For Ben Dooley's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
A billion-dollar Indonesian real estate development with ties to U.S. President Donald Trump has become the latest project in China's globe-spanning Belt and Road infrastructure project — just as Washington and Beijing are tussling over trade. A subsidiary of Chinese state-owned construction firm Metallurgical Corporation ...
The civilian group descended on the village under government instructions to "win the people's hearts," but it also had a darker mission: identifying and punishing threats to the Chinese state. Four months after the Communist Party sent the "work team" to Akeqie Kanle, a fifth ...
The interrogation of the American cultural center staffer lasted an hour and a half. The Chinese police got straight to the point: where did it get its funding? How did it vet speakers? And most importantly, what was its connection to the U.S. government? It ...
In February, four years after pressing pause on one of the world's most ambitious nuclear energy programs, China quietly green-lighted the construction of two new nuclear reactors. The first new approvals in over two years, the decision seems to bode well for the almost 200 ...
China's loss to Japan on a popular game show devoted to mental athletics has left the country's netizens atwitter and provoked some national soul-searching. The battleground was the popular television show "Super Brain," and the eventual winner a 9-year-old Japanese girl. The series is a sort ...
In early January, a toxic cloud of smog settled over Beijing. For nearly a week, it wreathed the city in a choking, yellow haze. Levels of PM2.5 — microscopic particles that can be absorbed into the lungs and bloodstream endangering human health — peaked at ...
The Islamic State's announcement last week of the kidnapping of two Japanese men has raised serious questions about how the crisis will affect Japan's Middle East policy. But for China, the unfolding drama has raised concerns about its neighbor's policies closer to home. News over the ...
For years, China literally kept the tragic story of its "comfort women" underground. Since 2007, the country's only museum dedicated to the women forced to work in Imperial Japanese Army brothels has overflowed two cramped rooms in a musty basement on the campus of Shanghai ...
With his warm smile and shy demeanor, actor Hirotaka Tsukagoshi doesn't look like a villain. But as he gets into character, lowering his voice to a demonic growl and arching his eyebrows into a cinematic expression of cruelty, you begin to see hints of the ...
A majority of Chinese citizens believe the United Nations, not the battlefield, is the proper venue for settling their country's maritime disputes with Japan, according to a first-of-its-kind opinion poll released last week. The survey, as reported by the University of Western Australia's Perth USAsia ...
