For over a quarter century, the one figure that dominated discussion of China’s economy was this: eight percent. Beginning in 1982, when leader Deng Xiaoping established the percentage as necessary to quadruple the size of the country’s GDP by 2000, China has seldom failed to achieve it—even in 2009, when the world was enduring the worst downturn since the Great Depression. […]
Obama’s failure to don a batik shirt for the closing photo shoot of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit changes little. In addition, if the past is any guide, China’s leaders will once again overplay their hand. For many of its neighbors, China’s uncompromising stance on sovereignty over various disputed atolls and islands is just too alienating. Read […]
President Obama’s trimming of stops on a trip to Asia this month has raised questions locally about the US government’s two-year-old re-balancing of resources to the region, a shift embraced by allies such as Japan and the Philippines as their common rival China looms larger. Read Here – Christian Science Monitor
Xi Jinping’s first foreign visit to Moscow and other signs of growing cooperation between the two countries, the bilateral relationship is a short-term calculation by Russia that while interests coincide for now it is in fact China that poses the greatest threat to Russia’s presence in the East. Read Here – The Diplomat
U.S. President Barack Obama has a good chance of making peace with Iran and lave behind an enduring foreign policy legacy just as one of his predecessors, Richard Nixon, opened the doors to China. Obama could learn from Nixon the art of perseverance and tenacity in developing better relations with an old foe. But let’s […]
The Indo-Pacific ranges from East Africa, across the Indian Ocean, to the western and central Pacific, including Japan and Australia. Within this vast area, cooperation between countries and systems of alliances form, such as cooperation between the U.S., Japan and Australia, countering trends such as China’s assertive behavior in the South China Sea and its […]
And what’s happening in the world today? Are the issues facing us changing, or are they the same the world battled with a decade ago? There are some surprises ahead. Here are are the 10 stealth economic trends that are impacting our world today. Read Here – The Atlantic
Military competition between the the U.S. and China is on the rise even as the two foster closer links, with China’s defense budget more than doubling since 2006. Though its military spending is less than one-fifth of the U.S., China has developed drones, stealth fighters and an aircraft carrier while deploying a type of anti-ship ballistic missile […]
Xi’s prolonged attack on civil society—crackdowns, one right after the other—is only increasing the pressure in the country, and that is occurring while the tolerance of the population is decreasing. Read Here – World Affairs Journal
The Manmohan Singh–Barack Obama meeting at the U.N. General Assembly session is unlikely to be significant thanks to the stasis that has marked India-U.S. relations since 2008 Read Here – The Hindu
looking beyond borders 