@nytimes Southeast Asia Bureau Chief. Previously covering China from 2010-2021. Pronounced Sweet, without the T. Previous homes: 🇨🇳🇭🇰🇺🇸🇸🇬
Bangkok, Thailand
- Tweets 20,983
- Following 5,033
- Followers 93,336
- Likes 9,822
Pinned Tweet
Here’s one of the more uplifting stories I’ve worked on in a while. I went to Mae Sot to hang out with Burmese women who are trying soccer for the first time — in exile. Stunning photos by @laurendecicca nytimes.com/2024/09/23/world…
17
21
118
145,853
I shadowed several groups in the Philippines going door to door for Leni Robredo. The majority of them are first-time voters or too young to vote. I left inspired by their energy and their passion. nytimes.com/2022/05/01/world…
125
4,656
16,664
Every journalist knows that a single death is a tragedy, a million a statistic. 68,000 people have recovered from the coronavirus outbreak, while nearly 5,000 have died. @vwang3 and I zoom in on two of them: two 29-yr-old female medical workers from Wuhan. tinyurl.com/qmqcype
238
2,737
6,694
I spoke to policing experts on Indonesia, who said the soccer tragedy in Malang speaks to broader issues confronting the police force. Poor training in crowd control, a highly militarized force, and crucially, almost accountable to no one. nytimes.com/2022/10/03/world…
83
1,692
3,745
This is alarming. World’s first systematic examination of antibody levels in patients who had recovered from Covid-19 found nearly a third had surprisingly low levels of antibodies. scmp.com/news/china/science/…
136
2,335
3,337
Thrilled to see the Filipina inventor of banana ketchup in “Overlooked No More.” What a fascinating history. nytimes.com/2022/09/29/obitu…
7
805
3,269
What did Mr. Marcos accomplish in the Senate? While in his six years in the Senate, nearly 70 percent of the 52 laws he pushed for were on designating holidays and festivals, renaming highways and reapportioning provinces and cities.
15
1,140
2,889
I first heard of Ferdinand Marcos when I was five, so covering his son at his rallies more than 30 years later was surreal. @CamilleElemia and I explore the context that has shaped his rise and delve into his track record. nytimes.com/2022/04/13/world…
48
1,064
2,741
Wow. Singapore is imposing sanctions on Russia. Extremely unusual for a country that typically abides only by a U.N. Security Council decision, said it had to act because of the "unprecedented gravity of Russia's attack on Ukraine." channelnewsasia.com/watch/mi…
53
706
2,188
Chay Hofileña, a senior editor at Rappler: “If, in a Duterte Presidency, the main issue was human rights, in a Marcos Presidency it would be truth. I don’t know what’s worse, someone who doesn’t value life or someone who doesn’t value truth.” newyorker.com/news/dispatch/…
21
844
2,259
1. There's a lot of buzz on the astronomical jump in cases from Hubei on Wednesday -- 14,840 new confirmed cases, almost 10 x compared to a day earlier. New deaths rose to 242, more than double fr day b4. The govt has changed the diagnostic criteria used to confirm cases. More ..
72
1,319
1,905
Grateful to Dr. Raquel Fortun for allowing me to spend some time with her and several skeletons of the drug war. Here’s my profile on @Doc4Dead: nytimes.com/2022/06/03/world…
10
521
1,892
I was having mild labor contractions in a hospital in February when I got a tip that Chinese researchers were mapping the faces of Uighurs using DNA samples. I said: Wait, what? nyti.ms/34Ni9Hq
65
1,084
1,710
3. More crucially, we were interviewing patients, who were showing all the symptoms of the new coronavirus, who said they were tested four to five times before they got a positive result. Li Wenliang, the whistleblower doctor, was one of them.
29
552
1,545
1. Folks, a while back I said there was no need to run for the hills after China first started reporting the mysterious pneumonia like illnesses in Wuhan. I still maintain that but I am now more worried. nytimes.com/2020/01/15/world…
58
944
1,396
2. Effectively, this means the govt is giving doctors greater discretion to clinically diagnose patients. Previously, they could only confirm cases with the nucleic acid test kits. But a govt expert said recently these were only 30-40 percent accurate.
