“China bashing”, i.e. shrill tones towards Beijing, had become a new popular sport in German political and media circles. In the following essay, Henrik Bork, a long-time China expert, argues for a pragmatic approach in dealing with the People’s Republic of China. For him, seeing
Seldom have German-Chinese relations in their 50-year history been as difficult as they are today. Although the People’s Republic of China remains Germany’s most important trading partner in 2021, the positions of the two sides on geopolitical issues could hardly be further apart. The opposing
As the 14th Winter Olympic Games draw to a close in Beijing, eagerly followed by some, but largely unnoticed, ignored or even boycotted by others, I feel the need to reflect on these two weeks of televised spectacle. To be sure, there seems to be
The following two letters from Professor Karl-Heinz Pohl to the editor of FAZ were both not printed. Mediastudies.asia publishes them here in order to draw attention to the highly one-sided, China-critical reporting in the German media. However, it is worth pointing out Sebastian Conrad’s excellent
Indonesia, the state with the largest Muslim population in the world, is in a process of continuous societal transformation. From the perspective of Media and Communication Studies, recent political developments towards an increasingly consolidated democratic system are of great interest. The comparison with Germany may
Hi Alka! Hi, Markus. Let me introduce the two others first: This is Saima, our Editor-in-Chief, and this is Yap Khai Qing, a journalism student at Xiamen University Malaysia. Hi Sama, hi Khai, nice to meet you guys. I think Saima wants to go first,
This is the first episode of our new series ‘Virtual Classroom’. It consists of a Q & A between Karl-Heinz Pohl, author of a text on “Chinese and Western values”, and 21 students from Xiamen University Malaysia, who have been carefully studying it – most
Professor Pohl, it seems that the media reporting on the Hong Kong protests is terribly biased. On the one hand are ‘Western’ media organizations that emphasize the topic of freedom, on the other hand are the official Chinese media that talk about chaos, disorder and
At The Cooler Lumpur Festival, they believe that discussion and dialogue is the hallmark of any great society. Hear, hear! They trust in “the irresistible and contagious power of a great idea and the latent potential it holds to inspire awareness, change and transformation” –