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Raymond Zhong
For Raymond Zhong's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Japan Times
WORLD
Oct 6, 2022
Climate change made summer hotter and drier worldwide, study finds
Europe, China and North America were parched by extreme heat that would have been u2018virtually impossible' without the effects of global warming, scientists said.
Japan Times
WORLD
Sep 8, 2022
How to save a forest by burning it
As useful as prescribed burns can be for maintaining forests, they are tough to carry out — costly, labor-intensive, contingent on narrowing windows of favorable weather.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Tech
Aug 30, 2022
‘The eye of the storm’: Taiwan is caught in a great game over microchips
Taiwan is the biggest producer of the world's most advanced chips. It is also rapidly becoming one of the world's most dangerous geopolitical flashpoints.
Japan Times
WORLD
Feb 23, 2022
Climate forecasters warn of a ‘global wildfire crisis’
The likelihood of extreme, catastrophic fires could increase by up to one-third by 2050 and up to 52% by 2100, a new United Nations report estimates.
Japan Times
OLYMPICS
Feb 8, 2022
Beijing wanted the Winter Olympics. All it needed was snow.
The secret of winter sports is that many competitions take place on artificial snow. China's water-scarce capital had to go to enormous lengths to make enough of it.
Japan Times
WORLD
Jan 28, 2022
Did I turn off the stove? Yes, but maybe not the gas.
Over a 20-year period, emissions from stoves across the United States could be having the same effect in heating the planet as half a million gas-powered cars.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Dec 15, 2021
Trends in Arctic report card: ‘Consistent, alarming and undeniable’
The Arctic is heating up more than twice as quickly as the rest of the globe, exposing 'vulnerabilities' that will similarly 'unfold for our entire planet.'
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Jun 14, 2021
China’s censorship widens to Hong Kong’s vaunted film industry, with global implications
The new guidelines, which apply to both domestically produced and foreign films, come as a sharp slap to the artistic spirit of Hong Kong.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / FOCUS
Apr 12, 2021
Drought in Taiwan pits chipmakers against farmers
The island nation is going to great lengths to keep water flowing to its all-important semiconductor industry, including shutting off irrigation to legions of rice growers.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Jan 3, 2021
How Taiwan plans to stay (mostly) coronavirus-free
Consider for a moment, in this time of anguish and loss and death, of mass unemployment and flattened national economies, the Twilight Zone alternate reality that is Taiwan.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Tech
Dec 28, 2020
With money and waste, China fights for chip independence
In every corner of the country, investors, entrepreneurs and local officials are in a frenzy to build up semiconductor abilities, responding to a call from Xi Jinping.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Dec 20, 2020
No ‘negative’ news: How China censored the coronavirus
Officials scrambled to suppress inconvenient news and reclaim the narrative, according to confidential directives sent to local propaganda workers and news outlets.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Dec 17, 2020
As China tracked Muslims, Alibaba showed customers how they could, too
The discovery could thrust one of the world's most valuable internet companies into the storm of international condemnation surrounding China's treatment of its Muslim minorities.
EDITORIALS
Jun 10, 2011
Energy draft misses the point
The nuclear accidents at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in the Tohoku-Pacific region have given Japan second thoughts on the wisdom of pushing nuclear power generation. In view of the havoc wreaked by the nuclear plant crisis, Prime Minister Naoto Kan announced in late May in France a new policy goal of generating 20 percent of Japan's electricity from renewable sources by the early 2020s.

Longform

Historically, kabuki was considered the entertainment of the merchant and peasant classes, a far cry from how it is regarded today.
For Japan's oldest kabuki theater, the show must go on