Either Beijing will find innovative ways that benefit debtor nations or it will be seen as just another predatory lender in a long history of empire builders. The backlash to China’s presence in lands around the world will soon follow, along with fractured political and economic relationships that become difficult, if not impossible, to mend. […]
China’s economy shrank by 6.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2020, the first contraction since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, confirming the economic damage done by the coronavirus pandemic. Over the first three months of the year, the world’s second largest economy faced an extensive shutdown as it battled to […]
In the six days after top Chinese officials secretly determined they likely were facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus, the city of Wuhan at the epicenter of the disease hosted a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people; millions began traveling through for Lunar New Year celebrations. Read Here – APNews
Two months ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping looked like he would emerge from the novel coronavirus pandemic with his legitimacy and his ambitions for Chinese global leadership in tatters. Today, as the Chinese government lifts its lockdown on the city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, Xi can present himself instead as a forceful […]
Back in January, when the pandemic now consuming the world was still gathering force, a Berkeley research scientist named Xiao Qiang was monitoring China’s official statements about a new coronavirus then spreading through Wuhan and noticed something disturbing. Statements made by the World Health Organization, the international body that advises the world on handling health […]
Over recent weeks, the United States and China have been using increasingly strong rhetoric around COVID-19. The war of words had real-life consequences in late March when a meeting of the G7 failed to agree a joint statement following US State Department’s insistence on referring to the virus as the “Wuhan Virus”. How have the two […]
As most Southeast Asian governments anticipate China’s potential reaction and adjust their behaviours accordingly, China no longer needs to exert explicit pressure. The COVID-19 crisis has made this trend more obvious, highlighting not only the internalisation of this “privileged relationship” but also a more disturbing – but unspoken – reality: Southeast Asian countries’ acceptance of […]
Will China be a lone bright spot as other major economies struggle with the virus in the months ahead? And when the crisis finally ends, will China resume its role as the major driver of global growth, boosting the fortunes of multinationals once again? That appears to be the hope of many who have praised China for […]
The United States has accused China of using the global coronavirus pandemic to further expand its “unlawful claims” in the South China Sea. In a strongly worded statement, the US State Department gave Washington’s view of last week’s collision of a Chinese coastguard ship and a Vietnamese fishing vessel near the disputed Paracel Islands. Read […]
Controversy and secrecy appear to lurk in the corridors of the National Biosafety Laboratory in Wuhan. Described as “a cell within the Chinese Academy of Science’s Institute of Virology,” it conducts “coronavirus research” and is a United Nations “reference laboratory for infectious diseases.” It is also situated in the city which in December spawned the first […]
looking beyond borders 