Author: Louisa Lim

China’s cartographic obsession – Louisa Lim

When German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to give Chinese President Xi Jinping an antique map, she unleashed a Pandora’s box of cartographic tensions. The 1735 map – printed by a German publishing house but made by French cartographer Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville – depicted a China without Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia or Manchuria. In addition, the borders of Taiwan and Hainan were shown a different colour from China. At a single glance, this document undermines Beijing’s claims that these regions have been inalienable parts of its sovereign territory since ancient times.

To many Chinese, this gift was at best a shocking breach of etiquette, at worst a slap in the face.

Is China the new imperial power in Papua New Guinea? – Louisa Lim

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In shops across Papua New Guinea, Chinese shop-owners perched on high chairs watch over local shoppers to guard against theft, checking their bags before they are permitted to leave the premises. This striking act of physical dominance is symbolic of the distance between Chinese migrants and locals, according to journalist Jo Chandler, who has reported extensively from the Pacific nation: “There’s a real separateness about Chinese enterprise which is above and removed from this population.” The complicated tensions unleashed by Beijing’s growing role in the Pacific are pitting political elites against ordinary people, with sporadic explosions of violence targeting Chinese communities.

Crime and the dark side of the Chinese Dream – by Louisa Lim

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There was once a time when Chinese towns got rich producing a single cheap commodity such as the zip, the cigarette lighter or the humble button. In some parts of China, the model remains the same but the product is crime. Criminal villages – fanzui cun – are emerging, showing a darker side of Xi Jinping's Chinese Dream.

Not as sexy as the shark – by Louisa Lim

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Reviled in the West, the slimy slug-like bottom-feeders of the ocean known as sea-cucumbers have recently won another moniker: “the gold of the sea”. Skyrocketing demand for this prized feature of Chinese wedding banquets has driven up the price of beche-de-mer, causing knock-on impacts ranging from international sea-cucumber smuggling syndicates to a thriving black market to a collapse in sea-cucumber stocks to starvation in some parts of the world.

The fate of the lowly sea cucumber is a cautionary tale into how one country’s growing hunger for a particular food source can reverberate into unforeseen ecological and social crises on the other side of the world.

Can art bring down the government? – by Louisa Lim

In late July, after the death of Chinese Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, a ghostlike picture materialised on walls around the world in Melbourne, Sydney, Ottawa, New York City, Taiwan, Dublin, and even Beijing. It showed images of Liu Xiaobo floating skywards, hand in hand with his wife Liu Xia, with blank white expanses where their facial features should have been. This was the work of Badiucao, a radical Chinese artist who, like Banksy, hides behind a pseudonym. He keeps his identity secret out of caution: “If you’re spreading negative energy like me, drawing criminals of the state, you become a problem.”