Philip Bowring

2 weeks ago | asiasentinel.com | Philip Bowring

He may be 78 years old, but Donald Trump sounded like a self-pitying spoiled child when he unveiled his packet of tariffs which is supposed to raise money, cure the trade deficit and deliver punishments, almost the worst of which fall on the US’s major Asian friends – Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and India – as well as Europe. The underlying theme in Trump’s mind is that unfair practices by foreigners account for the trade deficit.

3 weeks ago | johnmenadue.com | Philip Bowring

_My country, right or wrongseems to be the mantra to which Chinese people must adhere whether viaindoctrination in schools or by command of the national security law. However, noted the British writer G.K. Chesterton in a 1901 essay, that phrase was the last thing that a true patriot would say. Patriotism involved principles and behaviour, not to be conflated with the specific actions of ones national government.

3 weeks ago | asiasentinel.com | Hamish McDonald |Philip Bowring

This is a rare and excellent book about a region which had to be invented but is nonetheless very real for that. Melanesia, as Hamish McDonald points out early, was defined as islands which were not Polynesia and not Micronesia, and where people generally had blacker skin than those of the other South Pacific islands. Nor did they share, unlike the Poly…Keep reading with a 7-day free trialSubscribe to Asia Sentinel to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.

1 month ago | asiasentinel.com | Philip Bowring

Most of the US media have gone along with “Art of the Deal” Donald Trump’s claim of victory with the agreement for a consortium led by Wall Street giant BlackRock to acquire management of Panama’s ports. Hence it is claimed to have taken them away from China and returned them to US control. The reality is that port was never under Chinese control.

2 months ago | asiasentinel.com | Philip Bowring

MAGA may well mark the beginning of the end of the American empire. Empires are not just about seizing or controlling territory, least of all Greenland and Panama. They are about cultural as well as strategic dominance, about being the sum of a system which generally brings peace and a degree of prosperity through innovation and trade to a wide area in which different peoples acknowledge its benefits and so can tolerate the dilution of their own political and cultural independence.