As Xi Jinping and China’s other new leaders begin their tenure, Beijing‘s behavior strongly suggests that although they may have strategic goals, China has no strategy for achieving them. Beijing continues to follow a development model it has outgrown and pursues an assertive, zero-sum foreign policy that is counter to its long-term interests. Read Here […]
In the West, Xi’s assumption of power has largely been covered as an economic and political drama: Can he keep China’s booming markets on track? Will he tame the country’s toxic levels of official corruption before demands for political reform derail him? Is he a reformer at all? What these accounts often miss are Xi’s […]
If global economists are distraught over the gloomy numbers coming out of China, imagine how Xi Jinping must feel. China’s president, officially in the post for barely a month, is still consolidating his power. At home, he confronts a widening rich-poor gap and endemic pollution, not to mention bird flu and rivers overrun with dead pigs. […]
China has committed $75bn (£48bn) on aid and development projects in Africa in the past decade, according to research which reveals the scale of what some have called Beijing’s escalating soft power “charm offensive” to secure political and economic clout on the continent. The Chinese government releases very little information on its foreign aid activities, […]
At 7.7%, China’s annual GDP growth in the first quarter of this year was slower than many expected. While the data were hardly devastating relative to a consensus forecast of 8.2%, many (including me) expected a second consecutive quarterly rebound from the slowdown that appeared to have ended in the third quarter of 2012. China […]
Is China, under its new president, Xi Jinping, undertaking its own diplomatic pivot, parallel to the United States’ “pivot to Asia”? Xi’s first significant international initiatives – making Russia his first official visit abroad, followed immediately by his attendance at the BRICS summit in South Africa – suggest that China may be seeking to place […]
Most observers are gloomy about the prospects for serious economic reform in China. But they ignore a central lesson of recent Chinese history: reform is possible when the right mix of conditions comes together at the right time. And the very circumstances that facilitated the last major burst of economic reform in the 1990s are […]
Fitch Ratings downgraded China’s long-term local currency debt one notch, from AA- to A+. The primary reason for the move was the country’s too-rapid expansion of credit, one of the “underlying structural weaknesses” the agency cited in its announcement. Many analysts in fact think the debt resulting from then Premier Wen Jiabao’s borrowing binge, which began to accumulate in earnest […]
On March 22nd, shortly after assuming the post of President of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping headed off to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Observers were watching the two leaders closely, looking to divine whether or not they could overcome past divisions to achieve a new level of cooperation in bilateral ties. What […]
Chairman Mao Zedong said that power comes out of the barrel of a gun, and he knew a thing or two about power, both hard and soft. If you have enough guns, you have respect. Money is the same: if you have enough cash, you can buy guns, and respect. Israel and Saudi Arabia are examples […]
looking beyond borders 