38
446
1,321
Everyone in the @nytimes Beijing bureau was involved in this account of the crucial first weeks in Wuhan that explains how the government’s refusal to come clean with its people led to the spread of the coronavirus. We hope you’ll read it: nytimes.com/2020/02/01/world…
46
767
1,329
When I heard that people were making cancer drugs from scratch in China from pharmaceutical ingredients that they found online, I couldn't believe it. But I spoke to a couple of these DIY drugmakers. Here's a heartbreaking tale from one of them. nyti.ms/2DgRGY7
66
788
1,355
4. Chinese health experts say this is why there's a change: they now realize that there's a group of patients who only test positive very late with the nucleic acid testing. Because of how transmissible the disease is, they want to include these people as confirmed cases.
20
447
1,250
5. The point is to isolate these patients quickly and treat them. Doctors are now clinically diagnosing these people with CT scans. The advantage of these scans are they are immediate. Previously, patients had to wait at least two days for their results.
31
409
1,253
I interviewed a female professor this morning and told her of the NYT's drive to quote more women in stories. She sent me this extensive searchable list of female experts across various fields: #womenalsoknowstuff womenalsoknowstuff.com/
15
579
1,223
It’s official. I have a new beat! Covering the region I was born and raised in has been a long-held dream of mine. Thankful and thrilled.
Congratulations to @suilee 黄瑞黎 who takes on the role of Southeast Asia bureau chief, based in Bangkok. nytco.com/press/sui-lee-wee-…
130
51
1,265
Today, I’m thinking of Zhang Xianling, who lost her only son, Wang Nan, 30 years ago. Wang, 19, told his mother that he wanted to “record history.” Before he left for Tiananmen Square on June 3, 1989, he asked her: “Do you think the troops would open fire?” She said she did not.
10
544
1,098
I traveled to rural Vietnam to try to understand why the Vietnamese would be willing to be transported in container trucks to Britain. I found poverty and desperation on a level I haven't seen in a while. My story: nyti.ms/2Puop24
33
567
1,053
In recent wks, I have found it impossible to talk to public health experts in HK on the coronavirus. One of them, a long-time source, sent me a note this morning: "It's difficult for us to criticize the mainland due to the national security law." What can you do. 😭
46
637
979
5. A huge caveat: China controls information v tightly. Already, they are censoring the discussion online. The hashtag #WuhanSARS is blocked on Weibo. So a lot of the information that we have is only from the govt.
108
1,038
1,057
Ending the thread with another quote from @mariaressa: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting,”said Ms. Ressa, the journalist, recalling a quote from the author Milan Kundera.
“If facts don’t win, we’ll have a whole new history.”
8
234
955
How does an outbreak become a pandemic? “Seven million people left Wuhan in January before travel was restricted.”
51
697
839
Hello, The New York Times is looking for a stringer to help us cover Indonesia. This person needs to be:
- fluent in Bahasa Indonesia and English
- be readily available to cover breaking news
Please send me an email with your CV if you are interested at slwee@nytimes.com
45
649
763
233,156
Many Filipinos say this is a historic election, the most important one for them in 30 yrs. Over and over, I heard these phrases "battle for the soul of our nation" and "the fight of our lives." @mariaressa puts it well: "It will determine not just our future but our past."
4
167
754
On this fateful day in China, 31 years ago. nytimes.com/2020/06/03/world…
26
309
690
This story is just huge. The growing awareness of women’s rights in China might be the biggest shift I’ve seen in 11 years of covering the country. nytimes.com/2021/11/03/world…
33
263
667
My story today: Last year, a Chinese woman was savagely beaten by her husband. To escape, she jumped from the second floor of a building, leaving her temporarily paralyzed. She filed for divorce but the court said no. 1/7 nytimes.com/2020/09/16/world…
25
308
658
Marcos: “I explained to President Xi that last year was the first year in the entire history of the Philippines where we had to import fish, which is a ridiculous situation for a country that consists of 7,100-plus islands.” (1/2) reuters.com/world/asia-pacif…
76
169
644
222,616
We walked the streets of a Chinese city with a couple looking for their missing cancer-stricken son. This was the saddest story I've covered in China for the past 8 yrs. I hope you read it. nyti.ms/2wfVIe7 with @elsiechenyi @gillessabrie
36
287
631
4. The details of the case in Japan are even more alarming. The man said he did not visit any market in Wuhan and Japanese health authorities say it is possible that he had contact with a person with a lung infection.
