Philip Bowring has been based in Asia for forty-four years writing on regional financial and political issues successively as correspondent for the Financial Times, editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review and columnist for the International Herald Tribune. He currently writes columns for the South China Morning Post, www.asiasentinel.com, a website of which he is a founder, and The Globalist. He has just completed a history of Maritime Southeast Asia, focused mainly on the pre-colonial eras, to be published in 2018.