21 March 2004 Taiwan: The Best Possible Outcome By Gwynne Dyer “If Chen loses, the chances of war are about 20 percent,”said Arthur Ting of Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, only days before the vote on 20 March in which President Chen Shui-bian was seeking re-election. “If he wins, the risk rises to 40 percent.” …
10 December 2003 Triple Bluff over Taiwan By Gwynne Dyer Taiwan’s President Chen Shui-bian is bluffing when he hints at holding a referendum on independence from China. US President George W. Bush was bluffing three years ago when he promised to do “whatever it takes” to defend Taiwan, though he was serious last Tuesday when …
10 July 2003 Hong Kong: A Very Instructive Cock-Up By Gwynne Dyer Historians generally divide into two schools: the paranoids, who believe that there is a secret plot behind everything that happens, and the realists, who think that most large events are the result of a cock-up somewhere. The remarkable events in Hong Kong over …
17 April 2003 SARS and China: Get It Right Next Time By Gwynne Dyer The virus that causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) was identified on 15 April in a ten-country collaboration between 13 laboratories as a corona virus related to those that cause the common cold. “Now we can move away from methods like …
8 April 1997 Uighurs’ Independence By Gwynne Dyer “We think Deng’s death will bring a power struggle within the Chinese elite,” said Sargari Tarym, spokesman for the Uighur independence movement, in Moscow in late February. “If that happens, the independence movement in Turkestant will intensify.” In fact, it is already pretty intense. Given the tightness …