5
179
592
Update: A 69-year-old man in China has died from the mysterious coronavirus. He is the second person killed by the disease in less than a week.
nyti.ms/388fWrq
1. Folks, a while back I said there was no need to run for the hills after China first started reporting the mysterious pneumonia like illnesses in Wuhan. I still maintain that but I am now more worried. nytimes.com/2020/01/15/world…
22
404
584
I shadowed Shen Yue, a "programmer motivator" who massages her male programmer colleagues and chats with them to ease their stress. She loves her job. nyti.ms/2FffM2y
67
310
600
I took a break from coronavirus reporting to look at how China is collecting blood samples from men and boys to build a nationwide male DNA database. An American company, Thermo Fisher, is enabling this drive. nytimes.com/2020/06/17/world…
35
429
595
Gu was asked at least 6x about whether she still holds U.S. citizenship. She talked about the support she has received from both countries, about how she feels Chinese when in China and American when in the United States, and never answered the question. nytimes.com/2022/02/07/sport…
309
143
601
I met an American woman this morning who said she is flying her in-laws out from California to Singapore because she has no confidence in the health care system. Sick People Across the U.S. Say They Are Being Denied the Coronavirus Test nyti.ms/39NYsSz
33
224
519
1. There are growing questions now among scientists about the real-world effectiveness of the vaccines made by China's Sinopharm and Sinovac. I spoke to several of them. nytimes.com/2021/06/22/busin…
83
377
567
2. First of all, these patients in Thailand and Japan say they have had no exposure to the Huanan seafood market that China says is at the epicenter of all the cases. This suggests that the virus is spreading in Wuhan.
5
150
491
We know that older people with pre-existing conditions form the bulk of fatalities but I've been thinking about the outliers: the younger people who have appeared to have recovered and then died suddenly. The most famous one was the whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang.
6
107
498
It's been clear to me that the U.S.-Philippines alliance is something to watch this year but even I have been astounded by the speed of the events that have happened in the last month. I just came back from the PH and learned a lot /w @CamilleElemia nytimes.com/2023/02/20/world…
13
126
479
391,178
Today’s visit to a private Chinese company was a good reminder that businesses here operate on a whole different level. How many other firms overseas have to pledge “to never betray the Party?”
68
273
495
Special thanks to @serV33jay @mdlmaria15 and the more than 30 other young people I interviewed for this story. I’m always ridiculously grateful that people take the time to talk to me.
4
32
534
One year ago, @vwang3 and I wrote this story. I remember feeling shocked that nearly 5,000 people had died. nytimes.com/interactive/2020…
25
105
469
A cytokine storm happens when the immune system goes berserk and kills everything in the way, healthy cells included. It was the main culprit of fatalities in the 1918 flu pandemic and the 2009 swine flu.
16
116
470
China's vaccines were supposed to be a win for Beijing. Instead, countries are complaining about a delay in shipments and other citizens are asking why their govts have chosen to go with inoculations that have weaker efficacy rates and little data. nytimes.com/2021/01/25/busin…
44
237
487
Sometime last year, @CRTejada had asked a couple of us to look into U.S. companies doing business in Xinjiang. Was there anyone we shld be looking at in particular?
I said yes! Thermo Fisher, a U.S. maker of DNA sequencers that was selling their equipment to the police.
28
277
455
8. Pls read this story by my colleague, Roni Caryn Rabin. Problem with new numbers for experts now is comparisons and understanding the extent of the virus's spread. nytimes.com/2020/02/12/healt…
17
191
432
And thank you to all the people who helped me with contacts. Reporting in the Philippines is a real joy. Thank you to @hannahreyphoto for her lovely photos and @newshound16 @CamilleElemia for patiently translating ❤️
10
27
490
A Times reporter who visited the Mongol school in Hohhot was surrounded by plainclothes men who put her into a police car. They took her to the back building of a police station, where she was interrogated, one officer grabbed her throat with both hands and pushed her into a cell
We went to Inner Mongolia this week and found incredible courage - Mongol parents, teachers, students, even police fighting for their own language - but also sweeping security crackdown, w targets as young as middle school. Please read @latimes latimes.com/world-nation/sto…
8
264
443
7. I wrote about all these issues last week: As Deaths Mount, China Tries to Speed Up Coronavirus Testing nyti.ms/38dFtzZ
10
150
422
Correction: I missed a zero. Thailand expects 300,000 (!) Chinese tourists during the lunar new year period.
