Showing 1 - 10 of 13
Pageant fallout
Oped, Postbag, Published on 18/11/2025
» Re: "Turmoil in tiaras at Miss Universe in Thailand", (BP, Nov 6). There was an international furore a couple of weeks back over comments made by the co-organiser of the Miss Universe Pageant, Nawat Itsaragrisil, to Miss Mexico, Fatima Bosch.
Rare earths are definitely China's trump card
Oped, Angela Huyue Zhang, Published on 15/08/2025
» China's weaponisation of rare earths has emerged as a major flash point in US-China trade negotiations. These critical materials, especially the high-performance magnets they make possible, are vital components in electric vehicles (EVs), wind turbines, industrial robotics, and advanced defence systems. In response to China's strict rare-earths export controls, the United States has quietly lowered tariffs, relaxed export controls on AI chips, and even softened visa restrictions for Chinese students.
Kids: quality not quantity
Oped, Editorial, Published on 25/10/2024
» Labour Minister Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn recently floated a way of resolving the declining birth rate by increasing the amount of financial support to parents from 1,000 baht to 3,000 baht per month per child for a period of seven years.
Overcapacity in China causing global concern
Oped, Yi Fuxian, Published on 18/09/2024
» Chinese overcapacity is raising concerns worldwide. It is easy to see why: China accounts for nearly one-third of the world's value-added manufacturing, and one-fifth of global manufacturing exports. But there is good reason to believe that the decline of China's manufacturing sector is imminent.
Thailand's development model splutters
Oped, Peerasit Kamnuansilpa, Published on 16/03/2023
» Location-based economic development (LED) strategies, defined as government efforts to improve a particular area's economic and social conditions, were implemented in economically advanced countries long before they were in Thailand.
The next Green Revolution will be digitised
Oped, Maximo Torero, Published on 02/02/2023
» Farming is one of the world's oldest and most far-reaching endeavours. Meeting the growing food demands of the global population amid accelerating climate change presents an unprecedented high-wire act that requires human ingenuity, good governance, and technology.
A last look back at Asia this year
Oped, Curtis S Chin & Jose B Collazo, Published on 31/12/2021
» 2022 could not have come fast enough. For many in Thailand and no doubt the rest of the world, new hope based on increased vaccination rates against Covid-19 was overwhelmed by the spread of the Omicron variant at year-end. Thailand's travel and tourism sector continues to be particularly hard hit as entry and quarantine rules continue to change.
Mega-merger risks Thai digital future
Oped, Pavida Pananond, Published on 26/11/2021
» The Charoen Pokphand (CP) Group is on the move again to swell further in size, weight and power over the market. Having recently acquired Tesco's operations when the British retailer sold out and exited Thailand and Malaysia, CP is now aiming to consolidate its grip on the telecommunications industry in a planned merger between its True Corporation and Total Access Communications (DTAC), the local subsidiary of Norway's Telenor. If successful, the merger would reduce Thailand's major telecom players from three to two and further concentrate market dominance over the telecom market to the detriment of consumer choice and welfare.
Fixing the US-China tech split
Oped, Hoe Ee Khor & Suan Yong Foo, Published on 12/08/2021
» Heightened US-China tensions have raised the prospect of a deep global technology divide, potentially forcing other countries to choose which camp to join. There are plenty of grim scenarios involving irreconcilable splits between core technologies that power a wide range of products and services, from aircraft and automobiles to precision engineering for robotics and payment systems for e-commerce. Should these scenarios materialise, the world's two largest economies will pour huge amounts of resources into a zero-sum race to control technology's cutting edge.
Are we ready for the first real automatons?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 30/01/2021
» They were planning to put on a play written by an artificial intelligence programme in Prague, capital city of the Czech Republic, this month, to mark the invention of robots (or at least the idea of robots) in the same city exactly one hundred years ago. The coronavirus pandemic got in the way of that, and it will now only be available free online late next month. Kind of symbolic, really: the future is quite different than what they expected.