The degree of Putin’s genuine popularity is unknowable. His reelection earlier this year was more a display of apathy than ardor. All polling and electoral data in Russia are suspect, but Putin clearly dominates the political culture. He has delivered the stability that many Russians craved before his presidency, although, as Dugin realized in 2012, […]
EU ports have recently caught the attention of various Chinese corporations, as China undertakes infrastructure projects around the world as part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI is an international infrastructure and trade development project led by the Chinese government in an effort to pursue greater cooperation and deeper integration of China into the […]
The Belt-and-Road Initiative (BRI), a pet project of China’s leader Xi Jinping, aims to build trillions of dollars of infrastructure from Asia to Africa to Europe, and along sea routes too. Involving roughly 70 countries so far, it entails massive spending (and lending) by China on railroads, ports and energy projects, highways—and, increasingly, satellite launches. Read Here – Quartz
For years, most experts believed that China’s military challenge to the U.S. was regional in nature — that it was confined to the Western Pacific. After decades of tacitly free-riding on America’s global power-projection capabilities, however, Beijing now is seeking the capabilities that will allow it to project its own military power well outside its […]
At the heart of Obama’s narrative was a belief that progress, in the larger scheme of things, was inevitable, and this belief underscored his position on every issue from marriage equality to climate change. His idea of progress was neither the rigid millennial faith of Woodrow Wilson nor Bush’s shallow God-blessed optimism. It was human-scale […]
While Prime Minister Hun Sen often portrays himself as sole protector of Cambodia’s sovereignty, China is at work building a port, airport and virtual city on 45,000 hectares of Cambodian land with the premier’s express permission. Read Here – Asia Times Also Read: Myanmar Risks Falling Into China’s Debt Trap
Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia Philip Lowe’s speech last week highlighting the risks to the Chinese financial system from shadow banks – non-bank financial institutions often operating in more lightly regulated wholesale markets – has once again drawn attention to the major economic risk in China. Read Here – Lowy Institute
The world seems to be moving away from multilateralism. The United States has withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris agreement on climate change, attacked the World Trade Organization, and threatened to start several trade wars. The United Kingdom is negotiating a messy exit from the European Union. But one place is bucking the […]
The gradual disintegration of the Chimerica symbiosis is likely to be the world’s biggest business story for the next several years, if not decades. Even if the U.S. and China don’t come to blows, their deepening economic rivalry creates a headache for multinational companies that have spent decades constructing global supply chains. Read Here – Bloomberg
Much has been written on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s remarkable consolidation of political power since he took office five years ago. But an equally important question for the international community to consider is how Xi views the world—and what that means for how China will approach it. Because of the opacity of the Chinese political system, this is […]
looking beyond borders 