China’s ambitious plan to recreate the old Silk Road trading routes across Eurasia and Africa is facing a serious financing challenge, according to the country’s senior bankers and government researchers. Read Here – South China Morning Post
The prospect that President Xi Jinping could remain in power indefinitely has caused much consternation outside China. But within China, and among many serious observers, the elimination of the constitutional term limit on presidential incumbents has attracted a more positive, or at least nuanced, response. Read Here – Project Syndicate
A composed and contrite Mark Zuckerberg held up under hours of grilling by more than 40 U.S. senators — but his performance did little to mask Facebook’s growing political problems in Washington. Read Here – Politico Also Read: Key Moments From Mark Zuckerberg’s Senate Testimony
Chinese President Xi Jinping announced plans on Tuesday to open up the Chinese economy, including lowering tariffs for autos and other products and enforcing the legal intellectual property of foreign firms. Xi’s comments come amid escalating trade tensions between China and the U.S. as the world’s two largest economies take turns announcing punitive trade measures against each other. Read Here – CNBC
As Cui, China’s man in Washington, suggests, Xi’s team is now “looking at all options.” While Trump doing his worst with tariffs is worrying, the idea of Xi pulling the plug on the dollar is positively terrifying. Trump must remember that even though he runs the biggest economy, Xi holds the deed. Read Here – […]
China is still not wedded to North Korea’s survival, and the countries’ “alliance” continues to be only in name. For Beijing, the ultimate goal of the meeting was not to patch up the relationship with Pyongyang but to shape the direction of upcoming U.S.–North Korean talks and to ensure that any outcome favours Chinese interests […]
China has been crucial to getting the rail portion of the project off the ground. After more than a decade of disagreements with a Franco-Canadian consortium, the governments of Senegal and Mali signed separate agreements with China Railway Construction Corporation in 2015. Senegal’s deal comes to $1.24 billion, and will be funded by a Chinese […]
For its entire history, Silicon Valley has deflected skepticism, building itself a filter bubble that largely protected it from tough questions about its grand plans for remaking humanity and capitalism, about its bulldozing of privacy and media. Tomorrow will be the day Zuckerberg raises his hand before Congress, and it will be the day Silicon […]
The Pakistan navy is likely to soon place nuclear-tipped cruise missiles on up to three of its five French-built diesel-electric submarines. It has also reached a deal with China to buy eight more diesel-electric attack submarines that can be equipped with nuclear weapons. These are scheduled for delivery in 2028. Even more disturbing, Pakistani military […]
Given the rapidly shifting geopolitical landscape – or, more accurately, seascape – of the South Pacific, the region poses several strategic challenges to the US and its allies. As Australian National University’s Joanne Wallis has argued, over the past several years the South Pacific has seen the creation of alternative regional institutions, increasing Chinese investment and strategic […]
looking beyond borders 