Last night, I turned off my computer, ignored the news all evening, reread W.H. Auden, and wept.

Beijing’s neutrality means it will not be taken seriously as power broker in Palestine, but that may be best course in a region becoming a quagmire.

The Joe Biden White House goes along all the way with Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist cabinet – to which Hamas sees terrorism as the only answer.

One thing I have learned from China and Israel is that terrorism committed by militants will inevitably be met by ruthless state repression.

Trump is said to have earned the disdain of allies. But despite more refined rhetoric, Biden has repeated, if not expanded, many of his odious policies.

Drama reveals there is perhaps no democracy today more desperate for political reforms or no country more blind to that need than America.

‘Oppenheimer’ the movie got on my nerves, so I reread a book by Werner Heisenberg to calm down.

Individuals, corporations and nations grow in strength not by having an easy time but by confronting severe, even existential, challenges.

Reading the classic political novel, how might BN(O)ers choose between crumbling and ‘nothing-works’ Britain and ‘totalitarian’ Hong Kong?

So long as Moscow, Kyiv and Washington are willing and able to continue the bloodbath, it’s the Chinese who will reap the benefits without a bullet fired.

When something becomes too complicated, psychologists say we go for ‘rules of thumb’. In Washington today, that rule is ‘the China threat’.

Self-governing Cook Islands and Niue have exchanged their freedom in political association with New Zealand for dominated status under the United States.

Beijing’s strategic dilemma is that to counter US containment, it needs a free hand in the South and East China seas and into the rest of the Pacific. But the more it pushes, the more it antagonises neighbouring countries.

Islands provide perfect example of ‘China threat’ for US and its allies as they then turn central and south Pacific into their sphere of influence.

International law of the sea is set to be subverted as America seeks to exercise extraterritorial defence claims over foreign exclusive economic zones beyond those of three Pacific island states.

Washington’s new pacts with three island states will establish a second island chain of attack as a complete sphere of influence in breach of international law and its own interpretation of freedom of navigation.

When the tweets of the top US envoy to Japan about China alarm even his bosses in Washington, you know it is time for a replacement.

If the US needed millions of dollars to shoot down a couple of hobbyist balloons, a trillion-dollar military budget is not enough to fight China.

The sad truth is that political assassination is increasingly tolerated as a method of foreign policy not only for ‘rogue’ states, but also some powerful democracies as well.

Ex-Singaporean foreign minister George Yeo has come under fire for suggesting cross-strait links ‘at the cultural and civilisational level’.

As ordinary Europeans suffer from the economic fallout of the Ukraine war, more are turning to the nationalist, xenophobic hard right. Maybe it’s time to make peace with Russia before the 2030s turns into the 1930s.

If US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is anything to go by, Washington wants to drag everyone into a fight of ‘with us or against us’.

According to independent observers who visited the region, Beijing has implemented policies to help Uygurs after crushing terrorist threat.

West’s globalisation of conflict has inextricably linked it to two of the most dangerous flashpoints – the Taiwan Strait and Korean peninsula.

In a recent essay, former HKU vice-chancellor Wang Gungwu puts today’s relationship between two countries down to the rejection of ‘the great convergence’.

When it comes to prosecuting anti-government protesters, Canada, the United States and Hong Kong have shown similar vengefulness.

The China threat has much more to do with the insecurity and indecision of the West towards the country, the emerging multipolar world and the erosion of Western dominance.

Controversial US political scientist John Mearsheimer argues the much-touted counter-attack against Russia was doomed from the start

Western military fabulists now warn that China may be expanding naval bases around the world faster than you can count aloud.

Europe now realises the high costs of conflict while mainland China knows what a ruthless Western proxy war in Taiwan would look like.