5G Hand in the Classroom: Combining its Social Credit Score with the latest IT by 2020

Posted on February 3, 2019 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 2, February 2019

Young students at their desks all with mobilephones. The mobilephone has become seen as a ‘must have’, an item of necessity among the Chinese people and China as the world’s largest country is now recognised to have the most mobilephone users. Source: Pexels.

Victor Mair, Ph.D.

University of Pennsylvania

I recently had a good, long talk with a young American who is teaching at a major Chinese university on behalf of a top American university.

He kept saying that life in China now is becoming more and more “intense” (he repeated that word many times). The politicization of life is felt in countless ways.

He said that the Communist Party Secretary of his school marched into his classroom one day without announcing it ahead of time and without even saying anything to him when she barged in. She started inspecting everything he’d written on the blackboards and that the students had written in their notebooks. She had her camera out and was taking pictures the whole while.

Continue reading →

Taiwan and the Lesson of Chiang Kai-shek: Hard Cuts Soft

Posted on January 22, 2019 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 1, January 2019

Ma Ying-jeou is photographed next to a podium. He is smiling, holding his glasses in his hands.

Taiwan president-elect Ma Ying-jeou makes a speech, 2011. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Arthur Waldron, Ph.D.

University of Pennsylvania

Taiwan is never to be taken for granted. We really have to get one thing straight, which is that without Chiang Kai-shek (CKS), his mainlander army, and even aspects of his dictatorship, the free Taiwan that we love today simply would not exist. Its natural leaders, both from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Kuomintang (KMT), would either be long dead or in prison, while its young people, now among the best educated in the world, would be memorizing idiocies from the imperial thoughts of Xi Jinping.

Continue reading →

THE BATTLE FOR WEST PAPUA

Posted on January 18, 2019 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 8, No. 1, January 2019

Ben Bohane

Photojournalist

Supporters carry West Papuan leader Benny Wenda through Port Vila, Vanuatu. The supporters are holding flags and a man in a red shirt appears is sitting on a plank of wood held up by the crowd.

Reports of the Indonesian military using white phosphorous munitions on West Papuan civilians in December are only the latest horror in a decades-old jungle war forgotten by the world. But new geopolitical maneuvering may soon change the balance of power here, prompting regional concern about an intensifying battle for this rich remote province of Indonesia. It is time for the US and Australia to change policy, complementing Pacific island diplomacy, or risk a major strategic setback at the crossroads of Asia and the Pacific.

Once again, Papuan highlanders have fled their villages into the bush where they are starving and being hunted by Indonesian security forces.

Fighting between OPM (Free Papua Movement) guerrillas and the Indonesian military has increased in recent months creating a fresh humanitarian crisis in a region cut off from the world: Indonesia prevents all foreign media and NGOs from operating here. This makes West Papua perhaps the only territory besides North Korea that is so inaccessible to the international community.

Continue reading →

Huawei and China: Not Just Business as Usual

Posted on January 1, 2019 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 8, No. 1, January 2019

A Huawei mobile smartphone is photographed close-up. The home screen is visible.

Huawei at Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, 2015. Source: Karlis Dambrans via Flickr.

Douglas Black

Technology Journalist

To the average consumer around the world, Huawei is likely thought of as a Chinese company that makes nice phones — a “Chinese Apple” of sorts. The average American consumer might associate the firm as one that makes nice phones but, for some vague, political reasons, is not trustworthy. As of early December, the average Canadian consumer might recognize Huawei as the company at the focus of some political gamesmanship between the US, Canada, and China. All of these lay-interpretations are indeed valid, but there is a great deal more going on than revealed by a cursory glance. This article is intended as a brief explainer of Huawei’s history and current market position, the importance of the company to the ruling Communist Party and their strategic goals, and the far-reaching implications of the outcome of the arrest of Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou.

Continue reading →

Wall Street Elites Against Democracy? A Case Study in Pro-China Media Bias

Posted on December 3, 2018 by admin

Press Reaction to the November 2018 speech by Dr. Peter Navarro, Director of the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, was biased in a negative direction.

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 12, December 2018

President Donald Trump is photographed seated in the Roosevelt Room.

President Donald Trump in the Roosevelt Room. Trump signed proclamations that imposed a 25-percent tarriff on imported steel and a 10-percent tarriff on imported alumninum. Source: The Epoch Times via Flickr.

Anders Corr, Ph.D.

Publisher of the Journal of Political Risk

Dr. Peter Navarro, Director of the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, gave a speech on November 9 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. The title of the speech was “Economic Security as National Security”, which Dr. Navarro, a Harvard-educated economist, argues is the maxim of the Trump Administration. After the speech, Dr. Navarro was attacked in the media, but not about his main points. The negative, and one might argue biased, coverage came from the Wall Street Journal, CNBC, the Atlantic, and Director of the National Economic Council, Larry Kudlow, among others. The negative response centered on Dr. Navarro’s controversial claim that Wall Street elites have undue influence on U.S. policy having to do with China. Tempers were likely frayed at the time due to planning, negotiations and internal maneuvering in advance of a high stakes late November meeting then being planned between Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping at the G-20 meeting in Argentina. Worries were high that lack of progress on at least the outline of an agreement at the meeting could lead to deepening tariffs between the countries, and fears in the financial sector of falling stock markets or even a recession. But the bias and infighting of the attacks were unbecoming of these media outlets, and of Mr. Kudlow, the Director of the National Economic Council.

Continue reading →