While the rise of China as an export powerhouse became evident at the beginning of this century, the story began earlier. Towards the end of the 1970s, China began a set of reforms to upgrade its economy and open up to the world. At that time, its share of global trade stood at less than […]
Data is now at the center of global trade. For decades, international trade in goods and services set the pace of globalization. After the global financial crisis, however, growth in trade plateaued, and in its place came an explosion of cross-border data flows. Measured by bandwidth, cross-border data flows grew roughly 112 times over from […]
Beijing is likely to favour an African candidate for the top job at the World Trade Organisation(WTO) as US-China trade tensions drive the body into dysfunction, according to an adviser to the Chinese government and observers. Of the eight nominees vying to replace Brazil’s Roberto Azevedo, who is stepping down as WTO director general a […]
Almost every week of late, it seems something new, startling and historically unusual is happening in U.S. trade policy. President Donald Trump’s actions are undermining the credibility of American negotiators, increasing uncertainty for traders and investors, domestic and foreign, and potentially threatening to throw the economy into recession. Read Here – World Politics Review
A logical implication of the externality argument is that trade agreements lead to freer trade. Some have equated this with the argument for free trade, but the arguments are quite distinct. The case for free trade rests on strong assumptions that may or may not be reasonable. Read Here – Harvard Business Review
More than two thousand years ago, China’s Han Dynasty launched the Silk Road, a sprawling network of commerce that linked South and Central Asia with the Middle East and Europe. Today, the idea of a “New Silk Road,” an intertwined set of economic integration initiatives seeking to link East and Central Asia, has taken hold […]
The extent of the shift becomes clearer when you look at the US-China equation. We are today dealing with a China whose accumulation of power is unprecedented in history, in both pace and extent. In 1990 the US economy was eight times the size of China’s. Today, in less than a quarter century, the two […]
In history, a hegemon is largely associated with the presence of international economic infrastructure. In the 19th century, the British hegemon underwrote the liberal international order in the form of free trade and gold standard. The liberal order was later re-established by the American hegemon, which has overseen the Bretton Woods system from 1945. By […]
At 7.7%, China’s annual GDP growth in the first quarter of this year was slower than many expected. While the data were hardly devastating relative to a consensus forecast of 8.2%, many (including me) expected a second consecutive quarterly rebound from the slowdown that appeared to have ended in the third quarter of 2012. China […]
Trade numbers for 2012 show that China has become the world’s biggest trader, unseating the United States that has ruled the global trading charts for several decades. It is a momentous shift that is bound to have far-reaching impact on the way Beijing sees itself and the manner it influences geopolitics. As it becomes the […]
