COLUMNISTS
Resources
Principal content
David Pilling is the Asia editor of the Financial Times. He was previously Tokyo Bureau Chief for the FT from January 2002 to August 2008. His column ranges over business, investment, politics and economics.
David joined the FT in 1990. He has worked in London as an editor, in Chile and Argentina as a correspondent and covered the global pharmeutical and biotechnology industry. - -
Roll up for Japan’s medical mystery tour
With a smaller slice of a shrinking domestic pie, Japanese pharmaceutical companies have had to take the fight abroad. The country’s track record outside manufacturing does not bode well, but it is too soon to dismiss the industry, writes David Pilling
From Marx to Mohammed
Central Asia is now the focus of a new ‘Great Game’ as Russia, China and the US vie for a strategic foothold. David Pilling discusses four volumes that bring to the fore a region that deserves to be better known and convey themes too pressing to ignore
Out of Steppe
Inside Central Asia
In the Bloody Footsteps of Ghengis Khan
Xanadu
The state’s dead hand returns to haunt China
State-led companies that have received massive loans have the means to buy private enterprises, writes David Pilling
Talks with Burma are no laughing matter
Distasteful as it is to sit down with the generals, it is the right thing to do. Isolating Burma has pushed it towards China, writes David Pilling
Optimism endures China’s upheavals
Citizens are aware of their country’s failings and contradictions. Yet a common view is that these are inevitable side-effects of development. They are tolerable so long as tomorrow is better, writes David Pilling
Japan’s poodle strains at the American leash
Given the unspoken tensions over military bases, Japan’s pacifism and relations with China, Washington should be giddy at the DPJ’s promise to build a more equal, open alliance, writes David Pilling
Asia banks for a world turned upside down
If western banks have been turned upside down, in Asia they have been turned downside up. A year after the Lehman implosion, four of the world’s top 10 banks are Chinese, writes David Pilling
Beijing strains to hear the voice of the people
In the absence of elections and free speech, government’s ability to uncover the true state of public opinion is limited, writes David Pilling
A wiser Japan casts its vote without illusions
Hatoyama’s Democrats have responded to the national mood, offering direct support for farmers, poverty alleviation for families, a higher childcare allowance and better worker protection, writes David Pilling
India needs to put its bleak houses in order
The case of Ambani vs Ambani, where two brothers are in dispute over how their father’s business empire has been divided, has similarities to the themes Charles Dickens used to write about, says David Pilling
