More than a month after the arbitral tribunal set up under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea decided in favor of the Philippines in its arbitration case against China on disputes in ...More
EJ Insight2016-08-15
In America, Hillary Clinton is calling for the shattering of the highest and hardest glass ceiling of them all by electing a woman president of the United States. In Britain, Theresa May was catapulte ...More
EJ Insight2016-08-09
Last week, two Hong Kong journalists were sentenced to prison in China. The similarity of their case to that of the five disappearing/reappearing booksellers grabbed public attention since these two m ...More
EJ Insight2016-08-02
Two weeks after the arbitral tribunal of the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea issued its award to the Philippines, China continues to seek to undermine the legitimacy of the tribunal, m ...More
EJ Insight2016-07-26
An international court in The Hague has ruled that China's trump card in its claims in the South China Sea – its long historical relationship – as depicted in a nine-dash-line shown on official maps e ...More
EJ Insight2016-07-14
Even before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague announced in late June that the arbitral tribunal in the case of the Philippines against China will issue its award, or decision, on July 12 ...More
EJ Insight2016-07-11
Disclosures by released bookseller Lam Wing-kee of his treatment in mainland China and the resultant outcry have spurred Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying to ask for a review of the notification mechani ...More
EJ Insight2016-07-04
The British referendum on quitting the European Union, which is causing tremors across Europe, is being used by China to strengthen its argument against democracy. On Friday, the state-owned Global Ti ...More
EJ Insight2016-06-27
Lam Wing-kee. Lam Wing-kee. Lam Wing-kee. Remember that name. That is a name that should go down in history – Hong Kong’s history and China’s history as well. For Lam Wing-kee, a 61-year-old bookselle ...More
EJ Insight2016-06-21
The Chinese Communist Party finds itself in a dilemma: should it rejoice over the decline this year in the number of Hong Kong people who commemorated the anniversary of the June 4, 1989 crackdown in ...More
EJ Insight2016-06-13
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s scolding of a Canadian reporter for daring to ask a question about human rights in China has made headlines around the world. The unexpected rant reflects China’s at ...More
EJ Insight2016-06-06
The visit by Zhang Dejiang to Hong Kong, during which he held a brief meeting with four pan-democratic legislators, was clearly an attempt by Beijing to appear to be conciliatory. Zhang – the third-ra ...More
EJ Insight2016-05-31
In response to the thoughtful inaugural address by Taiwan’s new president, Tsai Ing-wen, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office had a simple rejoinder: her speech was an “incomplete test answer”. In Beijing's ...More
EJ Insight2016-05-23
Fifty years ago this week, China embarked on what would turn out to be 10 years of turmoil known as the Cultural Revolution. It was not a revolution in the usual sense, in that it was initiated from a ...More
EJ Insight2016-05-17
Chinese political dictionaries define an overseas Chinese as a Chinese national who resides overseas. That is a narrow, legal definition. But many people, including the mainland government, use it loo ...More
EJ Insight2016-05-09
After the disappearance last December of Hong Kong bookseller Lee Bo, Britain’s foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, asked Beijing for information on his whereabouts, pointing out that the 65-year-old w ...More
EJ Insight2016-05-03
In mid-April, the Foreign Correspondents Club of Hong Kong sponsored a lunch talk on the rule of law in China. What set this talk apart was the speaker: Wang Zhenmin, head of the law department of the ...More
EJ Insight2016-04-25
China failed last week to pressure Japan and other G7 countries into not discussing the South China Sea when the group met in Hiroshima. Instead, foreign ministers from the seven countries issued a jo ...More
EJ Insight2016-04-18
For a country that believes strongly in non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs, China, oddly, is constantly telling other countries what they can and cannot talk about. Last week, China ...More
EJ Insight2016-04-11
The Hong Kong National Party, whose ideas of Hong Kong independence were weighed and dismissed by older and, presumably, wiser heads in previous years, nonetheless has succeeded in getting the attenti ...More
EJ Insight2016-04-05
