As 2020 draws to a close, many of us cannot wait for this annus horribilis to end. And for good reason: this year has seen more than a million and a half COVID-19 deaths; an economic collapse far greater than that of the 2008 financial crisis; a boiling-over of resentment against decades of racial and social injustice; […]
Even after Asia’s economies climb out of the COVID-19 recession, China’s strategy of frenetically building dams and reservoirs on transnational rivers will confront them with a more permanent barrier to long-term economic prosperity: water scarcity. Read Here | Project Syndicate
Deng, when he was in charge, warmed to USSR again. In fact, he brought Gorbachev to Beijing in 1989. We don’t know if Xi will follow Deng and eventually change China’s international position, but certainly the global situation for Beijing is far more complicated than 40 years ago. Read Here | Asia Times
Many Pakistanis see the army as the real power behind Khan and the cause of the country’s political and economic woes. Their anger has occasioned a remarkable shift as major political figures speak out for the first time against the military’s dominance of Pakistan—a shift that could eventually threaten the military’s chokehold on political power. […]
We must recognize that world affairs are rarely black and white, that alliances should serve as instruments of U.S. policy rather than as ends in themselves, and that—like it or not—history as we always knew it has returned. Read Here | The National Interest
U.S.-China relations sharply deteriorated in 2020, after three years of steadily declining under the Donald J. Trump administration. Beijing and Washington traded blame over the coronavirus pandemic, remained locked in a trade war, competed over 5G networks and other technologies, and clashed over rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, among other issues. Read Here […]
The act directs the US government to issue economic and visa sanctions against any Chinese official who interferes with the Dalai Lama’s succession. The bill also prohibits China from establishing any new consulates in the US until Washington is granted its own diplomatic outpost in Tibet. Read Here | South China Morning Post
Although Joe Biden has ambitious proposals to raise taxes and spend trillions of dollars over the next decade, he will be constrained if Republicans retain control of the Senate. He should welcome that outcome as an opportunity to govern in the mode of Bill Clinton, rather than as the ideologue others would like him to […]
After the 2008 U.S. housing and credit market crisis, Chuck Prince, the former Citibank CEO, explained his bank’s speculative activity during the bubble by noting that when the music is playing you have to dance. Today, with the world’s major central banks continuing to supply the markets with ample liquidity, there can be little doubt […]
China’s experience of the coronavirus pandemic has reaffirmed this assessment of faltering American global leadership, the failing capacities of the West to address the challenges of the new century, and the resilience of China’s socialist economy in comparison to capitalism; most importantly, they think it has also validated the superiority of their political system. Read […]
