Michael Sainsbury Global Pulse Magazine, April 1, 2015. Thailand has emerged as an unlikely touch point for China’s increasingly aggressive campaign against its Muslim ethnic Uyghur minority. Beijing has been battling the Uyghurs for millenia; the latest round began in seriousness in 2009. The Communist Party’s policy of encouraging ethnic Han to migrate from
Michael Sainsbury Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign is opaque, utterly devoid of due process — and hurting big business. When Rio Tinto chief executive Sam Walsh, then head of the company’s iron ore division, inked two high-profile deals with Chinalco president Sun Zhaoxue in 2010, little was he to know that just four years later Sun would be
Michael Sainsbury Global Pulse Magazine As China’s supreme leader Xi Jinping sails into his third year at the helm of the world’s most populous nation, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: some of the most vitally important soldiers on the ground in the Communist Party’s war of survival do not carry guns. Most have never
Michael Sainsbury Pope Francis, the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, this week hopes to put his stamp on Asia. The pope’s six-day trip to Sri Lanka and the Philippines aims to convey the church’s message to billions of potential converts. Asia today is home to 140 million Catholics. There are an estimated 73
Michael Sainsbury Within the high walls of Zhongnanhai, the sprawling Chinese Communist Party leadership compound in central Beijing, there would have been conniptions after Maithripala Sirisena ran over the top of incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa in last Thursday’s Sri Lankan presidential elections. Democracy had punched a hole in the CCP’s Indian Ocean strategy, commonly known as