Democracy

Double Tenth speech: A softer Lai, but no thaw across the Taiwan Strait

Taiwan President Lai Ching-te’s Double Tenth Day address prioritised economic relief over cross-strait policy. Academics told Lianhe Zaobao’s Taipei correspondent Lai Oi Lai that the speech is a cautious move to calm tensions with Beijing and win domestic voters.

Lai Oi Lai

12 Oct 2026

How China’s ethnic unity law targets Taiwanese identity

China’s new Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law goes beyond domestic ethnic policy, bringing cross-strait exchanges, media, education and online activity into a broader political narrative aimed at shaping Taiwanese identity and advancing unification, argues academic Chang Chun-Yen.

Chang Chun-Yen

29 Sep 2026

Trump-Xi summit: The ‘China threat’ and America’s real war

American commentary is resurrecting the “China threat” narrative ahead of Xi’s visit. US academic Ma Haiyun takes a look at US foreign policy towards China and Israel, revealing a stark asymmetry in how US’s foreign entanglements are managed and judged.

Ma Haiyun

24 Sep 2026

[Video] Bilahari Kausikan: How to navigate the new world order

Bilahari Kausikan, in an interview with ThinkChina editor Chow Yian Ping, examines how US-China rivalry is reshaping the global order, why China’s “China dream” narrative of national rejuvenation remains powerful but limiting, and how a more fluid, multipolar Asia will test the nimbleness of smaller states such as Singapore.

Chow Yian Ping

12 Aug 2026

Why Trump is ready to lose the midterms

As the US midterms loom and polls plunge, Donald Trump appears strangely indifferent to his party’s fate. US commentator Ian Bremmer argues that despite Trump’s claims of rigged systems, US institutional guardrails will hold as the post-Trump era nears.

Ian Bremmer

07 Aug 2026

Fukuyama: A superpower at war with itself

Political scientist Francis Fukuyama tells Lianhe Zaobao video producer Audrey Jiajia Li that America on its 250th anniversary is divided and polarised as never before, but there is still hope if it can believe in itself again.

Audrey Jiajia Li

13 Jul 2026

From founding order to utopian drift: How America lost its centre

Tracing the US’s shift from its founding constitutional order to a period of ideological experimentation and internal fragmentation, Chinese commentator Jun Ma examines how competing visions of society have reshaped its political centre.

Jun Ma

25 May 2026

Can Trump survive a fourth political assassination attempt?

Reflecting on the assassination attempts against US President Trump, commentator Deng Yuwen argues that institutions once seen as sources of public confidence have weakened, while repeated gunfire in symbolic spaces of power shows external hatred increasingly penetrating the system’s boundaries. This is especially dangerous when the US president becomes a highly symbolic figure embodying political conflict.

Deng Yuwen

28 Apr 2026

How civilisational politics fuels today’s wars

Academic Ma Haiyun traces the history of civilisational conflict narratives in Western strategic thinking, built on Jewish intellectual foundations, long before the rise of Samuel P. Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Such approaches have had a profound effect on influencing the US’s behaviour in the Middle East and spillover effects in the region.

Ma Haiyun

22 Apr 2026

The tyranny of too much democracy: Confucius’s answer

Democracy today has lost some of its shine, with issues such as the rise of right-wing populist parties worrying some. But part of the problem lies in the conflation of two distinct ideas — liberalism and democracy. If the balance between liberalism and democracy needs to be restored, might a Confucian mixed regime be a possible alternative? Chinese academic Tongdong Bai contemplates the question.

Tongdong Bai

13 Apr 2026

Nepal’s new guard: How Gen Z fuelled a political sea change

In an unforeseen political upheaval for Nepal that saw the Rashtriya Swatantra Party win the largest political mandate in modern history, academic Rishi Gupta explores why Balen Shah and his party struck a chord across age groups, and how the new government plans to do a balancing act between India and China.

Rishi Gupta

02 Apr 2026

Taiwan in the shadow of a Trump-China deal

While Trump 2.0 has shown that the US may not sway towards Taiwan as readily as before, Trump’s actions in Venezuela and Iran may be good for Taiwan, by tempering China’s ambitions. Taiwanese academic Ho Ming-sho weights the pros and cons. 

Ho Ming-sho

31 Mar 2026