Chinese strongman Xi Jinping has a terrible weakness – and his name is Kim Jong Un. This is supposed to be the Chinese President’s big moment. Not since Deng Xiaoping’s day has a mainland leader controlled, well, everything – foreign affairs, the economy, the military, censorship policy, you name it. United States President Donald Trump’s […]
The legacy of 2007 is still with us. Its most devastating and destructive effect was to put a premium on unconventional monetary measures. Unfortunately, when policymakers scrambled in search of “big bazookas” ten years ago, they set the stage for the return of an old character: a strongman willing to pull the trigger. Read Here […]
After the pomp and ceremony of China’s big military milestone this week, the sudden absence of President Xi Jinping and other key leaders from state television news bulletins on Wednesday was a familiar sign for China watchers – Beijing’s summer conclave has begun. Read Here – South China Morning Post
Even as China and India once more come nose to nose and eyeball to eyeball across the forbidding glaciers of the high Himalayas, the United States must resist the temptation to pour gasoline on this potentially dangerous conflagration even though more than a few U.S. (and global) arms merchants would benefit from the intensification of Sino-Indian military […]
Both Gandhi, for all his saintly status a profoundly sectarian Hindu leader, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the All-India Muslim League and the founder of Pakistan, were dead within a year after partition. If the British government had not been in such a panic-stricken rush to get out of India, there might have […]
Sometime in the next few days, President Xi Jinping will probably decamp to a seaside resort on China’s northeastern coast for a key Communist Party conclave before a twice-a-decade leadership shuffle. The annual meeting in Beidaihe, a summer retreat for China’s most powerful leaders since the 1950s, is one of the last chances for party […]
To win the price-setting game, oil producers need to address two related issues: They must maintain prices at a relatively high level without losing more market share to nontraditional producers, and they need to retain unity amid geopolitical tensions and disparities in domestic economic and financial situations. Read Here – BloombergView
Today, the world’s major economies are experiencing a steady recovery, despite the occasional setback. To be sure, economic performance is far from reaching its full potential: depending on where one looks, one can find output gaps, excess leverage, fragile balance sheets, under-investment, and unfunded longer-term non-debt liabilities. Still, financial markets show no signs of convulsion, […]
Once dependent on Beijing during the years of international isolation imposed by the West for its nuclear program, Iran is now critical to China’s ability to realize its grandiose ambitions. Other routes to Western markets are longer and lead through Russia, potentially a competitor of China. Read Here – The New York Times
The fixation on headline GDP overlooks deeper issues shaping the China growth debate. That is because the Chinese economy is in the midst of an extraordinary structural transformation – with a manufacturing-led producer model giving way to an increasingly powerful services-led consumer model. Read Here – Project Syndicate