14
74
411
1. I've been covering the coronavirus outbreak in China since last December but I think what's going on outside China is really worrying, and revealing. My latest with @imakiky What a Party in Japan May Tell Us About the Coronavirus’s Spread nyti.ms/2PbP5DI
15
270
425
1. Last week, as the online attacks against Chinese feminists intensified, a powerful voice stepped in to help the trolls: Weibo’s CEO. nytimes.com/2021/04/24/world…
14
221
427
What we still don’t know: the source of the virus and the transmission route. The problem with eradicating the source is that there are many illegal animals at these markets, as Malik Peiris notes, so they will be hard to track down.
5
119
394
1. To everyone who has written/tweeted to say they cried while reading this story, I thank you. I've been covering this outbreak from China since Jan. 2 and thought people would be numb to reading such stories. It makes me feel hopeful about our shared humanity.
Every journalist knows that a single death is a tragedy, a million a statistic. 68,000 people have recovered from the coronavirus outbreak, while nearly 5,000 have died. @vwang3 and I zoom in on two of them: two 29-yr-old female medical workers from Wuhan. tinyurl.com/qmqcype
10
71
404
Wang Yi's charge: "Inciting subversion of state power." The sentence: nine years.
Pastor Wang Yi’s sermon on Sept 9, 2018: “We believe we have the responsibility to tell Xi Jinping that he is a sinner, and that the govt he leads has greatly offended God, because he has used force against the church of Lord Jesus Christ.” chinachange.org/2018/12/14/p…
10
396
401
I just called a professor in HK.
"Hi, I'm a reporter from The New York Times."
Him: "I don't know what paper is that. But anyway, call me back in half an hour."
19
51
389
Masks are so scarce in Wuhan that doctors and nurses are using tape to patch them up. Chinese medical workers at the forefront of the fight against the coronavirus epidemic are now becoming its victims -- 1,716 infected, 6 dead. w @chubailiang @amyyqin
nyti.ms/2wkNbdH
37
260
360
My colleague, Amber, and I spoke to her husband, Wu Shilei, over and over again. He was so patient with his time even amid his grief. So many years in this business and I still hate death knocks. I also cried listening to her mother. I ask you not to look away.
2
38
351
1. The Communist Party would like you to believe that they are getting the coronavirus outbreak under control. Yes, the no. of recoveries has exceeded deaths; the daily tally of new infections and deaths has declined steadily since Feb. 12. But it's too soon to conclude anything.
27
136
364
6. Samples had to be transported for hours to the province's relatively few labs. The nucleic acid tests are also dependent on the people sampling these patients. There's room for error. But the disadvantage of using CT scans is that they might not catch people w mild symptoms.
5
120
353
“Dr. Fortun’s work has taken her to Cyprus, The Hague and East Timor. She would make more money if she practiced medicine abroad full time, but said she felt ‘there was always this guilt that I’m not in the Philippines where I’m needed.’” nytimes.com/2022/06/03/world… @Doc4Dead
At the start of her presscon at the DOJ this morning, Dr. Raquel Fortun acknowledged that her initial involvement in the Percy Lapid case came from social media, when Twitter users asked her to comment on Villamor’s death.
Authorities and Lapid’s family noticed.
So keep asking.
81
395
Tragic morning in the city of Yangon today. Fatalities Reported After Military Truck Rams Protesters in Myanmar nytimes.com/2021/12/05/world…
21
333
377
3. They started displaying symptoms days after the market was shut. The woman in the Thailand case said she went to another market so she could have been exposed to the source of the virus, likely a mammal.
3
100
323
Amber spoke to the doctor who treated Dr. Xia. He remains baffled as to why she suddenly died, especially at such a young age. He says it was hypoxia, oxygen starvation of her organs. This was possibly because of a cytokine storm, an overreaction of the immune system.
4
95
332
The death toll of the new coronavirus has exceeded that of the SARS outbreak but recoveries are rising. Health experts say this is evidence that the treatments meted out have been effective and that the virus does not appear to be as deadly as SARS. nyti.ms/2OniCKg
17
138
350
Chinese Officials Respond To NBA Controversy By Moving Millions Of Citizens To NHL Re-Fanification Camps sports.theonion.com/chinese-…
21
110
322
1. Wuhan is calling its mass testing drive a "10-day battle." @vwang3 and I take a closer look at the government's plans to test 11 million residents. The numbers are staggering. nytimes.com/2020/05/14/world…
23
146
327
Chinese journalists are my heroes. Caixin, Caijing, Beijing News, Beijing Youth Daily, China Youth Daily, Renwu and Sanlian Zhoukan have been killing it with their coronavirus coverage. The Subtle Muckrakers of the Coronavirus Epidemic nyti.ms/2S1J9PD
5
126
334
6. Of course all this is happening days before the spring festival. 30,000 (!) Chinese tourists are set to arrive in Thailand. Numbers likely similar throughout the region. Governments in Asia must be worried. END.
