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Adam Minter
For Adam Minter's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 12, 2015
Robots leave behind Chinese factory workers
Chinese factory owners are increasingly turning to automation, leaving millions of low-skill workers with an uncomfortable sense of impending obsolescence.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 7, 2015
Beijing declares war on illegal golf courses
On April 1, the Chinese government quietly went to war against golf.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 31, 2015
Low-cost airlines elevate stress levels for pilots
Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot who steered a Germanwings flight into a mountainside, had a history of depression so debilitating that he left his pilot training program for six months in the late 2000s, reports Germany's Bild newspaper.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 27, 2015
Why Chinese tourists love Japan
Despite the apparent ill will that Beijing, and occasionally the Chinese public, express toward Tokyo, Chinese tourists can't seem to get enough of Japan. In 2014, Chinese visits to Japan increased 83 percent on the previous year.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 12, 2015
Asian airlines are running out of trained pilots
Asia's aviation market is booming, but the supply of pilots isn't keeping pace with the demand for flights. It's time that aviation companies in the West lend Asian airlines and governments a hand.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 27, 2015
China's fertile ground for the Islamic State group
Chinese authorities probably won't be assured by the likelihood of Uighurs who were driven out of Xinjiang and spent time with the Islamic State group taking a path that leads home.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 16, 2015
Your toothpaste is destroying Asia's rainforests
You probably had some palm oil today, which is found in roughly half of the products sold in modern supermarkets. It is the cause of one of the world's biggest environmental catastrophes, the decimation of Southeast Asia's rainforests.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 6, 2015
One-child policy didn't give China too many boys
Research suggests that it was China's liberalizing economic reforms of the 1970s and 1980s that might have been responsible for today's heavily skewed gender ratio in favor of boys.
COMMENTARY
Jan 20, 2015
China learns airline etiquette, the hard way
China is facing a crisis of airborne sanity and civility as its population of travelers rapidly grows.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 5, 2015
Saying goodbye to steel production in China
As China's domestic economy slows and competition increases amid widespread disgust with air pollution, one surprisingly popular option for the massive, state-owned steel mills is to bid China goodbye.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 30, 2014
Wanted: brides for millions of Chinese men
A fast-growing underclass is sure to pose an array of challenges for China. The victims are the millions of poor, mostly rural men, who cannot meet familial and social expectations that a man marry and start a family because of the country's skewed demographics.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Society
Dec 26, 2014
Scam shows China's shortage of brides reaching critical mass
In the villages outside Handan, China, a bachelor looking to marry a local girl needs to have as much as $64,000, the price tag for a suitable home and obligatory gifts. That is a bit out of the price range of many of the farmers in the area.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 19, 2014
Under Xi, China is coming clean on dirty air
Recent developments in China suggest that, after decades of prioritizing economic growth over the environment, the country now seems set to pressure and even embarrass some of its most powerful corporate citizens to curb pollution.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 15, 2014
NASA's Mars capsule will never land on Mars
Rather than admit the many shortcomings of the Orion space capsule, NASA has boldly promoted its development as the first step in America's journey to Mars. But it will not be going to Mars.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 8, 2014
Xi's cultural revolution looks doomed to fail
China's government has just reserved the right to send film and television actors, directors, writers and producers on all-expenses-paid, involuntary, 30-day sabbaticals to rural mining sites, border areas, and other remote locations.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 28, 2014
South China Sea competition takes a toll on reefs
Competing territorial claims and rogue fishermen are taking a toll on the South China Sea's coral reefs.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 16, 2014
More insulation can help China clean up its act
During the 2000s, nearly half of the world's new buildings were erected in China, yet only five percent of them met China's energy efficiency standards.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 11, 2014
China flouts efforts to protect world's wildlife
It would be nice to believe China's rhetoric that it cooperates with other countries in protecting wildlife. Yet, for two decades at least, Chinese consumer demand has been directly linked to the precipitous decline of wildlife populations around the globe.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 1, 2014
Commercial rockets go boom like NASA's
There's no risk-free way to launch 5,000 pounds of food, science experiments and equipment to the International Space Station. As Orbital Sciences found out last week, some ways are far more dangerous than others.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 29, 2014
A hobbit won't help with your emergency oxygen
Placing a priority on entertainment in preflight safety videos may not be the best way to teach first-time fliers emergency procedures.

Longform

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