While some major economies are recovering fast from the pandemic-induced recession, others are languishing, and still others remain in a state of acute crisis. The extent to which these global inequalities persist will depend on a range of factors, and will have profound implications for social, political, and geopolitical stability. Read Here | Project Syndicate
To the extent that crude demographic trends matter in world affairs, they have been running to the United States’ advantage for some time. But big changes are underway. The initial returns from the U.S. 2020 census and the reports about last year’s birth totals offered sobering news. Read Here | Foreign Affairs
All over the world, countries are confronting population stagnation and a fertility bust, a dizzying reversal unmatched in recorded history that will make first-birthday parties a rarer sight than funerals, and empty homes a common eyesore. Read Here | The New York Times
Future generations will remember what the world did, or failed to do, in the face of South Asia’s devastating second wave of the virus. India and its neighbours desperately need more vaccines, oxygen, and other supplies, and it is in everyone else’s interest to provide them as fast as possible. Read Here | Project Syndicate
The United States and China are locked in a contest for influence over the rest of the world. The new great-power competition looks in this sense very much like the one that took place during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. But back then, the United States had a compelling […]
As the IMF has warned, economic recoveries are diverging dangerously. The disparities will widen further between wealthy countries that have widespread access to vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics, and poorer countries still struggling to inoculate frontline healthcare workers. Read Here | IMF Blog
As the Chinese government has started to worry about the country’s low population growth, it has progressively relaxed its family-planning policy. Policymakers should now go further, and provide a significant financial reward to parents of baby girls. Read Here | Project Syndicate
Who owns the Australian outback is a vexed question. The true answer is First Nations peoples, whose ownership stems back 60,000 years. The legal answer is more complex. It’s a mess of titles – freehold, pastoral leases, crown leases, public land, native title and land held by Aboriginal trusts. Read Here | The Guardian
Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the Communist Party has closely overseen every aspect of life in the country. There were signs of change in the 1980s when Deng Xiaoping started rebuilding after the Cultural Revolution but liberal moves have since been reversed. Read Here | South China Morning Post
“Governance in Russia is a one-man show.” Countless attempts have been made to kill off the claim. Vladimir Putin is not ‘a cross between Joseph Stalin and a Bond movie villain’, nor does he command a ‘well-oiled machine’ of governance with ruthless efficiency. For those commentators who think that politics in Russia is about more […]
looking beyond borders 