Chinese tourists may be flocking to Europe in record numbers, but now they can see some of the continent’s top historical attractions without ever leaving the People’s Republic. The Alpine village of Hallstatt, Austria, (a UNESCO World Heritage site on the picturesque shore of the Hallstätter See) has been re-created in full-scale replica in Boluo, in southern China. Complete […]
When most people think of British-Russian relations, they imagine Bond films, iron curtains, Cambridge double agents, irradiated dissidents, and billionaire oligarchs who dress like Evelyn Waugh but behave like Tony Soprano and then sue each other in London courts. But there’s another element underwriting this not-so-special relationship. British elites, elected or otherwise, have grown highly susceptible […]
Amid a world of pitiless competition, David Cameron is serving the national interest by leading the drive to sell British-made weaponry to our allies in the Gulf. No less than 300,000 jobs depend on Britain’s defence industry, which serves as our biggest exporter of manufactured goods and keeps this country at the forefront of technological […]
Greatness is an odd word because it signifies both quantity and quality. In the case of Russia, the two are easily confused. Even after the huge territorial losses incurred with the Soviet collapse, Russia still accounts for one-seventh of the Earth’s surface. Therefore, it has a geographical imperative to think big. Russia is unlike Britain and France, which shrank back to their middle-sized home nations after losing their […]
George Osborne has seized on news that the economy has emerged from double-dip recession, growing by 1% in the third quarter of 2012, as evidence that his policies have put Britain “on the right track”. The figures, announced by the Office for National Statistics on Thursday, mean the chancellor will be able to deliver his autumn statement […]
To those who met them in Japanese-occupied Manchukuo in 1935, the Swiss businessman Charles Emile Martin and his American partner, Cy Oggins, must have seemed an enigmatic pair. Oggins was a distinguished-looking man with craggy features, well-made suits, and a penchant for silver-topped walking sticks. He seemed to know a great deal about Oriental antiquities, […]
Exactly 11 years ago, with the wounds of 9/11 still fresh, the United States and Britain invaded Afghanistan. They arrived in anger, collected allies along the way, and grew in ambition. Today that anger has faded, those allies depleted, and their ambition exhausted. The campaign is already the longest in American history, far surpassing the Revolutionary […]
Had Eric Hobsbawm died 25 years ago, the obituaries would have described him as Britain’s most distinguished Marxist historian and would have left it more or less there. Yet by the time of his death at the age of 95, he had achieved a unique position in the country’s intellectual life. In his later years he became […]
The fiasco at London Metropolitan is making every university with non-EU students sit up and rub its eyes. While British people of all ethnicities may well be becoming more hawkish on immigration, the proposed clampdown on student visas seems designed to appeal to those whose idea of Britain is not imaginative or comprehensive. Read Here – The […]
The case of Nokia, a Finnish mobile-phone manufacturer, is well documented: it contributed a quarter to Finnish GDP growth between 1998 and 2007. But do any other countries rely so heavily on a single company? Read Here – The Economist
looking beyond borders 