Exchanging ideas with an American scholar

Just came back from KLCC after having an one-hour exchanges of broad ideas on the rise of China with an American scholar associating with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He had already met some of my friends in the Chinese-language media and academia and he is going to meet more of them later.

Broadly speaking, my central idea on the subject at the back of my mind is that the resurgence of China is not a linear event but a dialectical process of ups and downs as well as twists and turns in the past 150 years or so.

Also, I said that it seems that the specific triangular relations among China, Singapore and Taiwan have more dimensions than popularly reported in the American or other Western media. I must say I have learnt a great deal from the former journalist specialising in Indochina and Thailand.