Essays Archives

On a sweltering afternoon in June, the rice fields outside the small town of Omagari in Japan’s northern Akita prefecture are eerily deserted. Only the voice of Kimiko Kyono belting out from the speakers atop her orange Nissan breaks the silence. “Konnichiwa!” she exclaims to the open fields. “This is Kimiko Kyono of the Democratic Party of Japan!” Finally she spots a farmer: “Over there!” A campaign aide drives the car through the field in hot pursuit of the lone voter.
Posted July 3, 2009

Poverty-worn squid vendors and masseuses saunter along the sleepy beaches of Sihanoukville, stopping to gaze at the Gulf of Thailand, which sits untouched by commerce, except for a few tankers dotting the horizon. From across the bare sea, locals working in backpacker bungalows and sugar palm farms hear whispers of riches. “Hun Sen get oil. Give money me and daughter,” a blind beggar stutters.
Posted June 5, 2009

For much of the campaign season, there was little memorable about the position of any political party or inspiring about any political figure. It all seemed so scripted. The ruling Congress party, which began with a huge head-start over the Bharatiya Janata Party, the main opposition, appeared to have lost much of its advantage due to overconfidence. The BJP, which looked weak at first, began to act as if it actually was the dark-horse favorite. Everybody was ready for a long haul, expecting no clear winners and much postelection horse-trading.
Posted June 5, 2009

Even for the most jaded cynic, the image of serpentine queues of smiling men and women waiting patiently in the harsh heat of Indian summer to cast their votes, cannot fail to inspire. Also impressive is that India regularly carries out this logistical miracle almost flawlessly, given the scale—some 714 million voters this time, of whom 420 million voted, making the elections the world’s largest expression of democracy.
Posted June 5, 2009

There are few people in Indonesia who doubt that the incumbent president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, widely known as sby, will win the July 8 presidential election. Mr. Yudhoyono’s competitors, who include his predecessor and erstwhile boss, Megawati Sukarnoputri, and his current vice president, Jusuf Kalla, are trailing far behind in popularity polls. Pundits and pollsters alike doubt Ms. Megawati can win more than 20% of the popular vote, and Mr. Kalla would be considered extraordinarily lucky if he could manage 10% of voters’ support in his bid for the presidency. Barring some unforeseen disaster on the campaign trail, Mr. Yudhoyono will walk away with a simple majority of the vote and once again become the leader of the world’s third-largest democracy.
Posted June 5, 2009

Only last fall, Sanjiang in the province of Guangxi, was the China of every tourist’s dream. Stunning mountain rice terraces serve as a backdrop to quaint villages of airy, traditional wooden houses and peaked, covered bridges. Inside, people of the Dong and Buyi ethnic minorities—the women adorned in traditional smocks and knotted head coverings—move about the slow business of farming through picturesque paddies and green fields.
Posted June 5, 2009

It’s a momentous change in East Asia’s financial landscape. For the first time, Taiwan is opening its doors to Chinese money—both portfolio investment by Chinese institutional investors, and equity investment by Chinese firms. That’s one marker of how much cross-Strait relations have improved. Once on the brink of war, the two sides are now playing nice. China has softened toward the self-ruled island it views as a wayward province. Since 2000, economic ties have tightened; that process kicked into high gear when the China-friendly Ma Ying-jeou took power one year ago.
Posted June 5, 2009

With North Korea’s second nuclear test on May 25, South Korea’s Sunshine Policy has faded into a sunset of recriminations and threats that diplomats had been working assiduously to avoid ever since North Korea formally withdrew from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty six years ago in April 2003. The tragedy of the Sunshine policy, and all efforts at getting North Korea to give up its ambition to become a nuclear power, is that the same pattern repeats over and over: After seeming breakthroughs, terrible disillusion sets in. So how did the final breakdown occur?
Posted June 5, 2009

On May 22, the Film Forum in New York screened a newly restored print of Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 Cold War classic, “Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” This black comedy of nuclear madness and apocalyptic obsession seemed perfectly timed for North Korea’s second nuclear test just three days later. In particular the image of wild-eyed foreign policy advisor Dr. Strangelove, one of several characters played by Peter Sellers in the movie, could almost be a stand-in for Kim Jong Il, whom the media never tires of calling “unpredictable” and a “madman.” Supposedly, however, Kubrick based Dr. Strangelove, Teutonic accent and all, on Henry Kissinger.
Posted June 5, 2009

On May 18, a closed court inside Rangoon’s notorious Insein Prison assembled for the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi, opposition leader, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and repository of hope for Burmese near and far. The charge was violation of the terms of the house arrest to which the democratic icon has been subjected on and off for nearly 14 of the past 20 years. The circumstance that provoked it was a nocturnal swim across Inya Lake by American adventurer John Yettaw, who washed up at Daw Suu’s dilapidated University Avenue villa on May 3.
Posted June 5, 2009