by * Alvin A. Camba, Contributor/Fellow, Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
In the bustling offshore gambling industry in the Philippines today, a conservative estimate of 100,000 people work. About 90 percent of them are mainland Chinese. In this interview, a Chinese customer service worker talks about how and why they came to the Philippines; their living and working conditions; incidents of misbehavior; and how the shops […]
by Alvin A. Camba, Contributor/Fellow, Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
The biggest recipient of Chinese foreign direct investments in the Philippines these days is the online or offshore gambling industry. Since Duterte assumed the presidency, real-estate companies, tours, hotels, and entertainment, as well as services across Metro Manila, Cebu, and the major cities have drawn the bulk of Chinese FDIs, after wholesale and retail. THE […]
by *Alvin A. Camba and **Stella Hong Zhang
WHEN PROVIDING Official Development Assistance or ODA, Western donors typically require the recipient states to adhere to international political norms, such as the ratification of human rights, fiscal austerity, bank secrecy laws, and environmental standards. For the World Bank or Asian Development Bank, these include the implementation of market-based mechanisms, macroeconomic reforms, and removal of […]
RICHARD JAVAD Heydarian, a resident commentator of GMA Network, has repeatedly pointed out that China has fooled the Philippines into giving up the South China Sea in exchange for unrealized capital. In numerous articles published across popular venues, Heydarian draws his conclusions based upon the Philippine Statistical Authority’s (PSA) data, which only shows aggregated committed […]
by Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA)
THE ROUGH and tumble world of politics is supposed to be the territory of male journalists in Indonesia, but many of their female counterparts say they are not only being assigned to cover it, they are also able to do it well.Yet while women journalists say that they have opportunities to cover politics, cultural norms […]
by Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA)
TIMOR LESTE’S ranking in the latest press-freedom index of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) leaped by 11 places from the previous year, but those on the ground do not feel any improvement in the country’s media conditions.Indeed, in January 2019 alone, there were already at least three cases of press intimidation and interference reported by the […]
by Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA)
THE ABSENCE of independent media and shrinking civic space have effectively deprived the citizens of Laos of timely and qualitative information, including those that are critical in keeping them safe from harm. Not surprisingly, more and more Laotians have turned to social media to seek and share news and information that are censored in the […]
by Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA)
IT WOULD be almost impossible to discuss media freedom in Vietnam without first reviewing the country’s political situation over the past year. The unique Communist one-party system, combined with a socialist-style free market economy, has created a narrow window of opportunity for non-state and independent media to grow over the years, despite state censorship. For […]
by Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA)
SINGAPORE’S media industry has long been tightly controlled by the government. This is unlikely to change in 2019; in fact, new legislation is expected that could further curb press freedom and freedom of expression.In January 2018, Parliament convened a Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods to hold public consultations and gather feedback on how to […]
by Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA)
IT HAS just a little more than a year before its five-year term ends, but Myanmar’s ruling National League of Democracy (NLD) still has a lot of promises left unfulfilled. Among these are reforming the country’s media and ensuring freedom of the press and freedom of expression – but no one now believes NLD will […]