7
83
298
Watching the debates reminds me of when I was a 21-year-old exchange student in the US and one of my professors took me aside to say: In America, you succeed by being loud.
12
49
300
I've been wondering this for a little while: why do so many people in Southeast Asia love Michael Learns To Rock and Westlife?
44
56
331
113,781
nytimes.com/2020/09/22/sport… “Women have long faced doubt, dismissal and outright denial that they belong in the lineup among big wave chargers. They have seldom had access to the kind of sponsorship it takes to chase swells.”
8
68
294
🧐 Hugo Boss tells Chinese customers it will continue to purchase Xinjiang cotton, months after telling US news outlet it has never used it | Hong Kong Free Press HKFP hongkongfp.com/2021/03/26/hu…
33
254
309
A former colleague and a friend. Just shaken for her and everyone in the press corps.
Chinese authorities detain Haze Fan, who works for the Bloomberg News bureau in Beijing, on suspicion of endangering national security trib.al/3i4KJ7Y
5
87
288
Yolanda Ouyang, 39, an employee at a state-owned enterprise in the region of Guangxi, was ecstatic. She had kept her 3rd child hidden for 2 yrs because she feared that she would be fired. “Finally, my child can come outside and play out in the open.” (1x) nytimes.com/2021/05/31/world…
11
77
298
I've always been struck by how difficult it is for people to see a doctor in China. So I spent several months standing in line outside hospitals, talking to doctors who have been stabbed and interviewing officials who are trying to change the system. nyti.ms/2QhuagL
36
168
292
For the first time ever, Myanmar's army is facing a dual problem of recruitment and retention. Although the number of soldiers defecting is too small to topple the Tatmadaw, the stresses are taking its toll. (1/n)
nytimes.com/2021/11/21/world…
24
143
293
As I was thinking about how to do this story, the Wuhan authorities announced last month that two 29-year-old doctors had died in a weekend. One of them was Xia Sisi, a gastroenterologist with a two-year-old son.
4
46
271
None of the people I interviewed at Ms. Shen's company thought that her job was sexist. When asked about the issue, Ms. Shen said: “I think women should be independent, self-reliant and have self-respect. And that’s enough.”
13
45
262
Brazil’s communications minister went to Beijing in February, met with Huawei executives at their headquarters and asked them for vaccines. Two weeks later, the company, previously barred from participating in Brazil’s 5G auction, was invited to do so. nytimes.com/2021/03/15/world…
35
147
275
Having covered the outbreak since Jan. 2, I’m flabbergasted by this quote in this devastating tick-tock. “Italy looked at the example of China, Ms. Zampa said, not as a practical warning, but as a ‘science fiction movie that had nothing to do with us.’” nytimes.com/2020/03/21/world…
19
142
282
She called and said: “Go round the back and look for my kitchen window!” Let’s do the interview from here.” We scanned the block and saw a grey-haired woman waving furiously and holding a picture of her son. I think it was Kim Kyung-Hoon who took this photo.
3
63
268
Zhang is a prominent infectious diseases specialist in China. “I said repeatedly two weeks ago that it’s unlikely the pandemic will be over by the summer, that it will largely last till the next year. Recent developments have confirmed that.” caixinglobal.com/2020-04-08/…
9
184
282
1. Hubei, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, is racing to test everyone suspected of being infected by today. But they are still short of testing kits, processing the samples takes at least two days, and they don't have enough labs. nyti.ms/38dFtzZ
10
156
271
I spoke to the brave Ou Jiayong, who is leading the fight in China to erase homophobic content from textbooks. She hasn’t come out to her parents and I was struck by how she thinks they would react: “They would lock me up at home or send me to a hospital.” nytimes.com/2020/10/28/busin…
5
86
279
1. Four Chinese cos. have started testing their coronavirus vaccine candidates on humans, more than the U.S. and Britain combined. But two of them have a long history of corruption and scandal, and all belong to an industry that is reviled by many in China nytimes.com/2020/05/04/busin…
32
150
267
C.D.C. and W.H.O. Offers to Help China Have Been Ignored for Weeks nyti.ms/2S7oA49
26
190
257