Donald Trump is kicking off an Asia tour next week that includes a two-day state visit to China starting Nov. 8. At the top of the agenda for his meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping is, of course, North Korea and trade—two items that, in Trump’s mind, can be traded against each other. Read Here – […]
A growing number of economists are joining the chorus forecasting the arrival of a stronger Chinese economy under President Xi Jinping – a stark contrast from a year ago, when China was seen as a source of instability for the world. Although Beijing has delivered scant evidence that it is taming its debt mountain, the optimists […]
As Donald Trump angles to make America’s debt burden great again, he has some finessing to do with his bankers. No, not Russia in this case, but China and Japan, both by far the biggest holders of U.S. Treasuries with a combined $2.3 trillion. South Korea’s $95 billion stockpile also has folks in Seoul curious about […]
This new era marks the resurrection of Mao’s one-man rule and symbolises the death of Deng’s two most important political legacies: the consensus-building “collective leadership” and an orderly power succession mechanism… Also, with no clear successor, Xi is set to dominate decision-making for years to come, putting 1.4 billion people, the world’s second-largest economy and an emerging nuclear-armed […]
Seventeen years after Vladimir Putin first became president, his grip on Russia is stronger than ever. The West, which still sees Russia in post-Soviet terms, sometimes ranks him as his country’s most powerful leader since Stalin. Russians are increasingly looking to an earlier period of history. Both liberal reformers and conservative traditionalists in Moscow are […]
A 38-nation Pew Research Center survey finds there are reasons for calm as well as concern when it comes to democracy’s future. More than half in each of the nations polled consider representative democracy a very or somewhat good way to govern their country. Yet, in all countries, pro-democracy attitudes coexist, to varying degrees, with […]
China’s new leadership lineup has been revealed. The members of the Politburo Standing Committee are, in order of seniority, President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang, Li Zhanshu, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji and Han Zheng. The unveiling of the new lineup marks the climax of the twice-a-decade leadership reshuffle after months-long intense horse trading and […]
The ruling Communist Party has formally lifted Xi Jinping’s status to China’s most powerful ruler in decades, setting the stage for the authoritarian leader to tighten his grip over the country while pursuing an increasingly muscular foreign policy and military expansion. The move to insert Xi’s name and dogma into the party’s constitution alongside the party’s founders […]
China’s top graft-buster Wang Qishan is not on the list of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and is therefore confirmed to be retiring from the Politburo Standing Committee, the apex of the Chinese leadership…The release of the list came after the twice-in-a-decade national congress adopted the political ideology of President Xi Jinping into […]
In the wake of Trump’s election, signs of a grassroots activism in the tech industry have been everywhere: management-endorsed Googleplex protests; tech workers participating in their first political marches; executives from Tesla, Intel, and IBM leaving the president’s advisory councils. There’s also a growing realization that the most effective form of resistance is winning state […]
