Review of Sirin Phathanothai’s The Dragon’s Pearl

In the years following the end of the Second World War and the victory of the Chinese Communist Party in the Chinese Civil War, the threat of Communist insurgency was very real across Southeast Asia. For those countries which, like Thailand, wished to remain steadfastly a member of the capitalist west, yet had a longstanding relationship with China and many millions of ethnic Chinese residents, the situation was complex.

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Review of The S.E.A. Write Anthology of ASEAN Short Stories and Poems: The 30th Anniversary

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was created on a basis of non-interference in the internal affairs of member countries. Permitting a variety of autocratic regimes freedom from scrutiny and public comment was considered the best means of ensuring that countries often at each other’s throats could work together in areas of mutual interest. In recent years, ASEAN has progressed to include the ten states of the region as members with a variety of schemes aimed at closer economic integration. Nevertheless, despite protestations to the contrary, it is quite evident that there remains something of a social and democratic deficit in the association’s workings.

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