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Asia’s past unmasks PRC hegemony By Jerome Keating In 2013, when China first promoted its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and later its Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI), there was a haunting deja vu feeling about it. There still is. The world, but especially East Asia, needs to look back to June 29, 1940, when Japan made a similar announcement of a grand, idealistic plan for the region: the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. On the surface, the plan seemed perfect for the needs of the region. It would free East Asia from Dutch, French and British colonialism, and all the newly form...

The Kinmen and Matsu challenge By Jerome Keating Chiseled into rock in Kinmen County’s Jinhu Township (金湖) are the Chinese characters for one of Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) favorite memes. Translated they read: “Remember our days at Ju” (毋忘在莒), referencing the Warring States period when the armies of the state of Qi were forced to retreat to the city of Ju. Once there, they regrouped and returned to regain their lost territory. That meme serves as an important yet also an ironic reference in understanding the “limbo state” of Taiwan and why it needs to break its nebu...

US, PRC, ROC: a new Great Game? By Jerome Keating There are games and then there are games; some games are serious while others are just for fun. However, the real ones can be deadly, especially if they involve nations. One such example served as the backdrop for English author Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim; there he used “the Great Game” to describe the struggle between Great Britain and Russia over influence in central Asia. As this game played out, central Asia became a graveyard for many. Today, another such game is developing, but this game is in East Asia and it could be called t...

Changing the discourse on Taiwan By Jerome Keating As a nation that touts democracy as one of its chief values, the US has always suffered from a slow learning curve on nationalistic self-determination and democratic development in Asia, particularly in Taiwan. As T.S. Eliot said in his poem The Hollow Men: “Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act, falls the shadow.” Why? The quick and obvious excuse is that the US began as eurocentric. In its early, formative history, all settlements and subsequent colonies were on its east coast, and settlers and later immigran...