Pageantry Politics: Beauty Queens Challenging the Chinese Government
Memo #358 By Jonathan Brasnett – jonathan.brasnett [at] alumni.ubc.ca While beauty contests have often been analyzed as sites of gendered oppression or commodification, they have actually long been sites of political contestation and to a lesser degree, activism by the contestants. In November 2015, when the People’s Republic of China faced two beauty queens raising controversial […]
Preparing for Taiwan’s Future? KMT’s Keys for Reducing the Margin of Defeat
Memo #354 By: Justin Kwan – justin.kwan [at] alumni.ubc.ca In one of Taiwan’s latest opinion polls, Kuomintang (KMT) Presidential Candidate Eric Chu is projected to only have 20% of national support, a distant second place for a party that has traditionally dominated Taiwan’s political scene. While the party’s chances of winning the upcoming January election look […]
Taiwan’s Elections: Tsai Ing-wen’s Race to the Finish
Memo #353 By: Justin Kwan – justin.kwan [at] alumni.ubc.ca While the historic meeting between Ma Ying-jeou and Xi Jinping, the first between the leaders of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, has been described as Beijing’s way to “pre-emptively constrain the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] ahead of its likely victory,” its effect on the upcoming […]
Taiwan’s Water Shortage: Surrounded By Water That It Can’t Access
Memo #352 By: Denea Bascombe – denea.bascombe [at] alumni.ubc.ca Although its average annual rain fall is 2.6 times the global average, Taiwan is classified by the United Nations as an area where water resources are scarce. In the summer 2015, Taiwan faced its worst water shortage on record. What happens between when the rains fall […]
Non-government path of engagement with North Korea
Memo #351 By: Avram Agov – avram.agov [at] gmail.com The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is widely perceived as isolated and rogue state with nuclear weapons. The political standoff on the Korean peninsula begs the question: to engage or not to engage? The answer is: this is not the question, particularly in the humanitarian field, which is […]
Investigating Evidence: Japan’s War Responsibility in Southeast Asia (A Video Memo with Dr. Nobuyoshi Takashima)
Memo #350 Featuring Nobuyoshi Takashima [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyKGbIXU2OM[/youtube] A few weeks ago the Asia Pacific Memo sat down with Dr. Nobuyoshi Takashima, Professor Emertius at the University of the Ryukyus. He is a noted scholar in the areas of history education, textbook issues, war responsibilities and war memory, including those of Okinawa. Professor Takashima has been leading study tours to Malaysia and Singapore […]
South Korea Moves Ahead with Plans to Publish State-Authored Textbooks
Memo #348 By: Rufina K. Park – rufina.park [at] asiapacific.ca South Korea Nationalizes History Textbooks In October 2015, the South Korean government announced its decision to nationalize middle and high school history textbooks, which means that starting from 2017, schools will no longer have the option to choose from Ministry of Education approved independent publications. Instead, the […]
Spawn of China’s One-Child Policy
Memo #347 By: Christopher Rea – chris.rea [at] ubc.ca China’s One-Child Policy became, on October 29th, a two-child policy. The Policy was originally enacted to slow population growth, conserve resources, and ameliorate poverty; its actual results since 1979 have been well documented. One of its many unexpected effects was to inspire Mo Yan’s 2009 novel […]
Urbanized Interfaces: Chinese Visual Arts in the Age of Urbanization
Memo #346 By: Meiqin Wang – meiqin.wang [at] csun.edu and Minna Valjakka – minna.valjakka [at] helsinki.fi Interconnectedness between visual arts and urbanization defines the recent development of Chinese visual arts China’s massive urbanization in the past two decades has had a far-reaching impact on the practices of visual arts. These repercussions are evident in agencies, subject matters, themes, styles of […]
Gender question: Toward an egalitarian society in urban China?
Memo #344 By: Julie Remoiville – julie.remoiville [at] gmail.com The “International conference on gender equality and institutional social responsibility,” organized by UN Women, takes place October 22-23, 2015 in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province in China, and the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country. Considering the substantial efforts invested by the Chinese state to improve […]