- On China’s reforestation programme. Also, if you haven’t already, read Seeing Like a State.
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“After a half century of blistering economic growth, China is increasingly looking back at the environmental havoc it wreaked and searching for a greener path forward. It has boosted renewable energy, declared a “war on pollution,” and vowed to lower carbon emissions. But if Grain-for-Green is an indication, preserving biodiversity may represent a new challenge in China’s push to go green: protecting and restoring natural spaces with an eye to not just quantity, but quality.”
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.. - A review of No Friend But The Mountains, by JM Coetzee. I have not read the book, and am not sure I want to. Not, I hasten to add, because of the quality of the book or the lack of it, but because of the utter heartlessness the review manages to convey of a nation I am conflicted about.
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“The UNHCR has been extremely critical of Australia’s offshore policies. In 2017 it concluded that PNG and Nauru were intrinsically unsuitable as resettlement homes, given “the impossibility of local integration.” In other words, Papuans and Nauruans do not want refugees living among them, and refugees do not want to live in PNG or Nauru. New Zealand has offered to take 150 of the inmates, but Australia has vetoed this offer on the grounds that former detainees might make their way from New Zealand to Australia, thereby weakening the deterrent power of Australian policy.”
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.. - A thought-provoking write-up by Danny Quah:
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“In the new world order Asia’s leadership does not mean Asia has to become alternative architect. Instead, Asia only needs to be articulate and empowered consumer, and allow demand and supply to work in the marketplace. With care, thought, and unity, ASEAN (and indeed all of Asia) can continue to make a success of this new marketplace for world order.”
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.. - “A course at Yale-NUS College on dissent and resistance in Singapore was canceled two weeks before it was scheduled to start, the Singapore-based The Straits Times reported. Yale-NUS president Tan Tai Yong said some of the planned course activities and speakers would “infringe our commitment not to advance partisan political interests in our campus” and potentially expose students to the risk of breaking the law.”
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Via (where else) MR, dissent on dissent in Singapore.
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.. - “Lok, 31, lives with her parents in North Point, in Hong Kong Island’s Eastern District. It is more than an hour away from the island of Tsing Yi, where 35-year-old Chau lives with his parents. Their three-year-old daughter, Yu, spends Monday to Thursday with Lok and the weekend at Chau’s. They can’t move in together in one of their family homes, Lok says, because the bedroom space is simply too small for two adults and a child.”
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Not me being lazy, I promise, but this too, from MR… on the space crunch in Hong Kong, but oh so much more.
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