Facing escalating geopolitical competition with the US, China is scrambling to win friends in East Asia. But while China’s neighbours will undoubtedly welcome any respite from Chinese belligerence, they will not be fooled by sweet talk – or even sweet trade deals. Read Here – Project Syndicate
Since Deng launched the opening-up policy in 1978, China has transformed itself from a backward, agrarian economy and politically isolated state into the world’s second-largest economy and an important player with global interests and influence. For instance, in the 30 years from 1949 to 1978, only 200,000 Chinese people travelled abroad. Last year alone, they […]
The sea change in consumer behaviour has apparently worried Beijing. In September, China’s cabinet pushed for supportive mechanisms to boost consumption, following its move in August to raise the threshold for collecting income taxes to 5,000 yuan per month from the previous 3,500 yuan. Read Here – Nikkei Asian Review
China’s leaders have long known that the economy has outgrown the world market, and is desperately in need of rebalancing. But, thanks to Donald Trump’s trade war, they are now pursuing that goal with a new sense of urgency, suggesting that US pressure may well end up being a blessing in disguise for China. Read […]
Over the past 15 years, China has fueled one of the most dramatic and geographically far-reaching surges in official peacetime lending in history. More than one hundred predominantly low-income countries have taken out Chinese loans to finance infrastructure projects, expand their productive capacity in mining or other primary commodities, or support government spending in general. […]
When scholars of international relations predict that the 2000s will be a “Chinese century”, they are not being premature. Although America remains the lone superpower, China has already replaced it as the driver of global change. Read Here – The Economist
The world has moved on and conditions have changed within China in ways that Warring States militarists had no reason to anticipate. The Party is beginning to encounter an international backlash against its strategy and methods, at the same time as it faces rising discontent with its authoritarian ways at home. Once again, the Party’s […]
President Xi Jinping paid homage to the past when he returned to where China’s economic miracle was born and nurtured. But his eyes were firmly focused on the present and the future. With immaculate timing, his trip to Guangdong this week conjured memories and images of Deng Xiaoping’s historic 1992 ‘Southern Tour’ after he had stepped down […]
Democrats and Republicans in the United States may be deeply divided on almost every aspect of President Donald Trump’s inconsistent foreign policy, but on one issue they are in unison: China’s US$1.1 trillion “Belt and Road Initiative” must be contained. Read Here – South China Morning Post
The biggest national security issues, however, arise from the unpredictable political impact of a recession in China. We learned this, or should have, during the 1997 to 1998 Asian crisis. China may have had a disguised recession or near recession in 1998, but it was in a much smaller economy. Apart from that one episode […]
looking beyond borders 