My Father and the Republic: A Talk with Novelist, Dramatist, and Historian Pai Hsien-yung (Video Interview)
Memo #298 Last fall the Asia Pacific Memo sat down with Pai Hsien-yung (Bai Xianyong 白先勇), the renowned novelist and son of Pai Chung-hsi (Bai Chongxi 白崇禧, 1893–1966), a gifted general and strategist, key Kuomintang leader, and close associate of Chiang Kai-shek, with whom he had a long and stormy relationship. While Pai Hsien-yung is a worthy subject […]
Modi: Breaking the Mold of Indian Politics (Part 1 of 2)
Memo #296 Narendra Modi’s Historic Electoral Victory. By John Harriss – jharriss [at] sfu.ca HE DID IT. That Narendra Modi should have won India’s 16th General Election is no great surprise. But the scale of his triumph is. Together with most other commentators I expected Modi to win, but thought it likely that he would be constrained by […]
Modi: Breaking the Mold of Indian Politics (part 2 of 2)
Memo #297 How Modi won may tell us something about the face of a Modi premiership. By John Harriss – jharriss [at] sfu.ca Read Part 1 of this memo HERE. Yes, Modi did it—won a transformative electoral victory. But HOW he did it is also important. There are three aspects of these elections that stand […]
Nǐ sǐ wǒ huó (“You Die, I live”): Xi Jinping’s Anti-Corruption Campaign as Power Consolidation
Memo #295 By Elizabeth MacArthur – e.macarthur [at] alumni.ubc.ca In a speech made shortly after coming to power in the fall of 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping famously vowed to crack down on CCP and State corruption by “upholding the fight against tigers and flies”. Over a year later, he has made good on his […]
Chinese SOEs and Non-Renewable Resource Development in Alberta
Memo #294 By Daniel Wood – dwood [at] alumni.ubc.ca Canada’s abundance of non-renewable energy resources, such as conventional and synthetic crude and natural gas, are vital to the national economy. According to Statistics Canada, jobs from this sector currently contribute to 4% of Canada’s total labour force and 6.2% of its GDP. Meanwhile, the number […]
A Canal Runs through It: Seoul’s Ara Waterway at Two
Memo #293 By Daniel Kane – danielkane [at] gmail.com The Han is the river of the South Korean capital of Seoul, and for most of that city’s history it served as highway to the Yellow Sea, some twenty kilometers to the west. To be sure, it still does, but since 1953 and the Korean War armistice […]
Coalitional Constraints in India: Why we shouldn’t fear Modi
Memo #292 By Geoffrey Macdonald – GPMacdonald [at] gmail.com Polling indicates that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will be announced next week as the clear winner of India’s scheduled parliamentary elections. With this result, the worst fears of many Indians and international observers will be realized: Narendra Modi, who is banned from entering the United […]
Engaging China: Myth, Aspiration, and Strategy in Canadian Policy from Trudeau to Harper (Video Interview with Paul Evans)
Memo #291 Behind the Book: Dr. Paul Evans discusses his latest book Engaging China: Myth, Aspiration, and Strategy in Canadian Policy from Trudeau to Harper Last month the Asia Pacific Memo sat down with Paul Evans to discuss his recently released book, Engaging China: Myth, Aspiration, and Strategy in Canadian Policy from Trudeau to Harper […]
North Korean Insiders: Some Give and Take with the Founders of Koryo Tours
Memo #290 Despite the often invoked image of North Korea as a closed, “Hermit Nation,” tourists—mainly from China, but also from Western countries—do visit there, currently to the tune of around 15,000-20,000 visitors per year. Of these, some 5000 are citizens of Western countries. For over a decade now, Koryo Tours, under the leadership of […]
Third Culture Kids and the Rise of a Cosmopolitan Ethos in the Asia-Pacific
Memo #289 By Grégoire Legault – gregoire.legault [at] alumni.ubc.ca The world is changing, thanks in great part to unparalleled levels of migration. According to the United Nations, more than 230 million people were living outside of their countries of birth in 2013, many of them originally born in Asia. Conceptually, foreign-born residents of third countries already […]